Combat speed:  Combat speed as described here sounds fine to me.  i prefer this combination of attack or movement points.

Morale:  i like the way you explain it.  its simple and effective.

Terrain:  excellent as long as there is varied terrain, and many kinds of bonus's or uses that terrain can provide.  example:  ancient stone wall lines part of the battlefield.  position a unit behind it(say archers) they gain a 50% cover bonus or some such.

Winner take all:  i don't particularly like this idea.  personally i would prefer some sort of battlefield timer that ticks down with each turn.  you only have so long to fight then it goes back to overland, and starts up again next turn.  i do think that retreats should be allowed, but only if the retreating army has an escape route.  say there is an exit tile on all four sides of the map.  any unit that gets to that tile exits the battle on that side(one space north, south, east, west of the initial battle location).  this way if you just retreat(or the unit becomes panicked, they head for the closest tile) you may end up scattered.

Combined arms:  i think that specialized units are important, but i don't want the game to automatically assign roles to stereotypical units.  if i want some foot soldiers that can move even faster than horse units, then i want to be able to create them.  they would be enhanced of course with boots of speed.  this way it opens up much more strategy, and can really surprise the enemy.

Thresholds:  this is fine as long as it is set in the menu, and is either a personal choice, or is a server side choice before a multiplayer game begins.  also it should be changeable at anytime.

Controlling the length of tactical battles:  again this should be an option in the menu.  set it for so many turns before returning to the overland map. in single player the player should be able to choose unlimited if they want.

Randomness vs richness:  i think that randomness would be best, as long as the randomization is fairly good.  then again if you create a couple hundred unique locations, and the mod community would really run away with tile creation the game could have even thousands of premade tiles.  so that to is good.  kinda torn on this i suppose.

I just got done reading the last 3 pages of the "The Money Is On The Console" thread and that got me thinking about some of this.

The biggest thing was Why are we buying a PC exclusive title?

The awnser to that is as PC gamers we are generally snobs of the gaming world and we want games with all the bells and whistles. Depth, Story, Intricacy, and Complexity.

With that in mind I would have to say when it comes down to these decisions we want as many options as we can have. If we didn't we would play a console game.

We want to spend the time necessary to play a well developed game. If we didn't we would buy a 20 hour console game.

We want a game that requires our fullest in brainpower and allows us to be the snobs we think we are. If we didn't we would be buying some Action/FPS console game.

See the theme here. Anyone who is seriously looking forward to this game or is pre-ordering to get into beta 2 already realizes that this isn't going to be your dumbed down, quick play console port.

With that in mind I have to really support and reiterate what Raven said earlier about please do not simplify the combat portion. I know K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) is a motto that sells. But on things like "Winner Take All" it really strikes me as going against the whole reason you made this a PC exclusive title.

So as for Winner Take All, Random vrs Rich. I leave the Decision up to you as the dev's. All I ask is that please think about why you made the game you did with the principles you had in mind. If the game takes longer to be produced (God help me for saying this since I am dying waiting for Beta 2) then by all means take the time you need to produce the truly first original, engrossing, and memorable PC titles that has been released in the last decade of dumbed down shovelware crap.

As for those of you who are arguing for RTS for MP's speed sake. While I can completely empasize where you are coming from. This is the first time in a very long time where we are going to get a game that actually has some meat, thought, creativity and power under it's hood.

I don't care if the Battles take 3 hours as long as they are engrossing, spectacular, and require alot of thought on my part. If for the first time in a long time  I feel I lost a match because I was outmanuvered instead of out clicked or out reacted I will bless the ground the Dev's walk on.

And I will fight you to the gates of hell before I will surrender the best chance in a decade of a game like that

That's the thing with continuous turns though. Thanks to the pausing mechanic, you don't get "out-reacted". You can stop the game whenever you want to plan out your actions and give orders to react.

It's NOT an actions per minute clickfest. It's just a lot faster then traditional TBS combat because every unit can move at the same time, and every player can give orders at the same time.

WINNER.TAKE.ALL

Allow retreating but offer up some reasons not to do so.

Attacker retreats: attacker gets morale penalty, defender a morale boost

Defender retreats: defender loses morale (and what they were guarding), attacker gets morale boost (and their prize)

1. Controlling the length of a tactical battle.  We believe that users should have a lot of control over how in depth they want their battles to be. Should a tactical battle finish in less than a minute or should they last 2 hours? How do we make it so that players can control this?

Can you combine the auto-resolve with the time limit that a player sets? For instance, a player wants to fight a battle but only if it takes less than 10 mins. They then set the battle timer which will gradually start counting down and 'killing off' random units. For this example let's say it begins doing this at the seven minute mark based on the number of units on the battlefield. This way the player can be involved from beginning to end, but the battles won't go longer than a player would want. They will need to make adjustments to the battle as they lose units 'unexpectedly' which keeps the tactics portion alive. Players that want to plan every move can just turn the timer off.

1. Randomization vs. Richness. I won’t lie to you, we have a trade off in front of us and it’s a big one.  We can randomly generate the battlefields in tactical combat OR we can have it pick from a series of pre-made tactical battle maps.  The randomly generated ones won’t be as interesting but they’ll more accurately reflect the local terrain.  I’m preferring the pre-made ones because we can add some spectacular strategic when we’re crafting them and have hundreds to pull from.

I would prefer the pre-made maps to the randomized ones only if there are truly hundreds to choose from. If not I fear the maps would become predictable and the 'strategy' would be lost. I don't know how quickly the team could make that many maps representing varied tactics so I ask, "Is it worth the effort?" Would the time be best served to support the map making community and have a new pool of maps being uploaded regularly?

And I feel that with the Beta 2 +3 combo, we will have Pictures, things will open up substantially. I mean, think about it? What is the one thing SD needed to totally control, the final "LOOK" of Elemental.

Allowing, how ever many Alpha testers there actually is, access to the Graphics, would be an untenable situation, to say the least.

Brad will release us soon. And Raven X. Your arsmy will be mine LOL

twitch twitch

Thank you for this.  I have now envisioned Sauron zipping around a battlefield, in Benny Hill fast forward, to the tune of Yakkety Sax.  I would never in my wildest dreams have conceived of this on my own!

More seriously, while immensely powerful, Sauron was defeated by two people: Elendil and Gil-galad, and Isildur cut the ring from him.  In the most generous interpretation, three.  As badass as he was, there's nothing but Peter Jackson's delusions to support crushing tons at once.  Even Morgoth, more powerful than Sauron by far, wasn't so fast he could lay into a single elf over and over before his turn ended.  (God I hope no one makes me find page references in the Silmarillion for that last part...)

Since I can't seem to work the quotes on this forum in a similar fashion to most forums...

Frogboy wrote: "Randomization vs. Richness. I won’t lie to you, we have a trade off in front of us and it’s a big one.  We can randomly generate the battlefields in tactical combat OR we can have it pick from a series of pre-made tactical battle maps.  The randomly generated ones won’t be as interesting but they’ll more accurately reflect the local terrain.  I’m preferring the pre-made ones because we can add some spectacular strategic when we’re crafting them and have hundreds to pull from."

What about pre-made TILES?  Think like the board game Rivers, Roads, and Rails.  You could have tiles designed such that there's more than one way to fit them together, and by assembling your grid while keeping tiles connected properly, you could have some randomness, and still keep some of the benefits of pre-made.  It can get kind of complex, to be sure, but I think it'd be doable, and allow for some interesting variety.

And all the action would happen at the same time, I think this is the way to go too.

Will we be able to MOD and bring back the (continuous turns/pixel based combat system)?

Another question:

If you guys already have a combat system, that you are tossing out in favor of Tile Based/Turn-Based, why not let us try it?

His point regarding the nature of this beta is interesting too.  When I heard that release is intended ~3 months after we get phase 2 it struck me that is more akin to a normal beta than I realized -- our job is to try and break the game, test different systems for crashes/etc.  With only ~3 months between the start of phase 2 and release, and given the time needed to iron out the kinks and achieve some semblance of balance, that leaves not much time to tweak the major design decisions.  Thus I conclude much/most of the design decisions have been made and we're 'fine-tuning' them -- and that's fine.  I'm not saying we have no effect, just putting things into perspective.

This isn't a complaint/criticism, as I look at our beta glass as half-full not half-empty -- I think our role here is much better than the typical beta, but most of the design heavy lifting has been done.  And Frog has mentioned including 'beta-testers' earlier in the process in the future, which fits in with the above.

I hope the ultimate standard for what decisions the devs make is their concept of what Elemental should be.  Listening to us is great, but they need to listen to their 'dream', for otherwise we'll get a hodge-podge of ideas.  The best results are usually when someone has a dream and pursues it, and holds to it despite attempts of others to impose their dreams onto it.

I'm too old to be naive -- I keep learning that the hard way -- but sometimes ya just gotta sit back and trust, and I'm trusting that Elemental will turn out pretty well.  It won't be all I'd make it, maybe in some ways 'worse', but also in some ways much much 'better'.

Yeah, exactly what I think, add to it the fact that TRUE TURN-BASED/TILE-BASED make the game lean more towards chess than EPIC FANTASY MAGICAL BATTLE...

Good call Raven X. That's the primary reason I am here and why i have pre-ordered. 

There are not many old games that I have fond memories of equal to MoM and the tactical battles it allowed. If that aspect of the game fails, it will add to the long list of games played and punted to the closet/used bin.