WOW, I'm starting to hate the combat visuals

Whats the nodding up and down? Do you mean how they kinda bounce around like a screensaver instead of space faring civilisations at war?!

When I start a battle with a mixed fleet, for example 1 large ship and the rest small or tiny, they all start in a line and the small / tiny ships move forward "faster" and so its looks really cool initially.

Yeah I kinda agree.. Why can´t it be just two lines moving in closer little by little while blasting each other away. This way the free camera could be atleast bit useful. Now the ships go around like mad men.

I would be much pleased if the ships would stop colliding so darn often!

It's like watching a game of bumpercars, piloted by eight-year olds, instead of trained pilots!

When we are at "nodding up and down", anybody noticed how silly ground combat looks near the end.

With dancing tanks where parts are going up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down.

You can even see how traks are not conneced to firing tower, but float.

My personal favorite is the fact that only the beam weapons actually appear to hit enemy vessels. Missiles usually at least get close (close doesn't cut it vs. even thin armor, but I'm willing to suspend disbelief), but the projectiles from the mass driver-type weapons, especially the later models, just seem to kind of tumble out of the barrel and wobble around the screen until SHAZAM! an enemy ship that was on the other side of the viewscreen takes a hit.

Yeah... the high end missiles and mass drivers are annoying as hell. Although, it gives me time to make lunch while I'm waiting for that photon torp to wander towards its target.

I'd be very happy if it wouldn't show the ring of a planet when that planet is attacked. Kind of defeats the purpose of the combat viewer to show an unnecessary object that blocks the view of the entire battle, no matter what angle you move the camera.

I've got to admit, though, that the "Black Hole Eruptor" is uber-cool. I like seeing the singularities open up over the enemy ships. You can almost hear the crew screaming, knowing that their doom is assured.

it gives me time to make lunch while I'm waiting for that photon torp to wander towards its target.

Heh. Yeah, it reminds me of the bit in Austin Powers where Austin starts the steamroller moving, and about a hundred yards in front of him, one of the Evil security guards starts shouting "Noooo!" Then it cuts to something else, then back to the steamroller, a little closer to the guard who's still shouting "Nooooo!" Then back and forth and back and forth and then after about five minutes the steamroller finally grinds the guard into the concrete.

Yeah, the later and slower massdrivers look totally stupid. When they are shot, they fly into a direction where nothing is. But eventually one of the enemies ships will fly just into where it is going. "Look ma, I catch it, I catch it!"

Reason for me to use beam-weapons most of the time.

It takes too long for the battle to commense and end in the battle view screen. I have it set to just go on in the normal viewscreen. Then it only takes a few seconds for an entire fleet to attack. Don't ask how I got it to happen in the normal screen, I don't know but I like it.

So basicly, mass drivers and missles need to be much faster, so that unit does not fly off and gives weird screen effects.

there is an option to turn off comabt viewer for fleet battles and that will resovle without combat viewer

SD; how about just having the two fleets move SLOWLY toward each other instead of "nodding" up and down and colliding?

i agree whats up with the ships bobbing up and down like they are in water???

I guess nothing will be done?

there is an option to turn off comabt viewer for fleet battles and that will resovle without combat viewer

There are at least five check boxes that state things related to the combat viewer. They read:

• Show battle sequence
• Always watch player ships in full battles
• Full fleet battles
• Auto-play full battles
• Show full-fleet battles only if both sides are fleets

If all your combat takes place on the main map, could you post your settings?

I wrote my opinion earlier but still like to bump this thread. I think it would be alot of work, but making combat viewer fleets actually use formations and moving slowly towards each other would make the combat viewer 10x cooler. I get this big feeling of controlling a wast empire untill I get into combat viewer where the dummy cars crash each other

You guys have valid complaints, but they're not serious complaints that affect game play so I hope they don't divert resources from game play improvement. Maybe if you just build one really cool looking ship you can use the orbital view or the chase cam and the bobbing won't show from that angle.

Iam no expert coder or anything, but changing fleets to move as formations can´t be huge change. Maybe too big for a patch but for expansion?

You've got objects moving in 3D space that you want to change from doing something simple (moving around randomly without bumping into each other) to something complex (moving in some kind of formation coordinated with the other objects). Sounds like it would be on the hard side to me.

I've never actually worked with 3d objects (or any kind of graphics) before, and I've never seen Stardock's code, so I could be wrong about it being a hard change to make. I'd rather see it in a sequel when they're making a whole new combat viewer anyway then ask them to redo this one for an expansion. At least partly because I want to see other cool stuff in the expansion instead.

What's with the "nodding up and down" thing they do? It really looks silly on large and huge ships.

Frogboy posted a response to this in another thread, the "nodding" is due to the "top down" view. He suggested that different camera angles would provide more dramatic views and less "nodding". Someone with more patience could likely track his post down, it was posted this week.

@PJ You have a point there. But I don´t see the huge difficulty here. Instead of having computer check all the time if ships are on collision course, the ships would have pre selected starting point and would move towards enemy untill they are too close and stop. By this time the battle would be over. All you would have to change is the ship starting points and the shooting part is doned alrdy in the game so no coding there. But you are right that these are not so important issues as some other but would be nice additions.

Also the land battle is dreadful to watch, first of all why do the big machines or tanks explode in fast mode? Wheres the movie magic of big explosions and slow motion hehe. All this is eye candy but can you honestly say it would not be sweet to see actually mass drivers pound asteroids down on enemy troops or gas for that matter.

Iam starting to be quite happy with the GC2 UI and clearly diplmacy is getting rework in the future. So all in all Iam quite content with the game so would not mind to see bit more eye candy.

ps. this forum is the devils handwork. I need to add br commands to change lines manually. the pain

Try viewing the battles at half speed, it makes the bobbing less annoying and almost magest on the larger ships IMVHO. Also copy the new fleet formations from the demo mod into the fleet formations folder in /galciv2. The new formations make it much more realistic as small ships tend to be in more coherent formations to the side or in front of the big ships.

I am the OP and all I want is the "nodding" and "bobbing" to stop. I don't bash Stardock but what did they possibly think this would look like? Tiny and small ships look OK; they kinda shoot around like little ships ought to. When we get to LARGE and HUGE ships, the ugly "nodding" and "bobbing" starts...and it looks ridiculous. It would actually look better if the large and huge ships just stayed motionless....no? As it is, ships shoot through other ships (even their own!). Gotta love 30 missiles passing right through my battleship while it bobs up and down like a bobble-head doll.