[geoschmo]

I would love to see something along these lines done. Unfortunatly it is not as easy to implement as it appears on the surface. It would require a massive rewrite of the combat engine. So many things would have to change. For example:

Currently once initiative is determined, that players fleet gets to move all it's ships, then all it's ships fire. One suggestion would be to calculate inititive on an individual ship basis instead of by fleet. However, would this work with the current fleet mechanics? Would a ship in formation break formation to move and fire?

Simultaneous fire as well has problems. As it is now ships can move in to max range, fire and then move as far away as their movement will allow. In simultaneous fire everybody would move and assign targets and then fire at the same time. Does this mean you don't get to move away after firing? And who moves first? What if you move first, target a ship and they move out of range before the simultaneous fire phase?

Another suggestion is to move and fire the ywa it is currently done, but not apply the damage until the end of the combat turn and apply all damage simultaneously. This seems the most complex, but is may actually be the easiest to do. One problem I do see with it is PDC fire on missles You might have to allow PDC damage to be applied instantly unstead of waiting or your missles would still hit the ship even though they were actually blown up.

I am not hopeful of any of these beign implemented in SEIV, however I am hopeful that something along these lines will be done for SE5. Especially since the next SE game, "SE: Quadrant Wars" that is supposed to come out before SE5 is being billed as the combat engine for SE5. That will allow him to concentrate strictly on this portion of the game and get it working the way he and we want it and then he can plug it into the SE5 game as a whole.

Geoschmo