econundrum1

Join Date 04/2007

+36

can I fire my ship captains....

OK I go to all the trouble of building a nice fleet armed with missiles and attack the iconians starbase in my territory. Here is how the fight goes, the iconians drone fly out to meet me and are destroyed. My ships carry on approaching the station until missile range is reached. Then the space station and my fleet both open fire with missiles.

So far so good, it's at this point that my captains show me they aren't in the top branches of the iq tree, they carry on flying towards the station letting it bring not just it's missiles but also lasers and mass drivers into play winning a Darwin award. I still won but one of my ships was destroyed and another took a lot of damage and much of it could have been avoided.

ships should try and use reach advantage when they have it like for instance when they can easily avoid 66% of the enemies weapons just by staying out of range while still hitting with all or most of there weapons.

The tactical combat Ai looks like it could be greatly improved.

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ForesterSOF

Join Date 10/2013

+29

Not till expansion 1

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Perhaps for a better gaming experience (and a better behavior from the AI), the weapons fire distance should be removed, so all the weapon types can be used simultaneously.

Basically, if the ship can stay out of range of the other weapons (with starbase in your example), they becomes useless.

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I don't think they ever planned combat to keep in standoff range. Frogboy said in the stream he actually would like the range requirements removed. Whether that happens or not depends on SD. If you take the range requirements the AI for battleviewer is sufficient.

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econundrum1

Join Date 04/2007

+36

True but if you have range in and thrusters to effect combat speed then attempting to use a reach advantage if you have one is the only logical choice and so the Ai needs to respect that.

I'm fine with it being a post release patch and it would make combat more interesting personally I like range and speed being factors in combat.

Of course it may also need to take ship roles into account.

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I think thrusters can give a bonus even if all the weapon types can be used simultaneously (and it would be simpler for the AI).

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econundrum1

Join Date 04/2007

+36

I don't actually think it would be a very difficult thing for the Ai when fighting a static opponent or small number of opponents I can see how it could get tricky in large fleet battles with lots of different weapons, defenses and ship types involved to be fair.

I guess the attacking a static starbase is just the obvious case that shows it as stupid behavior and could easily be caught by the Ai as a special case.

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Yeah it just seems like beta is really alpha, release is really beta and expansion 1 will really be release...

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econundrum1

Join Date 04/2007

+36

To be honest I think that's a little harsh as someone who has played a lot of Beta and release games, this is a fairly minor point really but one I would very much like to see addressed at some point. At the moment I think the game is a very good Beta, will it be ready in time for a 14th May release, honestly I think it needs probably another month for polish, but I have seen games release in a worse state that did well enough.

They intend to patch in further fixes and features before the first expansion you know, GC2 got considerable amounts of polish and extra features for free outside of expansions, they tend to keep expansions for really game changing changes for instance ToA added per race tech trees that totally changes the game.

I didn't really post this to knock the game, rather to point out something that could be improved.

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Battles with stations involved are better to auto resolve. Ships on the defending side of a battle with stations just charge the attacking fleet leaving the station behind, even support ships do this. I do hope this behavior will be change in a patch because that is certainly broken.

If range stays and the battle viewer is expanded on then stations should mainly have defenses in the form of missiles, armour, shield and point defenses... they should then carry fighters. A fleet should stay back and lob missiles and the base should counter fire with its own missiles and launch fighters to try and kill the missile ships.

Sure... remove the ranges and you might as well remove accuracy, recharge rates as well and the battle view would become even more pointless and just a glorified auto resolver.

I still like to look at my battles even though it is frustrating when ships fire 360 all around them at full effect and every ship rushes into point blank range because not doing so would unbalance the weapons quite significantly as things stand.

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

I have to agree that I haven't seen enough from ship range to make it something worth staying in the game.

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The combat calculator (not the video) is the thing that takes into account the different range and speeds of ships and whatnot. So when you're watching your ships zoom in to fight an enemy that they should be keeping at a distance, that's not a strategy fail. The game can't display combat tactics, because it's not calculating those tactics.

Your weapons with higher range fire earlier which means you get the first turn(s) in the combat calculator (i think). And a ships faster speed means a higher likelihood of misses (I think). But the positioning in the video is essentially meaningless. Your opponent must eventually move into firing range and get his turn (assuming he survives your initial attacks).

They could adjust the calculator to take these different ideas into account (and hey, maybe they do) but then they'd have to sync up the video playback.

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econundrum1

Join Date 04/2007

+36

Quoting sweatyboatman,

reply 11

They could adjust the calculator to take these different ideas into account (and hey, maybe they do) but then they'd have to sync up the video playback.

An interesting point, the answer is we have no way of knowing it looks like the ships stupidly bring themselves in range of weapons they don't need to be in range of and get hit by them though and from the results I sort of doubt the combat calculator is calculating this obvious tactic.

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Quoting sweatyboatman,

reply 11

Maybe I missed a dev announcement (or something in the streams) but isn't the video of the battle essentially just a static visual representation of the combat calculator results. That is, the results of the battle have already been calculated.

The combat calculator (not the video) is the thing that takes into account the different range and speeds of ships and whatnot. So when you're watching your ships zoom in to fight an enemy that they should be keeping at a distance, that's not a strategy fail. The game can't display combat tactics, because it's not calculating those tactics.

Your weapons with higher range fire earlier which means you get the first turn(s) in the combat calculator (i think). And a ships faster speed means a higher likelihood of misses (I think). But the positioning in the video is essentially meaningless. Your opponent must eventually move into firing range and get his turn (assuming he survives your initial attacks).

They could adjust the calculator to take these different ideas into account (and hey, maybe they do) but then they'd have to sync up the video playback.

Nope... the auto calculator and battle viewer are completely separate mechanics, that is obvious when you try out station combat. Try defending an unarmed support ship at a station and use auto or battle viewer, completely different results...

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