Tactical Combat : Endless Space-y or Dominions-y?

from GalCiv3 Forums

Hello all, 

 

I've been mining these forums struggling to get a handle on what tactical combat is going to be like. AFAICT:

 

  1. It's not "tactical combat" in the fallen enchantress sense-- you won't have direct control over individual ships or even groups of ships.
  2. It's not just a bunch of dice rolls in the way that Gal Civ II was, and ship design was really about how many laz0rz you could fit on a battleship.
  3. There are carriers and fighters that will actually behave differently in combat , not just varying sizes of ship.
  4. There are actual decisions to make when two fleets meet.
  5. Fleets operate in stacks, as they did in Gal Civ II.

So there are only two games I can think of that reconcile these constraints, and they operate pretty differently. 

A. Endless Space-- you have a handful of options at the beginning of each battle ( Ships line up by most HP, firepower, experience, etc...) and possibly at designated points in the rest of the battle (sabotage, engineering, etc.), but nothing like direct control over your ships.

B. Dominions -- your troops are organized into 'squads' well before the battle, and you position and order different squads before the battle with generic commands like charge, hold, flank, etc. Space and positioning do mean something, but you don't get direct control over those variables once you hit 'go.'

 

Can anybody shed more light on what's going on with tactical combat?

39,236 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I do not have an answer to your question, but I've been thinking about it a different way. Fleet A starts on the left side of the screen in no formation, fleet B starts on the right. All ships simultaneously advance at their max speed and start firing the instant they get into weapons range. The carrier would release the fighters inside as soon as those fighters get into weapons range.

So the way I envision it, the only tactics will be the way you build your ships and your fleet. No battlefield decisions.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

my impression and i could be completely wrong in this

is that you will assign a role to each ship (think wow (tank, dps, support,etc)) you will then be able to give general orders to the roles; at the start of combat or possibly in a combat designer where you will then be able to assign prearranged tactics when entering combat.

tanks rush ahead and provide cover for the support.

dps flank around thier tanks and try to take out the enemys support

support come up with targeting solutions /ECM etc

 

 

WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Hopefully we will be getting an eyeful this Friday.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

It was a while ago I deduced what combat was going to be like, sadly I didn't write my discovery down and thus forgot it. I know that fleet roles are going to be super important though.

in the games files data/game/BattleBehaviorDefs it shows what fleet roles do. That's why I imagine them to have a big impact on combat because of the variables involving the amount of ships and what your opponent chose. Not to mention off type defenses and weapons, or accuracy ect. ;)

Friday is soon...lookin forward to it.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The code in 'StatusEffectDefs' is... Amazing. What could it do?

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Aha! Thanks to DARCA, I have a bit of an answer.

 

At a glance, it looks like each ship is assigned a 'role' out of :

Escort

Capital

Assault

Interceptor

Guardian

Support

Upgrading

Starbase

 

I would *guess* these are assigned when ships are designed, since 'Starbase' sounds like it's inherent to Starbases. Each class has the following:
Starting position: Just a very cryptic integer-- I wouldn't be surprised if it's  just forward/backward relative to the enemy, but who knows.
 
Maneuver Type: One of Attacker ( Assault, Interceptor, Capital ), Defender ( Escort, Guardian ) or Stationary ( Support, Starbase, Upgrading)
 
The Defender types then have a set of "Defend Targets," which I would guess are listed by priority. Escorts defend Capitals, then Support, while Guardians defend Supports first , then Captials.
 
All types, defenders included, then have a list of "Attack Targets," which I would also guess are sorted by priority. I'm not going to list all of that here, but I will note that 'Upgrading' and 'Starbase' are ALWAYS the last two targets. Support is usually third-to-last, but two (Interceptor and Capital ) prioritize them higher (2nd and 4th, respectively).
Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Possibly hull based too, there's five categories and five hull types. Or maybe you can designate what ship will be the capital of a fleet?

Yup, all roles have a list of targeting priorities, but the defense roles are the most baffling they are to complex to work out in my head and I'm not a psychic. Lol

Also I don't think combat will be a one ship at a time line-em-up like before. I think both sides will be firing and multiple ships at a time will be targeted...awesome. :3

I think I earned a protein shake :)

 

DARCA ;)

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

There doesn't need to be only one 'capital' ship -- that's a general term for heavy-hitting ships like battleships or carriers. There are five mobile categories, but I'm not sure that supports necessarily have their own hull. 

 

The defense roles struck me as pretty simple, since the only ships that have them only have two entries. It looks like escorts are 'forward defense'-- they guard ships that are attacking, and guardians defend the stationary support ships in the back.

 

Interceptors seem to be 'gankers' since they go after guardians and supports first, while Assaults and Capitals first attack the enemy's Escorts and Capitals. After that, Assaults prefer to attack enemy Assaults and Interceptors, while Capitals go after the guardians and supports.

 

OVERALL, a battle will look something like this: Guardians and Supports hang back, while Escorts, Capitals, and Assaults meet each other 'in the middle' for a straight up firefight. After that battle resolves, the Capitals and Escorts will charge forward to destroy the enemy Guardians and Supports. Meanwhile, each side's interceptors will go straight for the other's guardians and supports, and the guardians will try to fend them off until the center battle ends. At that point, any remaining assaults will head back to help the guardians against the enemy interceptors.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Assaults get it the best part of the deal. They are lower on the firing priorities of ships and attack the attackers...sorta like defense already. I'm going to make alot of those.

There's still so much hidden stuff, and more things a want go rant about but I will stop here. :)

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I sense a great many Cartesian products in the ship Designer ...

We might need more tabs and such. :thumbsup:

  • Fleet, right-click, Show Tactical Formation (like a football play: 65-Baker-Cheep-Wheel)
Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

In the old computer games, and I am going back here to the spectrum and commodore computers. some of the tactical games when it came to combat had a "choose your attack"

and it listed things like cautious attack , frontal assault, blitzkrieg, etc, or when defending a few choices there too. so in galciv3 maybe a choice in how you want your fleet to

behave in combat.

 

I have also wondered what would happen to combat if one fleet surprised the other (say by moving from outside of the sensor range of the defending fleet to attack it in one move)

so the attacking fleet actually attacks from the SIDE rather from the front. is the combat attack rolls done in the battle viewer, so that a assault ships attacking from the side find

there target right in front of them with the fighter protection at the wrong end of the combat. would this alter the outcome of a battle. or is the total strengths weaknesses actually

calculated before the combat viewer starts

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting BlackMerlin, reply 11

In the old computer games, and I am going back here to the spectrum and commodore computers. some of the tactical games when it came to combat had a "choose your attack"

and it listed things like cautious attack , frontal assault, blitzkrieg, etc, or when defending a few choices there too. so in galciv3 maybe a choice in how you want your fleet to

behave in combat.

 

I have also wondered what would happen to combat if one fleet surprised the other (say by moving from outside of the sensor range of the defending fleet to attack it in one move)

so the attacking fleet actually attacks from the SIDE rather from the front. is the combat attack rolls done in the battle viewer, so that a assault ships attacking from the side find

there target right in front of them with the fighter protection at the wrong end of the combat. would this alter the outcome of a battle. or is the total strengths weaknesses actually

calculated before the combat viewer starts
End of BlackMerlin's quote

I don't think the attitude of your attack will matter. Each battle will be fought head on according to the rules established for the ship roles. Speed and a greater sensor range will allow you to use the tactic of retreat that several have asked about.

Reply #13 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I can see the appeal of retreat and or hit and run tactics against a more powerful fleet wearing it down slowly etc. surprise attacks of some sort would be cool. hiding your fleet in asteroids and nebula waiting to pounce an unsuspecting enemy as it passes. wonder if you could get a bonus to attack for the first round or so before the enemy has chance to react etc

Reply #14 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


It's not "tactical combat" in the fallen enchantress sense-- you won't have direct control over individual ships or even groups of ships.
End of quote

Tactical Combat : Endless Space-y or Dominions-y?
End of quote

"When there is no alternative choice of two entities, both will be of a hefty garbage."

(Escobar)

Anybody, tell me, why we should choose between shit and shit? Seriously, I really love GalCiv series, GalCiv II is my favourite game from childhood, and there were only two things in this game, that I had dislike: non-availability of multiplayer and lack of good spaceship battles. In my opinion battles in GalCiv should be made as in Imperium Galactica or Empire at War. Is it really so hard? Player haven't too many ships, and orders like "Ship №1 attack Enemy Ship №2 with a laser" aren't so difficult. Why it can't be so? Somebody can say, that GalCiv isn't space tactics, it is a global strategy. But in this game player manage his civilization in different scales: player leads civiliztion, rule on every planet, choose researches, making ships. Why player can't lead a fleet in the battle? If smb don't want to do this - autobattle is allowed. 

Why not this combat systems? Coz if I want to play space combat in this way, I'll play in ES or Ds. If I want to play a card game, in which my actions doesn't matter - I'll play in Black Jack. I want to have a real control in the battle.

I had bought all GalCiv 2 addons, and now I had paid for GalCiv 3 BETA(in which I can't even start a game - it is crashes every time), so I hope that I hadn't give you my money just for exchanging squares for hexes.

Reply #15 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Arsdor, reply 14
so I hope that I hadn't give you my money just for exchanging squares for hexes.
End of Arsdor's quote

Really starting to get irritated by this complaint as there are a LOT of differences between GC II and GC III besides hexes. :)

Reply #16 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Well i think what they are saying is that mostnif these changes only enhance a solid gaming which is really what the next game in the series should be,  whereas they basically want a brand new.game which destroys the game series.to my opinion. A lot of the new features provide a better way to play galactic civilizations not a whole new game experience.