Note To Everyone this is just some feedback from me a long time veteran player of this genera ( I know I am not the only one who played MoO)
As a gamer this is obviously a big part of the game we will want to enjoy after building and researching for lengthy games we want to see these big carriers launcher an army of interceptors OR shoot the many different weapons we see in other games lasers, rail guns, quark cannons, point defense vs fighters,
I hope you change your mind of the emphasis you put on battles otherwise you might just make a big mistake
if that you will not profit as much as you could form this game if the players don't see it as a must play again type of game
(don't want to see players getting bored with the game is all im saying after a play through and they think to themselves wow I wish they put more effort into this battle system COULD HAVE BEEN A GREAT GAME)
I played with possibly a thousand different players in these type games and yes we enjoy the space strategy and empire building but we also want to get into some battles and use tactics and special weapons to gain the upper hand
"But we don’t want to mislead people – Galactic Civilizations isn’t about fighting long tactical battles."
They don't need to be long, but tactical is what makes battle fun you could also have an option that allow you to skip the visuals in case you don't want to watch or control anything and let the a.i. do it ( i am sure you have this already as most other games do)
but if you have that skip feature I think it should not matter either way if its long or not as we could skip it if we wanted to
but say we wanted to watch it and try out some things then we could engage the battle hands on
"We want to keep players engaged at the empire level and fighting for planets and systems, not in ship to ship combat."
--- It sounds to me here that you want to take more of the fun out of this game
Players will get bored fast if they are simply clicking about the empire map the whole time
-- they will want to immerse themselves into good combat every once in a while plain and simple its what makes a game fun
same thing with ground combat people would love to engage in ground combat every once in a while they want to feel the enemy crush beneath the might of there invasion force with shock troopers and tanks may be some tactical missile launchers
I made a post here
https://forums.galciv3.com/451675/page/1/#3438022
To the developers keep up the hard work me and my friends looking forward to see this
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.
Ah, but I need to intervene. You know, because I don't agree and this is the internets and you should bow to my opinion as I am RIGHT.
Anyway, on the serious note; Sword of the Stars is far from being a tactical game. It is a strategy game, a far deeper game of strategy than GC in all its incarnations has ever been. And I loved GC2...
Some see strategy as the number of races and different resources, but SotS completely blew me away with a randomized tech tree and different ways of FTL travel for each race - beautifully balanced at that. No more "standard research path", no way to use the same approach for each race. Not to mention that playing another race feels like a completely different game.
But it does also have tactical battles, that much is true. And unlike GC, the shape of the ship and weapon placement actually has an impact on how you play the battles.
The only thing that I always felt SotS is lacking is exactly what GC3 seems to be promising; a way for the tactical battles to be played without the ship micromanagement. Albeit SotS has "ship stances", they offer little comfort to a player who wants his ships to survive.
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.
A lot of people played SotS without playing tactical battles altogether. Autoresolved all of them. No distractions from the strategy left. Features like random tech tree, 3D map and a different way of travel for each race had passionate believers (me) and also passionate critics. Some had a serious problem navigating the 3D map and others demanded a chance to always take the same research path as they didn't want to be forced to use what the game threw at them in that playthrough.
I imagine some will play GC3 with autoresolve, too, though I will not be among them. If the tactical battles are done in the direction hints are flying (no micromanagement, fleet-wide commands), this will be the only reason for me to buy the game. Strategy has been done, and in ways I prefer.
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.
Thank you for clarifying this.
ala' Endless Space but without the cards?
Neat; hope it pans out well.
Some people would. And they would be the same people (or at least some of them) that would do saves and reloads to get the optimal result if they couldn't micro manage their battles.
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.
So, no interaction during the battle... I guess I'd love to have at least some influence (a retreat option?), though no influence is better than micromanaging ships. I hope I'll be able to use my substandard tactical skills in the battle preparation (or however this "MtG phase" will be called) to their full effect and my doom.
Why is this ability tied to support ships, not command ships?
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.
This sounds pretty disappointing. I played both GC 1 and 2 and lacking a smart combat system made the game feel empty. It was even worse in GC2 when I realized that the nifty ship creator was just an aesthetic device and the weapon/defense system was rock paper scissors. If I recall correctly with GC2 when it came out and throughout its entire life cycle this was always brought up every so often. As indicated by one of the first posts in this thread, it is a huge topic of concern for people.
Everyone groans when MOO is mentioned, but the reason it always comes up is because in so many years it is one of the few games to ever get it all right. I understand you want to make a game with deep strategic options first, but a huge opportunity is being missed. Plenty of games since have done the same and they are easily forgotten. The same people that would feel forced to micro manage things are the same people that will save and reload over and over to change the outcome anyway. I can't understand why anyone who claims to like this genre wants a part of it to be overlooked or just simplified to the point where I watch the computer do everything. Hopefully, this does not turn out to be the case.
"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 has been ironic when you say your opinion and those who disagree tell you to "play a different game". Like nothing will ever remotely change.
Time kills all doughts.
One can not see the sun till it has risen. Or. One can not see all the stars till the sun has set.
if stardock makes a once and for all statement for the initial release. We would not be debating but ,sleeping 8 hours or spending time with our family and not glued to the forums waiting and wishing for more detail.
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,
This idea is far too sensible and reasonable to ever happen.
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.
Again, Tridus, you are coloring this with your own personal play style. You should never assume that everyone else enjoys the same play style. It varies widely from person to person. That is why options are so valuable in games.
More options isn't always a good thing; there's an important opportunity cost involved with implementing such things.
No, I'm tinting it with a cold dose of reality. It was a great game, a very long time ago. Give it to someone today who has never seen it and you will not get the same reaction as you get from people who played it when it was new.
That is just the reality of Nostalgia. The market has moved a long way, and what worked then doesn't necessarily work with a new generation of gamers.
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.
What your favorite color?
that sentence has more use than what most are saying right now.
it's a bit funny when you look at all the post, there like rock, paper, scissors.
for example. Luck Jack counters Tridus, ParagonRenagade says something vague and tridus and Lucky Jack "repeat the cycle". (the reapers are coming (ME) Maybe we can all beg for a once and for all descriptive statement from stardock. And get more from that than debating if you can guess what number am thinking about right now.
to be clearer even if everyone agrees with you. all the combat details will still be unknown and you be not the the wiser than your beliefs. So if we all beg at the same time we can drop this dead log.
Dark blue is one of mine.
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.
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