Combat feature requests |
I have been considering the combat system recently, and reading various people's comments on the subject. It seems to me that just a few additional features would vastly improve the combat, and is necessary with combat now done in real time.
Move/Attack Without Formation:
It should be possible to order a group of ships to move to or attack a target without staying in formation. There tends to be large gaps between ships, and sometimes odd movement of outlying ships when they attempt to stay in formation. Being able to disregard a formation and have each ship move independently would be very useful.
Intercept Target:
Repeatedly giving a move command to a ship so that it can catch up to a fleeing ship is very annoying. Being able to give a ship an intercept command would remove a large amount of micromanagement and make massive real time battles practical.
Tighten Formation:
Ships in a task force tend to be spread apart about 20 ls. This will often cause a single ship to be the first to be attacked many, many times. Being able to order a task force to tighten formation to 10 or 5 ls between each ship would be very useful in shortening the delay before the other ships come into weapons range.
Did I miss anything?
Not quite...
That's not what I meant. When you issue a move command to a group of ships, they stay the same relative distance from each other. I want each to act independently, without having to give each individual ship a move order.
I repeatedly issue manual target and move orders, thus clearing auto-move, and constantly going into the piece options window is tedious...
-----
Give me atmopshperic manipulation cannons, or give me death!
More targeting detail in tactical mode
Any chance of expanding the tactical combat targeting UI?
It would be nice to have a large window with enemy ships on one side and my available weapons on the other.
You could select a ship and then select the desired weapons (with '% to hit', 'firing rate' and 'damage' shown based on the current range).
When you select the next enemy ship, only those weapons that are currently available would be selectable.
As it is, when you select a ship, it is difficult to determine which weapons are available (all are shown for every ship selected).
The weapons are not numbered and the screen is so small that it is tough to get things right.
SEIII had something like this and I was hoping that this UI detail would return in SEV.
Please let me know if I'm missing some feature in SEV and speaking out of line.
Thanx,
skigrinder
Point Defence
one very very problematic thing during tactical combat .. is that if you switch off auto targeting point defence does NOT track and target NOR destroy seekers or fighters ....
this becomes really NASTY when you'r assaulting a planet .. that has satalites or fighters and maybe a WP or 2 ..
while you are trying to nuturalize the defences and drop your troops .. at the same time .. you have no intention to just blast the planet.. so you cant use auto targeting for your main wepons.
the point :
point defence should always be on auto targeting.
EDIT: Typo's
Combat formations and...
1. You want to see your strategies to break formation - this will allow the ships to follow their own strategies rather than fleet strategies. You can also do this in combat with the break formation orders - either for individual ships or groups of selected ships IIRC.
2. I think if you have auto-move on and target an enemy ship - it works like you describe...
3. In Formations.txt and Formations_TaskForces.txt, there is a "square width" and "square height" amount that describes the spacing of the ships in the formation. But I suppose an order to tighten/loosen formation would be good as well.
-----
Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod