GoddessAthena

Join Date 12/2011

What's the word on the ship battles?

I haven't been able to keep up on the updates or what they plan on still adding, or working on, but besides the fact you can only use the MMB to rotate ships which is totally killing my ability to do the one thing I love most about in Galciv, there has been another thing that seems the most unpolished to me. That is the ship battles themselves.

The ships remind me of a bunch of drunk kids on an ice ring with their shoes on.. just sliding every which way, and turning and flailing about in the general direction they want to go. The problem just gets worse as the battles go on.

The larger ships act like fighters, turn on their axis and don't act how you'd expect a large star ship to act, or turn. I can see one problem with this being the fact that the weapons need to turn and point. I feel the developers really missed a huge oppertunity here to make it as realistic and immersive as possible by creating additional gun types for large capital sized ships for smaller fighters. (Weapon sizes, etc. Such as Flak guns, and small missile batteries to combat the smaller fighters without having to force the ship to turn 90 degree's on a dime to fire). However since it's waaaaaay past the chance to do that....

I'm wondering what the devs have in mind for the ship battles, since they look and feel a little.. silly..

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Ashbery76

Join Date 02/2002

+36

The early beta battles looked MUCH better as the ships were at much longer range.It looked epic

Now they start too close together.It looks stupid like in GC2..

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Larsenex

Join Date 04/2009

+212

I have to agree with Asherberry here. I think the Ships are starting too close. Also the free cam is not startin at a position that I can use to see with. It puts me in space with no ships near as I can see.

I like they original setting where we had some distance to close on. I know Paul changed it to 'speed' things up but we have a speed multiplier for that. I suppose we can mod it to set the fleets engagement distance a bit further back. Also a bit more distance between waves might seem in order.

I love the fighters/interceptors up front racing to engage and a bit of space then my assault boats in behind and then a bit of space the Capitals and escorts then finally the ECM tenders and Command ships surrounded by Guardian ship types.

Oh and I LOVE being able to designate regardless of how they are outfitted my own ships. Kudos on Paul for that!

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Actually all weapons shoot equally well in all direction so ships don't have much incentive to do pretty much any turns even if they do.

I otherwise agree that ship battles leave something to be developed in the future.

There should be a bigger distinction between ship sizes, classes of ships and how ships behave during ship battles. It would also be interesting if ship formations had a greater impact, but as long as weapons fire in all direction and all are more or less the same this is not going to happen.

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Quoting JorgenCAB,

reply 3

Actually all weapons shoot equally well in all direction so ships don't have much incentive to do pretty much any turns even if they do.

I otherwise agree that ship battles leave something to be developed in the future.

There should be a bigger distinction between ship sizes, classes of ships and how ships behave during ship battles. It would also be interesting if ship formations had a greater impact, but as long as weapons fire in all direction and all are more or less the same this is not going to happen.

Yea, while I agree that the battles will never get to the point of games like Sword of the Stars where the ships act pretty much how you'd expect them too depending on size and weapons, I still think there is much work to be done in GC3.

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One simple thing that actually do exist in the game is weapon range... but why do not ships actually try to use that advantage, such as against a star base. If I have a few missile ships they will all close in to point blank range... seems pretty illogical to me. Ships should basically try to out-range en enemy if they feel it is advantageous to do so.

Later on I hope they add diminishing strength for weapons the further from their front a weapon fire with the option of adding weapons to extend the damage in other directions (or the opposite). I don't feel that GC3 need actual weapon firing arcs but some mechanic to force ships to maneuver and make flanking attacks a real thing. This would also make small versus large ship diversity more pronounced.

I do hope they add some functionality to the battle viewer in a patch, DLC or expansion pack down the road. The game is perfectly playable as is and auto solving battle are still an option, in some cases even the better option for a balanced result.

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UnleashedElf

Join Date 03/2013

+16

Quoting Ashbery76,

reply 1

The early beta battles looked MUCH better as the ships were at much longer range.It looked epic

Now they start too close together.It looks stupid like in GC2..

The ships need to start further apart.

I would like to see things like a better AI put into place - ex: if I have mostly missile weapons and the speed advantage, the optimal thing to do is to try to kite.

I would like to see:

1. Firing arcs

2. Physics for maneuvering

3. Better AI as I mentioned

4. Weapons with secondary effects (ex: a weapon may slow down a target)

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The ships should start further apart AND engage from further away. Plus different ship sizes should act differently, large ships should hang back and fire at the other large ships from a distance while the smaller ships move in to dogfight.

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Something that sort of work now is to arm ships designated as Guardians with missiles and very little defense. Ships designated as capitals armed with 1/3 missiles and 2/3 beam of the weapon parts and about 25-30% defense and 70=75% weapons of the ships total capacity that is not engines or support. Escort get about 33-50% defenses and mostly kinetic weapons but some beam is not to bad either.

The reason is that you will engage in a very good way and completely devastate a well balanced AI fleet or AI fleet that has its ships much further apart. The designated ships of guardians and escort will also target the most dangerous of the enemy ships first while you capital will mostly target high threat targets as well.

The thing is that... as long as weapons are the same and ships are the same and designations act the same there will be very few tactics to what is the best solution, even in multiplayer. Anything that keep your ships as close to each other so you can focus fire will work best, more or less...

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