What ever happened to reaction moves?

The biggest problem I can think of is that turns are sequential (at least they are in GC2). The Altarians take their turn, the Drengin take their turn, the Terrans take their turn, the Yor take their turn, the player goes last. At the end of the player turn all the move counters get reset and the cycle starts again. I think it's safe to assume something very similar will happen in GC3.

You should immediately see the problem. At the time I take my turn, everyone else's movement points for that turn have been used up, assuming those ships moved during their turn. The AI fleets would be very unlikely to have points available to respond to player moves, while the player fleets would always have their maximum move points available when attacked. This might be addressed by resetting movement points just after a faction (AI or human) ends their turn, letting any evasive movement count against the *next* turn's movement.

Alternatively, a player could game the reaction movement to their advantage. I came up with two relatively easy ones right off; I'm sure there are more. First, if an AI fleet is set to evade, the player could use a faster but weak ship to chase the AI fleet around each turn to expend all its movement points. All the AI fleet's movement would be used up before they even get to do their turn, and the same tactic could be used repeatedly for each turn to effectively neutralize an enemy fleet without ever firing a shot.

Second, the player could "corral" an evading enemy fleet, by moving a few fast, weak ships in from all sides to blockade the space available for the enemy fleet to evade *into*. Depending on how the AI handles it, you would be able to contain the enemy fleet into a single space where they would not be able to evade *from* - all adjoining hexes being occupied by enemy ships. Then the player's heavy fleet jumps in for the kill.

Both of those *might* be able to be handled by an advanced AI player, but the AI would have to be specifically designed to deal with that sort of tactic. The first, by recognizing when it happens and turning off auto-evade; the second by recognizing what was happening and having the option to attack one of the corral ships to get out of the trap.

Now think of many other ways the player might exploit reaction moves and come up with effective ways an AI could counter them. The AI involved would not be trivial.

Yea all these kinds of possibilities.

Allot of 'problems' have already been solved in other games that use reaction moves. For example, as far as movement is concerned, reaction moves can only use movement left over from the previous turn, therefore you would always have full mobility at the start of your turn. This would also create good strategical potential because you have to think about how far you will push your fleet and how much reaction movement it will be left with?

As far as multiple opponents - well in the game there will either be more enemy ships or fewer enemy ships using up your reaction moves, who owns them is irrelevant to this. As far as war triangles go, reaction moves going off here and there and that and this player taking advantage and that player using up reaction moves.... wonderful!

AI - What i would say is that the Galciv AI is already capable of assessing enemy fleets, you would naturally use this existing feature to modify the AI reaction move responses so that it would not retreat from a fleet which is 'x' amount weaker, so on and so fourth, simple.

About multitple opponents. If memory serves, Jagged Alliance 2 allowed multiple sides battles with possibilities of interrupts. There even were four siders (Deidrana forces, Militia, local fauna and our mercenaries). I exclude civilians and alike, they rarely participated in combats, and even if they did, generally in small numbers.

So in theory there could be possibility of "interrupts" should someone left "action points" during his previous turn, adding some sort of tactics to combat. Proper sequence could be quite problematic to pick up, it's not "Heroes of Might and Magic V, where units with high initiative could make more turns.

IMHO that's need prototyping first, but in theory it could be interesting - weaker, yet faster fleets, using their agility and multiple attacks (with possibility of interrupt) against powerful, yet slow enemies. Should extensive maneuvering be brought into combat...

Well if i understand you correctly, there already doing this kind of thing in Civ4 and 5 whereby faster units have a chance of retreating from battle.

In the ancient game called 'rifles' any unit has a chance of retreating when defeated in battle, but you receive 'morale' penalties which reduces the combat effectiveness of the unit. Sometimes the units morale hits rock bottom after retreating and you are penalized by not being able to control that unit the next turn at all due to the disorganized state of the unit. It takes several turns keeping still to recover morale.

Edit: or was it called 'Age of rifles'?

I wasn't thinking about retreating, actually, though it could be added too. I mean that engine of the ship should have same impact on combat's result as armament. Faster ships will be able to break formations, flank enemy or even attack from the rear - turn their speed to advantage. Outside of simple "pursuit" and "getting there faster" roles.

In JA2 "Faster" mercs could flank the enemy to get to better position, or they could make more shots than their "slower" comrades. Yes, we in space, so cover's presense chances are reduced (you can't place your ships in "hull down" mode), but in theory ships can't have equal armour and armament everywhere, so getting to area with weaker armour or armament, or even to blind spot, to shot at enemy without any retaliation.

Of course, in fleets' formations ships will cover each other, but it doesn't mean you can't try to break that formation.

I don't remember sorry, but factors of "morale", "organization", or "effectiveness" could be brought into this game too. Damaged ship could be ordered to disengage, maybe for repairs, maybe for emergency repairs, or to evacuate crew (experienced crew should be more important than ship they are serving on). Ship with low crew's morale can stop responding on your orders until it's commander will be able to restore order. IMHO that shouldn't happen with well trained crews. Organization is a bit harder to implement - part if it could belong to ship's crew's training, part to organization should reflect ships cohesion within flotilla, fleet or any other ships' formation. The higher it is, the more difficult it is to break it, the better their maneuvers are, and they are more solid as one unit. Effectiveness is derivative value, based on morale and organization (of both types).

Ships with reduced crew (do combat damages or simply as skeleton crews (for multitude of reasons, starting from lack of trained cadres to hastly evacuation from besieged shipyard) could be reinforced, but with inevitable drop in organization, resulting in some drop of their performance.

Basically units cohesion should affect their performance - if cohesion in high, then every maneuver or order performed flawlessly, whole fleet is moving as one big entity, regardless of order given - attack, turn, falling back, retreating, changing formation into most suitable one and so on. If cohesion is low, then ships will perform more like group of individuals, withh possible break outs, even collisions.

Morale could affect each individual ship's performance with possible adjustments from either commander or fleets' own reputation (sort of "it's famous fifth fleet, they are invincible!" leading to morale's boost), or actions within fleet ("damn it, they killed Kenny, you bastards! destroyed our flasghip "Chiken wing", we will revenge!", that could render ships "immoral" for some time).

I understand, on scale from zero to ten chances I see this in game are about minus two, but I wouldn't mind to add some flavour to combat.

Ships crew? hmm i only ever saw that tried in X2/X3/TC... correction, i only ever 'heard' that tried in X2/X3/TC, played those games extensively but never used ships crew - they made it absurdly aggravating. 

Ships' crews are reality in X-Rebirth. They are reduced in numbers in comparison with real ships - for example, single pilot, or captain, plus defense officer, plus engineer (one of my ships have eaten about five of those - I think they named wrong game "Dead space"), probably marine officer and marines (which are goods/wares now (I'm not kidding, you buy them like inventory wares: "I need six bottles of whisky, three chocolates and 20 elite marines. No need for bag, thank you")). Now sure why would you need latter - no one seems to board my ships. Not that I have many - they were bugged. Probably still are.

It's not aggravating per se, what is annoying is that crew members are scattered all over stations, stations have multiple docks types at each, and there is little system in that scattering. Plus X-Rebirth interface is horrible, you can see only four persons aboard certain dock, yet some entry corridors could have eight people. Plus, prior hiring you can't see person's skills, and they could be... zero. Marine officer with boarding skill zero. He could lose with any amount of elites. Well, he will lose.

I understand, it's German game, hence 100% bugridden, plus it's been in development for 7 years, so they had more time to add more bugs, so it's nothing unusual.

Is it much worse than getting software in X3? With current interface and certain "features", it's just more tedious.

Returning to my essay over crews' questions shouldn't be supreme ruler responsibility. Of course, you can create a pattern, or system of training - for peace time, for war time (with inevitable drop in requirements; that also could affect manufacturing - cheaper stuff, maybe not as comfy), but that's all.

Do I want to see that? Yes. They could be semi-hidden parameters, like many of those in Jagged Alliance 2 were. You don't control each ship's crew recruitment, you create outlines, within which your subordinates work. If you want to have a pinch of micromanagement in your life - welcome.:)

And I don't think it will be too difficult - Hearts of Iron series lives with those more or less fine. No need to tell me it's not HoI, somehow I noticed.

Reaction movement is kind of messy and that is the reason you tend not to see it in games. People don't really like seeing seeing the enemy acting out of turn. If it's my turn, I don't want the board moving around on me because that messes up my ability to make plans. That example in the OP where a enemy fleet moves into attack you on your turn would be more annoying then exciting I think.

I'd like for player turns to stay sequential, I'm not a fan of "Real-Time" reactions in TBS.

That's not "real-time", that's "interrupts". Y U NO like Jagged Alliance 2, it was done nicely there and wasn't irritating.

Thanks to those who posted, and apologies for my lateness! But better late than never (within reason).

Yes there are certainly no shortage of potential things that can go wrong with reaction moves, but if it is done well, i think it can greatly improve a game like Galciv.

As Nomotog points out, an actual unit movement in reaction move can be very problematic, and aside from scinario type setups, i have only ever seen this type of reaction move in one game, ever! Rifles, and it worked very well in that game.