Tactical Combat: Your observations and requests

My biggest beef with tactical is that the computer tends to overallocate firepower in some cases. It will fire a bunch of weapons at target that is just about dead instead of spliting fire to targets that are still a threat. I think the targetting AI should try to cripple as many targets as possible then finish them off when the battle has swung decisively into it's favor. Having written a targetting module for a real time space game I know this is possible, but it does take quite a bit of programming and testing to fine tune. The basic premise is: Fire at the ship with the most offensive capability and least defensive capability first, estimate the damage you are going to do, then when the ratio changes work your way down the list of other targets. The AI seems to be weak at estimating how much damage it's going to do and switching when it can pretty estimate the current target will be destroyed or made ineffective. Also, if a missile is targetted on a ship that has just exploded it should re-target onto a live target.

Re: cloaking in combat: that would be cool but there would need to be a way to activate/deactivate it, and balance it so there are no MOO2-style timewarp facilitator exploits (Sure, SE5 combat is not turn-based, but what if Aaron decided "screw Star Trek, I'm gonna let them fire while cloaked!", or what if you were able to decloak for an infinitesimal amount of time to fire, and then by the time the enemy shots were to hit you, you were cloaked again?) One thing I might recommend, though, is giving the cloaking device a defensive bonus, much like Stealth Armor has... of course if you make it too much more so than stealth armor, that would need to be balanced out so that ships with cloaking devices aren't impossible to hit - perhaps give it an attack penalty (it scrambles YOUR targeting sensors), or make the cloaking device really huge, or make it drain supplies every turn, not just when you are cloaked (yes, I believe this is possible - just give it a negative Supply Generation ability)...

Re: missile targeting: maybe missiles aren't that smart

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Check out the 21st Century Mod!

"Re: missile targeting: maybe missiles aren't that smart" - LOL...they are that smart already...(as you know.)

wouldent mind the option of crossing a jump point in combat it would be the sensible thing to do for a ship to do if it can when jumped at a warp point

Would actually like cloaking to be effective at range, but less effective when close.

IE - enemy fleet's in the middle, and your ship is on the edge of the sector - they won't see you. You get close enough, how close depending on your level of cloak and their scanning level, and they can start to see you. I'd think 70 ls guaranteed to spot, and for every level after that which scanning exceeds cloak level, an additional 10 ls (or so). Maybe a higher guaranteed spot distance - but enough that you could fire missiles from cloak if your target's scanning level is lower than your cloak level.

If they see you, they can target and fire on you, regardless of your cloak. You can fire and do all that regular stuff while cloaked, too - including launching fighters if you so desire.

Thats what I'd like to see happen with cloaking. Invis to others (who you're not showing where they are via treaty) on the system screen, but in combat only invisible if far enough from the enemy to avoid detection. And yes, that'd mean that a level 1 cloak would avoid detection by a level max level Tachyon scanner if not in the same sector.

There are two levels of detection: Someone is there somewhere (and maybe even which classs it is (of course if this class is known)) and we know exactly where he is, so we can shoot him.

So good sensors can detect ship from distance and even tell its class (et least size), but still not be able to attack it.

If it was there, there would be possible eg. hunting cloaked ship - you detect ship in hex. You send fleet of destroyers (ehm, frigates in this game (why is dest. bigger than frig?)) and/or carrier (+some killing force?) and sweep whole sector (realy broad line of ships/fighters) and once target is located, you attack it with killers.

But overall i LOVE your idea of cloaking.

Another thought would be (if its not too much of a resourse hog) to have combat include not only the sector it takes place in now, but the 6 sectors around it ... making this change could give plenty of additional room to play with cloaking ranges, and allow for cloaked vessels to appear on the main screen (if in an adjacent sector) - because it makes no sense to me that a ship would be invisible on the combat screen but visible at a greater distance on the system screen.

Heck, not so much an issue with combat in and of itself, but more inline with cloaking ... I'd love to see the minimap get rid of unknown warp point connections (if you don't know where it goes, you shouldn't even see that little line coming from the star on the minimap) and for warp points, when there's more than three in a system, to have at least one with a random level of cloak, up to and including complete undetectability, with the ability to flag a sector as a warp point that you can pass through, without having to use the component to make one there. IE - you see someone come out of it, or you find the other end and go through it yourself, you can now use it because you know its there. The same would apply to other warp points that aren't completely hidden, but only partially so - even if you cannot detect it but you see someone coming out of it, you know its there and can use it.

Make a weapon that targets just weapon platforms on planet.

Also allow changing firing rules on all ships weapons so you can allow, say, the weapon platform smart bomb only fire on planets and not torpedos event though both can target a planet.