if the battle is only processed after moves are done how do you use any remaining moves? As in fight, move, fight again, move, invasion
I should clarify ... after moves are done for the turn... assume the ship's movement is terminated at the battle's inception (they 'drop out of warp')... at the end the end of the battle, new movement orders can be issued for resolution in future turns.
the devs have said that you will only be able to effect the battle in a general way "roles" you will NOT be able to say ship A attack ship X
Yes I know... that is what item 3 is all about... I'm not asking this current team to completely redesign the game, just redesign the current combat code to be modular so it can be REPLACED by the tactical combat modules that I have described.
In item 4 I am actually asking for the development of three NEW games. These games would take the gc iii objects and (micro) scenario as initial play conditions; 'enhance' the objects' attributes (auto-synthesize new attributes as appropriate); 'fill-in' and/or synthesize scenario details as necessary; process (play) the objects with the additional functionality afforded in the expanded/enhanced game engine; then when done, return the objects 'normalized' (all additions/enhancements removed) in their new states to gc iii. Having three tc-xmods allows variations and customization to the scenarios, i.e.: for surface battles - interpret it 'civ v' like; for space battles - perhaps model them 'sins oase' like; etc.
The problem is gc iii is a strategic game with a 'galaxy' wide scope/scale... the objects in that game are huge and numerous... objects are not detailed to any great depth... (if they were, there would be tooooo muuuch information in the game and it would be unplayable...) in that system, combat is an exercise of statistical reduction.
To do the tactical combat that we all want to play, we need tactical game engines.
For space battles the scale is on the order of an astronomical unit (not light-years or parsecs) and the number of objects that is in the scenario will be limited... therefor, each object can have orders of magnitude more detail and with enough detail we can do 'physics' and 'physical' combat resolution... this additional detail is synthesized by analysis of researched techs, the ship's specs and the ship's state, etc... this detail is synthesized just prior to combat and released after combat resolution... the engine may cache individual ship details before the details' release in order to possibly reduce the time spent on synthesis in a future battle, but this would be held independently from the main game data.
For surface battles the scale is planetary and some of the objects are extremely vaguely defined (at the strategic level)... in this case the requirement of additional detail will mean wholesale invention... yes do an analysis of researched techs, but since the base game only has info on size of the fielded forces, the composition of those forces will have to be 'invented'... the map of the surface with terrain details will also be an 'invention' that uses the current planetary map from the main game as a initial template... once again the additional detail (with the possible exception of planet terrain details) will be synthesized as a precursor to combat and dumped after combat is done... as for planetary terrain details, the entire planetary colonization sequence could be viewed as a specialized set of tactical ops... at the beginning of colonization the standard map is generated by the main game and the detailed terrain map is then generated by the tc game engine and independently stored (to be updated and used with surface battles involving that planet)... at the start of colonization operations, with the ideology scenario generated by the main game, the ideological choice prompt is raised by a surface survey op... finally the choice of where the 'capitol' goes is made in a colonist landing op.
I've gone in some detail about what each engine needs to do, to highlight that fact that the needs require different engines and that they are, in fact, different games... The main gc iii game will, in essence, be paused while one of the tc xmods is run... that is the reason for item 2...
Adoption of these measures would give the player unprecedented command and control across all the phases of the game.
This is more than building a mod, this is changing the main game so that it could integrate with three other games and then developing those games.
-David S.
P.S. Now, if someone from Stardock dropped me a line I could easily be convinced to do a labor of love in making those extra games!!!
