Without any thought whatsoever to complain or flame this game ( which i find absolutelly delicious and have tons of fun with ) i am painfully missing the tactical combat phase i first saw in master of orion. Without it, ship or fleet combat is simply a battle of numbers, or better yet, an extension of the superbly implemented economics : Build economy, build your fleet, build a better and bigger fleet, crush your opponnent's smaller fleet. In the end, it's the battle of economics, whoever can sustain the bigger ships wins. It's kind of comparing Command & Conquer with Starcraft. Production vs Strategy.
Therefore i have a number of suggestions, feel free to flame / comment :
- First thing should be actual control during the combat phase, which can be real-time ( with timer settings ) or turn based. Either way, it would be great if we could control each ship, choose what to attack and with which weapons ( i'm dreaming, but targeting specific components would give me a hard on ). The ability to concentrate fire, evade or run would be lovely.
- More weapon settings. Right now is laser vs shields, gun vs armor, missile vs chaff. How about adding range and rate of fire? Accuracy settings! Cooldown maybe? For missiles, limited no of salvos ( reloading needed at star port ). Repair bots? Anything that would make a ship design really stand out, instead of just be a battle of numbers.
I am not sure if this has been proposed / discussed already ( did not browse the whole forum ) and i can already identify some problems with my proposals :
- Designing AI with competent tactics
- Military rating close to useless
- Balancing issues
However, taken all that into account, the combat part is simplistic and the only disapointment of the game. If i would be able to manually control all battles, imagine the tactics, the hit-and-run, the sniping, the concentrated fire, the joy of destroying a much more powerful fleet with just micro-management.
Doubt it that would be implemented, but one can only hope for.
Cheers
