So........ About Combat...

Combat as it is being developed right now is being done as both 2D and 3D iso. What I mean by this is you have some camera control at your disposal. You can pivot the camera into a complete top down view if you so desire, or you can play it from any angle from the 90 degree top down to an isometric view that you are able to rotate around as well.  This is something I felt the player base was going to be very divided on which is best and since we can provide both without compromising the gameplay we are making sure that it can be either. 

The traditional WASD controls are in effect, along with gamepad support. You will have direct control over an individual ship that you fly in space. Right now there are two abilities per ship that allow for them to be played in very unique ways.  We may add additional abilities or functionality to the game's combat but as of right now we don't want to over complicate things as we build them.  

The design approach for the game's combat is that it should have more depth than complexity.  While a lot of people may feel that the difference is subjective, here how it is defined for Star Control.  Depth means that the action/ability/control that is being preformed can be utilized in many different ways. Something that is Complex takes many inputs or variables to align in order to perform a single action.  

An aspect from the original combat that occurred in Star Control that is going away is the screen wrap around. This was an aspect that was very disorienting, instead of wrapping around to the other side of the screen the edge of the solar system is going to be considered a disengage zone, where if you spend too much time in it the ship you are controlling is going to run away. 

Also the play field is going to be changing from fight to fight. Rather than having combat around a single planet, you are going to be having it in a solar system that is going to have multiple gravity fields in play. Depending on the star type, planets, and other features of the system, the gravity fields is going to feel very different, and it will CHANGE during combat based on the position of the planets orbiting the sun.  The gamespace has much more dynamic field for everyone to capitalize on. 

Hmm...not sure I like the idea of no wrap-around and it being just an out-of-bounds area, but then again, I haven't played it.

Is there a possibility of a ship being "cornered" in the out of bounds area?  If so, will that affect game play negatively?

Just food for thought (from someone who hasn't seen anything yet!)

Either view mode is fine. SC3 was What I was most concerned about was whether or not you were going to keep all ships on the same z-plane or not. I'm a proponent of of 2D restrictive movement because that's what I liked about the original. More 3D ship movement makes the game into a FPS or flight sim.

Some comments...

• I would like to see the 16-angle turning arc limitation removed and replaced with modern 360° rotation. Sure, it was fun to dance between a Chmrr laser arc, but this was one relic of Melee that I did not feel held up to the test of time. The original arcs were implemented because it reduced the number of ship sprites needed. With the advent of 3D, the sprite limitation was removed.

• What I found important was to be able to cut thrusters and rotate my ship. For example, this would let you shoot the Spathi main forward-firing gun backwards while still fleeing.) Is the goal to keep this element? If so, how would you mimic this behavior on an analog stick? I think you'd want to have a thrust button (akin to the W key) and then let your ship turn to face whatever direction your analog stick is pointing. (If you were holding up-left on the stick, your ship would rotate until it hit UP-LEFT)

I love this.

Let me use a ship example from SC3. The DakTakLakPak Vivisector's special was to lay down mines. What I used to do was to ring the planet with mines. I'd hug the planet with my ship. This forced enemies that engaged me to get pulled into the mines by the planet's gravity well.

THANK GOD! I hated the screen warp effect.

There are no corners because the gameplay area is round.  The tactic of chasing an opponent or luring an opponent out of the combat area is completely valid. Also as the defending player think of it as a way for you to escape and save a ship rather than loosing it outright. 

It might... Consider how screen warping was used as an exploit to foil AI-guided weapons like the Earthling Cruiser's nukes.

I suppose if the area is big eough its not that big of an issue. Though I'd be concerned about that with regards to hwo you trade off big/slow moving ships vs small/fast ships. If the arena is too big, then the combat might not feel very tight. If its too small, then small/fast ships sort of lose their advantage.

Of course mostly hypothetical issues given we've not seen what the implementation is.

There are more elements in play. While in the original you only had 1 planet and gravity well to worry about, you now have many. All planetary objects exert gravity and effect the gravity field.  The main gravity well is the star who exerts their pull over the entire playfield. Each of the planets then in turn effect the gravity well. So in some instance your gravity swing could be altered by a nearby planet. One of the meta tactics that has emerged in the office is gravity surfing. Where the gravity field of the planet is stronger than the gravity pull of the star and create a small pocket that will pull you around the system. If the planet is moving fast enough you can use this to your advantage and move faster than you normally would under your own thrust. The planet also provides a natural shield to one side. 

I like that the spirit of the "gravity whip" maneuver remains alive and well, but taken to a whole new level.

Curious about scale ... back in the day, planets in the combat arena were very small, at about the same scale of the ships and by today's standards, that would be a huge disconnect. I always felt even back then that it would make a lot more sense for ships to be much smaller than the planets generating a strong a gravitational pull, because that's how gravity works.

I also think the consequences for colliding with meteors and planetary objects should be handled differently. I don't think bouncing off of planets makes much sense, and by the same token, I think colliding with an asteroid should cause damage.

Our primary focus with the Space Combat is to keep it fun and arcade feeling. One of the first concessions is that realistic scale has to go. We wanted the planet sizes and scale to be fun gameplay map terrain and feel like they can be used tactically. 

Will any of the ships have ways of capitalizing on the terrain? Maybe have a ship ability that alters the pull of gravity on enemy ships (thus making them crash into planets). What about projectiles? Will there be some that are affected by gravity too?

Yes, Yes, and Yes. We haven't revealed the ship yet, but Gravity is a very important gameplay piece.

Please add an option to skip combat. I find it extremely tedious to have to do combat constantly, especially against trivial enemies. I hated the Slylandro probes in SC2 and the Daktaklakpak in SC3.

There also weren't any incentive/rewards at the end of combat. That didn't help the tedium either.

I would not mind the added possibilities of 3 rather than 2 abilities on a ship; however if going with a 2 ability approach I think it would be nice if it was possible to change the 2 abilities (not while engaged, but outside). Kinda similar to how the Precursor ship-frame could be specced out differently; but applied a bit more generally to all ships.

That doesn't necessarily mean foreign many novel abilities per ship - it can mean variations on the technology of a ship. So instead of a small short-range AOE that ability that slows enemy ships down - you can respec the ability to be a long-range AOE that slows enemies down, but the AOE has a slow travel time.

There was actually, if you didn't want to go about farming planets for RU you could get them from Combat. Each victory gave you a RU reward. The probes and the races you were supposed to war with gave you a lot, the races you weren't supposed to war with gave you very little. 

We are planning on doing a spectate mode, where you can be a more arm-chair general in terms of fleet strategy rather than take an active participation if you don't want to. 

Is there a chance of having an extra reward for manually-piloting and winning at combat vs having an arm-chair general win?

Efficiency and you will have a more direct hand in the results. 

And bragging rights

Hmm... Maybe my judgement was clouded by the thought of further combat being pointless after you capped out on RUs (bought everything you wanted).

The big problem was that the situation didn't make sense in terms of gameplay.  Your main use of RU was to upgrade your ship, but without an upgraded ship grinding RU in combat didn't make sense because it wasn't very efficient.  Of course once your ship was fully upgraded you no longer need RU and the randomized encounters become more of a chore than anything else.

I am glad to hear a true top-down view will be possible, the 3D isometric view of SC3 really ruined that game for me all by itself.  I don't even see how it is playable in that view but apparently some actually like it.  Nice to basically have both.

I think 3 weapons/systems would be the most you'd want on a Star Control ship, and you might also have a ship with only 1 weapon.  That kind of variety in ship design is one of the things that makes Star Control so unique and different from similar games.

Something that I haven't seen mentioned as a possibility: finding artifacts that can give a boost or new ability to a single ship, ala the Precursor pickups in SC1's campaign mode. Or craftable/purchasable limited-use items. Something to shake up a straight-forward battle and surprise an unwitting enemy.

An interesting idea may be multiple ships in combat, rather than just one-on-one.  Imagine some sort of team-based AI with group behavior based on the alien mentality:

• Yehat would engage with wingmen
• Pkunk would swarm
• Humans would use formations
• etc

This might convolute the battle a bit but I could see this easily mitigated by gradually introducing the player to more ships in combat has he/she progresses through the game.  Maybe there is a Logistics stat which start low at the beginning of the game which only allows control of one ship in combat and as this progresses you get to scramble more ships into combat, each ship requiring a certain amount of logistical value before no more ships can be added.  And this could be capped to max of 3-5 ships per team.

We can take this a step further and introduce Captains to ships, assigning them giving that ship a particular bonus, in agility or damage say. 

There really is no limit to the number of ships you could have in one game, other than technological limitations and map size.  Tactically, things work out fine no matter how many players are on a map as long as the map is large enough for the number of players.  Subspace/Continuum has zones with 20+ players per side.  It doesn't sound like they are planning on having any maps that are that big, but I would hope they would consider supporting up to 6 players per side.  This would be just enough to do some very interesting alternate supermelee zones such as Base Defense, Capture the Flag, and Space Hockey.  Supermelee alone is probably not enough to retain a large online audience (and Capture the Flag and Hockey have dueling beat by a country mile when it comes to fun).