Terrible space combat system

[wm.j.olson]

Maneuvering is clumsy. Firing components don't shoot. There's no damage control system. No shields. Too few weapons slots. Mysterious, overly complex stats for weapons, of which there are way too many options and no way to compare their relative merits. One of the things that makes a space game is awkward at best.

[corisai]

Originally posted by wm.j.olson:

Maneuvering is clumsy.

Not at all - build a proper ship (hint: light!) with proper end-game engines.

Originally posted by wm.j.olson:

There's no damage control system.

They are - Repair Bay in game, but it's quite advanced component.

Originally posted by wm.j.olson:

No shields.

Because shields are impossible in real science?

Originally posted by wm.j.olson:

and no way to compare their relative merits

LOL? Next tier always completely better then previous.

Lasers, Plasma, Railguns/Coilguns and Particles have their own quirks & area of use. Nothing really hard here (except probably particle guns could get some love).

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by corisai:

LOL? Next tier always completely better then previous.

Lasers, Plasma, Railguns/Coilguns and Particles have their own quirks & area of use. Nothing really hard here (except probably particle guns could get some love).

You do need some poorly-documented tricks to see the critical rate of fire stats...

But other than that, yeah, things are pretty transparent on that front.

[corisai]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

You do need some poorly-documented tricks to see the critical rate of fire stats...

Probably because there is no critical hits? Armor chipping is entirely different mechanics.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

You do need some poorly-documented tricks to see the critical rate of fire stats...

Probably because there is no critical hits? Armor chipping is entirely different mechanics.

"Critical" meaning "of great importance". It is of great importance to know the rate of fire statistics of weapons but it is not displayed.

[corisai]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

"Critical" meaning "of great importance". It is of great importance to know the rate of fire statistics of weapons but it is not displayed.

It's displayed if you hit RMB on weapon category (laser, magnetic, etc) :)

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

"Critical" meaning "of great importance". It is of great importance to know the rate of fire statistics of weapons but it is not displayed.

It's displayed if you hit RMB on weapon category (laser, magnetic, etc) :)

Well, that's certainly very helpful, but it should still be shown in the normal infobox.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

"Critical" meaning "of great importance". It is of great importance to know the rate of fire statistics of weapons but it is not displayed.

It's displayed if you hit RMB on weapon category (laser, magnetic, etc) :)

And that's the poorly documented trick.

[wm.j.olson]

The combat mechanics aren't even on a par with Imperium Galactica II, which is decades old. Overly fascinated with a tech tree that is needless complex and so duplicative as to be a time sink. But, it does bring out the inner accountant and bookkeeper mentality of some. Hurrah.

[Damedius]

I agree somewhat.

While the controls are workable they are somewhat awkward and you could probably remove half the engines in the game without missing much. The version we are playing should be called the long war version and there should be a streamlined normal version.

[Thomoman]

I agree. Early game is great, once you get to space, this game hits the toilet. Alien ships can evade you, but you can't evade them. They can send a single ship to destroy all your stations and bases, as you chase them around. They evade the battle and then immediately destroy the next base. Their Delta-V is pretty much unlimited. DEVS - just eliminate the evasion option, the player can't evade anyway, so it doesn't matter. A lot of work to do, I'm going to pause and wait for more development.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Thomoman:

I agree. Early game is great, once you get to space, this game hits the toilet. Alien ships can evade you, but you can't evade them.

They can't evade you if you're using pincer maneuver (sending two fleets to arrive at same time - they will evade first and will be forced to fight a second). Devs are planning to make a dedicated button for such order (auto-split your fleet in two for that battle).

Also aliens will not escape your fleet if you're attacking their hab.

[Riepah]

What seems super clumsy to me is the way ships move at waypoints... If, for example, you tell them to continuously spin, they spin quickly, then keep that position until they reach the next waypoint before spinning some more. It's very weird, and I hope they'll make some changes to that.

[NattyGaming]

Originally posted by Thomoman:

I agree. Early game is great, once you get to space, this game hits the toilet. Alien ships can evade you, but you can't evade them. They can send a single ship to destroy all your stations and bases, as you chase them around. They evade the battle and then immediately destroy the next base. Their Delta-V is pretty much unlimited. DEVS - just eliminate the evasion option, the player can't evade anyway, so it doesn't matter. A lot of work to do, I'm going to pause and wait for more development.

You need better engines for that, but it's true that in the early game it's quite impossible to truly stop them from just annihilating your stations if they decide to do so.

The early space game really is balancing out expansion and not angering the Aliens too much.

I'm at a point where I have anti-matter dirve and enough prods to supply them and make more of them, so chasing and annihilating AI fleet is pretty easy on my end now.

[Comrade Point]

I was a bit confused to see on this page that land battles are simple abstractions, but in space theres complex "design each ship on its own" and "real time physics based battles". I really like the political aspects of this and i think simplifying the ground engagements made sense, so why would space battles be complicated? Why wouldn't they just be a die roll done by fleets, like how operatives battle flora? Or a series of health bars comparing a "fleet power" stat, like miltech on earth?

[VDmitry]

Originally posted by wm.j.olson:

Maneuvering is clumsy. Firing components don't shoot. There's no damage control system. No shields. Too few weapons slots. Mysterious, overly complex stats for weapons, of which there are way too many options and no way to compare their relative merits. One of the things that makes a space game is awkward at best.

Maneuvering is ok on a single plane. Complexity comes mostly from Z-axis where your ships start to rotate when you don't need that. With some practice it was possible to move at desired direction outside of main plane. This is redone in recent patch, but I didn't try it yet.

Another problem with manuvering is that starting ships have no drives capable manuevering. So your ships fly like bricks.

Shields replaced with armor, lasers, PD etc. Ships are very much capable to be immune to almost everything.

There is damage control, but it's automatic I believe.

Not sure what you mean for overly complex stats for weapons.

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I have significant number of battles behind by year 2053. My initial reaction to ship battles was pretty much negative, mostly because I did not know how to handle it.

At this point I think the battles are very much ok, though requiring some tweaks. In particular I would like to have more options on starting formations. For example I would like to have 2-3 independent groups of ships starting at some distance, so some of them can engage enemies from flanks.