Realtime or turnbased tactical combat?

[marc420]

Suicide Junkie said:
SE5 is in no way a RTS.

Think of it as combat being processed one turn per millisecond, and direct fire weapons now take multiple turns to reach their targets.
If you choose single player, sequential turn, AND tactical combat, then you provide/update your orders every 1000 combat "turns" or so.

In any other case, the computer is calling the shots according to your given strategies, and everybody is happy.

I just hope he gets it right. I've seen games where you give orders, then the AI's resolve it .... turn out really, really bad before. Nothing like cursing a really stupid UI and you don't have any options.

In general, I just hope that all the push towards fancy 3D and neat looking ships and RT combat don't take away from what I want in a strategy game. I want two things from combat in a strategy game. I want it to fit well with the rest of the strategy in the game, ie I want it to reflect and respond to the strategic choices in the game in a nice balanced way. I want it to support startegic choices, instead of driving everyone to one perfect weapon. And the second thing I want is reports/feedback from the combat that tells me what I need to know to make strategic choices in my turn. So if my fleet died because there wasn't enough Point Defense in the fleet, I want to know it. I don't want to be guessing about what happened or squinting at a screen trying to figure it out.

I don't care what the ships look like, and generally think the phrase "real-time" is the root of all evil.