dasiko

Join Date 12/2005

Starship-Battles

interactive fights?

hello everybody!

it's my first post here. i thought that GC2 will have an interactive battle (e.g. like MoO2) where you can fight with your spaceships against your opponent.
looking through the game i have to say that i'm kinda disappointed that the battles are still calculated and can only be watched and no interaction is possible.

my question here: is there any project, suggestion or something like that to develop an interactive (turnbased or maybe even RTS) spacebattle part for GC2?

i just want to strengthen my request cause that was a main part of games like MoO2 and i would really miss it in this wonderful game (GC2)

best regards, daniel please remove this double post - sorry about it - thx

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There's enough to do in GC2 to have to worry about tactical battles as well.

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Funny....no one complains about the absence of tactical battles in Civ IV (the supposed king of all strategy games). I like them both even without....besides like Alfonse said there's enough to do already.

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There's enough to do in GC2 to have to worry about tactical battles as well.

I don't completely agree with you Alfonse.

Yes, there is plenty to do in GC2...probably enough to warrant there never being interactive tactical battles. However, that is an element that many people find as enjoyable as the strategy and conquest.

Imagine for a second that you were outflanked and an AI's fleet is bearing down on one of your planets. You've hardly any ships in the area, certainly not enough to stop the fleet and prevent the planetary invasion. With a more interactive combat system you can choose to engage anyway, but instead of a suicidal gesture that proves nothing it's a suicidal gesture that allows you to take out the troop transports and buy time for one of your fleets to respond more appropriately.

In another scenario you might be outnumbered and outgunned, but be able to take enough of the AI ships to win a moral victory.....or in more rare occasions actually win the battle.

They could easily include an option to auto calculate the results instead of forcing you to run each battle while allowing you that same option to control what targets get priority, etc. Right now the algorithm has the deadliest ship targeted automatically, even though you might consider the deadliest ship that troop transport/scout ship/etc. There's any number of people that would gladly choose more control over starship battles rather than accept a "rock, paper, sissors" result.

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Yeah, I'm a little surprised that the AI doesn't generally attack troop transports. I've had a few situations where I've sent a fleet of transports directly up to a planet ahead of my actual fleet, and the AI just ignores the transports. Maybe it's an ethics sort of thing with the AI but transports are the first thing I target.

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That's something that could be fixed by allowing the player to decide which ship to attack first, even if you don't control every single ship individually, just being able to designate a target would make a world of difference.

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GalCiv2 is a STRATEGY game... implementing more options for tactical battles would bring much more strategy to the game. Of course, if someone does not want to mess with strategizing combat, there could be an option not to do so. I know I would start winning more battles if I personally commanded my ships and told them what to do. It would add so much more depth and strategy to an already amazing game.

Definitely worth a thought or two.

Cheers.

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Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

Interested in tactical Combat

There threads ad nauseum on tactical combat and why it is not and will probably (i say probably because ultimately all things are possible) never be part of this game.

If tactical combat is something you must have there are games out there that have it.

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Dasiko

If it is of any consolation, if you ignore the visuals in the Combat Viewer the combat is quite "realistic". In the game it is the attacker who fires first where in reality it would the side that could obtain a target lock first and/or came into range first. It is only in the movies that you get ships maneouvring for position and dogfighting.

Sorry the game is not all that you were initially looking for, but give it a go and it may open your eyes to other aspects of gaming that you have not tried before.

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I'm looking forward to playing GalCiv2 because its not like all the other strategy games out there... I've had my fill of games like empire at war with over powered hero units and long drawn out space battles

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1st and foremost: thx to everybody for answering my questions or making your comment

it seems to me now that it's some kind of GalCiv policy not to have a tactical battle ingame which is ok to me - and looking back at civ1-4 i agree that these games were magnificent though they had no tactical combat

to continue some thoughts of you guys:
imo it would be great to assign special offensive and defensive tasks or commands to each ship like "primary attack ships of type *type*" or "defend my troop-carries" or something like that
i would really love to see that - in the current way its like playing basketball, soccer or something else and everybody on the field is running for the ball - no real tactic

regards, daniel

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in the current way its like playing basketball, soccer or something else and everybody on the field is running for the ball - no real tactic

Dude, it's the beginning of March Madness and you say there's no real tactic to basketball???!!! If you'd mentioned soccer for 5 year olds I'd agree with you, but left as a blanket statement I'd have to say you're insane!

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hmm.. it seems to me that i wasn't able to write down (understandable) what i really meant
i know the real situation - this was meant to be a fictitious statement
i meant that it is like these junior games where everybody's running for the ball and nobody cares about tactics
cause, ingame, every spaceship is hunting down the one the AI assigns as being "most threatening"

there's no reason for kicking me around just cause i didn't got written down what i meant to say.

i hope it's possible for you to see my point now
daniel

PS: to march madness - GO SPURS GO!

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There threads ad nauseum on tactical combat and why it is not and will probably (i say probably because ultimately all things are possible) never be part of this game.

Made me go and search for the topic. Can't say I feel bad for not knowing about topics that closed 24 and 65 days ago.

In one of the earlier posts Frogboy had this to say Link :

I can't think of any scenario where you would want to control the units in GalCiv in combat because the strategy is so straightforward -- eliminate the unit that represents the biggest threat to your ship / how tough it is to kill.

I disagree with this because of my above scenario; the biggest threat to your ship is not necessarily the biggest threat to you. Having said that, his other comments are sound against tactical combat:

But ultimately, for me it boils down to not wanting to feel like I had to manage the battles. The only way we would ever consider it is if we felt we could do the AI so good that it would perform the battles better than virtually any human player and even then it would only be less idea than the best person by a small percentage.

And that would be non-trivial. It would also require the the combat system be more sophisticated starting with combat ranges, defense ranges, and special modules that had varying range effects as well.

Without range for weapons, defenses, and modules in a tactical battle, controlling units is pretty meaningless and unnecessary.

That just can't be argued against. While I will always believe tactical combat adds another layer of enjoyment, with the above knowledge my support for the idea in GC2 ends.

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I wouldnt mind the choice of tactical battle.

Anyway, the biggest thing missing for me is the choice to retreat at least 1 of the ships. It's always a battle to the death. Saying that, I'm not exactly sure how it works but it will be nice to be able to retreat especially if you have faster engines.

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I think having tactical battles would be neat, but that's not what this game is designed for and its absolutely fine without it.

However, if you really want some tactical battles Dasiko, you may want to keep your eye on a game called Sword of the Stars. It will be focusing primarily on tactical battles, whether it'll be a good game remains to be seen.

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Not to add to the pile of cleaverly covert flames here, I think it's fine the way it is. As it stand the outcome can usually be predicted even thou there are some random factors. If you had a tactical combat the outcome would be uncertain,a nd that would favor the human player over the AI.

Still originally there would have been no fleet battle screen even, but we requested something like this in Beta and I'm happy to say we got it. Though Frogboy said time and time again that this is a strategy game not a tactical game. I played Moo2 as much as the next guy and I can telly ou the cheese in the tactical combat really takes away from the game overall. And in Moo2 the cheese is endless.

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Concerning the retreat idea.... adding a tactical retreat option sounds good when it's about saving your own ships. It's not so fun when the AI gets to use it also.

Enemy AI units can retreat from tactical battles in Rome:Total War. It can get annoying when you have to chase them again on the strategy map, after "winning" a battle on the tactical map. In an open field situation (no nearby armies or cities to merge with), it just forces you into another battle on the next turn, which isn't much fun because you're fighting a depleted army that has no chance. Decisive battles (fight to the death) make the overall game flow faster.

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