My Only Real Problem With GC

[The Templar]

Imagine the following conversation:

Technician: Admiral, Torian Dreadnought 363 sited in our sector.

Admiral: We are seriously underdefended! Send Corvettes Goblin and Imp with Starfighters 565, 89, 62, 93 to intercept.

Technician (to ships): Goblin, Imp, and all Starfighters, intercept Torian Dreadnought 363. Simultaneous attack with support from Sector Starbase.

Admiral: hold that order! What do you mean "simultaneous attack", man! Issue the order for Goblin to attack first, followed by Imp, then each starfighter one at a time.

Technician: Sir, if the ships attack individually they don't stand a chance against a Dreadnought. But if they attack together ... well ...

Admiral: Well nothing, man. One at a time! Who ever heard of ships attacking en masse!

Technician: But Sir, smaller ships can't attack a drednought one at a time and hope to even inflict any damage. But if they attack simultaneously at different approach vectors ...

Admiral: No, no. One at a time, thats how the Terran Union does things!

++++++++++++

Given that smaller ships are all armed with the same level of weapons as bigger ships, it seems as though smaller ships should be of continuing use if they didn't just attack one at a time. For that matter, it seems as though two Avatars would attack a single Dreadnought together to minimize their own risks.

Unit on unit makes a bit more sense in Civ where each unit represents a group of men, tanks, planes, whatever. But in GC, each ship represents one ship.

Anyway, just my one gameplay beef.

[Kuciwalker]

They don't attack together when in fleets?

[The Templar]

Originally posted by skywalker
They don't attack together when in fleets?

No. Strongest ship in the fleet attacks. I the attacked en masse when in fleets myself. Until the first time my fleet lost an engagement. The result - strongest ship only lost, everything else intact.

[campfreddie]

It's slightly annoying but the alternative is worse.

I think Brad didn't want fleets attacking en masse because it causes the 'super-stack' problem.

While it's great to co-ordinate 5 corvettes to take out a dreadnought, it's not great when a stack of 5 dreadnoughts becomes totally incvincible.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by campfreddie
It's slightly annoying but the alternative is worse.

I think Brad didn't want fleets attacking en masse because it causes the 'super-stack' problem.

While it's great to co-ordinate 5 corvettes to take out a dreadnought, it's not great when a stack of 5 dreadnoughts becomes totally incvincible.

I figured had had to be because of game balance. Still stacks of some sort might have been nice to revive older smaller ships (although, if you have enough starbase support in a sector ...)

[Harry Seldon]

It'd be cool if they they set size limits to stack attacks, like dreadnaughts can't attack together because they're too big to coordinate their movements that close to each other but three corvettes could attack together because they're smaller and more agile. Just cut the number of ships allowed to stack more the higher the ship class.

[Boris Godunov]

Honestly, no, I'm not really satisfied with the combat model in GalCiv. It seems rather ludicrously unbalanced, IMO. Even a Civ 1-style combat engine would have been better.

However, the other empire management aspects are done so well, it's easy to set aside the complaints about that.

[Harry Seldon]

Still beats the pants off MOO3, eh?

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Harry Seldon
Still beats the pants off MOO3, eh?

I don't know about that. On the one hand, the GalCiv AI kicks the crap out of the MoO3 and the combat (such as it is) works very well.

However, I really liked the addition of real-time tactical combat to MoO3. That was a brilliant idea whose time has come.

[Harry Seldon]

I like MOO3, but without the code patch I don't really enjoy playing it. For now, I think GalCiv is a better all around. Maybe after MOO's been patched it'll be a more even contest.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Harry Seldon
I like MOO3, but without the code patch I don't really enjoy playing it. For now, I think GalCiv is a better all around. Maybe after MOO's been patched it'll be a more even contest.

When discussing MoO3 one must always do so with the caveat 'if it worked properly'

GalCiv definitely plays better.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by The Templar
However, I really liked the addition of real-time tactical combat to MoO3. That was a brilliant idea whose time has come.

Previous 4X games had already introduced this, however, including IG 2, Rebellion (*eww*) and Starships Unlimited.

Personally, I prefer the SEIV style of turn-based tactical combat. RT combat just seems to devolve into clickfests wherein one can't really get a handle on what's going on.

[Garth Vader]

From my experience with RT combat in IG2 and Moo3, they were just two sides hammering on eachother without much ability to control anything or even really see what's going on.

Good in concept, because turn based gets to the "fire first = win" point fairly quickly. But I haven't seen it well executed yet. Although early game BOTF was interesting, late game sucked though.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Garth Vader
From my experience with RT combat in IG2 and Moo3, they were just two sides hammering on eachother without much ability to control anything or even really see what's going on.

Good in concept, because turn based gets to the "fire first = win" point fairly quickly. But I haven't seen it well executed yet. Although early game BOTF was interesting, late game sucked though.

Actually, IG2 had a really good RT combat model for the early game, when one only had small ships and fighters. Fighter tactics were crucial to victory. The problem came in the late game, when the huge battleships came into play. The eliminated any need for fighter tactics and it came down to "He who has the most ships wins." One could then just float around the galaxy with a super fleet of 300 ships or so and wipe out all opposition easily.

Rebellion's RT model actually was one of the better features of the game, although it was terribly ugly. It at least involved more tactics, as you'd want to concentrate on taking out the enemy's larger warships first and then going after smaller ships. Fighters could also do some damage to cap ships, so it wasn't smart to ignore them.

[Garth Vader]

I don't remember IG2 that well so I probably only remember the end game.

One problem with end games is that offense always increases way faster than defence in these games. That's what is causing all the problems.