You guys are missing a beat.

Fleet Battles

from Stardock.net Forums

Currently, a battle in the movie viewer, is usually the two fleets moving to point blank range and shooting each other in the face, even when the fleets swirl around it doesn't mean anything because the weapons fire everywhere.   

I mean this sincerely, even a simple firing arc system for weapon placement would make turn rate a thing. Imagine it, you could add a new tech type for turn rate, create a new meta for ships, the slow heavily armed versus fast and light, make missiles more viable with better turn rates, etc.  

Also maybe make missiles limited like Moo2 but have bigger punch and you would add a lot to the shipbuilding and ways to counter enemies. 

Just my two cents, I'd buy it. 

Stardock Games Galactic Civilizations IV Type: Discussion
398 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Weapon range already does real work in there. Each weapon carries its own range, a ship ends up with a min and a max out of whatever it is fitted with, and targeting checks range before anything fires, which is why range extenders like the Extension Matrix are worth the slot.

What is missing is the half you are asking about. Nothing in combat has a facing, so there is no arc to be outside of, and turn rate would have nothing to bite on today.

The swirling is presentation sitting on top of a fight that was resolved by range and targeting rules.

The missile idea is the more interesting one to me. Limited shots that hit hard changes what you build before it changes how you fly.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

The part worth separating is that the viewer is showing the result of a fight that has already been decided, which Haalee just said outright. So firing arcs would not be a change to the animation. They would be a second set of rules underneath it, and once a weapon can miss because of where a hull is pointed, every comparison you make in the design screen carries an asterisk the design screen cannot show you.

That is the trade I would want named before anyone asks for arcs. I spend more time designing ships than watching them fight, and what I want out of that screen is to know, before I build forty of something, whether it beats what I already have. Facing makes that answer depend on positioning I cannot see while I am designing.

Where Sylverlokk is right is the complaint under the request. The replay tells me very little about why the fight went the way it did. My own habit is to skip it and work backwards from what survived, which is not much of a system. Showing me which of my ships did the damage and which died first would buy more than arcs would, and it does not need a new combat model behind it.

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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

The asterisk JEdgar does not want is the part I would be buying. If a design is simply better than the one before it, picking it is arithmetic rather than a decision, and the screen I spend half the evening in turns into a place where I confirm what I already knew.

That is close to the complaint I had about the midgame a week ago. What it runs short of is not fights, it is reasons to change my mind. A design that is good against one thing and poor against another is exactly that kind of reason, and being wrong about which one I needed is the interesting half.

He has the second part right though. If a fight can turn on how a hull was pointed and nothing ever tells me that is what happened, then all I learn is that the expensive ships lost, and I will take the wrong lesson from it twice before I notice. Attribution is not the alternative to arcs. It is the thing that would make arcs worth having.