But you don't have the beta.  You have no idea how it plays, what it looks like, etc.  The fleet battles have been in for months and people like it universally.

In another thread, you claimed I don't know strategy.  If you want people to remotely take you seriously, you need to come down off your high-horse. 

Actually I do have the beta. I do enjoy the game, mostly. I'm frustrated with fleet battles but for some reason until a few days ago I thought the end product would have some kind of user control in fleet battles. I'm sorry for saying you don't know strategy that was me being a moron. So this will be my last post on the subject and if I can't say something nice I'll be quiet.

That is, if you have an option to not watch fleet battles.

Well, you have it. There are lots of options associated with battle and fleet battle.

Perhaps some basic element of tactical maneouver can be incorporated into fleet battles. 2 or 3 options at the most. 1) Target same ship, 2) Target individual ship, 3) Target 2 ships, or something like that.

well, given Frogboy's posts in another thread, attack orders are:
- find a ships that deals lots of damage and can be killed fastly.
- attack it until it is dead
- target the next ships with the same algorithm.

And I don't think why someone would do otherwise: being able to greatly reduce the attack power of the ennemy with the minimum of shots is rarely a bad tactic.

BTW, one important thing in fleet battle is the fact that damages done by a ship are computed before the next ship on the same side decides which ship to fight, meaning that they won't waste shots on a ship that has been destroyed by the previous shot. The tricky part is that when watching the battle, the calculation is made before you see the weapons fired. You need to pay attention to the central bottom screen that informs you of the damage made by the various ships and the target they have choosen.

However, Galciv from the getgo has not had a tactical focus - which is unfortunate IMHO. Frogboy has some personal vendetta against tactical - but that's his call as developer. I hope in future versions of galciv that tactical starship combat gets put in.

Star Ranger, did you read Frogboy's earlier post?

Tactical battle detracts from strategy games because the AI almost never is anywhere near as good as a human player at doing them.

*That's* why tactical combat isn't being implemented in GalCiv 2. It's why it's not implemented in a lot of turn-based strategy games (Civilization, anyone?). It's why most real-time strategy games are relatively easy to beat in singleplayer mode--unless you have the difficulty level cranked up to the highest one, where the AI always receives ridiculous cheats and/or bonuses. I've only ever come across 2-3 strategy games (and I've played quite a few over the years) where the combat AI posseses any real degree of competence, and even they were far from perfect.

Unless you count chess, there's really not a computer strategy game in existence where the tactical AI is actually going to give you a challenge over the long run. It's only a matter of time (and usually not very much time, at that) before you figure out the AI's particular weaknesses and how to exploit them. Having truly capable combat AI--or even AI that's just "good enough"--is simply not practical or feasible when it comes to computer games. If given enough resources (particulartly time and money), could Stardock program and insert combat AI into GalCiv 2 that was good enough to give all of us players a run for our money? Sure. But since they *don't* have unlimited time and money, the only we'd ever see an AI that was good enough would be for the game to not be released until we're all in nursing homes, and/or Stardock would have to drive themselves to bankruptcy acquiring the necessary expertise and technology needed.

It's not that Brad has a "vandetta" against tactical combat, nor are any of us here against it either. I would like nothing more than to be able to personally command my fleets against the enemy. But I know that it wouldn't take long before we'd figured out how to blow the AI out of the water 9 times out of 10. At our current stage of computer gaming, the technology and expertise (with all respect to Draginol and Frogboy) needed to produce even a reasonably competent combat AI simply does not exist--at least not at prices a game developer could afford. Yeah, starship combat is pretty to watch (which is why I'm glad GalCiv 2 includes the combat viewer), but how much fun would it really be to personally fight battles that you know you can probably win just because you know the AI's "Achilles heal"? That would get boring in a hurry!

I would like to see the computer assign a certain number of ships to destroy a target and not be overkill.

Well, it is the case: there isn't any overkill. But the computer doesn't assign all ships before they fire at a target. The algorithm (based on some tests I have made on the beta) is the following:
- Fleet A starts.
- ship A1 in fleet A fires at ship B1 in fleet B. Damage are calculated BEFORE cinematics of firing weapon is displayed
- ship A2 in fleet A choose a target. If B1 is still alive then it is B1. If B1 is dead, then it is B2
- repeat until all ships in fleet A have fired
- proceeds the same way on fleet B.

The key point is that one side fire before the other and ships choose their target based on the result of fire made by other ship in the fleet. You haven't a target assignement of all ships of your fleet before they fire. It just doens't work that way in GC II (and I know, it isn't realistic). The assignement is made ship by ship after that the previous ship has done its damage. So you haven't any overkill. If you want, see it like all ships in fleet A have a greater speed/initiative than any ship in fleet B because they are the attacking side.

I see a problem when a super advanced battle ship is equipped with six missile battleries, each capable of destroying a small hulled ship on it's on, only to have the ship fire all six at one target. This is where the simple system falls down.

Even ships in WWI and WWII had the ability to engage multiple targets with different gun turrents. Todays ships have some serious electronic muscles and can do even better. Even small US Navy fighter planes can track and engage multiple threats.

One assumes that the threat analysis, tracking, and engagement ability of super advanced combat vessels would be increased even more. Although I am generally comfortable with the current system there certainly are areas that I personally would have no troubles expanding.

Perhaps ships should be allowed to use excess firepower (or a part of it) to shoot at the next target having destroyed the last one.

That might be tricky since the huge excess of power might allow to kill the ennemy ship: the attacker rolls a random number between 1 and the total attack value of the kind of weapon. So you get more chance to hit (defender rolling below) and inflict more damages (difference between attacker roll and defender roll).

How about this for a compromise idea? This idea is ganked off the old SNES game Ogre Battle. This is probably too late for GC2 regular, but maybe the expansion or GC3.

You get a choice on attack orders.
First (pick randomly)
Leader (pick the flagship)
Strongest (pick the strongest enemy ship)
Weakest (pick off the weakest enemy ship)

On the defense side, I'd allow ships to be escorts, and give defense to the entire fleet, and have a chance of being battled instead of the flagship.

A couple of things people should know about Brad (Frogboy):

# He was the top ranked Total Annihilation player in the world on Boneyards.net for over a year.

# He was in the top 10 best players on Battle.net during the Starcraft beta

# He was in PGL (Professional Gamer's League) on a number of strategy games.

# He was in the top 100 in the Warcraft 3 beta and top 10 as a the human faction.

So he knows strategy and he puts his knowledge into the computer AI in the game.

Individual battles are a very small part of the game. Player controlled tactical battles would make it likely that there'd be some "trick" that would allow mediocre strategy gamers to win because they knew how to game the tactical battles. Anyone remember the gaming of the alien diplomacy in GalCiv I?

I have a question about starship battles that I don't think has been specifically addressed: Do opposing ships fire at each other simultaneously, or does one side fire first? And if so, what determines which side gets to go first?

The attacker's ships fire first, then any remaining defenders return fire, continuing back and forth in this fashion until one side is annihilated.

The attacker's ships fire first, then any remaining defenders return fire, continuing back and forth in this fashion until one side is annihilated.

Hmm.... I admit that bothers me a little. I wonder why Stardock is doing it that way. Not being a programmer, I don't understand why opposing fleets couldn't fire simultaneously. Can anyone answer this for me?

but how much fun would it really be to personally fight battles that you know you can probably win just because you know the AI's "Achilles heal"? That would get boring in a hurry

DId you read my first statement Citizen Martok - Ever heard of Moo 2? One of the best selling games of all time. Obviously people didn't think it was that boring! Hell there are more people on the net who play old version of moo 1 and moo2 than gal civ itself!


Noone goes into tactical games thinking there is a AI that will be as smart as a human - but that's why there are other factors to "balence" the game out - AI bonuses to production, combat, etc.

A couple of things people should know about Brad (Frogboy): # He was the top ranked Total Annihilation player in the world on Boneyards.net for over a year. # He was in the top 10 best players on Battle.net during the Starcraft beta # He was in PGL (Professional Gamer's League) on a number of strategy games. # He was in the top 100 in the Warcraft 3 beta and top 10 as a the human faction. So he knows strategy and he puts his knowledge into the computer AI in the game.

Big F'en deal. When I see "stats" such as these someone obviously feels the need to justify himself. Build a good game and that's all the justification you need.

For the record - I don't have anything personal against Frogboy - I'm just not a fan of his decision not to put tactical combat. HIs justification of not putting it in the game is also weak - if I wanted a pure strategy game I'll play chess. But as I said - its his call.