Personally, I don't even give commands in combat. I just sit back and watch the battle unfold, and only intercede when my ships do something really braindead.
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Barnacle Bill said:
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arthurtuxedo said:
You could have had a real time system with 2D, sure, but the ships wouldn't be able to pass over and under each other and planets, and I can't imagine how it would have worked with a lot of ships if they can't occupy the same square.
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Why couldn't they occupy the same square? They can in board games like Starfire & Starfleet Battles? It's called "stacking". It happens on the system map now (and in SEIV and in SEIII). The above games had "range 0" entries on the CRT and SFB had rules for determining weapon direction at range 0 (since it had directional weapons & shields). A set of rules that can be written for a board game could certainly be programmed for a computer game.
In fact, with location quantized to a grid (hex is better, but still true for squares), the SFB proportional movement / pre-ordered movement system effectively is real-time. I can envision an almost direct real-time port of the SFB system, with the player able to pause at any impulse to change movement orders (subject to turn mode) or fire weapons that bear & are charged, and the computer just stepping through the impulses. You would not have to take the complexities of SFB internal energy management, sticking with the more simplified SF/SE assumption that (aside from ordnance & weapon cycle times) everything in the ship can be run simultaneously at full bore. You could track shields & armor by the hex side they face and determine weapon firing arcs by the side they face and how much extra $/hull space you spend on a mount with a bigger arc. A 2D system that eliminates the issues of SEIV combat is very doable...
Not to say that I dislike the SEV system, just that it wasn't the only way to skin the cat...
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You're correct that it could have been done with 2D, but it would have been much more difficult to keep track of and had a more complex set of rules that would be harder for players to learn. SE combat has always been simple, and necessarily so given the huge number of ships on each side that might have been fighting it out. I shudder to think of trying to figure out what was happening in a real-time 500 ship furball when any ship that enters the same square as another becomes a 'stack', or to try and give orders to those ships.