Starting with Galactic Civilizations II, we allowed players to go and watch their ships fight it out in battle in a separate battle viewer screen. But, what if we could show the battle on the main screen? That is, what if we could just zoom in on a fleet and rather than it being the leader ship with a number by it, it actually changed to show the entire fleet? So if you wanted to watch a fleet fight it out, you would just watch it right on the map.
Thoughts?
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Galactic Civilizations IV Dev Journals
#1 - Welcome to GalCiv IV
#2 - Humanizing AI
#3 - Addressing Micromanagement
#4 - A Guided ALPHA Tour
#5 - The Ideology Compass
#6 - Those First 20 Turns
#7 - The Changing Face of Space Robots
#8 - Rise of the Commanders
#9 - Onboarding
#10 - Do we need a battle viewer?
#11 - Combat AAR
#12 - AAR Drengin Human Wars I Part 1
#13 - The Vault
#14 – Pacing Comparisons
#15 - Internal Factions
#16 - The Battle Viewer
#17 - Screenshot Time
#18 - The Dawn of the 24th Century
#19 - The Roadmap
#20 - Deals of the Xeloxi + v1.04 Preview
#21 - The Arcean War + 1.05 Preview
#22 - Save Me
#23 - Every Turn Counts
Intuitively it feels to me like this is the right decision. The battle viewer (although I'm not married to it) is a bit of a core feature in the franchise - it'd be difficult to give it up entirely. I'm looking forward to the AAR myself with combat mechanic details to know why I'm winning/losing battles.
Will AAR be part of 0.65 or will 0.65 still be alpha?
0.65 will be alpha.
Excellent news @frogboy. Looking forward to testing it.
I've always liked tactical combat and/or the Battleviewer. You really just need an option as to if you wish to view the battle or not. I enjoy seeing how different ships perform, and how they function based on the specs and the ship role.
The scaled down ship design capabilities and options on equipping a ship reduce the need, but doesn't eliminate it. Seeing the battle stats in progress for each ship is a great part of the viewer. Every version of GC has the game mechanics of the ship defenses change. Watching the battle unfold brings the operation to life and lets you understand how to configure your fleet with ship size, ship role, and ship configuration.
I don't foresee "zooming in" providing the detail and information given in the viewer. I'd say add the viewer, but let the player choose if they wish to see the battle or not with a pop-up screen before the battle.
I am not sure a pop-up will be the best way to go once we’re late game with more battles.
Perhaps a hotkey and a prominent UI element showing its status of on/off or a options menu toggle might be more comfortable and less frustrating.
I would not be looking forward to have to keep clicking away a popup telling me a battle is about to start and wether I want to see it or not.
On the other hand, if the popup would present valuable statistics about the battle upfront and then offers me to see the battle in detail if I so choose, it might be less annoying and rather functional instead.
This is the best news I've received regarding GalCiv IV except for finding out it was coming out and there was early access
So just bumping this because i asked in discord? is the battle viewer part of 0.70?
Beta is released but there does not appear to be any battle viewer.
No there's not a battle viewer yet.
make a battleviewer, it's a GalCiv trademark, it's got to have one. But there should be the option before a battle because it's not always necessary. For big battles later in the game it would be awesome, a turn based battleviewer would be just as good if not better.
A (full screen) battle viewer makes sense if you actually have tactical contol over the battles. Which would be cool for resolving key strategic battles where a lot is at stake. Less important battles you leave then at auto-resolve, not unlike Total War series.
If there is no tactical control over battles, however, then I would make the battle viewer optional. Because some players still want to fully view their designs at work that they've spent so many hours in. And others couldn't be bothered to be held up by a 3D animation show they can't control.
I think the battle viewer in GC3 was a waste of CPU and time. It didn't really help me figure out how to build out my fleet, which would be my greatest interest. So I am not strongly in favor of this for GC4.
On my wishlist is to have a full battle viewer displayed on 2nd epic monitor. This way you can keep clicking around the main map during battles. If you use a lot of custom ships the battle viewer is great!
Why is no one talking about this “Battle Chatter” idea. This is incredible. Each race could have
Defensive battle chatter a/b
offensive battle chatter a/b
and taunt of course.
this would really bring your fleets alive and opens up opportunity to give some life to citizens who get caught up in encounters.
(oh and I want to see the Battle Chatter in a battle viewer)
I think that would be great. I'd put Battle Chatter in the same place I'd put a Ship Designer, Battle Viewer and Tactical Battles, which I say again, are great ideas BTW, In an RTS/RPG game.
My approach to 4X ie the Role I'm Playing in GalCiv is:
I'm the Evil Overlord. I've just appointed Johnny Bluenose, who had a traumatic childhood and therefore has great anger in him (and a great Resolve stat, too!), as my Minister of Warfare/Galactic Domination, that kind of role... So it's his job to show me the latest, greatest battlecruiser his minions have designed and how it went against the Drengin Laser Fleet 2. It's also his role to determine how best to use that ship in combat and sign-off on any improvements/changes that the battlecruiser might need. As far as I'm concerned, even if Johnny's ship-designing minions are idiots (for listening to his ideas), I'm not going to rock on up to Doofus & Sons Shipbuilders for The Blondini Race Inc and take over their jobs. I'm just going to fire or execute (or maybe both in a swift one-two!) Johnny Bluenose and get someone else in as Minister.
In comparison, I feel it's logical to have a say in what gets researched as that research will effect my Civilization as a whole and I'm not the one spending hours/however long doing the research. Whereas I'm spending hours fiddling with just where the laser should go etc (Or was when I used the Ship Designer in GalCiv2, I guess it's changed in GalCiv4...)
While I'm on a rant, I could compromise: Keep the Ship Designer, bring in the Battle Viewer and maybe even have Tactical Battles but get rid of Jeff!! Wir mussen die Mowlings ausrotten!! I enjoy snarky-funny races, but funny-funny races just don't fit GalCiv for moine (as they say in Australian sport).
And definitely have the option to turn the battle chatter off for Mr Boldini
I think one of the reasons why you need something like a battle viewer is people who play this game love designing their own ships from scratch. If you don't reward the player for all their time spent creating these ships by displaying it in all its glory you remove the incentive to even use the ship design tool. The reason why people skipped past the battle viewer in past iterations of this game is you wouldn't see anything new as the game progressed. One of the main objectives of any game developer should always be to look for opportunities to entertain the audience, you can do that here but you always have to introduce something new for the audience to see or do otherwise it can become redundant and people will just skip past it. An example would be if there are 10 different beam weapons upgrades there should be 10 different beam weapon animations, along with 10 different types of explosions. Plumes of grey smoke , pieces ripped off of hulls spinning out of control, fires raging, acid melting metal, boarding parties etc. Fleets that have a commander you could have one time special abilities introduced where you can press a button and release an emp charge or shield buff or teleport to a different part of the screen. If you want players use this feature you must constantly incentivize them by always introducing something new to see or do. I don't have any stats to back this up but I always feel that game companies that invest in this approach leads to better sales in the end, so if the time and money is properly spent on this feature you will be rewarded.
ps. I love how the game is developing so far keep up the great work!
Fleets that have a commander you could have one time special abilities introduced where you can press a button and release an emp charge or shield buff or teleport to a different part of the screen. ps. I love how the game is developing so far keep up the great work!
i really like these ideas. U could have one time artifact uses for in-combat, and one of those could be to instantly teleport your fleet out right then, either saving your forces once you realize the battle will be lost, or getting what ships you have left out of there after you've destroyed a high value target(s).
I think a nice feature of a battle viewer would be to be able to retreat your forces at any time. maybe taking a few hits on the way out but hopefully being able to have most remaining ships survive intact, including command ships and such that your other ships might be trying to defend.
that would also be a great feature to implement. I think there is a lot of creative potential here. It can be much more than a way to just review statistical information on how a battle transpired.
To say that the space battles depicted as they are now are 'bland' and 'boring' is an understatement. You build a stack, bump it into another stack, if you have more hitpoints in weapons and/or defenses, you are going to win every time. Bump, pop, wash rinse repeat. Maybe a repair to break up the boredom of the 'epic space battles'.Don't get me wrong, I like building up my empire infrastructure, appointing governors, constructing buildings, making ships and all that, but space battles are a serious part of this game and they are underwhelming. It makes me think about Stellaris everytime I play this game. I ask myself, why am I not playing Stellaris instead of this? Not to mention the fact that if you make an attempt to try to play this game for more than a few hours, it unceremoniously and without any warning crashes to the desktop in the blink of an eye. This issue should be addressed before any further patches are implemented, it's been a problem since day one and it's continues through every update.
this game needs better space battles period what there is, is not good enough.
Yeah, while other parts of the series have progressed, combat is basically the same as in GC1, or really, back to the old Empire days, with death stacks that just bump into each other, but without the restraints of said stacks (logistics keeps going up and up giving huge stacks)
If you don't want MOO2 style tactical combat, maybe something simpler like how Age of Wonders Planetfall adapted the XCOM system. Or even just something like in Endless Space 2, where you can pick the tactics of the fight (but it otherwise basically a battle viewer)
Oh I really like Endless Space 2, haven't played that in a while. Ya even that simple combat system would be great to see in Gal Civ 4. I doubt we will see anything that "advanced" though
Happy Friday !!!
I actually have Endless Space (the first i think) on a different computer. Never really got into it.
My favorite semi-tactical combat is Birth of the Federation. Fairly simple and straightforward and with decent (for the time) 3D graphics
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