Not sure that I fully agree with your suggestion, but I do strongly agree they need to do more in GC3, but haven't considered fully what  iwould like to see.

Sounds cool but I honestly don't see it happening for release, unless they have already planned on doing something similar to what you propose. Maybe for an expansion though?

Anything that is tactical is welcome be me

We're talked about Tactical Combat before here.

There's a couple of major drawbacks:

(1) Assuming that it's a turn-based Tactical Combat (e.g. "chess with spaceships!"), resolving a single combat can be VERY time consuming. So time-consuming, in fact, that it's worthless for multiplayer. All multiplayer games will have to have auto-resolve turned on, and bypass TBTC completely.

(2) A basic TBTC setup isn't terribly hard to implement, but that's unlikely to satisfy the people who really want a TBTC thing in the first place. As your wishlist shows, people want a whole bunch of additional "realism" features, and that's a whole lot more coding and and graphic work to take into account.  Don't forget, you have to have all those "realism" features added into the Auto-Resolve portion too, otherwise, AutoResolve Combat and Manual TBTC modes produce radically different outcomes, and that's something that will *very* much piss off the userbase.

(3) An AI which will fight effectively in a TBTC is VERY difficult to write. The AI for the AutoResolve combat system isn't much more than a number cruncher, and doesn't really need to take into account much more.  An AI for a TBTC needs to be *at least* as complex as a good Chess program.  That's several orders of magnitude different in effort.

(4) If you get into 3D combat desires, well, that's virtually an entirely different game wrapped inside of a 4X.  Think about the effort it takes to write something like Homeworld, then imagine having to implement maybe 50% of that to get the kind of 3D TBTC people want. 

Basically, it's not simple to add. I could see it being a future Expansion Pack (it's far too complex for DLC) and people having to cough up $25 for it.

But the bottom line is that it's not an intrinsic need for a 4X to have a TC mode.  Plenty of people will buy GC3 without the TC feature, which means it's not necessary for the initial version. More people would buy it WITH the TC mode, but I'm pretty sure it's not economical to wait for TC to be implemented and delay the whole game to get that extra audience, especially since most of them will buy GC3 WITHOUT the TC mode, and separately buy a TC pack later.

Money, dear boy, is a factor.

(HoMaM3 isn't a 4x, and Civ 5 doesn't have any sort of TC mode - the bonuses are for position and such, but the combat resolves just as GC does it)

Tactical combat draws in people who would not play otherwise, considering how small the maket for TBSs is, it should be well worth whatever the cost.

not many people use MP anyway, not as many as would use TC as I've been lead to believe, not with the empty lobby, people like to play by themselves most of the time.

I would love it as a expansion, and I hope they realize the opportunity to have more happy/new fans and make some money$

I find it nice how you are stating facts. But odd how the demand for a "real" tactical combat TBS has been so high and yet untouched. TBSs are alot of boring screens to alot of people and RTSs are just about non stop fighting with little else. I really hope SD takes TC and TBS eventually, me and my friends have always wanted such a thing.

Again, thank (sgiving) you trims2u for impartial post.

DARCA

Well, considering that on a round map one would be able to wrap around the planet, I don't think that a flat map would be able to take into account this real-life consideration.