You mean Zydor?

lol

We should play a drinking game; search for his name, and for every time he says "Shoot 'em up" take a shot of hard liquor. That'll ruin you pretty damn quick.

I may be saying something stupid, as it has been years since I played it last, but I don't remember much else beyond the tactical battles being a large focus of the game. I do however, actively dislike the random tech trees in the game as it seriously detracts from any sort of planning one may have, and prevents you from doing anything but a shotgun approach in most of the games you play. I prefer if your chosen species/race/whatever is pre-set and "Softly" immutable; random events in-game are fine an dandy, as are stat-boosts or tech-dependent abilities, but the moment you start screwing with my playstyle and interfere with my fun, we have a problem.

And although I said I liked the fighting in SotS, even there it detracted from the larger-scale focus of the game, and weakened it in my opinion.

I dunno' maybe I'm just clueless and/or a fanboy, like I said, it's been a loooooooong time.

What you'll have here is if you have support ships in your fleet you'll be able to set up some battle options before the fleet battle begins. its hard to describe, it's a bit magic the gathering (select what you want to do at the start).  but you won't be controlling the ships directly.  The problem is that people would feel forced to micro manage their battles in order to get an optimal result.

ala' Endless Space but without the cards?

Neat; hope it pans out well.

Thank you for the clarification. If micro-ing is in, it'll force non-competitive players to micro, lengthening turn time and taking away from the empire management aspect.

The Emperor himself of Generic Empire Name isn't gonna step off his throne to micro-manage his admirals. He will, though, set out empire wide or sector wide standing orders for all to adhere too.

If you absolutely want tactical battles it could be modded in where you play as an admiral/vice admiral/rear admiral, and take orders from higher ups, sort of like in Crusader Kings (bad example, I know, but couldn't think of any other game).

Otherwise check out Starsector.

I would assume whatever functions you would put on a "command ship" would be part of what Frogboy called "support ships". Unless all your ships are identical each model will "support" the others in one form or another. Fighter defense, carrier for your own fighters, fleet bonus module ship (probably what you consider a "command" ship) - all support your main line of battle.

"I hate shoot em ups!" haha. ParagonRenagade that was F.U.N.

Every time Frogboy speaks their is clarity and content with the community. It would probably save Stardock alot of time and effort if they just gave a full description of the combat system. So they don't keep having to answer these forums a bit at a time after every one ends in a angry argument. And we players can stop starting forum after forum after forum. Taking up Stardocks time from making the game. And more forums will pop up until then.

And I have not stated this til now. But dialogue will be just as important in this game. It's a new decade and speaking the other races in diplomacy is as expected just as much as tactical combat for me...Shoot em ups! Someone type 'Kifflom' into google and see what happens.

I played Civ, Alpha Centauri, Birth of the Federation, etc etc etc. I have played pretty much every 4x game that has come out. All of them succeed or fail due to their own merits. Not due to their addition of one mechanic, but to the combination of several features or the lack their off. Elemental when it was first released was a complete mess this has nothing to do with the inclusion of one feature, but to a host of other design problems. As for CIV, CIV's combat has usually been atrocious. Do that make it a terrible game? No, but could it be better? When global conflict is shoehorned into dice rolls and unit spam, I think there is a problem.

What I don't get is that you are literally saying that you don't want more options, because you are afraid it will effect the strategic layer. Gal Civ wasn't any Hearts of Iron/Europa Universalis super strategy fest. It had some great depth and introduced a lot of good features, but the argument that it would effect the strat layer has always been a cop-out answer. You say it is a design decision, well my response is that it a bad design decision. And as I previously to pointed out, one that a good portion of the player base throughout the series has agreed with me on.

And if I don't like the game I will play something else. Stardock probably won't miss me either, but they might miss a lot of other costumers who think the same way. And as someone who has been a fan of their products for so long, I am going to voice my opinion about it.

It's a testament to how much we all love this franchise that we keep having animated discussions about this, but perhaps if the mods could pin this post with Brads response in it and kill off all other posts like this we could avoid this cycle of community fracturing fun!

Fate,

The idea that MOO got it all right is highly tinted by nostalgia tinted classes. MOO didn't get everything right. Those fights could get really tedious.

Give someone who has never played it a copy of the game today, and opinions will be much less kind than people who played it when it first came out.

More options isn't always a good thing; there's an important opportunity cost involved with implementing such things.

What you seem to be saying is that abstraction for the sake of simplicity or to direct focus elsewhere is bad. That's insane, basically the entire history of table-top gaming refutes that. Perhaps some people, sometimes, like games with abstracted instead of tactical battles. Perhaps they like GalCiv because it offers that. Perhaps they also wish others would learn to embrace games for what they are instead of wishing them to be a clone of a twenty-year old game. I really don't understand why someone would want to play a game this is apparently so broken in their mind. GalCiv has never had tactical combat and Stardock has made it clear that it's not part of their vision of the franchise. Please, please, learn to accept that.     

It would seem that there is now an "I really don't want tactical combat crowd". But yeah, I support tactical battles as well.

Even if that were to happen, tactical combat would still be by FAR the most in demand feature for half the community and strongly opposed by the other half (the half that has been eager to bash the OP in this thread).

Anyways, I think a lot of people are going to be let down the way things are going - not just by tactical combat, but by the hype. Life lesson - hype is hype.