SEV Tactical Combat Impressions

[Captain Kwok]

If you micromanage your ships in tactical combat, you can achieve better results particularly if you have a longer range weapon.

[StarShadow]

Personally I think that's going to be more trouble than it's worth. It seems to take at least 2 whole rounds just to turn! If I bother with tactical it'll be for small fights (2-4 ships), or just to watch the fight close up.

[tmcc]

I find this much more difficult in SEV than SEIV though. In an early game the only long range weapon is the missile. Missiles are now much weaker than their SEIV counterparts. I am currently using CSM lvl 5 and they only do 80 points damage. The enemy frigates have 345Kt of structure 140 of which is armor. My missile frigate has 3 missiles so their first voley only does 40Kt of damage. on top of that by the time they actually fire the missiles and turn around to run the enemy is within DUC range. Ussually the missile ship only gets one more shot, at most, before it dies, leaving a damaged but living enemy behind. While typing this I just realized that I need to put the engines in the front of a missile boat.

Bottom line is that, for me, tactical is much less useful than is SEIV and as such takes away a HUGE portion of the enjoyment I got from the game.

[arthurtuxedo]

Whenever you switch to something new, there will always be people who liked the old way better, but I maintain that the turn based combat of SE4 was absolutely horrible compared to this new system we have. The missile dancing, the "first shot wins" of warp points, the fact that an entire fleet of hundreds of ships can unload full salvos into their helpless enemies without a single shot of return fire, the way that ships could dance into range and then dance out after firing to be virtually immune to stationary targets, the list goes on. All of these problems are cured now, it doesn't take nearly as long for combat to play out, it looks better (even disregarding the graphical upgrade), feels more exciting, and the only drawback is no longer being able to take advantage of the game's limitations to walk all over the AI. To me, this is not a drawback, but another advantage.

[tmcc]

Everyone has their own opinions of what makes a game fun. For me it has always been mastering the nuances of the tactical combat system in order to pull victory from what should have been defeat. This has been true for me from the early days of Wizard's Crown on a C-64 though to today.

I agree completely that the new system is much more realistic and looks pretty, but that doesn't make it fun.

[Phoenix-D]

You can do the same tricks in SE5 as in SE4 you know. Just have to get used to the new system.

For example, your missile boats need to turn *before* they fire. Close to, say, 2x CSM range then heel around and let the enemy come to you. When they come within missile range accelerate away.

Your ships will hammer the enemy as they approach, and since you're heading directly away from them, catching up will take a while.

Pressing F5 to show the range circles helps a lot with this, by the way.

[tmcc]

I discovered the 90 degree turn last night using the simulator. It works quite well to execute the turn when the range rings touch. Using this tactic one frigate with 3 missiles could easily damage or destroy 3 gun armed destroyers with no damage to the frigate. Brings up an issue with AI not using PD on their ships. Hopefully a TDM like mod will come out for SEV.

Another observation, it would be nice to have some type of reload time info attached to ships on the combat screen. It is a pain to go through multiple menus to get this info.

Finally a stupid question. What are the hot keys to zoom in and out in combat? I normally play on a laptop with no extermal mouse so I don't have the wheel function available

[Phoenix-D]

Shift - and +, I think. You can check (and change them) in the Controls part of the main menu.

EDIT: its numberpad + and - actually. I'd recommend changing them since you probably don't have a numberpad.

[Suicide Junkie]

arthurtuxedo said:
...The missile dancing, the "first shot wins" of warp points, the fact that an entire fleet of hundreds of ships can unload full salvos into their helpless enemies without a single shot of return fire, the way that ships could dance into range and then dance out after firing to be virtually immune to stationary targets, the list goes on.

All those problems have been fixed in Carrier Battles mod.

I made missiles SE3-style (launch from range 20, infinite travel distance)
Weapon/Defense balance is adjusted to prevent instafrags.
No tactical combat, plus using missiles on your stationary platforms neuters the dancing issue.
Leaky shields and armor, so every hit does *something*. Even an overwhelming force can get a bloody nose in combat.

Plus, there is the fact that all the guns in the game are useful. 4 guns x 5 mount sizes + 6 missile types, and they all get used to varying degrees in a competitive PBW game.


I once attacked a defending force of 400 with only 300 ships; they got the first shot from close range. However, I still won. It took two game turns and about 5 combats, and in the end it came down to 20 operational ships from each side strafing each other. I only actually lost 20 ships in the battle and 50 more a couple turns later when the enemy cleaned out my immobilized ships. The rest made their way home for repairs.

Superior strategies (better spread fire for more crippling and less overkill),
A pincer attack tactic(attacking from below and the right let my ships spread out and partly surround the enemy),
And the fortunate inclusion of a good number of plasma-cannon battleships which require no ammo to fire (just lots of rads) were what turned that battle.
The inclusion of spare fighters in transports to restock the carriers for the second month of combat helped significantly, too.

Mods are where the serious SE game starts

[arthurtuxedo]

Preaching to the choir, buddy. Got a copy of Carrier Battles on my hard drive. Excellent mod, by the way. Kudos. Can't wait to see how you bring it to SE5.