Battle viewer, first look OMG!

Yes, the smidgen of a sneak peak of the battle viewer was very nice.  I recommend the hardcore among us check out the dev stream archive.  I can see where they are looking for a lot of polishing, but it is a darn good start.  I liked the shots obviously coming from the appropriate components.  Nice touch and it should work well with custom designs.  I liked the replay options, with attention to moment and angle.  Very decadent and self-indulgent eye candy.  I can see wasting a few hours with that.  More, please.

I still cannot wrap my imagination around an "arena" for space battles.  My conception of space battles is lots of elbow room in all directions.  Still, I trust the artists and wait, pretending to be patient yet again.

I am hoping there is more of a field tactics feel to it than a joust with multiple participants.  It looks like both fleets just head straight towards each other, every time.  Suddenly spreading or clustering formations would look good.  Small fast ships playing "Come chase me" would be visually interesting. I have no idea how ideal these tactics would be in space combat.  Who cares?  It should look good.  Besides, other races will think differently and different formations will make sense to them.  Use the third dimension more.  Your engine looks like it can handle it and it would help visually establish parallax.  Plus, it explains the lack of friendly fire incidents.  More angles to sneak shots in between allies.  Yeah, I believe that.

Is this going to have an output for 3D screens?  That could be something special. Not that I have the hardware for it, but dreaming and drooling is always available.

Paul's demo of the Battle Viewer was awesome. I am hoping there will be more visual affects, such as ships trying to evade attacking missiles by changing direction, spinning, rotating, firing counter-missiles, etc. Can we also have less experienced ships crashing into each other while dodging missiles? etc. etc.

From: Administrator of R&D

To: DARCA

I have assigned the 2ed Aero-Space Engineering division and four Naval training and analysis vessels to test and document the performance off all weapons , engine, and other variables to better prepare for conflicts in the future.

OMG it must be good if you said it was "awesome". I got to see that stream now. :3

I like'd the peak at the battleviewer in the stream. It already looks good and I think it will not disappoint in being yet another fun and enjoyable aspect to the game.

It looks very good at this early point. The one thing I think it could really use, and Paul mentioned this, is to have the ships arranged in a more 3 dimensional way.

what about special conditions for fighting inside dust clouds/ nebulas/ asteroid belts?

Paul has touched on this but we will just have to wait and see.  It will affect the background visuals but will it have any impact on the actual battle?  i.e smaller moper maneuverable ships have an advantage over large capital ships in an asteroid field; ships with better sensors gat an accuracy boost in nebulas.  ... will just have to wait and see.

Some shots and missiles may get blocked by asteroids, space dust might degrade the efficacy of beam weapons, damage the sensors, and hence the accuracy of the missile's guidance system, etc.

Good thoughts Licky.  I like them

As someone who was generally on the band-wagon of wanting RTS-like control of the battles, I must say that I am pleasantly surprised and happy with the new battle viewer! 

The one thing that I really noticed that could be improved, functionally on ships - and this is really brought out by Paul's Titan battleviewer demo is the inefficiency of they way that weapons fire and are prioritized.

I used to notice this quite a bit on GC2 where your ship would "waste" a lot of firepower to blow up a ship with only 1 hp.  Note that the Titans took a complete volley of 3 separate weapon types to wipe out a fleet of minor ships.  I'll bet that the lasers themselves could've wiped out the fleet had the separate laser beams targeted different ships instead of all of the lasers on each ship only targeting a singular target (followed by all of the missiles targeting another ship, followed by mass drivers). 

Obviously with some weapons "missing" targets spurratically it's not a straight forward as simply assigning the exact number/type of weapons to each target, but still...

I don't know where all of this fits in, perhaps having a module ("Weapons Systems Coordinator" or something) that would allow weapons to target more effectively would be appropriate?  Or maybe just having this implemented with more detailed battle planning in whatever update Frogboy was wishing for on the Steam forums about "hardcore" ship battles where component placement mattered and targeting specific enemy ship components (shields/engines/weapons/etc)...

cheers,

loving the look and concept of the battles, my only negative comment was perhaps they were too short, its not as much of an issue when those Titans were letting rip on the cutters but in he fights between smaller ships and thus bigger ones I would have expected multiple volleys being unleashed in order to destroy the target. Maybe this would get dull but to me things seemed a little brief. Linked with that is that shields did not seem to do anything beyond being added to the ships Armour, I'd have expected something more like you see in Sci-fi with the shields protecting the hull but once depleted damage going directly. Otherwise I echo the comments about multiple ship targeting, using asteroids and nebula, along with more general movement but the combat system is looking rather nice and a great place to begin. Really can't wait to see Carriers and Star bases unleashing waves of fighters/bombers from the back of a fleet while the front destroyers, frigates and Dreadnoughts being to unleash various weapon system volleys I think it could create some fully epic battles.

Thinking about it, I'm a little confused. Are the battles completely deterministic or is there a random element to it? In the stream Paul mentioned that in one case the outcome could have been different with just one missile missing. On the other hand, what I've read about the battle system indicated to me that the battles are deterministic.

Deterministic would mean that if ships with the same specs fight, the outcome is always the same.

If there is randomness to hits and maybe other things than battles of ships with the same specs might have different outcomes.

In other words: Is it like chess where I just need to calculate ... or is it like warhammer where I also need a little luck? What is correct?

If there are randomn elements, what are they and how big are there chances? 

Awesome sneak peek... I want more! Wouldn't it be even more awesome if one the the camera angles was cockpit. Imagine getting your ship destroyed while you view it from its fiery hull?

I am sure i don't have this completely right but here is my understanding.  first, once the battle takes place everything is fixed, replaying the fight is just playing a movie of what already happened.   I do believe there is a small amount of random number  generation in the fire/damage/defense/probability of hit calculations (GC2 was like this also).  You can currently see this in GC3 by staging a battle, saving, fight, record results (who won & how much damage was taken), reload and repeat.  You will see it does vary,  the winner rarely change even with equally matched ships/fleets but i have seen it happen. The battle viewer will not only give a cool visual of the fight but let you see (learn) the Ai tactics and weapon/defense effects like who/what fired first; how often, damage vs ship defense.. etc.  This knowledge will help you devise better ship designs (vs particular enemy weapon/defense set ups) and feel make up.   I do hope we get some quantitative data on the battle system from Stardock but if we don't i am sure it will not take moders and others to figure out some of this.

Quoting OPMmmGroup, reply 15

Awesome sneak peek... I want more! Wouldn't it be even more awesome if one the the camera angles was cockpit. Imagine getting your ship destroyed while you view it from its fiery hull?

Agree, would (hopefully will) be way cool.

I don't think you can judge it based on this  first quick look.  Recall, The fight was quickly kludged together with cheats just to give us a look at it.  Notice the fighters with missiles had a huge attack rating and shot ships with no missile defense.  I would expect this type of lopsided fight to always be over quickly.  I'll bet we see some long battles when fleets are appropriately designed to fave each other.

i think this would be hilarious, but of course it would really piss me off when my ships collided.  You bring up a great topic for discussion, namely how exactly will ship experience be implemented.  In GC2 all experience did was increase hit points.  No idea what Paul has planned or what will make it into the game  but i hope he is looking at things like ..

improved accuracy

better (smarter) maneuvering

coordination with other ships (formations, all ships target biggest threat )

smarter weapon allocation (what to fire against what defense i.e. use my lasers on ships with no shields and missiles on ones with no point defense)

lasers to shoot incoming missiles

giving pre-fight assessment ( ... Sir, i estimate we have a 80% chance of winning this battle)

higher firing efficiency (speed, targeting.. )

better damage control (HP boast, faster repair - HP/turn, repair during battle - Hp/round

What Paul was saying in the Dev Stream is that each battle outcome is completely determined before the battle viewer screen is brought up. This might imply that if you saved the game just before the battle and were unhappy with the outcome (single player mode only) that if you reloaded the game from that save and started the battle again the results might be slightly different (for better or worse). However, I have seen in the past that Stardock tries to minimize such divergence, so I wouldn't count on it, I think this is why the latest of the Sid Meier "CIV" series has a "new game" option of "new random seed".

As I see, there won't be tactic battle at all, yep?

yep

Can I got my money back?

Tactic isnt strategic. In the games like these your success depends on how you manage you empire and prepare your forces. Commanding units individually is not needed when you've done everything right. For if you didn't no tactic fight will pull you out of misery when your opponent has grown a larger empire, better economy and stronger military with breakthrough research. In that case you've already lost anyway.

On the contrary "tactic" should be superbly balanced and still may have exploits which the clever human can use to beat the artifical idiot. For example I still remember one epic victory in Imperium Galactica 2 when I defended the planet with a single antigrav tank cleverly placed on the top of the hill which my enemy's tracked wehickes couldn't climb. But they were trying to! For game mechanics was built in such a way that planet could not be captured while there was still resistance. So I was shooting and shooting them blowing them all up and the computer did never consider retreat for to retreat of 50 tanks before just one enemy was way beyond it's comprehension.

And that is why there is NO tactical combat in GalCiv.

BTW, u can remember, that it were hard to win against enemies armadas(Kra'hens were really strong), but it was interesting, and, sometimes, funny. U could made your own armies and fleets, your own units and that was greatful. Every unit was really specific and you could use it in your way. At real, it wasn't "tactic" battle, it was deep, strategical battle and every decision in tactic, researching and building were significant. Now I playing in GalCiv III, and all races had declared war on me(just coz I am Yor). They had defeating my fleets with their overpowered ships with nice shields and lasers, and I couldn't give to my fleet some orders like "get them in a pincers" or "Use {Yors' curse} rockets, why u are still using beams?!". If I could command my bases and fleets by myself, I could defeat those enemy fleets. So, what I did? Yes, I made a ship with shields and rockets, then overcome my enemies. SO STRATEGICAL!

Everyone is telling me, that it is "deep" and "global" strategy. But war is as important as science, colony managment and diplomacy. Look at the Imperium Galactica 2 - nice game, all included. And yeah, it is global space strategy. Total War is global strategy. In Endless Space u can only use some cards, but them affects on battle result. GalCiv III - "no-no-no, it is global strategy, we would destroy it, if we made controlable battles". Why player can dictate his will to scientists, governors, diplomates and even engineers, but not to officers. As it seems for me, developers are just too lazy. As a fan of this seria I'm disappointed.