The combat system in the game won't be that complicated otherwise turn times would get huge.

But each class of ship does have a distance before they can fire.  For example:

Fighters have to get closer than other ships before they can attack but their defense is much much higher against bigger ships.  

Ships don't miss (evasion and accuracy are not in as they are very hard to communicate to players and are one of the biggest causes for late game turn times).  Thus, we will be beefing up attack and defense ratings to communicate better.

So in this example, when a fighter is attacking a capital ship, its defense is always going to be 4 (1 + 3) even if the player doesn't equip any defenses to the ship.  When we play test, we may even increase this further.

Similarly, the fighters move a lot faster than other ships so while they don't have great weapons range, they do get into range fairly quickly but they will have to deal with capital ships likely getting the first shot.

With regards to rate of fire. Let's talk about that:

For instance, missiles won't fire as often but when they do damage, we increase it by more to make up the difference.

Similarly, when figuring out damage, did they hit, etc. This is how that will work:

There are only 15 rounds in a given turn.  We want big battles to take several turns to finish and this lets us reduce turn times late game.

In all these types of games, we have to balance realism and sophistication with the fact that most people don't want to wait 5 minutes between turns late game when there are thousands of ships on the fleet.  We also have to make sure that we have a clear UI to communicate damage to the player.  This is why missing is always a tough thing in thse games because it's hard to communicate this.

Frogboy,

Thank you for posting the information about how you are thinking about making the new combat system work.

I agree with the need to be able to finish every given round of combat quickly to reduce turn times.  I also agree with the desire to be able to explain clearly to players what happened during a battle.

Given your descriptions above, I have a few questions:

1. With respect to distances, range, and speed:
   1. how will you determine the distance between each of my ships in my fleet and each of the enemy's ships in the enemy's fleet?  In other words, will all ships be equidistant from each other at the start of combat or will the type of ship determine how far away from the enemy ships it is?
   2. Will all weapons on all ships be in range in the first round of combat or will some weapons on some ships not be able to fire until a later round of combat?
   3. Will it be assumed that all ships will always move towards their target or can some ships move away from enemy ships that are shooting at them?  For example, when hit points drop to a certain level can a ship turn tail and run?
2. With respect to combat rolling:
   1. When you say "max attack rating of all weapons" do you mean the sum of the attack ratings of all weapons or do you mean the largest attack rating of all weapons?  For example, if my ship has attack ratings of 5 for missiles, 10 for beam, and 15 for kinetic, is my "max attack rating of all weapons" 30 (5 + 10 + 15) or 15 (the maximum of 5, 10, and 15)?
   2. Would I be correct in assuming that you will have to apply the combat logic to each weapon on each ship in each combat round?
      1. Is the weapon loaded and ready to fire? If yes,
         1. Is there an enemy ship within range?  If yes,
            1. Is it a ship I want to shoot at?
            2. If there is more than one ship in range, which one (if  any) do I want to shoot at?
   3. Will the damage be applied immediately as each weapon on each ship is fired or will the damage be calculated for all weapons on all ships and the applied in total at the end of the combat round?
      1. the first option has implications for the order in which weapons are fired since a ship low in the firing order could be destroyed before it gets its turn to fire
      2. the second option can result in wasted shots by ships shooting at an enemy ship that is already destroyed like occurs in the current version of the game
   4. In each combat round how will you determine which weapon on which ship will attack an enemy ship?
      1. Do all of my ships that can fire have to fire at the same enemy ship or is there a mechanism to spread my attack across multiple ships each combat round?
      2. If a fighter wants to attack a large ship that is not yet in range, will they not fire at a smaller ship that is in range in order to be able to fire at the large ship when it does get in range?  For example, if a fighter is not in range to fire a missile at a large ship during a combat round, will it not fire at a smaller ship that is in range so that it can fire at the large ship as soon as it gets in range or will it fire it's missile at a smaller ship now and wait 5 rounds before it can fire at a large ship?

I think that is enough for now to get the discussion going.

there's some really good changes in there, very nice i esp like the combat changes and the research changes. the random research roll was very frustrating for many ppl, and could be pretty bad if u get very unlucky, but this system where u can pick what u want but get discounts for breakthroughs should solve that problem while still giving the random feel you were going for, very nice.

a couple quick thoughts on the combat... I want to address what i see as a potentially big problem, the targeting. i think the targeting can have default targets, but needs to be able to be chosen by the player and AI each turn if they choose. there could be default choices for targeting for ppl who feel it's set up good and just want to skip that part, but when you have auto targeting like "fighters ALWAYS attack bigger ships first" then once a player recognizes this, they can just build a tank or tanks for your fleet if you see your opponent is using a swarm tactic, and then the opponent's swarm tactic will always be useless because the pilots will be insanely trying to take out a large tank doing no dmg to them while they're getting killed by glass cannons. I think the default should be able to be chosen so that ships can be chosen to attack the most threatening ships first by default,  unless the player/AI can identify better priority targets, such as a large ship with a low defense rating. Autotargeting should be based on hull size as well. since tiny ships have good defenses vs larger ships now (great change btw, love it) it would make sense that the larger ships should autotarget other larger ships whenever they can since they will usually be doing much more dmg to larger targets than smaller ones. this reflects how combat usually works in the movies n stuff as well. big ships are often trying to get into range of, and then target, larger targets, and are not usually focused on fighting swarms of ships. They leave that to their fleet's smaller ships that have more maneuverability and better accuracy and targeting ability. when their ships are so small that they're evading our turbo-lasers, it's time to destroy them ship to ship. get the crews to their fighters. 

I also think that there should be multiple kinds of ships for the same hull size, that can have different tasks and priority targets. for example, instead of just having "fighter", it could be broken up into things like "dogfighter", and "light bomber". Dogfighters could be designed to fight other small ships and target smaller ships first by default, while "light bombers" could be designed to try to just rush to large targets and burst them for a bunch of large dmg that would be very effective vs a med and larger hull, but might have trouble targeting other small craft, esp if it's using something like missiles for large burst dmg but slow regen rate.

so much of combat is decided by targeting. I really think it needs to be a big focus for the expansion. players keep finding out how the AI targeting works, and then making "unfair" fleets against them designed with tanks to absorb all the dmg paired with glass cannons to kill everything fast. all the AI can do is endlessly target the tank because they are apparently insane and have no idea how fleet combat works, so victory is assured almost every time. this gets very boring very quickly, and combat in the game becomes less about designing good fleets that can evolve in how they work over time based off on the universe you encounter which leads to good fights, and more about playing whack-a-mole with a really big stick. the AI needs a way to detect the offensive, defensive, and support rating of a ship, and then use that info to decide any priority targets. stop forcing the AI to target tanks and I think the combat will get a lot more interesting for players

cant quite tell what you're thinking for defense btw... were you going to roll all 3 defenses into just 1 stat? cause i think you should at least keep the armor/shields. armor could be a set dmg reduction to the hull, while shields could absorb a certain amount of dmg each turn. could help add different fun tactics and support items, such as support ships that can increase the effectiveness of shields or armor, or support ships that can give the ships in your fleet things like armor-penetrating and/or shield-penetrating weapons to help get through tanky ships.

Looking good! keep up the great work! 

oh, and stuff like giving destroyers "Attack + 200% when fighting fighter" might be a little over-powered. u shouldnt just need to throw in a few of those into your fleet and never have to worry about tiny ships again, cause then no one would want to use tiny ships cause they have way too big of a weakness. I love the idea of smaller ships having more defense vs larger, slower ships. but they're already weak and easy to pick off. designing a class of ship that deals +200% dmg vs them just seems to give them no chance, esp later in game

ship classes need their own balance, otherwise you're just making another rock/paper/scissors combat thing where it's often very one-sided combat where one side wins in a landslide even with equal tech, fleet size, and fleet synergy, rather than a good close fight.

I'd like to see underutilized mechanics be brought up to par - like deception, diplomatic capital, ascension crystals... It seems like there is quite a lot of emphasis put on them, with whole culture traits set aside, but no way to apply them effectively to the game. I understand that they are there to be "expanded" upon in the expansions, but as of now they are just traits that you would never consider useful and be inclined to take.

And, as always, the AI... I can only talk about it in very general, dilettante terms. My dream is to see the AI able to competently pursue and achieve any and every type of victory, as well as to determine which one is best for it, given the circumstances. Right now it's really only the Mimots that ever have a decent shot at Conquest, due to their passive bonus, and even so I'm yet to see them win it. If the AI is incapable of winning, what is the point of playing against it? It really demonstrates a fundamental ineptness that even their considerable bonuses (on incredible/godlike) don't seem to offset.

As with most turn-based 4x strategies, the basic game trajectory is: the AI initially gets far ahead due to bonuses, then you INEVITABLY catch up to it and get ahead, due to being "smarter". Is there any chance at all we can finally move past this inevitability?

I hope that as you make it more competent, you will actually be able to LOWER its passive bonuses, substituting them with better abilities to solve the planetary hex minigame (right now I always tear down everything on conquered planets and build anew, because I just can't look at it), better invasion planning, better trade, etc. I feel that the AI should have access to all the tools and mechanics that the player has. Otherwise I feel like I'm the cheater.

Earlier, I agreed with 2 guiding principles:

1. Combat must be simple enough that the result can be calculated quickly (slow turns are bad!)
2. The results of combat must be easily and clearly described to the player

In this post I want to expand on #2 above.

If we start with the current "Battle Report" (screen snapshot shown below) I think the basic design of having a separate line showing the result of a single weapon on a single ship attacking a single enemy ship is good.  However, I would like to suggest some changes to what is shown in the columns:

1. show the max. adjusted attack value for the weapon.  If you hover over this number a popup should appear showing:
   1. the base max. attack value due to the weapons on the ship
   2. all factors that enhanced or detracted from the base max. attack value
      1. ship type
      2. fleet bonus
      3. location of battle (in your territory, in the enemy's territory, in neutral territory)
      4. military shipyard (effect of being within range of yours or theirs)
      5. other
2. show the max. adjusted defense value for the target ship.  If you hover over this number a popup should appear showing:
   1. the base max. defense value due to the defenses on the ship
   2. all factors that enhanced or detracted from the base max. defense value
      1. ship type
      2. fleet bonus
      3. location of battle (in your territory, in the enemy's territory, in neutral territory)
      4. military shipyard (effect of being within range of yours or theirs)
      5. other
3. if you hover over the target ship a popup should appear showing how the ship was selected as the target
   1. for example, a ranked list of ships within range showing "desireability" based on type of ship, defenses, and remaining hit points
4. if you hover over the damage number a popup should appear showing the details of the calculation
   1. adjusted max. attack value (shown in 1. above)
   2. random number used for adjusting the attack value
   3. max. defense value (shown in 2. above)
   4. random number used for adjusting the defense value

I believe that a good "Battle Report" will go a long way towards helping players decide the types of ships they want to build, the types of weapons and defenses they want to put on those ships, and the types of fleets they want to build.

If you are considering including ideas for combat factors that cannot be shown in the new "Battle Report" I would suggest that you reject those ideas to stay within the objectives listed at the beginning of this post.

Basilisk83,

Autotargeting is important to keep turn times low.  Giving players that much control over battles dramatically increases the time it takes to get through each battle.  If the player is willing to take that time to fight each battle individually, they will perform better against the A.I., the A.I. will need to be improved to fight these battles, and now players that don't want to choose targets now have to because if they don't, the A.I. will sweep them.  I think the better solution is to clearly state to the player in what order ship classes will target, as well as making the targets intuitive.

Example: Fighter vs Bomber class ( Think F-18 vs A-10 or X-wing vs Y-wing)

The fighter should in theory be designated as a way to destroy other smaller enemy ships like other fighters or bombers, but they are less effective against frigates, cruisers, or battleships.  It would make sense for fighters to target smaller ships like fighters, bombers, and gunships before they go after larger ships.

Bombers on the other hand are good at punching through heavily armored large ships because they carry larger payloads.  They are slower, and less effective against smaller ships such as fighters as they are unable to outmaneuver them, and their munitions often travel slower.  It would make sense to make bombers target larger ships first before trying to fire at smaller ships.

This brings me to my second point, how do you portray this in Gal Civ?

As you've mentioned, you can do this through modules.  Making changes to how the weapon types work.  Changing variables such as range, power, fire rate, critical hits, accuracy.  The problem is many players utilize the auto generated ships, and don't want to fight their way through the ship designer.  On top of that, the A.I. needs to be able to generate useful fleets to combat the player. 

I think the simplest and best way to show the difference between classes is to give them buffs and nerfs against other classes.  Giving 200% attack bonus to fighters against other fighters, bombers, and other small classes makes a fighter distinct from a bomber without increasing the difficulty for the players who don't use the ship designer, and makes ship and fleet creation about the same level of difficulty for the A.I.

The A.I. can combat the player by looking at the makeup of the players fleets, and building ships that are strong against whatever classes the player is building.

I don't consider it a fun game if I steamroll the A.I. and vice-versa.  A fun game is when the A.I. made meaningful decisions and it led to a close match. Even if I lost.  I lost a war once in GC III where I was forced into full retreat losing all of my main planets and my home world.  I stayed alive by conquering the guy below me.  One of the best games I ever had.

Draginol,

I read through your the possible roles and how combat currently works, and had a few thoughts.

1. Tactical speed seems to hurt fleet design more than it helps. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my ships with higher tactical speed outpace my larger ships, causing my fleet to split.  This often creates a suboptimal situation where my smaller and faster ships are often destroyed before the larger ships behind can enter a fight.  The +300% defense against larger ships might negate this issue though, and if it does, then I think it'll make the battle look cooler while not feeling like a suboptimal play.  I get the inclusion of tactical speed, but try to make sure it doesn't split the fleet in such a way that it makes battles more frustrating.

2. I think this plan will improve the quality and playability of mixed fleets.  Fighters and other small ship classes will probably be the most difficult to balance do to high fire rate.  I like the bonus to attacks against smaller classes and the increased defense against larger class ships.  Larger class ships will probably need a substantial bonus to defense against fighters as well to negate the high rate of fire from multiple ships.  If a bomber class is eventually included, that could be the small ship that has bonus damage to larger classes.

With the holiday break I'll only be able to answer these piece meal so no mega messages.

With regards to fleet battle distances, we internally do have a meters distance between them.  So then it's just a matter of deciding what the numbers are and then iterating until we get the feel we want.

The ship class (not the weapon type) will determine range.  I know that lots of people would like to see weapon range based on the type of weapon and not the class, but I think it'll get too confusing for players given the scale of the game.  Therefore, the class of the ship will determine the weapon range.

Now, I assume people have played previous GalCiv games so most of this is going to play out pretty similarly to previous games.

Re combat rolling: It's literally the attack of all weapons being rolled.

Now as for when damage gets played, I know we've played around with this in the past.  We generally let, in a given round, let all ships fire that are elible to fire that round. 

Since the ship class determines range, the only thing that determines what weapon is firing that round is whether it is that weapon's turn to fire.  Where we will have to play around with things is terms of determining damage since, as mentioned earlier, different weapons fire at different rates.

When it comes to combat, the biggest gripe I've had is that that the mechanics are opaque.  For example, if a ship has 2 potential targets, who will they fire at first?  If a fighter only has 1 target it will fire whatever that is first.

The reason we've always made it opaque (and like I said, I don't like it but I don't like the alternative) is that if you make it too obvious who fires at what in what order we will end up in an endless cycle of having to plug exploits.  As a practical matter, one should assume that if a ship has 3 targets, it will randomly choose (even if that's not the "smartest" thing to do).  Because you get into a very slippery slope to people wanting total control over every tactical battle.  Just assume your admirals are "good" but not "great".

Also, when it comes to the numbers, assume that we'll be playing around with those numbers a lot.  

Thanks for taking time during the holidays to answer questions!  Glad to hear numbers will be adjusted until they look good.

Personally, I'm good with limiting weapon range to ship class.  Makes sense for larger ships to have longer range than smaller ships.  It should also solve the fleet splitting problem I mentioned.

I think the random targeting is the best way to go.  Makes battles a little more interesting.

If I would change one thing about targeting I would make all ships that fall in a certain class lumped together as possible targets.

Example: If I have four fighters, but one of them is a different type, all four would be possible targets, rather than 3 and 1.  I've had elite ships in GC III get wiped out in the first round of firing because they stood out from all of the other ships despite being the same hull and role.

I think letting players know in what order they can expect their ships to set targets will be plenty. Hopefully it'll be somewhat intuitive based on the class.  Currently ship roles are just too opaque.  I usually just use interceptor or assault because I have an idea what those do.  I've tried other styles, but usually end up with the split fleet problem.

omg awesome!

This looks eerily similar to what was being discussed in this thread Ship Design / Ship Dimensions / More Hull Types

1) How many roles/types will be made available in the early game? - i.e can we have capital ships close to the start of the game?

This is something that has always bothered me with alot of space games - that you can only have access to proper warships towards the end of the tech tree - which is simply not how it works in real life.

Humans have had 'battleship/ship killer' vessels and other ships that fill various different roles since the ancient greeks were knocking about in the Mediterranian.

2) Will the Mass values for each ship type change/increase over time as you progress?

i.e In the Early game / beginning of tech tree a Fighter costs 20 Mass and a Crusier has 400 Mass (complelty grabbing figures out of thin air here)

 Then

By the end game a Fighter has 80 Mass and Cruiser has 1600 Mass

This would tie into question number 1)

Imagine in the early game you have your mainline capital ship - pride of your Navy- you then bump into your nieghbour who is unfortunately more advanced than you and their capital ship dwarfs yours in size and firepower - even though both belong to the same ship class.

Please provide documentation.

I want to bring up another point: tooltips. I read a lengthy article about this topic a few days ago. It was about another game but the problem discussed is true to GC4, too.

The problem is: what information should be presented at screen (first level) and what information should be given via tooltips (second level).

In my opinion, GC4 has many information at second level which should be at first level. Examples:

- citizens at planetary management screen
- citizens during loading ships (military and civilian)
- policies
- choosing a gouverneur
- information about ships in a fleet - which ships are damaged? Where are special modules?

My guess is that designers tend to like cool and polished screens but players like more information at first level (of course it is not so black/white...). Escpecially if we talk about complex games like GC4.

A second point would be multipliers. What you did with approval was great. It really matters. But you put so many things in the same multiplier. One example you could do:

- create another multiplier for gouverneurs (like approval). Additionally let citizens buff the gouverneur (advisors). In this way you had another strong multiplier that matters. Maybe you had to increase the cost of things and the "result" would be the same but the feeling for the player would be different because there were more meaningful decisions

Greetings and good luck!

I would be happy to help document!

I have played the game many times, and there are still things I don't understand.

cat wait for this update when will be released?

This is really good news! To keep it short, my main questions are these:

- Will there be some changes on how the AI makes fleets? My main "annoyance" with the game is the AI sending small after small fleet, filling the game tiles with lots of units, with the combat becoming too much of a pope-a-mole instead of fleet-vs-fleet fights.

- Will there be some tweaks on how colony upgrades work? Especially them being permanent. Many were quite situational, and many times I didn't pick any waiting for the resource gathering ones to unlock. I believe that a cooldown or heavy cost increase for switching them can work better. Also it would be nice for resource gathering to be possible from the get go the same as capitals, especially since you can "cheat" by assigning a governor, building the extractor, and removing the governor. The process is more of annoyance than a true limit, and I think it would be nice to invest in extractors early on on small planets.

Thanks, and I can't wait to give the game another try after these changes

I... don't really care for the "fighters are a superweapon against capital ships". Star Wars gets away with it because no one can hit the broad side of a barn at point-blank range, but the idea that fighters are way more nimble runs up against it being about how quickly the ship's weapons can track and target them - which is independent of the size of the ship that they're mounted on.

Which leads me to think that maybe a better option - and a softer version of the idea of user-defined targeting - would be to consider having weapon techs consider the mission profile of a weapon system, not just whether it's a beam, missile, or kinetic type. Somewhat like MoO's heavy mount and point defense modifications, you might have anti-capital, anti-fighter, etc, weapon systems that are really good at dealing with that specific type of target but much less effective otherwise.

Not only does this mean that the weapon profile determines what the ship is good against (fighters attacking a capital ship are only good against it if they have anti-capital weapons and the capital ship has little to nothing in the way of anti-fighter weapons - and other fighters are a real hazard to the attacking fighters if they have anti-fighter weapons instead), but it can be used to determine target priority, which gives the player (or AI, I suppose) some control over their behavior without turning the combats themselves into exercises in targeting micromanagement.

Of course, a well designed ship will probably have a mix of weapon types - a ship whose main job is to shoot down other capital vessels may still have a couple of anti-fighter batteries that engage any fighters that come at it, etc.

(I'm limiting this to just anti-fighter and anti-capital to keep it easy to explain, but there's no reason why weapon systems couldn't be specialized for other tasks too.)

Its great to see combat, invasion and ideology get an overhaul, I also feel diplomacy could do with some attention.

Currently the diplomacy screen shows you the civ's friends and enemies but it doesn't show any info about their trading partners, this would useful if you wanted to use the trade embargo treaty.

Also I think it would be nice some additional options in terms of demands you can make of the other civs such as removing starbases  from within your sphere of influence or hand over colonies/core worlds within your influence (perhaps diplomatic capital could be used here.

Or perhaps a system where grievances can be triggered and they can either converted into demands or denounced in favor of diplomatic capital (Humankind's grievance system is quite good as an example, however it is also tied to a war score system which I recognize might not suit Gal Civ 4).

Also alliances in Gal Civ 4 feel like they are too shallow and provide no benefit outside of the alliance victory, it would be good to see them fleshed out more and given extra depth.

As I said above its great that combat and invasion are getting an overhaul but I think the more peaceful paths to victory should also get some love.

For me there is nothing wrong or broken with Ideology.

It is just not simple as it was in 1,2, & 3.

Spend your time on combat, invasions, and bugs.

Leave what ain't broke (ideology) for GC5. 

Now the Faction System is as useless as nipples on a Boar Hog, could use a long hard look.

I actually tend to agree with you regarding the ideology system, I don't believe it is broken.  It works and is understandable, I just included it as Brad plans on reworking it as he himself isn't happy with its current state.  

Also agree the faction system is not hugely useful (effectively its a dumping ground for your excess leaders late game).  

Was playing a game last night where I managed to get alliances with both civs in my sector.  It took a good bit of effort and it just felt so anticlimactic whether its part of the upcoming update/expansion or not I really feel diplomacy in general needs more depth.

ooh i like that tech idea, i've been playing with that one in my head for a while. Creating a sort of meta properties for techs so they can automatically be associated in a network for adjacency and using simple cyclical graph distance to calculate distance to techs you've already researched. I suppose the one armed bandit approach to extraneous techs would work as an additional zinger too, techs that are just boost techs or esoteric bonuses that appear once a combo of intentionally researched techs have been completed.

Love it! Excited to see what you guys come up with!

Do these engineers you have understand that a stray unit cannot break a siege by its lonesome?  It has to attack the besieging army.  It can't just fly into the planet and halt the entire operation without a shot fired.  As well, reinforcing the besieging fleet should not halt the siege; nor should splitting units away from the siege.  The conflict in the game is supposed to be symbolic of real conflict.  No single soldier ever halted the siege of Stalingrad by sneaking in when the Germans weren't looking.

I get very surprising results in fleet-to-fleet combat as well.  Several enemies with attack strength 1 can defeat a small number of far superior ships in just a few rounds.  Looking at the defense and offense numbers says that should be impossible.

These issues combined have me thinking I've been hoodwinked, paying for a game that was slapped together without thought and remains that way months and months after its release date.

When worlds are colonized, it's not really massive cityscapes.  Those don't develop for decades if not centuries.  Instead it's a few habitable buildings that are very vulnerable to an attack from space.  A single ship targeting life support systems would be absolutely devastating for a colony and lead to a quick surrender.  That being said, Draginol mentioned they are planning on giving planets seige ratings to reduce single ships taking control of planet.

As explained above, damage is rolled between 1 to the actual combat rating.  If my ship has damage equal to 15. It actually does damage between 1 to 15.  Average of 7.  This can lead to frustrating losses, and surprising wins.

Unfortunately we're trained to always believe the estimated outcome.  If the computer tells us we'll win, we expect to win.  We almost always prefer to pick fights where the computer guarantees victory.  If we lose because of bad rolls, we are frustrated because we were told we would win. 

If you want an example of this, think about Risk where you have 10-30 troops vs 1 enemy troop.  You are pretty much guaranteed to win.  However there is an incredibly small chance they will manage to roll above you every time and somehow come out on top.  This can happen as well in GC4 because the system generates damage randomly.