Holding D works fine for me. You should see a little yellow line that highlights the path of your ship. While holding D, you can adjust this line. It's awkward but it does work.

If that doesn't do it for you, I'm not sure what the problem is though honestly, it's almost purely aesthetic. There's really little to no tactical purpose for it in this game.

You can avoid defenses this way. I plan to use this in future games draw enemy fleets off. I think 3D will be a great feature if they can flesh it out a bit in future expansions.

I simply like the fact that you can actually do this. It is a neat way to make your enemy come to you.

It certainly give boasting rights over other games like SOTS. And gives a real space like flavour to the game.

I wonder if you can D click your defences and factories.

I don't know why the bothered, ships can still move in 3D, and I've seen people using guardians repel to knock opponents ships downwards and prevent them getting high enough up to do a phase jump. Also ships will move up and down when preparing for phase jumps etc. Anyway it just seems like at the very least they ought to put it back in for 1.1 anyway...

I want it back so badly.

Hmm, it won't necessarily be back in 1.1:

Psugar (Ironclad) said it would be back in 1.1, but then retracted that with this statement - "My apologies, I had thought this was a mistake, but apparently it was removed because it was exploitable in multiplayer. Jamie's answer was the correct one, sorry."

I doesn't count out the possibility of it coming back in 1.1, but it definitely doesn't confirm it either.

that's the kind of talk that strays people away from online

they never ment for z to actually be a factor in gameplay, so when it started to become one they took it away to fix it so that it isn't any longer

why aren't the previous versions archived? I actually want to try beta 1 see how it was. I think I joined when the new KoI was added, actually when asteroids still had finite resources.

I think that saying the game is representative of real-time to the extent that you wouldn't see planets orbiting is a bit a of a stretch. Sure, it's not turn based, but it's hardly 'real-time' either. The same could be said for most other RTS too.

Slingshotting doesn't require them to move at faster than light speeds, but the ships would have to go much faster than they do right now for it to be a factor. Also, for that be included you would need to get rid of phase lanes too because the ships would be going pretty fast and would need a lot more room.

Newtonian Physics - as in there's nothing slowing you down in space, so if you turn the accelerators off you will continue to drift at you current speed (at least once you've got far enough away from any planets): there would be no drag to slow you down. Ships and structures would have to orbit planets in order to not get sucked into their gravity well, although the buildings kind of already do as the planet spins beneath them (and they are all positioned on the equatorial line) - you'd notice this feature more as ships using the z-axis would have different orbtial paths and things would start getting interesting. There's other things too but meh. Again, phase lanes would not be compatible as the planets, to comply with the physics, would also need to be orbiting the star and thus any phase lanes between them would be constantly moving.

Basically they're saying "make it mor reel plz!". Were those features all genuinely in the Betas? Or was it bastardised versions of them all? Because they would all require significant change of the game to be done properly.

I agree that it's not a stetch to not see planets orbiting (pardon the double negative). What I was saying was that using "the game's in real-time" as your justification for not having orbits is a stretch: if this game is "real-time" then how is it that you can take over numerous systems in a matter of hours? Clearly the game is NOT in real-time. I have no desire to see all those things Destraex listed in the game, not sure if I made that clear; I think phase lanes and all that are fine. I was mainly trying to point out how impractical it would all be to put that stuff in game (you clearly feel the same way).

As for noticing orbits (nitpicking) - it depends at what speed and distance they are orbitings, not all orbits are geo-syncronous, and even if they were not all planets take 24 hours for a complete revolution.

*sigh*

Faster than light speed travel does not explain how you wage war against several other huge factions and win in a matter of hours. Regardless, twice the speed of light is not that fast in terms of galactic travel. The nearest star to our star is 4.3 light YEARS away (that's 37668 hours in case you were wondering), other stars are similarly displaced (discounting binary systems). They are not 10 light-seconds or so apart. 37668 hours = 135,604,800 seconds. Let's say in game it takes 10 seconds to travel from star to star. Phase space would have to let you travel 13,560,480 times the speed of light to get in roughly the same amount of time. Still, it's a game, that's not too implausible.

As for buildings - just because building in WiC is about the same time does not make this game real-time all of a sudden. (I haven't played WiC, though from what I gathered they weren't built so much as dropped off onto the battlefield.)

Research is not explained: it takes longer to draw a picture of the ship in question than it does for these guys to research it.

Searching the planet: doesn't seem to take very long. Sure they might have a scanner for the purpose, but what they built it first and then all of a sudden it costs a load to use it? And only for a few seconds?

Structure construction is not explained: Forgetting actual, near-instaneous construction for a second, surely it would take more than few seconds to get the workers from the planet surface to the actual structure? Some of those things are huge like cities and it would probably take over an hour just to get one person from one side of it to the next.

Upgrades on ships are not explained: having invented new technology it rolls out instantly across the fleet? Wow, impressive logistics system.

Colonised planets have a remarkable birth rate for real-time. Also, they seem to work pretty hard and pretty fast in order to generate all those taxes.

I could go on.

So, clearly the game is NOT in 'real-time' (if you actually think this game could occur in real-time, even with phase space, you need your head examined): you might think it's real-time because of the sub-light speed battles, but really it is these that are out of place, and not the rest of it. Almost everything else, excluding the battles, could be considered pretty much in the same ball park and so you there would plenty of time to see planets orbiting, had they coded it.

Did you even read my earlier post?



Eh, anyway, whatever.

This is a 'simulation'. The only reason they call it 'real time' is because you don't wait for each person to take their turn. It is a gaming term, not a reference to actual time. The real time it would take to actually take over an entire Solar system or set of systems would be measured in the hundreds of years.

Just a thought.

edit:

Sorry, to stay on topic. I would love the see the game with z axis. As long as you could place structures and deffense platforms strategically in the z-axis as well.