Tactical combat should involve fleet formations, which concentrate firepower and are counter by other formations like a Rock-Paper-Scissors effect. The ships should have firing arcs for each weapon as this establishes formation tactics as well as detection and ECM/ECCM measures to prevent or facilitate engagement of the enemy. First detection is crucial in actual combat since first strikes are 96% lethal. Each ship should have a detection range in combat for weapons which can be degraded by enemy ECM and ships should posses some type of Tactical Data System which enables multiple ships to control and use other fleet assets remotely(i.e. Communications, Command and Control become important). However, Fleet intelligence should be paramount in tactical engagements, with Combat Patrols, fighters, bombers, and escorts. Imagine if you will, a combat patrol from a carrier is enroute to its designated waypoint and passively detects an enemy. This information is relayed to its carrier with a base percentage change of success plus/minus any degradation due to ECM/ECCM derivatives. If successful the carrier (CV) assigns 1 fighter wing the mission to seek out and identify the target (i.e. is it a ghost caused by enemy ECM, space debris, or sensor malfunction, or a picket acting as a decoy flagship. If an enemy target is positively identified then information is relayed to the fleet and a picket engages the target using data from the fighter wing. If the target is an intelligence asset marines are dispatched to capture the target (instead of destroy it with a picket) with a percentage chance of successfully boarding and capturing the vessel before the crew can scuttle the ship. If successful an enemy technology is aquired. If unsuccessful the crew has managed to self-destruct their ship resulting in the loss of the crew, ship and marines. Typical intelligence assets are flag ships like carriers or battleships, not pickets - the smaller escort ships which compose the fleet. This type of detection based combat enables undetected vessels to escape engagements and withdraw if the battle is going badly. Typical detection ranges far outpace weapon guidance ranges due to the varying levels of power required. Most weapons are guided remotely to their destination until they come within range to actively aquire the target. Hence fleet fighter battles will usually determine tactical success or failure by allowing the victor freedom to locate and destroy/capture vulnerable enemy targets. In situations where insuffient assets remain after engagement to locate and destroy enemy ships a window of opportunity opens which allows the loser an opportunity to escape.

I'd rather not see a pure MOO-type tactical sub-game in GalCiv. At least make it optional, and not at all needed to win battles.

I would like to see tactics chosen and applied in the fleet battle view though.

I like GC2 but I'm rather disappointed in the fleet battles. There is simply no room for creativity or "leading" your fleets and there should be. Something as simple as setting fleets to fire on certain ships first, or to run away if a specified amount of ships are lost, etc, wouldn't be difficult to build AI for and it would add a lot to combat.

I'd also like to see more randomness in combat. It looks to me like fleet composition A vs fleet composition B will always result in fleet composition A destroying fleet composition B with fleet composition A taking X losses every time. A lucky shot, a heroic act... seems there is room to make things more dynamic in combat.

Say, I have an idea that'll merge tactics and strategy. It'll involve some suspense of disbelieve, but too bad.

Alright, firstly, the game maps will be made quite a bit larger, with much more distance between planets and stars and other solar systems. Then, it's essentially permanent tactical combat. Each ship can always shoot, essentially, or pull off whatever special moves you want. That way, you can always reinforce battles, always do hit-and-runs and more complex tactical maneuvers, and battles won't last a turn anymore.

It'll be like those SEIV tactical battles, but on the entire map. Why do this? Because having seperate tactical battles, to be honest, is pretty lame and too time consuming. This way, battles just happen, and happen anywhere, and the flow of the battle can move as new ships arrive. However, because it's likely that more ships will survive battles because people don't like to die and eventually retreat, ships should either be slower to build or have less hitpoints, so either players have less ships, or enough ships die to keep balance.

Then, ships also ought to have their own morale meters, just like planets. If your ass is getting whupped bad and tons of enemy fighters are just flying towards you, eventually, you're going to surrender. This could add new use to the courage ability, as courageous races' ships wouldn't surrender easily.

Finally, I don't think targeting seperate ship systems should be much in depth. As it happens in GC2 games, I usually have dozens of fighters even in medium maps. I can't bother selecting ship systems, I should be able to just select one of my ships and order it to target one of the enemy ships in very few mouse clicks. That's really the key to making tactical battles work. You need to let players maintain a good deal of control over the battle, but let them do it so fluidly it's like playing an RTS.

This way, battles will be just as easy to manage as in GC2, but they'll allow for more flexibility.

Naw, I don't think you get it. See, it's like a giant tactical battle, that's why the map has to be much larger. So you have more room to maneuver. Ships can always use their tactical maneuvers out in space--on the normal map. There are no seperate battles, it's all handled on the same map.

Exactly, it's like turnbased homeworld.

How about a semi-tactical combat system? Two of the largest complaints from the MOO crowd are that the combat viewer doesn't do anything, and that combat is basically nothing but sit there and watch your two fleets kill each other. Just adding one layer of depth could make a big difference.

Imagine this:

As your fleet approaches an enemy fleet/your transport arrives at the enemy planet, a window pops up saying:

*************
"XXX has engaged Enemy XXXX"
[ ]Auto Combat
[ ] Use Combat Viewer
[ ]Tactical Combat

*************

Choose the first option, and the combat plays out as it does now, perhaps with a few new options based on the way Tactical would work. Choose the second option, and the combat viewer pops up, but with another layer of buttons and a 7-section time bar on top.

A GC II round is one week, so one engagement would take 7 days. Each day, the player could choose from one of a series of options, something like:

Aggressive (Bonus to Attack, Penalty to Defense)
Focused (Attacks a particular unit, Penalty to Defense against the other units)
Normal (No change from base GCII rules)
Defensive (Penalty to Attack, Bonus to Defense)
Disengage (Penalty to Attack, increases Distance by a small amount)
Retreat (Cannot Attack, increases Distance by a large amount)

Combat would basically take place along a line: a ship advances towards the enemy on an Aggressive, Focused, and Normal attack. It holds position on a Defensive attack and retreats towards their own end of the line on a Disengage or Retreat. The amount of distance the ship travels is based on its speed.

Like American football, the center of the field is adjusted after every round of combat: a new line of scrimmage, if you will. Each side has an "end zone" consisting of a set percentage of their combat field: a ship that chooses the "retreat" option while in their own end zone leaves the battle. A ship that falls off the "field" (gets too far away) leaves the battle right away. Logistics and such would affect the length of the line and the width of the end zone: a ship with better sensors and/or better tactics can stay in combat longer, coordinate fleets better across a wider distance, and/or retreat more readily from a battle gone bad.

Weapons range would be considered infinite so as to not add yet another layer of complexity: any ship in combat can hit any other ship. To keep players from poking the enemy and retreating over and over, there could be penalties the next round for retreating: fleets could break up and have to be reformed, ships could lose the ability to attack the next turn, so on and so forth. Overruning a ship (outracing it so that it leaves combat from YOUR side of the field) could cause other penalties. This could lead to some interesting multi-round tactics: trying to draw away an enemy fleet's fighters from their flagship so you can take them out piecemeal next week, or sacrificing certain units so the rest of the fleet stay unified when the reinforcements arrive.

This is, obviously, a rough idea, and it could lead to some abuses, I'm just talking out my rear right now.

Greetings,

I subscribed to this forum though I'm not really a GC2 player. I've been shown it by a friend and had a chance to try some of its features. I must admit that seing that combat resumed in watching a type of video where you do not have any control made me stop the game immediately.

As a MoO fan ( both 1st and 2nd episode ), I'd like to summarize what comes to mind immediately by reading this post :

1. Players who play alone do not request tactical combat. Since playing alone resumes to playing against an AI, tactical combat is never really exhilarating because AI's are crappy at playing. They can be cheated ( like they are in most games when you increase difficulty ), but remain dumb and thus tactical combat remain motly uninteresting ( there are exceptions as when you play Impossible in a Huge galaxy, you have to sweat to regain what has been granted freely to the AIs ).

2. Players who play in multiplayer need the tactical aspect of the game maybe more than they need the economical aspect. In fact, I believe than a well advanced game of MoO2 becomes boring at the economic level before than at the tactical level where large armies where used in combat, because of the multitude of planets to check every turn ( at the end, you build quasi everything in one turn, and have 20-30 planets ). In opposition, large tactical battles dont happen every turn but rather once each 20-30 turns and most of the time, defeating such a large opponent resumes to him withdrawing from the game because he cannot defend himself anymore ( and certainly not attack ). Knowing this fact ( which can be countered with a Logistics approach as read in this post ), I'd have to say that amongst the maybe 100 MoO2 games I played over the Internet, maybe 5 of them have lead to this status, because players preferred to play the economic part of the game rather than the tactical combat part. For the other 95 games, I've seen people attack me when I had from 2 to 6 colonies and with armies ranging from 7 frigates containing each 4 missiles to 1 battleship containing a single technological breakthrough that you cannot counter with your actual tech level ( neutron canons agains lvl 3 shields is lame ). So in fact, the large battle problems quite never occured...

To me, what makes a game really impressive and heartpounding is :

1. You cannot save and reload while in multiplayer. So each of your decision has a consequence, in short, medium or long term. This is not applicable in single player : reload enough and you'll find a solution. If not, take a savegame which brings you further back and you'll know what your opponent will play ( Where's the challenge here ? ).

2. Tactical combat : having the best weapons is not always the best choice if the game is effectively designed and gives you enough meanings of defeating an adversary with even a slight tech level advantage, provided you play better than him, or maybe uses his ships weaknesses. In MoO2, I've seen Titan Ships totalizing 9000 HP shot down in 1 turn by 2 frigates ( 30hp each ! ) : first one wears off the shields with an adapted weapon ( plasma cannons ) then the second making it explode with a single missile made EMG which had 20% chances to hit right in the core of the ship, thus making the thermonuclear motor explode, you loosing the ship and others not far to be damaged. This is only an example, and MoO2 had many of these technologies that could save you from an opponent which bet everything on HP and size. In fact, you had to permanently adapt to your opponent's fleets designs in order to beat him, and you could have mind blowing battles engaging no more than a few units ( the way this game was meant to be player in multiplayer i think ).

3. Diplomacy offered an interesting way of balancing the game amongst human players. While the game lacked options it gave an interesting approach of what can be done to save a desperate situation. Thus in a game where a player was coming to crush me ( he had 3 times more planets than me ), another player summoned me and gave me exactly the right technos to counter the attack, not to win the battle but rather to have the ennemy win at too large a cost, or maybe retreat with less power than before, making him vulnerable again to his fiercer opponents.

I must admit that I still have not found the game that could replace my love for MoO2. I've tried many but no recent game has made me change my mind. What I see now are very well made games, all very graphic and professionnal, but none do fill the voidness of my research.

What I'm looking for is a 4x space strategy game that I could play in full when I connect in the evening from 8pm to 2-3pm max. I dont want neverending games where you have 200 turns to wait before anything happens. I'd like to be able to connect from the game to a server that would inform me of the games about to start, enter the game and play.
Once in the game, I'm as interested in the economic part which is really a part you play alone, alongside with other players, as in the tactical part where you see if you made the right decisions in your economic and tech research against real opponents and not AIs.

To my knowledge, the only game responding to these criterias is MoO2. I regret it
I see I'm not the only one thinking that and the game has kept his afficionados. It has become hard to play for a lack of support, merely no modding available ( though I've managed to find how some of the mechanics of the tech trees and weapons can be modified ) and furthermore because its multiplayer coding uses IPX and needs Kali I to run.

Despite all this, I believe people are still considering playing it alone if no opponent can be found so I wonder if people like me should gather and play our favourite game until some game studio decides to grant my ( our ) criterias.

If some of you were to be interested by such a gathering, I'd be willing to create and maintain a Website which could help people find each other, set-up internet games ( which is still possible ) and play the greatest space game of all times.

Simply post a response to this topic saying you're interested and I'll come by regularly to see if enough people are interested ( say 5-6 at minimum would be nice ).

MoO2 rules ( in my humble opinion ).

If we are voting then I say nay to tactical ship combat in the I-move, You-move format of MOO and others.

A thin layer of tactics, pre-programmed only as fleet doctrine, to be watched on the battle movie, would be ok IMHO. Tactical match-ups that might give a weaker ship a chance to avoid a hit, or increase the damage of a hit would be cool. The tactics would be tech researched of course.


Ground combat could use some semi-tactical thought though, since its rather boring. Still no I-go, you-go miniatures model, but maybe something like a chess-Tic Tac Toe hybrid. The idea would be that the system worked simply on piece placement (think Go, i.e. deploying pieces rather than moving them as digital miniatures) rather than simulating shooting.

So not just Tic Tac Toe, but also an element of chess conflict in that I might place a pawn to try to score a 3 in a row, but the opponent might place a rook from his reserve pile on my pawn to eliminate it and take the spot. Losing a piece would then cause a loss of my total personnel numbers like in the current system.

The turn based aspect could be simplified even more. Say make it like Battleship, where the first turn is hidden deployment turn, and then the second turn the action is revealed. Except on the first turn, the whole force is deployed. On the second turn, any overlap conflicts are resolved Then Scoring say a 3 in a row on the colony center would be a critical victory. But failing that on the third turn, the battle would then get random like it currently is---a linear exchange.
The current tactics system could be converted to the tic tac toe formula, with the effects and destroyed planet tiles being resolved on the second turn.

To make it even more interesting, the Tic Tac Toe field could actually be the planet map, and the squares could have actual dominant terrains that would favor some units over others. So my jump pack infantry might be moderately strong everywhere, but my super-heavy tanks would only excel on plains, and be hurting in swamps or mountains. The net effect being to decide who would beat who if placed on each other.

My reason---just to have a more detailed army---with tanks, etc... like MOO3.

For Tactical Combat, there are only a few things I would like:

1. The ability to choose the priority list individually for each one of your ships to shoot enemy ships in a certain order.

2. The ability for faster ships to be able to disengage at will. They get moved to a neighboring parsec as a result.

3. The ability for slower ships to disengage if the faster ships choose not to chase. They get moved to a neighboring parsec as a result.

4. The ability for the player to choose the priority order in which starbase modules attack enemy ships.

5. The ability for military starbases to be able to shoot at any enemy ship in their influence radius with what are currently ship-assist weapons.

I thought what some of what I wrote in my first post should be located here (below the line)

MOO2's flaw was one side getting to attack first killing the other side, yada yada yada but for the most part i think we can all agree, MOO2 was simple, and it worked for it's time, hell i think it still works.

i like to see realism in games and i hope the people at stardock try to implement what i wrote.

i'd also like to say that in games like medieval 2 total war, lords of the realm, etc, i always "AUTO CALC" the battles. i don't want to play starcraft or C&C, i want to run a galactic empire simulator. but the ability to tell my ships to "engage the enemy behemoth" OR the troop transports first or launch fighter/bomber wings against capitol ship X would be a very good thing, as well as retreat.




-----------------From my First Post Below-------------------------

maybe i'm too biased towards MOO2 still being my fav but I think a system where:

all weapons damage shields first
all weapons damage armor second
all weapons damage structure (hitpoints) third

with the exception of ecm tech having a chance for missiles to miss completely is more realistic.

anyways, this enemy ship with approx 70 shields and 5 guns or missiles destroyed my 3 ships with 50 lasers and 5 shields each(or something like this, it was months ago)

it makes more sense to me that my 50 lasers should have worn down that 70 shield in 2 shots minus the shield regeneration rate per second leaving my 2 ship to partially hit armor while the 3rd ship hit all armor on the first attack roll. this leads me to another point about massive numbers of low tech ships VS 1 high tech ship. This is why MOO3 was poor as 5 of my lower tech task forces were wiped out 1 by 1 by a more advanced enemy task force. i am not a fan of fleet limits and i know i would have won had my 5 fleets been allowed to engage the 1 enemy fleet at the same time.

fleet limits make the game all about TECH and not about strategy so to win the game the startegy is all the same. design and build a better product, it does not matter if your second generation ships outnumber your enemies 4th generation ships by 22 to 1, you're going to lose, not lose in huge epic battles, but be wiped out completely in equalized 10 versus 10 combat.

in case you're confused, here's an example:

gen 2 / gen 4 (tech levels)
22 to 1 ratio =
220 ships to 10 ships

the battle should be 220 ships versus 10 ships

with fleet limits the war consists of 22 battles of 10 versus 10
-strength in numbers doesn't apply so we have the generation 4 ships kicking the tar outta the gen 2's meaning that the gen 2 civilization has no chance in hell so give up and start again.

If Galactic Civilizations were to mate with Battleships Forever and have an offspring, that game would own the world. Seriously, it would be like Galaxy: Total War!

Battleships Forever was interesting, but I'm surprised you've heard of it. Most people have never even heard of Game Maker (the program that game was created with), much less something created with it.