[Fyron]

http://games.Groups.yahoo.com/group/SE4/message/5348

SEV will definitely be turn-based.

This, of course, is somewhat contradicted by his next message.

http://games.Groups.yahoo.com/group/SE4/message/5351

Excellent question! The strategic movement of ships in SE5 will be
turn-based (and simultaneous turn-based) like in SE4. As for combat, that
has not been decided yet. Turn-based ship movement would definitely be
useful since you can manage large numbers of ships (and SE4 players would
not be too thrown off). But real-time does have a certain exciting edge to
it. And real-time battles look so much cooler than the simple move and
shoot of turn-based.

Aaron puts forth the idea of real time combat. Much debate ensues. Starfury is made as a test bed for the SEV combat engine. It is real time combat. Thus, SEV combat engine will possibly be real time combat, as stated by Aaron Hall.

From 11-4-03 chat log:

[17:05] Mephisto: What do you hold as strength of Moo3 (if you ever played it, that is...)?
[17:05] Malfador: Ouch, tough question.
[02:04:44-PM] Malfador: I like some the ways they come at Empire government. And I did play it for a little while, but the UI was a real fight.
[02:05:09-PM] Malfador: And the real-time combat might have been good if the ships were a little larger.

It would seem that the idea of real time combat is foremost on Aaron's mind. Second thing he thought to say after mention of MOO3. 9 months after the discussion on the mailing list about real time combat, no less.

[02:06:33-PM] ZeroAdunn: You might want to take a look at conquest: Frontier wars
[02:06:51-PM] tescosamoa: what part of conquest ??
[02:06:55-PM] ZeroAdunn: It has some interesting methods of real time space combat
[02:07:36-PM] Malfador: Yes, I kind of like Conquest: Frontier Wars. Definitely an interesting use of maps.

More discussion of real time combat engines, with no denial by Aaron about SEV combat engine.

Then we have this little bit that directly states that SEV will have real time combat, from the 10-21-03 IRC chat log:

06:31:23-PM] Malfador: The plan right now is to have real-time combat in SE5 such that ships move and fire much like they do in Starfury.
[06:31:30-PM] Mephisto: Will we be able to save games in simultaneous games in SE5? Please?
[06:31:49-PM] Malfador: Correction - pausable real-time. You can pause at any time to give orders to your ships.

Incidently, this is why there was not really discussion of whether SEV would be real time or not in the 11-4 chat, as it was a forgone conclusion that the game would have it.

To my knowledge, this statement has never been retracted. Aaron has never since this point said that there would be turn based combat. The news page on malfador.com does not specify which mode of combat there will be, thought it does confirm there will be 3d rendering, and Aaron always seemed excited about having 3d combat to go with the 3d models... I am left with one conclusion based on the information at hand: the plan is still to have a real-time combat engine.

[ August 06, 2004, 17:58: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]