Straight vs. Diagonal

[Fred]

Wouldn't it be more realistic, if ships pay 1.5 movement points (instead of 1) when moving diagonal?

It looks very strange if 2 enemy ships are roughly the same distance away from your ship and then when checking the distance with the cursor, one is 13 and the other just 9 squares away. Odd.

Same applies to system movement, not only to tactical combat.

Fred

Who cares about realism ! Do NOT change this, moving takes long enough as it is !

[Will]

It would be more realistic, but that's not the way it is

In the concept stage of SE4, the fans of SE3 asked that the maps be switched to either a coordinate based system or a hex cell map. They weren't put in, so... can't do much

[capnq]

I don't know about a coordinate system, but I do know from experience that it is quite a bit more work to write the program routines to deal with a hexagonal grid than a square one.

------------------
Cap'n Q


The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft

[Fred]

The change would be quite easy, simply all diagonal moves just cost 1.5 mp...what is the difficulty here?

Fred

[Suicide Junkie]

He said it would be hard to convert to a hex grid.

Fractional movement would IMO overly complicate things for a little more realism.

I've just accepted it and gotten used to seeing distances as virtual boxes. ie. range 6 is not a circle around your ship, but a square.

[Fred]

hmm,

but you don't need fractions...a ship with 5 mp can just go 3 sq diagonal, a ship with 9 mp can just go 6 sq diagonal.

And the computer is..able to handle the internal use of fractions..

Fred

[Suicide Junkie]

How would you handle telling the user these things? Any ship that finishes its orders would have a 50/50 chance of having a fractional movement remaining.
Is 1/2 movement enough to use stellar manip?
Is a ship with 1/2 a movement able to move at all?
Can you move half a square, and finish the move on the nest turn?

The system as is is quite straightforward.

[Marty Ward]

I guess the best way to look at it is the movement points don't make sense but it works. But since this is space isn't using 2D movement weird to begin with?

[raynor]

I'm glad someone else finally mentioned the skewed movement system in the game. Though, I would keep it very simple and make every diagonal move cost exactly the same as moving along the horizontal and vertical. So, every diagonal move would require *two* movement points.