I see myself as a member of the quiet minority.
I’m just a bit more vocal then most

I do like the game as it is, that’s why I don’t want tactical combat, particularly considering the man-hours better spent on other bling-bling.
Good point, though.


Rygel XVI - Dominar to over 600 billion (more or less) loyal subjects.

...and tactical combat would push that balance towards the micro-management nightmare... ... How on earth is tactiacal combat related to micro management?? the two are completely separate issues. ...

My exact quote states it would push it towards not make it a micro-management nightmare and that could disrupt the balance of a game that is already awesome as it is IMHO.

However let me explain, your proposal introduces, the optional, the tactical management of fleet battles during combat. In a hypothetical situation the Drengin launch a surprise attack on me (they were on the other side of the galaxy and I played with Blind Exploration and had no idea of the size of their empire due to not getting around to exploring it). I am woefully under-prepared and should pay the consequences for not knowing all my enemies strengths and weaknesses.

Human desire says that whenever possible I want to win the game, so though its an option. I know, what I'll do, seeing that the Tactical Combat AI has been said to be typically weak I'll manage the battle individually, so I change into my admiral hat from my running the empire hat and start managing the tactical aspect of every single one of those battles with the Drengin. That is micro-managing those battles because one I am primarily an emperor and this is an empire management/strategy game and two all things being equal I want to win and the game has given me a valid method to massively turn that in my favour despite the fact that I had made a serious strategic error in allowing the Drengin to start a war the when I was unprepared for it. For further food for thought Chess is a deep strategical game where you position your pieces and strike and counter strike against the opponents strategy and pieces. However when I do my pawn takes pawn I don't want to 'tactically' manage that exchange of pieces, it changes the nature of chess. Chess is designed that way. GC2 has been designed in its own way.

GC2 doesn't seem as if it was designed with Tactical Combat in it, maybe as others have intimated that is because Stardock had felt that creating a decent AI was too difficult or out of scope. So while you feel the strong desire to express your opinion, and I welcome intelligent debate on the subject, I feel a desire to express mine.

And here is another truth - If tactical combat was in the game to begin with, not one of you nay sayers would have batted an eyelid and still played the game and most probably enjoyed it.

I suspect some might have enjoyed it, I probably wouldn't have, but then we come back to the silent majority I can't speak for them but I take solace in this simple fact if Tactical Combat is such a important part of these games why one has it still sold so well despite this 'huge omission' and two why aren't the forums flooded with huge numbers of different people asking why it isn't there, in the hundreds, nay I say again thousands ?

Thank you for listening.

Have a good day.

AR

Alienrider describes rather well how a typical game would look like should tactical combat be implemented. Personally I would probably take it one step further and rely heavily on the computers weaknesses rather then my strengths.


Rygel XVI - Dominar to over 600 billion (more or less) loyal subjects.

Tactical combat would be too resource-intensive for even an expansion for GC2, in my opinion. It would take rebalancing all the weaponry (tactical combat without weapon ranges wouldn't be worth playing), creating a tactical AI, and updating the ship design AI to deal with the rebalanced weapons, the research portion of the AI to reprioritise the ship techs, etc.

As for the majority wanting it, I can't authoritatively speak for the majority, but neither can anyone else in this thread. There was a thread created a while back on how many people wanted tactical combat in GC2, and "No" won by a large margin. Even that can't speak to the majority of GC2 players, only the majority of people that were active in these forums at that time.

I'd have no qualms with tactical combat in GC2 on the following conditions:

1) It isn't cheesable. MoO1 and MoO2 combat definitely was, the respective AIs just weren't up to tactical combat against player designed ships. I didn't maintain interest in MoO3 long enough to find out how cheesable its tactical combat was, but even there, I did much better if I commanded my ships rather than using quick combat. And I wasn't particulary good at MoO3.

2) It doesn't take away development resources from things that I care more about. My guess is the AI issues mentioned above are the biggest obstacles to this one.

3) it's optional. Now, you might ask why I care about both if it's cheesable and that it's optional. It's because I don't want to feel compelled to micromanage combat to play my best. In MoO2, I never used quick combat, even though I didn't like tactical combat most of the time (first combat with a new ship design or a new weapon being one of the few exceptions), precicely because I'd do much better if I did control it.

Tribes all the way!

Hell even Tribes 2 was a cool game.

Alienrider and Rygel XVI: It's a pleasure to debate people who present their opinions as well as the two of you do. You both have argued your point effectively and I would guess that if there are any fence riders viewing this thread that you may have won some of them over.

I would like to think that Frookie and I have also won over a few. As most everyone who posts on these forums [or any forums for that matter] wants something enhanced, changed, clarified or added I will continue to push for the inclusion of tactical combat in a future expansion. I feel that this would be like "getting your cake and eating it too", in other words a real treat!

I guess I finally have to chime in on this topic (just having seen it). Please excuse my ramble. I play both tactical and strategy type games and have for a number of years, and I enjoy both. They are different, and I have yet to see any game that has done both of them well. As far as GalCiv2, I picked this up off the shelf at a game store, and I put it back down after looking it over. It 'looked and sounded' great, but I've been burned too many times by games not living up to their hype. About a week and a half later, I saw a review of the game over on civfanatics, along with the fact they had a demo. Cool, let's check it out. I was hooked, and bought it as soon as I could tear myself away from my computer. I love the game, and all of the options, but Tactical Options could easily be added, IN THE SAME MANNER AS THOSE FOR A PLANETARY INVASION. This game reminds me of a combination of two old board games that I used to play, called 'Federation and Empire' and 'Starfire'. Starfire was almost too detailed, you built your ships from the ground up, just like GalCiv2, and controlled everything from production down to and including tactical combat. Federation and Empire was more of a grand strategy game, tactical combat was even more simplified than GC2, but you had a couple of options that made it more interesting. While I want Tactical Combat Options, in most cases, I don't want to control every ship. Just give me the option of what to shoot at first. I may not be the actual admiral commanding that fleet, but I can darn well tell him that I want him to kill all transports that he sees before targeting anything else. I want to have the option to retreat after each round, unless my race is fanatical, they would perform a 'retrograde action' to preserve the fleet for a later date when I might be able to have a better advantage. Even if a true Tactical Combat option was added later, it could be limited to only one battle per turn, you can't be everywhere at once. In any case, I still love the game and will play it with or without the tactical options, but the 'Galactic Bumper-cars' TM *IS* the biggest turn-off in the game

(Off Topic, those of you who like naval combat, (or are true grognards) the Harpoon games provide a good Operational Level Simulation that is pretty close to tactitcal combat in a Strategic sim. Link )

I forgot about Harpoon. Many balls-to-four shifts spent in the Combat Electronics office playing on one computer with a Senior Chief across the room doing the same. The man never forgave me for destroying both subs in one of the first sub-hunt scenarios in less than 15 minutes on my first attempt at the scenario. Come to think about it, that was one of the last times I got to play the game.