This debate is awesome but no one has discussed the only issue that matters: Does it make the game fun?

Let's not forget that in the end game there's something like 250 ships per fleet. I don't want to have to tactically attempt to micro 250 ships, hell I can't even click on the ship I want in a 50 ship fleet.

Obviously, either behaviour scripts would have to be written for moving ships, allowing for a degree of control, possibly creating a "trade-off" system, with the "stationary" mode increasing accuracy and "mobile" mode increasing defense; or the change would be purely cosmetic and you wouldn't have to micromanage your fleets any more than you do now.

Keep in mind that you are not supposed to hunt for individual ships in the jumble that happens when two huge fleets clash - use your empire overview. Every ship, combat group and fleet are just a click away. So the problem of microing the fleet would only be present if the mobile ships went way out of position somehow... but if their range of motion is limited, like it is with the fighters and bombers right now, that should not be a problem. They would twist and turn, but they wouldn't inexplicably end up on the other side of the gravity well...

Whoever said something about 'dodging' shots, I'd like to meet my friend Sir Issac Newton. He made some theories about something called 'inertia'?

Bah, we got inertia dampeners for that.

so does the advent halcyon cruiser


yay!!!

So do a lot of the capships.

point being: this game isnt going to implement something that hasnt existed in pretty much any other succesful space RTS.

Couldn't you have included that in your last post. I hate pointless posts that actually have a point

the point of that post was to humiliate and prove someone wrong, duh.

Controlling your own fleet is probably not that much more of an issue with moving fleets. The problem is targeting the opponents. Already that's a problem (for me, at least) when i want to cue up more then 5 attacks. If the enemy fleet would be moving around, targeting non capitals would be nigh impossible.

But if you could use alt + mouse box select to automatically cue up attacks on the enemy fleet that would not be such a problem. But then i kind of like that not all ships gang up on one enemy ship at the time. The battle looks better if they don't. And they feel better.

1) I think you need to take another look at that list (as well as the movies and games listed).

2) Read up on Naval warfare (for instance Naval Maneuver Warfare). I specify WW2 because of the fact that both George Lucas and Nicholas Meyer (Wrath of Khan) have stated World War naval combat as inspirations for how they portrayed the movement and fighting methods of big spaceships.

Besides which, I clearly made the point that movement in Sins would make space combat seem "cooler" and more dramatic (the very reason Lucas and Meyer used such themes).

But I digress, your opinions are your own and mine are mine.

That being said, the more battles I have fought, the more I have seen a decent amount of movement going on when the AI decides to run for it, focus on a specific target type, and a number of other situations. It just seems a bit jaring when a ship does stop on a dime and blaze away at its target.

this is pretty much what i think as well. post by some dude at games spot on sins forums.

Lol... we got everything in here from fanboys to science nuts... jebus...

Alrighty, lets see what kind of hornets nest im gonna stir up...

Whoever said the devs were lazy, well, you are correct. They copped out and gave us a pitiful little answer, which is always a surefire sign of laziness among all devs. They also hid behind the shield of being anti-micro. Well, thats nice, cept now i dont feel like my ships are even fighting. Screw realism, look at it! Watching ships just shoot glowy things at each other is about as much fun as a poke in the eye. I got super bored with the battles almost immediately, just because it was like old warcraft. You know what im talking about. You attack with a bunch of catapults and footmen, they all run up to hit the building while the catapults sit there and launch rocks at the enemy building. Cept this time, they are all catapults, and every ship is a building. Dead serious, when i started playing, i had to tell myself I wasnt playing warcraft.

Now that the opinion section is over with, lets look at the issue. lul. We got three sides here apparently. First we got the people who want realism. We got the folks who want cool. And we got the fanboys.

Realism sits there and quotes numbers at each other. Well, that i dont mind, I kinda like the numbers, they be my friends. However, whoever it was that said a sphere was the best shape is correct. That is the most efficient design. Good thing we all agree that we can ignore that little fact, just for the sake of our eyes. I would hate to play a game with steel orbs shooting pew pew guns at each other. As for the rest of the realism stuff, its all true yes, but when you add in the fact that we are talking uber advanced races, well, seems like our concept of realism might be a bit... outdated?

Fanboys. Gotta love em! Yes, the devs had quite the explanation. Something about perfect targeting computers? Mkay, well, see, there's this thing, you know, called, uuurrmmm.. ECM? Electronic Countermeasures? Blah blah? So, umm.. super advanced ships with perfect targeting computers.. shouldn't they also made a counter? *watches as the devs explanation goes boom and sinks like the titanic* Oh! Wait! We dont actually get any cool tech stuff to play with, you know, like stealth or whatever. We get magical abilities.... Warcraft anyone? What i haven't seen yet is a fanboy bring up the devs biggest point, which is to reduce micro. Truth is, they dont want you watching the battles. They want you somewhere else, watching the icons move stupidly about the screen.

As for the coolness guys, rock on. I totally agree with you. Its much cooler watching space battles in ANY other space combat game. MOO2 had more interesting space battles, and they used sprites. Has anyone bothered looking at the flak frigate when it fires? Lul. Total Lul. Oh, and watching fighters bites, because they dont even have textures! Seriously, go look at the advent fighter, and laugh your face off.

I had intentions of getting this game from the day I saw a screenie in PCGAMER. I watched some clips, and I honestly thought that we had gotten a new Homeworld game. A month ago, I look on the Ironclad Forums. One of the biggest recurring threads was about ship movement in combat. The moment they took that out, my expectations went down the tubes. Then one of the devs had the balls to claim it as a sequel to TA. If he had never said that, I would never have posted here. But he did.

So what did we learn here today? First, that removing micro in favor of macro had a detrimental effect on combat in Sins. Second, dont ever compare a game to TA unless you got something to back that claim up with.

The. End.

http://au.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/sinsofasolarempire/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-41253480&pid=935993&page=1

find me a game that has units that automatically move while firing (save strikecraft)

there is not a SINGLE game that does this automatically, starcraft, supreme commander, command and conquer, nothing.

any idiot who thinks this game is going to be different has got to be smoking something. theres a reason that NO game has automated unit movement. now if you want to micro the units FINE, but do it YOURSELF you lazy turd.

quote me to whatever forum you got that from.

Thats what I said way back when, ironically enough.

If you want to talk about realism, I would ask why do ships make huge looping turns instead of just turning in place? Sitting in place during combat is minor compared to that.  

Just to chip in about realism.

The gravity well is of a planet, not a star. That is much MUCH less then a single light second.

a light second (299.8 million meters) is similar to the distance from the center of the earth to the center of the moon (384 million meters)...
However the distances in the game are much smaller. Most weapons only fire at 6000 (some 5000, some 7000). It doesn't specify what, but presumably km (based on the size of the sphere) then that means it will fire at ranges of 1/50th of a light second (which is kinda silly, a lazer could travel and be effective at much greater ranges in space, maybe light minutes or more). It takes a little longer for gauss weaponry to hit. For a gauss gun at a pathetic 0.1c it will take 1/5th of a second...

This means any ship that wants to dodge it must be able to accelerate (in a random direction! not just forward) fast enough to change its velocity by enough to move more then half its size in 1/50th of a second (computers can easily account for current velocity).
Capital ships carry between 5000 to 15000 soldiers onboard. They are several times the size of current day super carriers. Which can displace from 75k to 100k tons if water (their mass is much bigger) are over 300 meters long, and can hold 5000 people. A capital ship would be at least 500 meters long.
A capital ship must accelerate hundreds of thousands of tons fast enough so that it changes it velocity by enough to move more then 250 meters (beyond the expected original motion) in 1/50th of a second. 12,500 meters per second... but it has to be more because it doesnt instantly achive such a change, it gradually accelerates, assuming constant acceleration it has to be twice that 25,000 meters per second. which has to be achived in 1/50th of a second. So we are talking about accelerating 1.25 million meters per second per second.

On the best case scenario you have small ships that are maybe 40 meters trying to dodge a gauss bullet that takes 1/5h of a second to hit them... it needs to move at least 20 meters more then expected in 1/5h a second. If its acceleration is linear then we are talking about accelerating by 200 meters/second in 1/5th of a second.So it has to be 1000 or so meters per second per second MINIMUM... and that's for a tiny 40 meter ship (size of a house).

Keep in mind that gravity is 9.81 meters per second per second (one g)
So if you magically could accelerate that way you will be pulling an absolute minimum of 100g dodging a gauss bullet with a 40 meter tiny ship... or for a chance at dodging that laser fire means accelerating at an absolute minimum of 127,421g.

Heck even a fighter couldn't handle dodging that. an F16 has a wingspan of 9.8 meters. An F15 has 13.05 meters. Assuming tiny space fighters, and the shortest distance part of them is say.. 6 meters. To even have a CHANCE at dodging they need to move at least 3 meters.
Laser: accelerate at 15,000 m/s/s or 1529g.
Gauss at 1/10c: accelerate at 150 m/s/s or 15.29g.

And all that doesn't even guarantee dodging, if it was possible to accelerate at such speed then it would have only meant that there was a CHANCE of dodging fire through movement.

If the game was realistic you would have had capital ships shooting at each other from the other side of the star. That is, from one planet to the next. And even then it would have damn hard to dodge. In fact they could fire at planets from the other side of the solar system without ever missing.

Use of Gauss weaponry is rather silly. A laser would be able to take out fighters and bombers from the other side of the star system without giving them any chance at dodging. (physically impossible). But its a game after all.

you forgot to look at brakeing.

I said accelerate at ANY direction...

I can see that you are joking... but just in case...
Breaking in space (no friction) simply means accelerating in the opposite direction. Same amount of acceleration is needed no matter which direction you choose to go.

Company of Heroes, Homeworld 2, ORB, Nexus, Sword of the Stars, the flying units in all C&C games and in Supreme Commander. And that's just those I can think of in under 30 seconds. Yes, even more than 10 years ago people already had automatically dodging units in games. Just look at how revolutionary this game is by breaking with those age old standards

Of course, now you're going to repy how you consider most of those examples to be strikecraft and that they don't count, but whatever. It's quite clear to anyone not being a fanboy or being swept away by the hype that this game should have been delayed another year to actually include some details, polish and decent AI, not to mention an effort to turn it into something different than a simple Warcraft in space.

Personally, I'd like the cruisers and cap ships to stay as they currently are, but for most offense-based frigate ships to be a bit more mobile. Sort like like slower, clunkier versions of fighters. Since frigates are often mass built early on, battles would seem a lot more active and busy right from the start.

To be entirely honest, out of HW2, ORB, Nexus, even C&C flying units, and SupCom units only moved to maintain range (I haven't played the others). I never saw any automatic movement.

They should run around in circles like headless chickens, serving no purpose whatsoever (since they can't dodge) just to "look cool"... [/sarcasm]
(PS. it does NOT look cool...)

Sword of the stars has a huge problem with ships moving around... they consistently fly above or below where they should and expose their weak side while moving their major weapons out of firing arc...

When micromanaged properly, sword of the stars ships can be forced to stand still and face the enemies with the cutting lazers. Where they decimate an opponent ship in literraly 3 seconds (one burst from 5 ships takes out an enemy ship, done as ships close in range). But oftentimes they will move WHILE firing those, causing the majority of damage (damage over time) to not apply while they spin randomly... The "moving around" is the single worst "feature" of sword of the stars.

Also in sword of the stars "lasers" move at the speed of bullets and can be dodged. Phasers however act like real lasers, and instantly hit with 100% accuracy, always. I usually use phasers ships in SOTS which largely solves their moving around issues. (rather then cutting beam ships aka "sword of the stars" class ships... the ones after which the game is called! which are utterly useless)

Moving around in space is not so much to "Dodge" whatever than to move at relativistic speeds so that the doppler-effect kicks in and it's harder to aim.

Only lots of theory tho ...

Eh? Going from stationary to relativistic speeds in seconds would mulch the inhabitants of the spacecraft... unless they have Star Trek-esque "Inertial Dampeners" or something. Which would also solve taltamir's problem... but realism sort of goes away...
Come on, you'd need, what, 0.3 or 0.4c before beginning to notice the effects of relativity, no? Or am I all wrong here?

Okay, so I had this whole long spiel about how pointless it is to have ships moving around dodging projectiles... but then taltamir had to come in and say it first.

as far as aesthetics are concerned, sure it would be more dynamic and LOOK cool, but still pointless and a detriment to anyone trying to do any micromanagement. i'd rather not have my ships moving about on their own. i'd much rather move them to their desired positions on my own. the biggest reason to move ships around would have been if there was less armor above, below or behind a ship, thus making flanking maneuvers one of the keys to victory in any shoot-out. as it stands, however, the main reason to move ships around is to get certain firing solutions on your enemy. i.e. getting to a blind spot where the enemy ship can't fire at your units, perhaps taking half your fleet to a point behind the enemy fleet, if the enemy fleet doesn't have cannons/lasers/missles that are mounted on their sterns.

i noticed that the best way for my capital ships to do maximum damage in certain situations is to move one of them into the middle of an enemy fleet, so that every weapon is firing, not just the ones in front, or to one side. granted, this can be suicide, but then again, i said certain situations. now, i'm very new to this game and have only played about 4 maps thus far, but even i know the value of getting your units to their optimum firing positions before your enemy does. if trying to move your units on your own is too much work, you are too lazy and don't deserve to argue about the supposedly "static" battles.

ps - yes i'm aware of how many times i repeated myself.