Realtime or turnbased tactical combat?

[klausD]

Emp. fyron: This eliminates the stupid things that happen in combat systems such as that of SEIV, where one side gets to do a ton of damage to the other before the other side can react. It also eliminates the stupid things that happen in systems like MOO2, where one side still gets a lot of ships acting at the same time, before any enemy ships can act.

I agree that SEIV is stupid in this respect. But with the change of some rules, there could be found a proper solution for this problem without the need to change to realtime. A rule designer have just to look a little bit around at existing initative systems. There are alot of clever designs in the classic board wargame sector out there which solve exactly the SEIV initiative problem. MOO2 did it in a certain (but not perfect) way in its 1.31 patch, so why not SEIV?

Well but we will see if the new realtime engine is really that good as you say. At least I hope so and in sake of my love to the SE series I will give it a try without much prejudicing.

Emp. Fyron: We must be prophets or somesuch; what has been described on the SEV combat system is exactly what we told you before would alleviate all RTS and click festing concerns you had...

Well as you surely noticed English is not my native language so maybe I was not able to understand everthing in the previous posts. Sorry for that.

[Fyron]

The point is that those clever initiative systems are all designed to make the combat more and more like a realistic, "real time" system. They are designed to make it seem like events are occuring at the same time, rather than in a silly sequential method. None of them can ever get entirely away from the problems inherent in turn based execution. Going with "real time" merely smooths out the remaining problems and makes the combat that much more balanced and realistic. It is a perfectly natural evolution. You can not get a real time system in a board game, but computers can certainly handle it just fine.

On a semi-related note, I personally think the "sequential" method of turn processing should be eliminated entirely. Only "simultaneous" should exist. It is far superior in terms of balance and overall gameplay. Nothing sucks more than ordering a ship to move in one direction early on in the turn and later realizing that you would have prefered it to move in the opposite direction to react to a new situation... Certainly, the non-combat portions of the game should never be done in "real time." That would definitely be taking the game in the wrong direction.

[Hiruu]

Aaron and crew have progressively deliver a finer product with each game, and until they let me down, I'll trust the guy's judgement in making games. This is Malfador's golden opportunity to break into the big time, and rightfully snatch the 4X crown from MOO (some might say they already have, but not to the masses!), so i doubt that they are going to mess it up. I was skeptical about the realtime aspects of combat, but I really liked the look of those screenshots, since it looks just like the ones from SEIV, except for the 3-d aspect view. I hope the beta process is completed by summer and we get a demo, or at least a larger demo pool...hint hint!!! There wasn't much that needed to be change on SEIV basic structure to keep me happy, so the screenshots alone were enough for me. Overall, until I see more screenshots and a demo, I'll give Malfador the benefit of the doubt.

Also, Please don't mention the Space Empire in the same breathe with MOOIII, as that game was complete garbage!

[Magnum357]

Kid said:
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.

I just would like to add that although I love Turn-based 4x games too, there is one Realtime game out their that uses Real Time combat AND is still quite popular even today. Sierra's Strategy game "Homeworld".

[HP Delron]

I might add for real time combat, since more of the games time units pass in a real time situation. The putting in of weapons that would take too many turns to scale out properly (such as extremely low power, rapid fire weapons).

[Suicide Junkie]

True, all those gatling cannon components can be one big gatling cannon in a realtime combat environment.

See P&N-ism mod for Starfury to see such stuff in action

[Q]

I can understand both sides pro and contra real time combat.
Although I rarely use tactical combat at all in "real" games (tactical combat with more than 10 ships gets painful anyway) I think it is an important part of SE and especially to test some Mods I found tactical combats essential.
In my opinion the key point is what you can do or can't do during the pauses. If you can target and give movement orders then real time combat is an improvement IMHO. Hovewer if these two action can't be performed during pauses then I would prefer the old turn based combat.

[Slick]

I agree with Q completely. I'd also point out that, just based on numbers, most people who own SE:IV don't play multiplayer so tactical combat is probably more widely used when viewed over all game owners.

[Fyron]

Please refer to Kwok's post:

Captain Kwok said:
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.

[Instar]

Kid said:
I will be willing to try the Demo. After all Bauler's (Spelling?)Gate, had a semi-realtime and it was a great game.

Baldur's Gate is perhaps one of the greatest games of all time.