SE:V, I'll be honest

[Q]

Xrati did you try the demo?
I seems that you got a completely wrong idea about the real time combat in SE V: you can stop whenever you want and take all the time you want.

[Phoenix-D]

SE5 combat is pauseable, you can set it to AUTO pause after running for a certain number of seconds, and you can slow it down to 1/8 speed on top of that.

Plenty of time to do whatever's needed.

[arthurtuxedo]

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.

Barnacle Bill said:

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...

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.

[Barnacle Bill]

arthurtuxedo said:
I shudder to think of trying to figure out what was happening in a real-time 500 ship furball

I wouldn't want to do that in 3D or 2D, real-time or turn-based. Playability with that many ships in a battle mandates giving orders by multi-ship formation to reduce the number "units" the player has to keep track of individually. In a computerized game, that is completely feasible with the type of 2D proportional movement system I described.

[Xrati]

I'm sorry Q, didn't try the demo. I was under the impression that it was your normal REAL TIME combat. I will eventually try the demo when I get time at work as I have dial-up and really don't want to download all night. I apologize for the misunderstanding. The only real time game I’ve played that I enjoyed was Breach 3, where you could pause the game, issue orders and then continue the combat, and even then some of the units would still do what they wanted (part of the game mechanics). Maybe with that being said and more revelations everyday the game will turn out to be good, in a NEW sort of way!