Retreating??

[Narlotep]

Jeb,

Perhaps a scrolling combat zone would be a better solution. If a foe has long range missile capability combined with higher tacspeed and you do not, then you will not be able to engage him equally. To have "play balance" be the excuse for a wholly artificial "edge of the Universe" seems a bit silly in a computer-based tactical combat simulation.

As far as the Strategic combat option - I agree that its extremely useful. To be honest after "Homeworld" set the standard for tac space combat...well came close anyway...I really don't care to use SEIV's tac combat system and always use the Strategic option. However, I see no reason for the computer to display the little dots zipping across the screen. At the strategic level, I really only need to know the final result of the engagement.

Again, just my .02c and I'm sure everyone plays differently.

[Jeb]

Yeah, a scrolling tac map would make sense. The main trouble that I can foresee is if ships head off in opposite directions, so that the display area can't hold them both no matter where it scrolls. I suppose at that point you could declare the ships disengaged and end the combat, but I don't know how hard that would be to program. It certainly isn't going to make it into SEIV.

I still like the little dots, though. In my sim turns PBEM game, it's hard to know what the combat AI is going to do with my designs, so it's nice to have some sense of what my ships are doing in simulated combat. For instance, sometimes I see my ships aren't engaging the enemy at all, and then I have to reconfigure their combat strategy. If all I saw was that neither side lost a ship, I might think that they were fighting, but just not destroying one another. (Reports on the damage you inflict on enemy ships when you don't win outright in strategic combat would sure be a nice feature.) If anything, it bothers me that when I get combat reports in the log at the beginning of my turn it *doesn't* show me a replay of the combat. I agree, though, that different people like different things about the game, so maybe I'm in the minority here.

[Paladin]

I perfectly agree with the principle of the retreating tactic, and The map scrolling would be nice... Btw, it reminds me of the age-old Star Control II (darn fun game ;-) were ship's combat was real-time, but the screen was centered on your ship, and the ennemy (one at a time only) would reappear at the other end of the screen if you outrunned him... Not really realistic, but usefull idea (you could warp-retreat, it took 5 seconds to charge tough, so better be far from the opponent)


BTW, what about 3D space combat? it could be feasible even for a turn based "boxed" engine (again the old days, remember XCOM-UFO)

[Master Belisarius]

Jeb said:
"If anything, it bothers me that when I get combat reports in the log at the beginning of my turn it *doesn't* show me a replay of the combat."

Here I must agree with you... a repeat combat feature (a la Stars!), should be great for PBEM games. But I'm not optimistic to see it in SE4...

Paladin: I think that Star Control II (not SCIII), and the X-Com series, are some of the greatest games that I have played...

[Paladin]

I like the idea of the scrolling combat panel. After all, if a ship can outrun the other, how can it be destroyed? I had trouble imagining the justification of where is the ship going, but it can simply mean that interplanetary distance is vast enough (and it is) to have that kind of setting...

What I find completely dull in the whole movement thing is that big ships can move as fast as smaller ships...
There should be a movement bonus as large as the difficulty to hit on the smaller ships, that way it would be more realistic, varied, and fun...
Oh wait, I almost forgot how boring it is to run after a darn colony ship... But now it would be much slower ;-)
And don't even try to ram my escorts with your dreadnoughts, you must bring your own... (or have longer range missiles ;-)

I know there's a way to edit those stats in game, how do we do that?

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Paladin:
What I find completely dull in the whole movement thing is that big ships can move as fast as smaller ships...
There should be a movement bonus as large as the difficulty to hit on the smaller ships, that way it would be more realistic, varied, and fun...
Oh wait, I almost forgot how boring it is to run after a darn colony ship... But now it would be much slower ;-)
And don't even try to ram my escorts with your dreadnoughts, you must bring your own... (or have longer range missiles ;-)

I know there's a way to edit those stats in game, how do we do that?

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You will have to wait for the full game to edit the vehiclesize.txt file. But yes, you can give smaller ships a movement bonus if you want. Realize that colony ships are only 300kt in the current Version. They are the same size as destroyers. It would make a lot of sense to increase their size, and increase the size of a colony module proportionally. Founding a colony is a big project, and ought to require a lot of resources.

Ideally, we'd have a TURN allowance as well as a move allowance. This combined with weapon firing arcs would make the difference between large and small ships very noticeable. Maybe in SE V we can have that.

[dmm]

Since retreat is being discussed again, I'm bumping this up, for the benefit of newbies.