How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

Having just had a battle (my first real one since I bought the game), I'm wondering how it is that--for a game built on emphasizing the strategy in strategy--there can be no retreat option for combat.

It seems to me that one of the common things I might want to do in a game is raid a planet or system--do some damage and get out, fleet mostly intact. But with the way the game is designed, once your ships are in battle they can't retreat. So a raiding mission is zero sum--you either win completely or don't win and consider whatever ships you sent to have gone on a kamikaze mission.

I don't get it.

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, we ALL want the retreat option back. It was in SEII but I don't know about SEIII. But it will most likely be back in the near future. Maybe next patch or SEV. But I miss having that option. But the best thing to do right now is if you don't wanna fight no more with your ships is to take them to the outside edge of the map. But if the enemy has ships they'll chase you so you'll have to fight anyways. But if you're just attacking a planet then this tatic will work.
Hope that helps.
lol... You're probably wondering why I'm the one responding first to your post's... Well it's because I have nothing else to do tonight. So I'm just crusing the board being, well, bored. LMAO.

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

Not at all. Your replies are very welcome. So while you're sitting there being bored, perhaps you'd care to speculate on what possible reason the designers could have had for removing the retreat option. Honestly, I can't think of a single good reason.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, we ALL want the retreat option back. It was in SEII but I don't know about SEIII. But it will most likely be back in the near future. Maybe next patch or SEV. But I miss having that option. But the best thing to do right now is if you don't wanna fight no more with your ships is to take them to the outside edge of the map. But if the enemy has ships they'll chase you so you'll have to fight anyways. But if you're just attacking a planet then this tatic will work.
Hope that helps.
lol... You're probably wondering why I'm the one responding first to your post's... Well it's because I have nothing else to do tonight. So I'm just crusing the board being, well, bored. LMAO.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

maybe Aaron disagrees with the old axiom about discression and honor. or maybe it was to hard to work out how it would function.

i.e., can slower ships retreat from faster ones? if a force is of mixed ships, will only the faster ships be able to run? what becomes of ships of the same speed? is a fighting withdrawl being made, or is the fleet being routed? if a fighting withdrawl, do they inflict damage as they flee? do they take any? do they take more if its a route? how is a route determined? where do they flee to? what if they dont have any movement left?

while most, if not all and possibly more, of those questions can be answered, you do see how it could be problematic to program, and was perhaps left out of the initial release do the the extra time designing and testing that it would have caused.

of course, thats just a useless guess

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

HI Silent Sorrow, Yes, we ALL want the retreat option back. It was in SE3. I know i emailed MM on this many times,and suggested to beta testers too. There will be a patch soon to se4gold , but its uncertain it will be there. NOTE;I dont know the reason why it wasnt implemented?.

Ferengi Rules of Acquisition #7 Keep your ears open.

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

I agree with what Puke has to say about it. They had to rush to meet the deadline they did have for Gold so that might be one reason of many that they did not impliment it into Gold.

Another reason may be realisim(sp). In a actual fight were you got two sides if one side backs down the other advances, so they'd be the same distance apart unless one was faster. Thus retreating would get you no where but further away from the start of the battle. Unless you look at it likes this, in space/sci-fi type of shows/games, ships have faster then speed engines. So if the retreating party engaged their engines they cuold've gained enough ground on their pursuer that in effect they would have "retreated". Because unless the enemy is faster then you are you would maintain a large enough distance to keep out of firing range and thus effectivly retreat".

That's just one of many ways to look at it. I probably confused you all with that. It's late here so most likely I did confuse you. But who knows why Aaron didn't add it to Gold. We can only hope he puts it in the next patch for Gold.

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

You can raid- but you have to raid differently. Hit the mildly defended targets, or park just outside his reach and make him nervous. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Phoenix-D

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No we don't.(edit, better said: no, not all of us). IMHO the retreat in SEIII was a PITA. Hunting down single ships multiple times until you have them in the systems corner or surrounded by single ships of your own is just not fun. Haven't really put much thought to it, but in simultaneous move a retreat could really screw up things. I prefer having no retreat.

Rollo

[ June 25, 2002, 09:32: Message edited by: Rollo ]

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

Rollo at least we are two with that opinion!
Me too, I do not miss the retreat option at all.

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

I back Rollo and Q. In SE3 you had to chase the enemy into a corner in the system map. Where is the difference to chasing him into a corner in the battle map?

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

perharps specialized component with high cost, tech level etc. etc would solve the problem, plus inserting, some cheaper to some of the racial traits, like Temporal races

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

Rollo and Q are correct. But, B-U-T-T... If I'm not mistaken in SEII only the attacker had the option to retreat. Thus the enemy would HAVE to fight it out unless you (the attacker) retreat. Or is that what you guys mean as well? Because if the enemy could retreat on command as well then that'd be just stupid. Then the fights would basically never have an end, and no empire would win. So as long as the retreat option would be for the attacker then yes I would love to have it back.

I like what Taera said too, having a special componate that allows you to retreat or not. But then again that brings up the issue I just got done talking about. Because if it's a componate then that would mean the enemy being attacked if they had the componate all they'd have to do is use it and the battle is over. So they'd have to make it so only the attacker with the componate could retreat.

[ June 25, 2002, 14:33: Message edited by: Ragnarok ]

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

then there's the opposite of my idea - add a component high on the tech tree that would prevent the enemy from retreating.

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

One more person backing Rollo.

The only "retreat" option I wold prefer to have is in the combat strategies.

Something along the lines of "If my shields (or hull) are below ## percent, then switch strategy to don't get hurt"

Your raiders could harrass a slower enemy, and then fall back to the edge of the combat map before they get severely damaged.

Retreating from the combat map should only happen after 30 turns. If your ships had the ability and the orders to retreat, they wouldn't have entered combat in the first place, since they would have stayed away from enemies on the strategic map.

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Like Warp Disipator from MOO2, except there's no warp to dissipate http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

I'm with Rollo on this too. Retreating in SEIII was a pain and ate up far too much time when chasing down a single colony ship or transport.

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

I will start by saying that I am neither for or against the idea of retreat.

In several of the Star Wars games I have played, impulse engines are used in tactical combat and if you wanted to retreat you had to go to the edge of the combat grid (IIRC with a movement penalty) and wait a turn or two while your warp engines warmed up. This made you vulnerable to attack and sometimes your warp capability would be knocked out so you would then be unable to leave the combat grid. As you were retreating, you still had the ability to fire, as long as your weapons were still intact. If you managed to make it out of combat, you would only end up 1 square away from the enemy on the system map and could still be attacked if the enemy still had movement. This style makes total sense to me and IMHO would add to the game play experience.

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

When we asked for retreat in the past, the reason we were given for its removal was pretty much what has been discussed. Running down a colony ship was tedious. Strategic movement after combat made it possible to cheat in too many ways. etc. But getting pinned in an invisible corner is also a pain in the arse. I guess there's no single solution to the problem without some sort of complex 'scaling' of the game like Starfire uses. But that would be awfully complicated to program.

[ June 25, 2002, 16:56: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Why do you need to get into any of this? Why not just abstract it as in MOO2? If you choose to retreat you select "options/retreat" and your ships begin to move to the opposite edge or whatever--and sure, they can be taking damage as they flee. Then, on the next turn the two opposing fleets are still in the same space. The originally attacking fleet may choose to continue to flee on the galactic map (and be chased, or not chased, by the defending fleet).

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Though I'm no programmer I don't see how what I described would be difficult to program since it would not actually involve any additional programming beyond adding an option to the options menu.

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

[quote]Originally posted by Silent Sorrow:

Quote:

Why do you need to get into any of this? Why not just abstract it as in MOO2? If you choose to retreat you select "options/retreat"<snip>Though I'm no programmer I don't see how what I described would be difficult to program since it would not actually involve any additional programming beyond adding an option to the options menu.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I am not an auto mechanic, but I know it takes more than taping a button to the dash board to add cruise control to my car. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

What you are missing Slient Sorrow is that the combat engine in SEIV was designed around strategic combat. IIRC the designer originally intend not to even have tactical combat. It was added in after considerable amount of requests from members of the beta team.

All of the factors Puke mentions are nessecary to determine for retreat to be an option in strategic combat, because you cannot simply give the ship a retreat order as you suggest. You must give them a strategy and a method of detemining what conditions to retreat under, and what conditions to persue a retreating ship under. For that matter, even under tactical combat you have to figure out these things to give the AI the ability to make these decisions.

I suppose that retreat could simply be added for tactical combat only, but it's simply not been a priority of the designer. Whether that is because of the complexity in programming all these factors, or just a lack of compelling need for it I don't know.

Geoschmo

[ June 25, 2002, 17:48: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

Retreat would have to be carefully implemented so that warp point defenses could not be evaded too easily with speed 11+ ships (6+ tactical).

As for chasing single ships, if retreating was implemented, emergency propulsion would be a nice thing to have for getting away or for chasing. Too bad it does not work on fleets.

One thing that would really make raiding more effective would be concealment and more limited spotting of enemy ships. Add one level to the cloaking level of each ship for each square you are away from it. Problem with that is it would cause players to add a survelliance satellite to every square to detect intruders. I do not like the amount of micromanagement that would add to the game.

It would be nice if tractor beams could prevent an enemy from leaving a strategic square. (They cannot leave if they do not make it to the edge in combat). Along the same lines, it would be nice if you could evade pursuing ships by using a repulsor beam.

Personally, I think that leaving retreat out would be simpler as there are other things Aaron could add that would be more straight forward and would add to the game. There are lots of considerations for handling retreats. If it is implemented, it would be nice to make in a game option rather than a fixed change to the game.

A retreat component is hoaky in my opinion.

Re: How is it possible to raid without retreat ability?
 

The whole retreat thing is very complicated. For example if a fleets retreats do they end up in the same sector or is the fleet disbanded?

Besides, isn't the simultaneos turns supposed to work so that if an attacker can catch the defending ship the attacker has to be faster or their paths has to cross so that the defender has to make a big turn to escape. In reality the attacker would get very close to the defender and that applies to both cases.

I don't think that adding retreat to SE4 is a good idea.