I really want this to be true. 

Would Action Points work well in this scenario? Units having certain points that can be used for firing, movement, defense, flanking, etc.

Fallout in Space!

LOL! Hope you don't mean Fallout 3! But seriously, one option for ship building may be instead of hitting harder is to hit more often (speed).

This is a good way to do it.

Action points might actually rock.

Just an idea that i haven't thinked trough, i think it while i write it now, so bash it if its crap.

In fleet's you could create squadron's.

If fleet size would be 20 ships (not speaking about max fleet size, just for the purpose of this example).
You could have X number of squadrons in there, 20 if you like (your really not wanna do that).

So lets create 3 squadrons:

5 fast ships
5 defense heavy ships
9 damage dealing ships and the 1 "main ship".

You could give orders to your different squadrons between turns. Might be cool idea if the battles would go "real" turns, so the last long time and are not solved in 1 turn (unless of course your killing scout with a dreadnought".

Orders would be like this:

Get in front/back/left flank/right flank/below/on top of this (selected, can be hostile also) squadron.
Keep @ range very close/close/medium/medium far/far (also selection is squadron)
Flank left/right/top/bottom
Focus fire on X squadron
ECM that squadron

ETC ETC.

You could only give one fire command and one movement command per squadron per turn.

Issuing command costs Action points.

Your ships will always autofire if in range, so fire command is needed only if you want to change target.

You press turn, and the battle plays out.

Im not a coder or software developer, so i dont know how much resources would need to be commited on this. But my personal opinion in this would be it might be cool, but i really would not want this to take too much resources from the grand strategy side.

 Also one point to consider is that implementing system like this might give stuff to grand strategy side also: What weapons to build, what kind of ships and fleet compositions to use ? Do i need ECM ? Do i need ECCM ? fast close range or slow long range ? etc.

That said, im still not convinced its a good idea. 


EDIT: one more thing i forgot, the orders do need AP, and the AP would be very limited, thats why you want to have low number of squadrons, coz the more you have the more you would need to spend ap on ordering them around, the AI would never leave fleets to do nothing, but your orders should have some morale bonus or whatever. so you only use AP on most important decisions. 

Rather then having to divide fleets into squads, maybe just have fleets from adjacent tiles be involved in the battle. Like if you have two fleets flanking one fleet on the gal map, you could set both fleets to attack at the same time. (Maybe even get a flanking bonus.) Then you could have other things like a fleet with a long range bombardment ability, so you can bombard a fleet before you attack and soften it up, or after to finish it off. Maybe a command fleet that can give a attack bonus to the fleets in adjacent tiles well launching an EMC stuntype attack on a enemy fleet.

There does need to be some sort of penalty for stacking multiple fleets on the same hex.  That was a nuisance in GC2, the AI would spam hordes of cheap useless fighters often 3-4 to a tile.

Ya. It's not a very good idea and it was also written kind of poorly on review. I'm basically trying to think of ways that you could add tactical choices into the strategic map. I want more in depth combat, but I don't want a tactical combat system. (I want to have my cake and eat it too.) It's a quandary that I haven't been able to puzzle out in any quality way yet.

Player-created formations and behavior. Playbooks can be made before hand (like designing ships, etc) and then simply chosen from before the battle.

Hit play and enjoy the travesties of your decisions.

Your brain controls fingers, beacuse King Twitch can think faster, make correct decisions faster, hes better not because he has magic fingers.

Something interesting: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0070350

RTS and TBS are like speed chess vs slow chess. There's nothing suprising in this in my opinion.
I just like slow chess better.

I don't think either one should be bashed, but when it comes to this forum, GalCiv series is TBS and i would like them to keep it that way. All the way.

LOL at this thread.  Reminds me of the dawn of computing power.

"Hey guis, wouldn't it be cool if the map had more than just monsters and NPCs, like, I don't know, horses and cows?"

"Hey guis, wouldn't it be cool if we can kill those horses and cows?"

"Hey guis, wouldn't it be cool if we can bbq the meat from those horses and cows?"

"Hey guis, wouldn't it be cool if our heroes can eat bbq?"

"Hey guis, wouldn't it be cool if our heroes got hungry so they have to hunt?  I mean, why give us the ability to kill horses and cows if our heroes never had to eat?"

"Hey guis, wouldn't it be cool if our heroes had to poop?  I mean, all that food have to go somewhere right?  Why don't we make it so that you have to go sleep at an inn to poop, and if you don't poop for a long time, you start to lose health?"

"TOTALLY RAD!"

...or not.  I don't know about the poop part, but the rest of it actually happened (along with "hey guis wouldn't it be cool if your equipment wore down and then broke down").

Megalomania total control/real life simulation (LOL, why do I want to simulate real life?  I have my own) sounds fun until it gets implemented, and then you realize it's just tedium.

Hehe...  If you want to control the pooping of your subjects, play The Sims.

It looks like it'll still be "rock, paper and scissors".

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/15/stardocks-galactic-civilizations-3-revealed

“Some types of weapons are better against some kinds of defenses,” says Wardell. “You can’t just scattershot. You have to focus. If you’re going to war with the Drengin Empire and they’re focused on, let’s say, shields, then you are going to want to go after them with mass drivers.”

Now, that's no news, It sounds exactly like in GalCiv2. Not very promising.

+1 For tactical combat, personally I prefer the real-time combat  of Pax Imperia 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ceYoFQbAjpU#t=626) (boy do I wish someone would make a sequel to that game)

No tactical combat was my absolute biggest gripe with GalCiv 2 (next to no multiplayer then of course).

And if you guys do implement it (crossing fingers :D) please let there be an option for spectating on allied players combat in multi. Makes that wait for the next turn much more manageable. It gives you something to do while waiting as you're able to give combat advice in real-time and thus you're partaking in the combat a little bit.

No it's not promising at all. If they are keeping the rock, paper and scissors of GC2, that suggest to me that they don't intend add any extra depth to combat. I'm assuming that if there was a new aspect of choice then they would have eluded to it.

Maybe he should have continued reading, because the next paragraph of the article says this (emphasis mine):

Wardell says the customization plays into the overall idea that your fleet, tailored to your particular choices, has a goal, and is good at a particular thing. Maneuverability. Strength. Defensibility. Indeed, Galactic Civilizations III expands on the core rock-paper-scissors system of previous games, but Wardell hesitates to elaborate on specifics.

Further down where that wasn't in the post I was replied too. Though reading the full thing didn't really make me think that a lot was changing. At least part of me is thinking that if you where really going to improve things, then you would have more to say then ya we still use rock paper scissors. Call me pessimistic because in this case I am being pessimistic.

I like rock, paper, scissors! Napoleonic tactics etc. At least, in a soft-counter way rather than hard-counter... (if that makes sense?). Requires one to use combined arms rather than spamming one unit.

You know I'm not going to say that the system doesn't work. A lot of a lot of games build themselves around the idea. I'd even say that it works in GC2. One of the fun things in GC2 is hitting the next turn button only to find out that your now at war with someone and you have no standing army, so your scrambling about looking at there tech and any visible ships. Your trading with friends trying to cobble together a rock to beat that fleet of scissors flying towards your boarders.

Rock Paper Scissors systems only ever work because there so simple they are impossible to screw up. I would rather see a real system. Calling rock papers scissors strategic or even tactical is inaccurate to say the least. I would prefer a system where I have to think a little deeper then just looking at a my enemies units and building whatever their incredibly obvious weaknesses are. Doing that doesn't make me feel challenged it makes me think I'm playing a game for 6 year olds.

Imagine what will happen in multiplayer with 2 half way decent players. Everyone will just cover there bases and the effects will even out. I observe they are weak to missiles and they observe me building missiles and counter so I change and so on and so on until we meet in the middle and the system becomes irrelevant. That's what happens when you have a system so ridiculously simple.

Is anyone else curious by what Brad means by "obvious in hindsight"?  I'd like to think it means "No tactical combat in GalCiv2.  However, we tried tactical combat in Elemental/FE/FE:LH, learned how to implement it and make it work and using that knowledge, will have it implemented in GC3." 

I could be totally wrong on that but that's at least how I'd LIKE to interpret it