Realtime or turnbased tactical combat?

[Kid]

Stregone said:
Realtime combat is good. Remember it isn't a real time strategy game. There will be no real time resource management or build queues or anything like that, just straight up combat. Say you have a small skirmish with just a few ships each side, maybe you can speed up the time. Big huge fleet battle? Slow it down a bit. Alot of RTS games have that sort of option.

That will not do it for me. Name me one 4X game with real-time combat that is still talked about let alone still on the market. Ask your self why games like SEIV and Galactic Civilization have a following. Many of the players are die-hard MOO II fans that love turn base combat. I'm sorry but I very seriously doubt I'll be buying SEV. Out of respect for the developers and beta testes I will not post on this again. I've worked on a lot of games and I know how much blood sweet and tears goes into making a game.

[klausD]

Douglas,
You mean you have infos about the way the realttime tactical combat will be?

Do you really think you'll have to micromanage battles that much? I'm sure your ships will be perfectly capable of figuring out that they have to move just a little bit closer before shooting by themselves. The orders you give will probably be more along the lines of "Stay at maximum range of x weapon while trying to surround the enemy. Fire as requently as possible using targeting priority list y and allocating z% overkill to compensate for misses."

We will see if this is really the approach. The new strategy game imperial glory for example is also a hybrid tactical realtime/strategic turnbased game and in tactical combat each player has to check constantly the ranges of every unit without the options to predefine the behaviour of his units you describe. This means not of course that SEV will have the same system but it shows the usual (and questionable) way modern hybrid games go.

Kid,
so I am not the only one who is in concern with turning the tactical game upside down. Good to know.

Stregone,
If people want to play a realtime SF game there are myriards of those out there. No need to invade the SE series and making it not enjoyable anymore for its turnbased fans who played (and bought) every incarnation the last 10 years.

zarix,
well I have no problem with that you dont like the tactical game of SEIV. But there are many people who like it (me for example) and thats the reason for my concern and for this thread.

General
The more I think about the topic the more I assume that the SEV designers are in search for the mainstream bucks. Its their good right to do with their game what they want, but this new way excludes many of longtime SE-fans which prefer turnbased thinking over realtime clicking.

[douglas]

klausD said:
Douglas,
You mean you have infos about the way the realttime tactical combat will be?

We will see if this is really the approach. The new strategy game imperial glory for example is also a hybrid tactical realtime/strategic turnbased game and in tactical combat each player has to check constantly the ranges of every unit without the options to predefine the behaviour of his units you describe. This means not of course that SEV will have the same system but it shows the usual (and questionable) way modern hybrid games go.

No, I don't actually have solid information on how that will work, and I won't until either the game is released or I get in the beta. Of course, if I get in the beta, I'll be bound by the NDA to not tell you anything about it until release, so either way you'll just have to wait for the release date or an official comment from Malfador. I'm just figuring that Aaron knows about the concerns of longtime fans that realtime combat could become a micromanagement clickfest nightmare, and what I described is the logical extension of SEIV's strategies and would solve the problem quite nicely.

klausD said:
General
The more I think about the topic the more I assume that the SEV designers are in search for the mainstream bucks. Its their good right to do with their game what they want, but this new way excludes many of longtime SE-fans which prefer turnbased thinking over realtime clicking.

Yes, it does seem that Aaron is going for big bucks to some extent this time, he's even going with a retail distributor instead of online distribution only. However, I think he's established far to good a reputation with his current fanbase to want to risk alienating them. Plus, too many prominent members of the online community have expressed their opinions and their (very similar and quite reasonable) suggestions for making realtime combat not a clickfest for him to reasonably ignore them.

[Captain Kwok]

Have no worries my friends!

There are many excellent options available for the real-time tactical combat, including the ability to pause every X seconds to issue orders to your ships if you want - this can be used to easily recreate turn-based combat except all ships would execute their orders at the same time during the interval.

Even cooler is that you can even just focus on controlling just one ship (as if you're the commander) while keeping the others under AI.

It's not at all about who can click the fastest or anything like that.

I can't say anything more than that, but again don't worry.

[Captain Kwok]

Sure, perhaps a bit of real-time combat might help the appeal of the game and add some eye candy, but there are far more benefits to having such a system. It eliminates 95% of all the silliness and lopsideness that occurs in a turn-based system.

[Renegade 13]

Kid said:
Name me one 4X game with real-time combat that is still talked about let alone still on the market. Ask your self why games like SEIV and Galactic Civilization has a following. Many of the players are die-hard MOO II fans that love turn base combat.

I'm sorry, but you really can't compare SEIV combat to Galactic Civilizations combat. GalCiv combat was, quite frankly, primitive. SEIV had a much greater deal of control, and had far fewer things hidden from the player. No comparison, really.

Some advice: You have said you probably won't be buying SEV, simply because of the change in the way combat is dealt with. Why judge so fast? There's really no reason at this stage for you to believe it will be horrible. I'd suggest at least waiting until the demo comes out, download it, run a few combats, then judge. But please, don't be so negative just because some other games haven't managed to do a good job.

[douglas]

... Said two beta testers, who have actually had the opportunity to try out the new realtime combat system. Does that do anything to settle your concerns, klausD?

[Phoenix-D]

Said beta testers might want to watch their comments lest they get wacked with the NDA stick..

[DeadZone]

I for one love the idea of a real-time combat
*Just to note that Ive yet to actually try SEV combat out*
As Ive always found Turn-based combat too slow and tedious, and Im the type of guy who likes to have to think fast and be on my feet

As for, who can click the quickest... dont forget it will be against the AI, who can think a 1000 times faster than us anyway, plus issue a 100 orders to a hundred ships before we finish that first thought
As for MP, if its like SEIV, then you dont get to see the combat until after its occured anyway

[Captain Kwok]

Phoenix-D said:
Said beta testers might want to watch their comments lest they get wacked with the NDA stick..

I didn't say anything that Aaron didn't mention in the IRC chats.