Tactical Combat

I would take being beaten in the face over multiplayer. Tactical combat is not winning "overwhelmingly", diplomacy is a close second. I hope it overtakes it. A lot of people would want TC turned off, but you wouldn't turn diplomacy off. Just not use it.

And what about those people, like myself, who don't play multiplayer?

I would have rather seen more sophisticated ship designs and customization..... I big it up to those people who can actually make mods of ship hulls etc, like Kyro. I'm no good at that area of modding.

God knows what "Other" might be, but there we go.

As to tactical battles, I agree somewhat. If it were to be done, and as an optional part to the game, then what would be the point..... If Stardock do take this poll to heart, and decide to make an update, or to use this poll for GC 3, then I would rather see it as a purchasable pack, so that you can still play the game without it.... That way, the people who want it can buy it, and people like you and me won't have to, if we don't want to.

But that is my opinion

I agree with you, i don't want tactical combat either. The devs had explained why they didn't included it and it made perfect sense. Personally i would rather see better presentation in the combat screen for some truly cinematic battles but only to WATCH them, not actually control our ships.

PS: Why aren't the polls showing exact numbers? I hate it this way.

Hello all, this is my first post. (I purchased GalCiv2 last Thursday and having been smoking the GalCiv crack ever since. I need to get some sleepppp....)

To the original poster, can I imagine Civ with tactical combat?

YES! I can. Though, one doesn't have to imagine so much, just play one of the TBS games with tactical combat.

Have you ever heard of or played any of the Total War series of TBS games, such as Shogun and Medieval? Also, have you played Homeworld or Homeworld 2?

If not you should certainly give them a try.

The developers of the TW series were the first to sucessfully marry TBS and real-time tactical battles. Shogun (and Medieval, if memory serves) were both heavily voted Strategy Game of the Year.

Homeworld/Homeworld 2 are RTS games, BUT they are absolutely EXCELLENT examples of what real-time tactical combat should be for GalCiv.

IMO, nirvana would be well implemented marriage of GalCiv with Homeworld2.

Now to be objective, you are quite right!!! Any attempt at marrying TBS and real-time tactics would be a gargantuine effort!! It would take extraordinarily talented, dedicated people with true intrigrity toward the goal.

For example, to make such a marriage truly what it should be, would require TWO separate and distinct AI's, each of which MUST be extraordinary. That means the development resources needed to be applied for each AI would have to be equal (or in some fantastic way made equivalent) to that of TWO separate games; additionally, two separate game engines (graphics and otherwise), and so and so on....

Anything less would be a lesser game. One of the challenges for any developer would be in finding ways/techniques to *leverage* the efforts/technologies in order to reduce costs. This would be a serious challenge. Another thing to consider, then I'll stop is that the graphical requirements in terms of what players will find acceptable exceed the standards of what the average TBS/GalCiv player finds graphically acceptable.

In other words, would it really make sense or be popularly acceptable to implement real-time tactics for GalCiv if the *graphics* were not at or above the present day standards of the average RTS/FPS game?

Now that would be a major effort on the part of GalCiv's developers, in effect, they would be creating a whole new game with all that entails. Big dollars, big effort, time consuming. Now, one way to get around that to some or all degrees would be for them to purchase/lease an existing real-time game engine. One in which they could use wholly or with some modding effort applied to adapt to their specific needs. I would suggest that they go the lease/purchase way, rather then engage in a 'from scratch' development. To this aim, I, personally, would suggest that GalCiv's developers look into what could be done with the Homeworld engine, along with what financial arrangements could be made with Homeworld's owners.

Using the HW engine would be the best case, as everything necessary for 'space battles' , that is TRUE three deminsional battles, not 3D graphics but deminsional 'space' is already existing. To marry GalCiv to Homeworld, two major efforts by the GalCiv developers would be needed:

First, they must some how figure out how to marry, that is correlate the two 'worlds, that each game engine creates. That is any point on the Strategy map (Gal Civ) must correlate directly with that of the battle scene of the Homeworld engine. For example, click and start a battle near Mars will, the battle needs to take place *near* Mars with all the commensurate space terrain that the Strategy Map indicates. No small feat!! If any of you have played the Total Wars series you'll understand directly what I mean.

This *could* be done, and be done, I strongly presume, with a realistic budget that GalCiv2's recent success could probably allow. Yet, it would be financially RISKY! Wardell and company are probably one of the few development crews that *might* be positioned to take on such a probject, as they don't fully depend upon profits for GalCiv to pay their mortgages!!!

Oh, almost forgot, the second focus would be AI. HW's AI is only passable, so either a new, from scratch, AI would need to be build or the present AI, GREATLY enhanced. As it is, HW's is NOT up to GalCiv standards. Perhaps, this effort could be farmed out to either HW's original AI creators or to other competent teams. Doable!

Lastly, the original poster brings up a good point:

"Don't you people see how many combats happen in a turn?".

Right, but you need to look at those combats. Now, I'm rather new to GalCiv, but I am VERY familiar with the TW series. In the TW series, combat that occurs in simultaneous *game-time* is handled by presenting the player with one battle at a time, and preceding each battle is a pop-up screen where the player has a few options:

1. To engage in the battle as the *field* general;
2. To engage and allow the AI to *automatically* resolve the battle;
3. To surrender the battle; or
4. To Retreat.

In this way the player controls how his time and effort can be applied. Normally, how this works out is that extremely minor battles which have little *strategic* effect are allowed to be resolved by the AI, option "2" above. Only the MOST important battles, those whose outcome will have *strategic* effect are actually fought by the player, option "1" above. The options to Surrender or Retreat, once the player makes a choice are, also, handled by the AI.

Now, as you may note, the one caveate is the AI. A poor AI that produces uncceptable results when it is asked to handle the minor battles will make the game a tedious affair as no one will *trust* the AI, and consequently will never choose option "2". The quality of the AI is really important, of course, the AI should never be capable of doing as well as the player, if he choose to fight the battle himself (some penalty s/b acceptable for this choice), but the results/battle outcome s/b to a degree acceptable when the time 'saved' is considered and the outcome not strategically important.

This the way it is handled in the TW series, and while not perfect, works very well and is a method that could be adopted.

Homeworld/Homeworld 2, btw, have been discontinued.

Sorry to make my first post so long. For those who haven't, feel free to check out the games I mentioned:

www.totalwar.com
www.homeworld2.com/

If tactical battle can be pulled of well im all for it pluss it would attract alot of new people to gal civ.

The simple fact of the matter is tactical space combat would put the AI at an even greater disadvantage. I have played all three of the Total War series and while they could be enjoyable games, the AI for the tactical combat has always been easy to exploit. Even on the highest difficulty settings, certain tactics and use of terrain always yield a substantial victory for the human player, so much so that I almost never found it acceptable to allow the AI to resolve my battles for me because I could always do it dramatically better than the AI (same with homeworld series, once map was anaylzed and AI tactics figured out, cake walk).

That being the case, unless dramatic improvements over previous tactical AIs from other games could be meade by Stardock, with tactical combat the human player would gain even larger advantages over the AI in that the human players superior use of tactics, "terrain" (I guess there could be terrain in space), etc. would allow the human player to wipe out large AI fleets with minimal damage to their own. At least as it currently stands other than choosing when to fight and what kind of firepower to use the human player in GalCiv doesn't have the opportunity to further exploit AI through tactical combat.

In my opinion the depth and enjoyment of the game would be best served through a vast expansion of the use of diplomacy, espionage, and the UP council.

GC is not TW, nor is it HW. Lets all please agree to keep it that way.

The only way I'd be for tactical combat is if it was only 'psudeo-tactical' ala dominions or SEIV. That is you set orders for your fleets, rules of engagement if you will, but once combat is started you don't actually control anything. Of course that type of thing really isn't needed as the game mechanics in GC right now don't require it, but if more options are added to ships and tech, like range, cloak, sensors, ECM, ECCM, ... then it would make more sense to have more diverse fleets and have specific targets to take out in the opponent fleet first. MoO3 actually did this pretty well, though the controls for the RTS part of it weren't great, and the AI for the fleet battles wasn't great either...

Honestly if stardock took a long look at the better features (though they weren't always implemented very well) from MoO3 and found a way to bring some of them into GC3 I think they'd really have some wicked new gameplay for everyone.

Yay for Tactical Combat winning the poll. Boo! to all the GalCiv1 fanboys who don't want it. Yay for the Master Of Orion Fans! WHO HAVE SPOKEN! I want Moo1 or Moo2 Slider Combat NOT RTS. Even though making an RTS Like Moo3, Conquest Frontier Wars, Homeworld ect. would be easier.

I think you guys are selling the devs short on what they could do with tactical combat (does anyone really agree on what that term means anyway with regard to THIS game and how it would be implemented?). Many of the features we have today people did not think possible on the first GALCIV so all of this "the sky is or will fall" if tact ical combat is added in the next version is a bit premature.

There are two simple points that completely show why tactical combat does not belong in GC2, or even GC3.

1.) GC2 is BIG! You can end up with not just 20, but as many as 50 or even 100 combats in ONE turn.Even if you could somehow resolve a tactical battle in, say, 30 seconds, that would mean possibly as much as an hour for just one turn to finish. Perhaps some people want to spend an hour, or several hours depending on how quickly each battle can be resolved, finishing a single turn, but I can't believe the majority of people who are voting for tactical combat have really though about the time investment of just one game with such a level of tactical combat.

>Toranaga Sama> None of the games you mentioned come even close to the level of TBS that GC2 does, not Total War, and especially not Homeworld. Homeworld follows the path of one fleet, a la Battlestar Galactica, and TW doesn't involve nearly the number of "bases" (generic term for planet, city or whatever resource-producing center is used in a given game) as GC2 does, especially as the maps get larger. There simply is no comparison. To us your suggested method of handling this volume of combats only shows its weakness in a TBS game, because a whole new mode of play and a whole new AI would have to be created just to manage a tiny fractional part of any given game. A huge waste of programming resources. There are no real, good 4X games with detailed tactical combat, it just doesn't make sense to put that much work into such a small part of the game. Just look at how much of a flop Moo3 was due to the almost Microsoft-level of featuritis (combined with really crappy AI). Even Microsoft themselves are not so stupid as to do that in a game. I am not even going to get into analysis of the reasons behind the fact stated in your own comment that "Homeworld/Homeworld 2, btw, have been discontinued."

One of the single biggest complaints received about Moo2 was how boring and slow tactical combat got with large fleets and large galaxies, which is why Moo3's tactical combat system had a more generalistic method of control.

2.) Quite simply, tactical AI has never really been well done, even when the game company is one of the biggest and best. Maybe when we all have Pentium 9's that can process truly adequate AI algorithms in a reasonable amount of time, and game budgets can afford the development costs of them, tactical combat will really be worth doing in a game based around tactical combat, but again, in a massive 4X game it will still be a very small part of the game.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, this is a game where you play the part of Caesar, not Theodosius.

Heck I would be thrilled with just a turn based tactical combat with ship inititive. That way if you get attacked first you still have a chance of survival if you can get a ship in the other ships blind spot. Note all weapons should just fire forward unless placed in a diff arc. I would take a massive overhaul of the way the AI designes ships.

JOhn

I would like to add one thing to say to Stardock. Please for the love of God do not implement Tactical Combat Like "Reach For The Stars" or "StarShips Unlimited Divied Galaxies". I HATE those forms of Tacitcal Combat.

Space Empires IV has a tactical combat option. The problem is that it is all too easy to outwit the AI. Makling a really competitive AI would be a mega challenge for CalCiv. It is in the are of tactical combat that a separate multplayer game could be developed, in my opinion. Space Empires IV has a really nice feature that GalCiv could duplicate though. This is its combat simulation, where you have a lot of strategy parameters that you can use for fleets and planets of individual design, but you cannot control individual ships. Within this framework, the AI can compete quite well, making a very challenging game feature.

I don't want full turn-by-turn, shot-by-shot tactical combat as much as I want to be able to pick which ships my fleet should target.

For example:
I have a fleet of big battleships with good attack and defence - they have a fleet of big battleships with good attack and defense and a few little all attack fighters. I want to be able to shoot at the battleships and to ignore the fighters, but instead, my battleships overkill the fighters first instead.

Ok, I'm rather new to actually playing GalCiv. I first learned about it shortly after purchasing and installing OS/2. That operating system went kaput and so did my plans on purchasing GalvCiv. I was delighted to learn that GalCiv was being ported to Windows, but never got around to purchasing it. Then came Doom and a whole series of other games.

I'm kind of a hardcore gamer, so I have only time to get into one or two games at a time (time can last years). I got into strategy games by way of Civ2 and RRT. Playing Civ2 ALWAYS left a nagging taste to control the battles!! Then came Shogun: Total War and its take on TBS with RTT I was ecstatic! I was doublely estactic because I'm a closet fan of Japanese culture. JFYI, I was a huge Descent fan and relatedly a lover of HW (3 dimensional FPS and RTS repectively).

---

Now, I'm new to GalCiv/2, but not to gaming. I've tinkered with the GalCiv demo before and would have been playing all this time, but the game is so initially daunting that I never felt I had the time to dedicate to it, the learning curve being the steepest I've ever encountered. Time being so scant these days, I don't think I'll ever be as hardcore as I've been in other games, but so far I have spent 48 hours non-stop playing (thursday night till Sunday morning). Haven't had a battle yet!

Given that last fact, and >>Mistoffeles'<< comment:

1.) GC2 is BIG! You can end up with not just 20, but as many as 50 or even 100 combats in ONE turn.

will someone please give me some idea WHAT a GalCiv battle entails. Ok, 50-100 combats in one turn? What exactly is occuring in these "combats"? Typically, how many ships are in a SINGLE combat? I mean are you talking 50-100 combats (battles?) with, say, 50 ships in each combat?????? In other words, for example, 50 "combats with 50 ships each---that's 2500!!! ships.

The crux of my question is whether 50-100 combats are really and truly necessary? Perhaps only 5-10 are truly needed to make for engaging gameplay given RTT. RTT adds a different aspect.

I dunno know, guess I'm not getting it. 2500 ships??? Gosh, I've always found this game to be daunting, maybe I just don't yet realize just how so....

Anyways, I've always been an admirer of Wardell, for a variety of reasons, always enjoyed his input to the Usenet strategy newsgroup in the days I used to frequent it.

OKKIKK, thought about this some more, 2500 ships or not doesn't matter. The true crux of my question is this, and relates directly to my original post:

How many of those 50 - 100 "combats", of which the outcome, have TRUE *strategic* value? What percentage?

If the answer is 50% or less then, surely, the remaining are unnecessary "combats", having no strategic value.

----

"Even Microsoft themselves are not so stupid as to do that in a game. I am not even going to get into analysis of the reasons behind the fact stated in your own comment that "Homeworld/Homeworld 2, btw, have been discontinued.""

1.3 million units sold worldwide! Yeah, I'd love to here your thoughts, email if you wish.

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BTW, why the heck do some of you folks seem familiar? ))

Don't you people see how many combats happen in a turn?

have you been playing 1.2b? few combats go by that way in the newer battle system, at least for me since defense has been a more important factor. yes, many combats happen in a turn. but i think part of the point is to move away from that.

i did vote for tactical combat, but it was a very difficult choice. several fans have made good points as to why it would be a bad idea.

i think part of the difficulty is voting is now knowing exactly what style of tactical combat might be used. personally i'd absolutely hate a MOO2 style.

i'm guessing most people are voting for tactical combat a la MOO2, which will really disappoint me.

basically... i want the battles to look better. that's the only real time i get to see my ship designs doing anything interesting. i could care less about hands-on control. in turn-based grid systems like MOO2, Space Empires 4, or Age of Wonders, it can be tedious. and as it was said, when there are potentially dozens of battles in a single turn, it can be uselessly time consuming.

i'd say the eye-candy side of battles as it is now gets 7 or 8 out of 10 in my book. my biggest complaint is that my larger ships just sort of sit in place and wiggle. well, the other annoying thing has come about in the 1.2 battle system; the visual representation and the dice rolls don't line up (if you do lethal damage to a ship as the offender, it blows up, but their weapons still fires from empty space during your opponent's rolls b/c that ship still had a turn of firing... basically, i think the explosion sequences need to be moved to the end of the defender's turn). well, point defneses and armor could look a bit better too, but i'm trying not to get carried away.

on a strategic level, i'd be pretty satisfied with a few options in combat, like targeting priorities, and the ability for some ships in the fleet to (try to) retreat.

now, if SD really wanted to knock my socks off, they could develop tactical combat along the lines of Starfleet Commander. i'd really love it if, say, i saw an incomming fleet with a huge, very dangerous warship, i could send the closest available fleet in, whose goal would simply be to disable that ship's engines and retreat if possible. buy time and whatnot.

it could also make sensors have a tactical advantage, because you can't effectively target something you can't see.

speed would be more meaningful, since a ship's flight path would bear directly on how quickly it can get in and out of the fire zone.

and of course it'd make available all the other things people love in tactical combat, like ship capture,

a system like SFC's would also open the door for making the weapons in GC2 more qualitatively unique. in SFC, there are power systems you have to worry about. you can't just fire your weapons endlessly: phasor capacitors need to be recharged, and missile racks need to be reloaded (and you can run out of missiles). of course GC2 ships don't have generator comps (yet), but off the bat there's all ready the difference between beams which hit instantly and drivers and missiles which have a delay.

i wouldn't even be that upset if i lacked the ability to pilot my own ships. as the ruler of your empire, you probably would never command a ship in combat. maybe; i guess it depends on the empire. sometimes it's fun to be in the driver's seat, but sometimes i'd rather just get the battle over with.

maybe they could work in a new ability bonus, how about 'officering' off the top of my head, that affects how smart the AI is in tactical combat.

BUT i think if tactical combat is really going to enhance GC2, i feel it needs to be more than slightly complicated game of chess. the difficulty i have with fully RT games like starcraft, which make no mistake i loved, was managing my hordes of units. i lke TB games because i can think about how to position this horde and that horde. but when the actual combat comes in, and i've got to either move each unity by hand or leave it up to a fairly unsophisitcated AI... the game starts to lose me. the graphics become just a bit better than playing D&D, but at least in a paper/dice game, where you lack great visuals you at least have the freedom to act outside of programming (barring an anal retentive DM).

will someone please give me some idea WHAT a GalCiv battle entails. Ok, 50-100 combats in one turn? What exactly is occuring in these "combats"? Typically, how many ships are in a SINGLE combat? I mean are you talking 50-100 combats (battles?) with, say, 50 ships in each combat?????? In other words, for example, 50 "combats with 50 ships each---that's 2500!!! ships.

a combat occurs when two fleets face off. a combat does not occur when a fleet attacks a single ship, a star base, or when two single ships attack one another. you will get a combat if you attack a planet with an orbital defnese, even if there's only 1 ship in orbit.

100 combats in a turn is rare. it usually only occurs if two massive empires suddenly go to war, or if you've got ships far superior to your opponents with lots of movement points. the reason the number is so high is that combat is always 1 fleet versus 1 fleet. there's no way to combine fleets or bring in fleets from adjecent squares. i could envision that possible being something that was worked into tactical combat, but at the same time it'd make the logistics aspect of the game less meaningful (unless your fleets had to act in unison, or you could only give the fleet commander orders but not actually control ships).

your question of how many combats have strategic value is a little difficult to answer. it depends on how close the war is. if you're in the weaker position, every combat has significant tactical value. however, if you're at the point in the game where your resources are snowballing into a guaranteed victory, very few combats have much strategic value. it seems like a really stupid thing to say, but on the higher difficulty levels, i've rarely found myself in the winning position for my most interesting wars.

also, it really isn't an A or B thing. i've played games where i have a major advantage in technology and economy, yet control fewer planets. in games like this i tend to have fewer but more powerful ships, taking advantage of a spin control center usually. but still, wars happen. personally i find the game most strategically interesting when i'm outnumbered by slightly weaker ships.

i think all the combats would be more interesting if the AI designed its ships a little more intelligently. in the game i'm playing now, (all 10 players, huge galaxy, stars common, research v slow, everything else abundant), i'm the drengin. for whatever reason, i noticed that every other player in this game was using mass drivers. first war: i had harpoons, plasma beams and duranthium maxed, and i put that on medium ships. i wiped the floor with the altarians, but gave them a peace treaty so i could fortify me new holdings and finish them off later. somewhere along the lines, they managed to force an allliance with the iconians and drath, and attacked the yor. i honored my alliance, and ended up in a war against all three of them, who were all in my back yard (where the yor were on the other side of the map).

by that point, i had ultimate adamantium and psyonic beams. i had medium class ships taking out whole fleets and suffering nearly no damage. and because everyone else was using mass drivers, all their ships had was armor, no shileds or PD. most of my medium ships were between level 3 and 7 when the war started. i upgraded the leveled ones to an expensive medium class ship with lots of defnese and expensive psyonic offense (only the leveled ones, which i had to do one by one... ugh). the rest of that class was upgraded to a much cheaper version with early phasors and photonic missiles. i mopped the floor with all three empires in a few weeks. i'm just surprised the arceans didn't jump in, especially since they were militarily comprable to me (had the only two military resources on the map).

now, if the altarian AI were smarter, it would have learned from the last time to have more appripriate defenses. their ships each had a single shields II, escourts to dreadnoughts. why hadn't the altarians implemented subspace rebounders, or researched more effective shield technology? why didn't the fortify their larger ships with heavier defenses? it seems like the AI formula for designing ships is: 1 of the best engine + 1 of the best, most neccessary defense (on most ships) + rest of space used on best offense. the AI could stand to be setting more money aside for emergency overhauls of its fleets.

i've been spying on the arcean fleets. they've got PD III. they've got barriers III. they've got graviton drivers. they've got expert miniaturization, and warp maxed out. their defense stats are horrible, and their ships don't go very fast. i usually standardize my ships with 2 of the best engine available.

since the AI never stockpiles cash, they usually can't upgrade their ships to suit a sudden war. when they build their ships, it looks like they pay too-close attention to what weapons are out there in general, not what weapons their most hated enemy is using.

i've played games where i've had to fortify one boarder with one type of ship, and the other boarder with another. i havent seen the AI even on maso doing anything like that. researching up to later defnese techs is pretty easy. researching newer weapons is comparatively more difficult. yet the AI always seems to be a little farther than me in weapons ans way behind me in many other areas (in this game, i just happened to snag 3 research resources very early on, and grab the other two in short order).

so to answer your question of how many combats are strategically important... it depends on the particular situation.

If nothing esle you should know im 100% sure there will be an option to disable tactical combat. So really there is no need for crying on this one. If people want ot see it then they shoudlg et it. I myself don't care for it but if they put it in I'll give it a try.

dystopic, thank you for your detailed response.

Not sure if it fully answered my question, but I sure learned a lot that I can apply the next chance I get to continue my game.

I've got another question:

"your question of how many combats have strategic value is a little difficult to answer. it depends on how close the war is. if you're in the weaker position, every combat has significant tactical value. however, if you're at the point in the game where your resources are snowballing into a guaranteed victory, very few combats have much strategic value. it seems like a really stupid thing to say, but on the higher difficulty levels, i've rarely found myself in the winning position for my most interesting wars."

What exactly do you mean by "weaker"? Do you mean fewer ships? Or, a good number of ships, but the ships are inferior to the ships of the other AI players? I suppose it could be both.

Well, I was just thinking that, perhaps, a result of being in a "weaker" position, it would also, consequently, entail fewer battles.

hey folks, just because it tops the polls does NOT mean the stardock crew are commited to doing it. for the reasons stated here and others there is VERY little chance that tactical combat will be added. the 'much work' factor pretty much guarentees it. they are quite aware of their limited programming resources and make a point of not squandering them, look at their comments on the multiplayer issue if you doubt this. that said it looks to me like diplomacy is in the lead, not tactical combat

the poll is there to keep the stardock crew informed about the desires of their customers, not to make the game development process into some sort of democracy. thank god for that, you CAN'T make a game like that, at least not a deceint one. just be happy they care enough to ask thanks stardock, rock on!

There's a wrench in every turn.

hey folks, just because it tops the polls does NOT mean the stardock crew are commited to doing it. for the reasons stated here and others there is VERY little chance that tactical combat will be added. the 'much work' factor pretty much guarentees it. they are quite aware of their limited programming resources and make a point of not squandering them, look at their comments on the multiplayer issue if you doubt this. that said it looks to me like diplomacy is in the lead, not tactical combat

Actually there is absolutely no chance at all, Brad has already said he doesn't think he could get the AI to not be at a big disadvantage. But he himself voted for it, so /shrug.

Tactical combat won't be added to GalCiv II.  The poll is with regards to a future sequel (ala a GalCiv III).

Also, there would be an option to make it totally optional. So people who don't want to tactical combat need not worry.

Tactical Combat would be a lovely feature. The problem is making it work in a balanced, fun an exciting way. Why not make it sort of turn-based, yet the player still holds some control. I'm taking this idea from RPG games I've played. For instance maybe you could pause the battle, tell your ship to fire some special ordinance or something at the enemy ship and then unpause and continue watching. This allows the player to some-what manipulate the battle in his/her favor without having to actually playing an RTS game. Maybe certain power-ups for your ships that allow for their attack to go up, but their defence down or something to make some interesting battle dynamics. It would be interesting to have your ship power up the super cannon or something, yet the ship is left vunerable to enemy attack. I'll admit, watching a battle can be repetitive at times.

If anything I would like to see some more races in Gal Civ 3, or the ability to play against your custom races. Some more dimplomatic aspects and such, although not to the point where you go through a long process of MM each turn. Some new technologies and such on the tech-tree. And maybe some voice-acting for each race too. Advisors would be nice etc.

I'm curious whats this "hero" thing about. What would a hero do for your empire.

It seems as if tactical combat is winning overwhelmingly in the recent poll. Don't you people see how many combats happen in a turn?

I have about one to three battle in a turn, three is rare, and I'm bit of an warmonger (of course I can't speak for everyone). I have option set to fleet battles only. So if GCIII has same options then I don't see the problem.