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.

[President_Elect_Shang]

So many bugs, UI lost me totally; I wasn't even sure if this was SE or a cheap knock-off by a no-name company. I will wait to see if later patches clean it up. Presently there is no way I would spend my money on a game that comes across as a cheap attempt at mass market appeal which has fallen way short.

This sort of reminds me of Metallica with their drive towards mass market appeal. They have a few good songs in the present but the past was clearly superior.

[Fyron]

Xrati said:
I’m not interested in a game that will be corrected after it’s released. I would rather purchase a functioning game out of the box and patch it later to improve it...

But you purchased SE4? It required several post-release patches to be "corrected" and functioning well. It's demo was extremely buggy too. Aaron has never veered from the industry standard of "release now, patch later." He just puts out more in patches than many developers do.

...which never seems to be an option with real time...

Actually, pausability is a feature in a lot of real time strategy games. It isn't used much in Warcraft clones, but the better RTS games do use it.

BarnacleBill:
Sure, you could have some complex turn-based initiative system. But consider that continuous time is, in fact, the ultimate extension of phased initiative systems; each "phase" lasts milliseconds. The amount of action taken during each phase is miniscule, since we can't follow milliseconds of execution, but it is still there. During each step, every ship gets a chance to act; it is somewhat abstracted away, of course, which is a good thing. The more complex turn-based initiative systems tend to be a chore to play, not too much fun. Something simple like Moo2 (with 1.31 patch) could have worked, but why stop with such a limited system?

[Barnacle Bill]

Imperator Fyron said:
But consider that continuous time is, in fact, the ultimate extension of phased initiative systems; each "phase" lasts milliseconds.

Agreed. As the resolution of the grid gets greater and the time increment represented by an impulse gets shorter, you arrive at "real-time".

Imperator Fyron said:
The more complex turn-based initiative systems tend to be a chore to play, not too much fun.

I don't know about that. Too many people have been playing too much SFB for too many years (~30 now) for that charge to stick. The big problem with it is that the level of detail is too great to represent large fleet actions as required for most 4Xers. However, just taking its impulse movement concept doesn't require the taking the rest of it. The root of it is an "impulse" is just a mini-turn, and instead of differentiating by speed how many hexes/squares you move per "turn" it differentiates by speed how many "turns" you have to wait between moves. That eliminates the "missile dance". The other aspect of it was that you pre-plot your moves for the turn (in this case turn referring to a fixed number of impulses, not an individual impulse). Adapted to reducing micromanagement in a computerized version, this could just mean ordering a speed and end point for the formation, which in essense is how the move orders in SEV's tactical combat system work now. That could be combined a la "Steel Panthers" with the possibility to give weapon firing orders by range for individual weapons. Toss in a little more computerized intelligence and you could just order a formation to close to a certain range on a designated enemy formation and engage it with a certain weapon. It can be done in "real-time" or proportional turn-based, 2D or 3D - doesn't matter.

Imperator Fyron said:
Something simple like Moo2 (with 1.31 patch) could have worked, but why stop with such a limited system?

Certainly I would not consider the MOO2 system ideal. However, MOO evolved from a grand-strategic 4X board game in which combat was just a die rolling excercise (no tactical movement). SE evolved from a tactical space combat board game that acquired a 4X grand-strategic outer game only after establishing itself as a successful tactical gaming franchise (the first strategic rules for it were the second expansion product). So, one would expect more in the way of a tactical game from a new SE than from a new MOO (at least I would).

[Fyron]

SFB is not a computer game though. It requires a fair bit of dedication to play. All that pre-plotting stuff sounds fairly tedious, to me. In a "board game" setting, it can't be avoided if you want a decent system. With a computer game, we don't need to have overly complex initiative systems when there are easier (for the players) ways.

[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!

[Xrati]

Fyron, I actually purchased SEIV after the release of some of the first patches. I am happy to wait for the same in SEV. I'm not in a hurry! I'm still playing SEIV and I am getting ready to play test AT's STMod1942. I finally finished DL'ing all the new files.

You cannot compare SFB to SE series. SFB is a complex board game that attracts 'rules lawyers' as the rules tend to be vague in areas or interpreted incorrectly.

I have no doubt that SEV will be brought to a very playable state. The only question is how long will it take and will the true SEIV player finally accept the NEW game for what it is, "change."