SE IV The End Of An Era.

[Fyron]

But if you compare a SE4 ship with a Starfury ship there are some differences. Of course the ship-design prob is not that what matters.

The only difference is that for a SE4 ship, you provide a screenshot, for a SF ship, you provide the model file + texture file. Making the ships is identical in either case.

I think this is our traditional dispute about the "advantages" of realtime games, isnt it?

Indeed.

Hey come on, I am THE strategy fan. But I see a realtime game not as a strategy game. I see it as mouse clicking party. Each realtime game I have played (and I played alot) benefitted the guy which had the better mouse skills. Maybe you are one of those with good clicking skills, Iam not. A real strategy game is turnbased. (and 2D) Thats it for me. (and I am sure I am not the only one who likes it this way)

There have been many real time games that were not click fests. It is very easy to conceive of a real time engine that has no click festing what so ever. The ability to have the game autopause after a predefined (by the user) number of seconds, plus the ability to pause whenever regardless of the timer, and the ability to issue orders while paused would eliminate EVERY single possible click festing complaint you (or anyone) could possibly have. You could pause the game whenever you want to in SP tactical combat. No need to ever click fest, unless you really want to. Multiplayer combat would still be executed strategically, so again, it would not in any way involve any measure of click festing, as it would still have no player intervention, just like strategic SE4 combat. The only issue is hotseat combat, which is problematic on the same computer. So, a solution could be to have "turns" where each player gets a chance to issue orders, then combat is resolved for X seconds, then they get another "turn". This would play just like SE4 combat, except that it would be superior in every way because there would never be any lame situations in which any ship gets to move and fire first unnaturally, just because it is using a turn based system.

How can it play like SE4, if there is no "end turn" button - the most important button in the tactical combat game.

See above. Instead of "end turn", you have "run for X seconds". Combat would be executed more in a simultaneous turn fashion, rather than the poor system that is the sequential turn fashion. Simultaneous movement eliminates many of the lame idiosyncracies of turn based movement. Real time (for combat) just takes it a step further and eliminates all of the idiosyncracies of turn based simultaneous movement. With the above system, it becomes turn based real time combat. Instead of the simultaneous turns having a set phase, they have an infintesimal phase, so you never have ships that get to move first, just because of turn based combat.

quote: Only if it is made to be Starcraft-like real time.

God help us.

Fortunately, there is 0 possibility of this.

Oh, for me one of the most negative aspects of MOO3 was its realtime combat.

ONLY because MOO3 was done EXTREMELY poorly. DO NOT take it as an example of a good real time combat system! It is a very, very good example of how NOT to do a real time combat system.

Thats a possibility, but maybe if there would be more opposition against realtime elements in SE5 BEFORE the design status of SE5 has ended, the train has a small chance to go to another direction, I guess.

Hopefully you will decide to accept my proposed system as perfectly valid and equivalent to the best turn based combat system this time, so that would become unnecessary.

There is no possible purely turn based combat system that can approach the level of balance acheiveable by having real time execution of combat. Even just having turns where you issue orders, and then watch them executed for X seconds in real time with no intervention (no possible way to click fest there!), is vastly superior to any more traditonal turn based system possible.