Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!

[Xrati]

Well, first of all. We need to know how movement will be handled. Then weapons fire. Seeking weapons movement! How will the AI process it's controlled ships?

How will PBEM combat be resolved if using RT processing? Too many unknowns to weigh-in on this.

[Captain Kwok]

I think some confusion has crept in here...

I'm talking specifically about the combat module of the game, not the actual empire building component.

Star Legacy itself is intended to be a simultaneous turn-based game. That is, each player takes their turn giving orders to their various objects. Once finished, all player turns are processed together and movement/orders executed at the same time. This is the same format as simultaneous mode in SE4 or SE5, as well as other turn-based games. Except in Star Legacy, combat at this point would not be restricted to strategic resolution only, but you'd have the option of playing combats you're involved in.

I don't think it's really all that great for epic scale empire building games to be real-time. It becomes very difficult to manage in a time sensitive environment and adding co-managing systems doesn't really work out all that well because many players don't like to lose that control.

Originally Posted by KlausD

Possibly thats the reason of your wrong perception of the socalled "unfairness" of turnbased games?

Again I never declared turn-based resolution as unfair, so I'm not sure why you've added the quotes there. I simply said it was less fair than simultaneous/real-time resolution.

Why do you think turn-based methods have evolved such complex mechanics? To closely approximate a truly continuous system right? For early turn-based games or their board game predecessors, it was difficult (or impossible) to do this, but nowadays it isn't.

[Edi]

For reference, I was talking about the combat module here too, even though the AoW example was of the strategic map. There is nothing actually to prevent implementing something similar for a combat module.

Now, there are these things to consider:

While this is going to be a multislayer game, it will have a significant contingent of single player players.

There is nothing to stop there being both a traditional turn based system and a different version more suitable to multiplayer.

For a PBEM aspect, if it is included, there would have to be an automatic resolution option like the quick combat in Age of Wonders or the way things are done in Dominions 3, where units are given a limited script before being sent into combat. They act according to the script as best they can and depending on what they face, it can be anything from a crushing victory to total disaster.

There are multiple interests here that need to be balanced and it does not have to be just one or the other of two choices, since there are more. Being able to set combat module behavior from a dropdown menu or checkbox during game creation would answer these different needs and allow players to pick the best for any given game (e.g. fully turn based for SP, RTS with pauses or continuous turn based (ala HoMM5) or whatever else is decided on for MP).

This is a situation where you don't have a single silver bullet that is the Ultimate Truth for all situations.

[jars_u]

Originally Posted by Edi

Personally, I despise RTS combat most of the time, so if at all possible, there should be an option of setting up a game to use a fully turn based model or to use whatever RTS/simultaneous turn based/continuous turn based alternative is implemented.

I agree. RTS combat is not the way to go for a serious 4X game. I think the best although I would not call it a compromise is the "WEGO" system as found in the Combat Mission games. Orders/instructions are given in a turn and then executed for a certain time frame at which point they attempt to be carried out and you can't make adjustments unitl your next turn. The PBEM system of Combat Mission was also one of my favorite and could work I think for multi-player PBEM as in SE4.

But a more traditional IGOUGO system is certainly prefered over anything RTS or RTS/hybrid to me.

[jars_u]

While I'm wishing for random stuff how about the implementation of a simplified Z axis for the tactical portion of the game? More for the sake of game play than realism - if SL is to be 2d I'm thinking isometric sprites with an upper/middle/lower z axis. Something perhaps similar to the way different building stories were handled in the first two X-Com games. This would give the illusion of being able to attack from "above/below" and play for or against things like firing arcs and weapon mounts.

[jars_u]

Originally Posted by KnightWhoSaysNi

One thing I hope you strive for is the KISS rule when overseeing complexity. Some strategy games I've seen have a feel as if you're doing your taxes.

I think it is always a tough one to balance as 4X games attract Grognards I think. In both SE4 and 5 I always felt I spent way too much time managing my empire in non fun ways and in this respect I would be willing to relinquish some control for the more simplified/abstracts RTS elements of a game like SOASE.

[Ed Kolis]

Originally Posted by jars_u

I agree. RTS combat is not the way to go for a serious 4X game. I think the best although I would not call it a compromise is the "WEGO" system as found in the Combat Mission games. Orders/instructions are given in a turn and then executed for a certain time frame at which point they attempt to be carried out and you can't make adjustments unitl your next turn. The PBEM system of Combat Mission was also one of my favorite and could work I think for multi-player PBEM as in SE4.

The "WEGO" system can be emulated by the "autopause" system I've described; simply set autopause interval to, say, 10 seconds, and "auto-unpause" to an obscenely long or infinite delay

[Fyron]

Originally Posted by klausD

Ever heard of changing mini-initiative? Or bidding turns? These are concepts for certain turnbased games to learn who comes next and how many units he can move till his enemy comes. Today the alternative concepts of turnbased game design is more evolved than 10y or 20y ago.

All of those are literally attempts to make the combat engine approximate reality (which is intrinsically real time). "IGO-UGO" is about the least fair and balanced combat mechanic that can be implemented (beyond stupid dice rolling to approximate an entire battle). This is because one side gets to act in entirety before the other side. The solution is to approximate simultaneous action, by breaking up each side's forces into smaller groups that act in phases during a turn. Thus, you get various forms of initiative, bidding turns, and what have you. To make a better and better combat system, in terms of balance and fairness, one must break up these phases into smaller units. Thus, the ideal combat mechanic is one in which the gradations are as fine as possible. This allows as much simultaneity as possible. But as you add more and more complexity to the rules to continue improving the approximation of reality, you bog everything down and make the game harder and harder to play (just like the insane economic rules in GalCiv2). Going all the way to real time, continuous action serves to provide the most balanced and fair mechanic, due to the tiny size of the increments, all without bogging gameplay down with a huge morass of unnecessary rules.

The trick is creating control mechanisms that are easy to use. The only 4x games with real time combat that have really even come close are the far more RTS ones like Sins of a Solar Empire. Very few 4x game development teams are particularly competent in this area of game design, due to a glaring lack of experience. More effort needs to be put into studying the highly evolved control schemes of the big RTS games..

[Gregstrom]

On the presumption that this is the thread where people say hello, "Hello!"

I loved MOO 1 and 2 back in the day, and would love to see an interesting space 4X game appear. I mostly play Dominions 3 at the moment, and I'm very interested in seeing more PBEM 4X games available.

[Xrati]

Firing arcs are not needed. This is a 4X game with combat being ¼ of the game. If you want to have complex combat systems just mod in a combat resolution generator from a stand alone combat simulator. Then enter the results into the game rather then over complicate a game system with resource heavy functions.