Tactical vs. Strategic combat

I use it because i like to watch stuff blow up. I also like to see exactly what my custom strategies are doing, and as I am still getting the hang of the game, I am often suprised. I dont think it is unfair in part because I rarely get involved with giving orders, i only do it if a ship is doing something completely wrong, like failing to retreat. Also, given that it only takes 5 minutes, its really not too long of a time.

I use tactical when im testing a new design / strategy - or mod changes. Like seeing my new battle cruiser cut in to an enemy's fleet, and engage five ships at one time. . . brought tears to my eyes. other than that its strategic 90% of the time

The only time I use tactical combat is when I'm too lazy to create a strategy for exactly what I want my ships to do. It's just quicker (assuming a single battle) to manually give the orders in tactical combat. Other than that, I tend to shy away from tactical combat for two reasons:

1. Human players do not need yet another advantage vs. the AI, and tactical combat is a major advantage.

2. It's a bad habit to rely on tactical combat if you have any desire to try multiplayer. Tactical combat is not an option in multiplayer games, so it's good to practice setting up your fleets for plain strategic combat.

I agree that tactical is a HUGE advantage over the AI (more properly termed logic script, I would think..)

I had, on more than one occasion used 3 frigates with a small complement of fighters aboard (3 each) to wipe the floor with an enemy fleet of 77 cruisers and larger. Yes my tech level was at least an order of magnitude higher than the enemy fleet, but, that should have been overcome by the number disparity i suffered under. I used missiles almost exclusively, and was always staying just out of weapons range of their energy weapons, using the fighters only to finish off retreating ships. Stupidly, they kept following me when it would have been quickly obvious to a human that they were being suckered. But the replay looked heroic to say the least.

I do agree also that sticking to strategic combat forces you to confront and adjust for weaknesses in your own ship design.

Tactical combat is only an advantage for human players if they actively order ships around, otherwise it's exactly the same as strategic combat with the graphics displayed.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Exactly true. Which is why Humans have the advantage in tactical combat, if they take the time (you can slow the clock down, and pause to give orders) to manage the fight. Left to the AI, my little frigates would have charged in and been chewed up in short order by the much larger fleet it was facing.

I use tactical and slow things down a lot so I can see what's happening. But I haven't given any orders in months. Well, not intentionally. I accidentally r-clicked while a ship was selected during my last gaming session. Fortunately I was able to restore autopilot before any "harm" was done.

I use tactical to take planets intact(troops) With one planet with little pop.(less than 100) a small fleet blows it up before invading. But just one on one with an AI ship startatic get it done faster and just as well

One problem with tactical combat is that it interrupts turn processing. So you have to keep an eye on the computer instead of just going away for an hour or however long it takes to process. So if you don't want to give orders, set it up as a multiplayer game with simultaneous turns instead. Then you'll get a report after all the combats are completed and you can choose which ones you want to watch.

Two bad things about this are that giving orders in simultaneous turns takes a little while to get used to, and that Balance Mod's AIs don't form fleets in Simultaneous Turn mode. Maybe they will be able to after the patch when the "J" key starts working.

I almost always use tactical combat, only becaus I love to command my own ship... yes, this is an advantage for the human player, but... I love to much command my ship...

I always use tactical combat, I like to actually see the fighting go on and not just some mathematical calculations going in the background before a results screen is presented.

There is something very satisfying when I watch an enemy fleet of 80 ships get blown to pieces by 6 large platforms.

And if you don't see what's going on, how are you ever going to improve your designs?

Strategic resolution mode still makes sense for experienced players or for battles that are a done deal from the get-go, but the student of warfare is eager for any opportunity to learn.

You can always use the simulator to test your strategies. Tactical combat is always enabled for the simulator, if you choose to use it.

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Space for rent - please contact owner

I'm not so sure that tactical combat is as balanced as I once thought.

Lately, I started a new game - v1.44 with the latest BM mod. On level-1 technology tactical ship combat I've noticed a problem - and did some testing that seems to confirm it:

if you have 2 ships that are perfectly equal - in that they contain the exact same components, in basically the same slots - the ship that starts on the left-hand side of the screen will win approximately 70-80% of the battles. This is in actual battles, not the simulator.

We're talking the same level-1 DU cannons, level-1 armor, engines, and attack strategy. I did some testing in the simulator, against 2 ships of the same design (level-1 frigates), and the one on the left - "Empire 1" - wins around 70-80% of the time as well, so it would seem to corroborate my initial experiences losing all of my 1 - on - 1 battles with the computer.

I must also note that I am not actually controlling my ships in combat - merely watching and noting what systems and how much damage the ships take. It seems to me, but I am not exactly sure, that in any engagement, the ship on the left (the defender?) always shoots first. Has anyone noticed this also, or can test it?

I don't think the problem would be as noticeable in later tech levels, because ships have more weapons and armor, which would likely cause any render any small inequity in space combat unnoticeable due to the statistical variations in the amount of damage you are dealing, as compared to smaller level-1 ships.

Just thought that this should be brought to everyone's attention, as it appears to be a real problem. Even if my hypothesis is wrong, there is still something causing the 'left' side during tactical battle to win a far greater share of the battles than it should.

I haven't played in ages, but if I recall correctly from how this works, ships in the battlesim spawn facing "up". I also remember in the old days, as long as I stayed manually mobile and avoided stopping my ship, the enemy could spray tons of shardbolts and just miss totally, but if I ever STOPPED, regardless of how much ECM I could layer onto the thing, DEAD MEAT.

Conversely, beam weapons consistently follow ECM and always either hit or miss purely by odds. Bolt weapons, however, become "stray bullets" on a miss and will still strike stationary targets. So if a combination of strategies or poor manual piloting causes a ship to become stationary in the face of attackers with bolt-style weapons, it is DEAD MEAT, as you will always get hit.

The fact that both ships in default setup begin "facing up", instead of facing each other, will result in an unequal pattern of manuevering that will favor one side, since the early manuevering is essentially deterministic. DU cannons are bolt weapons, and thus exhibit this bolt-determinacy. Equipping your ships with APBs should likely result in a more random ratio as ship movement no longer affects weapon accuracy. Equipping with CSMs will either result in a one-sided victory for the "runner" side, or mutual annihilation.

also, does either race have a natural combat bonus/weakness?

I noticed similar thing when experimenting with low-tech ships. So i can at least confirm it is there, whatever it is.

In most interesting fights I use tactical combat.
In all clean-up situations I use strategic exclusively.

I always like making the biggest ships, so in most of the fights I control 1-4 ships. I really enjoy commanding the ships, regardless of the advantage that this provides, the AI can have it's difficulty bonus and resource bonus, but playing with the ships is THE game for me. What can I say? I'm a grownup playing with bigger and better toys

Tactical combat is one of the reasons I play SE. If it was to go away I would also go away...

>The fact that both ships in default setup begin "facing up", instead of facing each other, will result in an unequal pattern of manuevering that will favor one side, since the early manuevering is essentially deterministic.

In the latest patches, it seems like the attacker faces the defender, and the defender faces a random direction. So the attacker can get a bit of a jump. Still, I spend most of my time running down ships with speed of 11-12 when I have speed 13-14. And if the speed is equal, you have to do some tricks to get the attacker to spawn right next to the defender (usually with multiple ships).