It's okay. I will create The Ten Commandments of The Founder's Forum if he does.

But seriously, CB, please put Local MP as one of the Commandments. I will give you a fake internet point if you do.

What I had described was exactly what SCII supermelee was.  Then I added using command ships as an option, which would change things a little.  

1) DR all the way, absolutely not on the deck building/random selection. This is assuming you have already picked your fleet/have had it given to you. The fun of 1on1 combat with SC was always knowing which ship to use when in combination with your own skills, like a game of space chess. Randomization has no place in SC.

2) 1v1 to start for sure. No depending on AI to run other ships. That's just too much. It won't add fun, it will only add frustration. Maybe as an option later but definitely 1v1 first. Teams where there is no AI and all ships are being controlled by real people on the other hand.... that could be interesting.

3) I personally have never been a big fan of 3rd person/isometric views. Sometimes they can work, but they have a very common tendency to be clunky and extremely annoying when you can't see what you want/need to. I always liked the 2D battle format of SC and wouldn't be put off in the least to see it stay/return, fun/functionality > pretty graphics, no? OTH, if it's truly a 3D environment you are after, I'd much rather see a first person perspective implementation where you are truly the pilot of your ship... a la Wing Commander, Privateer, Freespace, etc. I could see that being very interesting too.

#1 Fleet building: Make a deck vs. Dynamic response

Dynamic is the classic way, yes? But Deck seems much more challenging. I kind of like the idea of having think about what area of space I'm in, who I'm likely to encounter, etc. But also seems to require more micromanagement. 

For multiplayer, I think it may be best to be able to pick from these options when setting up a match or tourney. For single player it seems deeply tied to the difficulty of battle. I would probably play through with Dynamic Response, since I'm mostly playing for story. 

#2 Solo vs. Teams

Ok, jumping to the ally makes teams a LOT more intriguing. Having two dumb ships I can never get out of trouble seemed a lot worse. Jumping around seems kind of like SPAZ, so if the AI is ok, I'm into it. But I like the idea of the periodic one v one battle, or in single player, times when you have to take out a lot of underpowered ships trying to swarm you or have three ships ready to take out one of their big mothership type bosses.

#3 Camera 

I think seeing all the ships by default. Unless we have full 3d cockpit dogfighting on my VIVE headset (wow!), I'm just not that interested in non top down combat for this game. 

Exactly this.  There is no reason to change things for the sake of change.  SC2 is a classic for a reason.  SC3 *spit* changed core gameplay elements just to be different from the classic games.  We all know how well that went.

This is true, but there's a difference between changing something because you legitimately think you can improve on a faulty system and changing something for the sake of change. I'm NEVER in the favor of the latter, only the former. I swear I will slap anyone who thinks I support changing for change's sake, so help me Dogar.

Kazon would like a word with you.  But, I get ya.  I just don't want to do calculus to play some Super Melee.  I always thought the random button was a fine compromise that added a little of system A into system B.

Go add to the Ten Commandments thread, then! 

My first 2 cents:

Make a deck vs. Dynamic response

It needs some clarification, but for now I assume that both options require you to set up an actual deck upfront (and not having the entire fleet of ships available for you), with the difference is between a predetermined in-order (or even random) pick, and between player choice to counter the current enemy ship winning the last battle.

My personal preference would be dynamic response - as it was in Star Control originally. Having your ship chosen for you at random means that even the better player can sometimes get screwed by a bad shuffle. Besides, some ships in Star Control were only useful in very specific situations (vs specific opponents), and not being able to utilize them exactly when needed will render them mostly useless.

My suggestion: If you wish to negate some of the counter-counter-counter-counter flow that dynamic response can ultimately lead to, try to mix & match. See for example games like Hearthstone and Clash Royale where you pre-build your deck, but instead of having it being available to you entirely you can play some cards from your current hand. These games are competitive at a high level so there's no reason to have a similar system here (for example, up to 10-15 ships in your hypermelee deck but only 3-5 available to choose from at any given time).

#2 Solo vs. Teams

1v1 is classic Star Control, so again that's my personal preference. 3v3 might also work well and can be a blast in multiplayer, and it adds another layer of strategic thinking because you'd like the ships to complement each other (having a ship with gravitational pull capabilities combined with another ship that can lay mines through space for example).

But without nailing down and perfecting 1v1 combat first, there is little to no point to spread into 3v3 where balancing is harder and exploiting is easier. Eventually every 3v3 has the potential to turn into 1v1 at some point, so that has to be taken care of first.

My suggestion: 3v3 would be a "nice to have", but not core feature.

#3 Camera 

I'm all about giving the player possibilities, but it's a question of whether it's even a necessity for the player to determine their. In my studio we've been working on a mobile RTS game (so that's targeting a slightly different crowd) but although we had the option to let the player rotate the camera we came to realize that it's not giving them any actual benefit and can sometimes just lead to confusion when they mistakenly rotated the map while intending to do something else.

My suggestion: Give the players the capability to manually override the auto-camera during the beta (either via a settings toggle, or dynamically during the game with the camera resetting after a while or on a click of a button), but make sure you track how many people actually chose to use it and perhaps even how they fared after changing the camera. These types of analytics can tell you A LOT.

#1 Fleet building: Dynamic response - I think it will be more fun if people are able to make many meaningful decisions and adapt to the situation, rather than making one decision and suffer the consequences for the whole match if their original assumptions were wrong.

#2 Solo vs. Teams: Teams! It would be neat to try different team tactics, though this would probably only work well with real players not AI\

#3 Camera: Free form if there's more than 1 v 1 (I get easily confused which character is mine when there are several on a screen at once), it'd be nice to limit the view to what's around me at the time, with the option to zoom out as needed. In general I'm all for more options of the player.

To add some fuel to the fire regarding deck vs dynamic... I played the hell out of SuperMelee. Everybody I lure under my troll bridge was subjected to a few rounds.

What I liked best was the ability to just grab a pre-built point-balanced fleet and just play.

I liked how there were two different point-balanced fleet options, each with different ships. I would play one side, then I would trade off and play the other.

I also liked the Alliance of Free Stars vs the Ur-Quan Hierarchy ship fleets. Those were more unbalanced (because the UQ Dreadnought suuuuucked), but they were still fun matches.

I never played the other ship fleet loadouts because they were pretty lopsided and un-fun.

It would be nice to have the pre-built fleets be a game mode in and of itself. For this mode, you would not be able to customize your fleet composition. I would rather play this than a build-your-own because the meta game would end up forcing you into having an un-fun fleet of 5 or more of the same type of ship (Shofixti Scouts).

Thinking more about this I wanna add:

2. If we're trying to get multi-ship combat then AI has to be pretty dam good. Which is not possible. As someone mentioned before it's impossible to script adaptive AI with different personalities in this scope of work. The max you can do is fake it. That will never work with advanced players. I envision it being like this: Oh, my idiots AIs are attacking that ship, I have to follow 'em... Or everyone will split into pairs and it'll turn into an uncontrollable mess with crossfire and confusion.

3. The last thing I'd wanna do in melee is muck about with my view angle. Toggle between dynamic zoom (that allows you to have both/all ships on screen) and fixed combat level zoom is a great option to have though!

Question for everyone. If you are in a 1 on 1 fight, when would you ever want to not have all ships on screen? When would you want to zoom in close to your ship and not see the enemy?

It was never needed in SC2. The closest you could come to a need was to see Space Marines or Fighters or DOGIs to help you shoot at them. But even those were big enough on the full screen zoom to see.

^Never. Never ever. Of course you would always want dynamic, smooth zoom. That's crazy talk. Seriously.

^ What about arenas where if the ships are at the opposing edges of it your ship turns into 5x5 pixels plop and you can't even tell its orientation?....... What if there are hazards around you at that time?... Whatchu gonna do then, genius?

As I said before, we have to try it out before dishing out the final verdict on all 3 main points. Arena size matters, ships abilities matter etc. etc.

Uhh... just don't make it that big. This is down-n-dirty dog-fighting. Not a tactical simulation.

I will git gud at maneuvering that 5x5 pixel dot and keep my enemy in my sights.

I bought into Endless Space 2 early access, and this reminds me of the battles. LITERALLY you start across the solar system each battle, and they slowly drift toward each other and it is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SLOW. You just sit there forever until they get close enough to fire. They had to include a "Skip" button for being so ridiculous lol. 

I think in the first endless space I always skipped the combat as well. I forgot that there even was a way to see it

Without actually playing it my opinion is based on SC2 melee and other games. (more like guessing than opinion even)

1# Im not 100% sure what is meant with 'deck vs dynamic'

Selecting next ship brings the element of knowing what ships to use against ship X etc...
This is how it worked in the original. It also had option to select random ship if one wanted to live dangerous.

Then again having pretedermined ship order might be interesting as well.


2# 1vs1. This is just based on my experience that it is very annoying when AI fails for you.

3# Free camera that can be locked in any position should work for everyone but without actually testing it's just a guess.

#1 Fleet building: Make a deck vs. Dynamic response

  Short answer: given the choices I find Deck intriguing, but I vote for Dynamic.  See my arguments below on why I don't really like either choice.

  Deck seems straightforward: pick a stack of ships in a certain order and let slip the dogs of war.  Nevertheless, we don't know whether there are limitations on the deck size or composition.  SC2 had a point system, which has been very correctly pointed out to allow for ships to be unbalanced while supermelee itself is not unbalanced.  Would our decks have a point limitation?

  The details given for Dynamic Response seem quite unclear to me.  Aside from being able to choose the order of our ships as combat unfolds, are we looking at a point system yet again?  This would make it (as I picture things) quite similar to the SC2 supermelee, which I think is a good thing.

  Can I suggest two alternatives, or rather variations, on what you propose?  First of all, I can't figure out why - if both systems are fun - we aren't simply given the option to choose from both at the multiplayer match setup menu.  Are they so different to balance that you only have time to work on one?  If that's the case then I'm obviously missing some key information that limits my understanding.

  My second variation would be to use a deck system, very like the SC2 custom fleet setup - with a point system - and with ship order enforced.  The wrinkle could be that you can change the order of your next ships between combat rounds in exchange for some sort of tactical penalty.  For example, perhaps you begin the match with zero battery, or your warp safeties are disengaged because of the sudden change in fleet commands, so you run the risk of warping into areas that would normally not be allowed (planets, gravity wells, asteroids, etc...  just ideas because, as said, we don't have enough information to offer good recommendations).

  My thought on this second variant is, for example, if my enemy has an Ur-quan Dreadnought and my next ship is slated to be an Earthling Cruiser, I might prefer to warp in with my X-form or Chenjesu and risk a tactical disadvantage in exchange for near certain death.  On many ships starting with an empty battery would probably suffice to make the decision a bit strategic.

#2 Solo vs. Teams

  I would like to have 1v1 if you can only choose one mode for release.  Get that working well and work your way up to 3v3 in expansions or something.  1v1 has been plenty fun and must be easier to design for, and I think the focus should be on getting the basics solid and fun.

#3 Camera

  I think the battles in SC1 & 2 were hectic enough that I didn't want the extra challenge of messing with a camera while duking it out, so an effective automatic camera is the way to go here, in my opinion.  Simple controls for straightforward gameplay is ideal.  It increases the accessibility to players who don't know where all their buttons are as second nature, and it puts the focus on action rather than panning and scanning around to find your target.  As for what it should focus on with zoom level?  For now I can't say - we don't have enough information regarding what the gameplay will be like.

Here's the thing, I have the feeling many of you are anticipating some sort of crazy "smart" free cam that will constantly be fighting against you, and I don't think that's the case. If any of you have played World of Warcraft, for example, if the camera controls are anything like the manual controls for that, that will be so simple that toddlers could learn to use it. (Actually, I've heard several reports where toddlers indeed HAVE.)

No, I'm anticipating a standard right stick spin camera that so many over the shoulder games employ these days. And that is overkill for what we need, as shown by a 20 year old game.

Make the camera show both ships at the same time, and if you need something bigger or smaller, have a button or axis that snap zooms in or out. Releasing the button or axis puts you back to normal auto zoom. Best of both worlds.

#1 Fleet building

I believe being able to respond dynamically will work best; though there's no reason to limit ourselves to just the two models provided. It could be implemented as a multi-phase system with a vanguard, main force, and rear guard. Ships in each group are predetermined (deck) but any ship within the active and prior groups can be used (and after 3 battles the main force arrives, and after 8 the rear guard). 

#2 Solo vs. Teams

Unlike many here, I advocate the teams approach. As much fun as the old StarControl 2 was; it's combat model is very simplistic by modern standards. The kind of depth that I'd have fun with on my cellphone while waiting for my sushi to be prepared. On my PC though (or on a console potentially) a 1v1 is not engaging enough at the depth of the original; I'm sure I'd have 20 hours of fun with it and then move on.

Keep in mind that in the long-term you'd want 3 friends playing together to take on 3 other smart monkeys. And potentially alternate co-op game modes like 3 friends vs infinite waves in a survival-style mod (Zombie-StarControl anyone?). But as soon as you have game modes with multiple human players, you need to cater for those game modes with AI placed in as well. (And the idea to be able to hot-swap which one you control... genius. Sheer genius.) I have no doubt that there is a lot of room for fun mods to be developed - but a lot of those have to rely on multi-ship combat and corresponding AI existing.

And seriously. The AI cannot be made good enough? That's like saying that a game like Civilization cannot have a challenging AI. That a beat-em-up like Dead or Alive cannot have a challenging AI. That a racing games cannot have challenging AI. Nobody requires SCO to have a perfect AI (except maybe Frogboy), all it needs to do is be fun and compelling.

There are multiple threads/comments about wanting to support local multiplayer - but not enough appreciation that a sizable fraction of the market that SCO is trying to capture is used to 5v5 up to 64v64 multiplayer games. Counterstrike, Call of Duty, KotOR, Battlefield, DotA, LoL, Overwatch, etc. Being stuck in a 1980s-knows-best nostalgia is not conducive in this particular case. SCO isn't about taking 2016 and dragging it to SC2; it is about taking SC2 and bringing it to 2016.

#3 Camera 

In the long term you'd probably want a semi-intelligent camera that can balance zooming in on the action/focus but also keeping aware of opposition/allies.

Right stick? I refuse to play this game with a controller. That's heresy.

Edit: In addition, snapping camera controls piss me off to no end. No, that won't make me happy, that will cost me a mouse. t(-.-t)