Alternate Combat Mode/Autoresolve?

[Professor Paul1290]

It's not exactly optimal and you can't avoid it 100%, but past early game you can sort of avoid combat already most of the time.

I can't say I've tried a "no combat" game intentionally before mind you, but there have been pretty long stretches of ordinary play where I did not do combat.

[BobTheJanitor]

You'll end up pretty starved for influence and credits doing no combat missions. Dispatches are veeeeeeeeeeeery slow ways to gain influence with a race, and the credit rewards are pretty paltry when compared to what you can rack up with just a few simple kill missions. I'd say it's nearly impossible, but I know this group of players and someone would likely prove me wrong by doing it on the highest difficulty level tomorrow.

[kosmoface]

After having more tinme withe the game, I think combat is a-okay. In fact I didn't think I would like it much after the first fights, but then... I pretty much like it now. Short enough to not throw you off and a nice distraction from the solar map flow.

Just what Misery said, having to make tactical decisions while in combat... this has to be more fleshed out. I really like that you can't die anymore while in combat.

[Khiseborn]

Generally I don't like to chime in with my ideas on games, having played ai wars for a good year and a half I felt no need to put my two cents into the matter. However I do not wish to see the battle system of TLF buried under an auto-resolve option when it has so much potential to become unique and awesome. In the start of the game the battles are quite nice and the effects of each battle are very rewarding. Yet as the game approaches the mid point, our hydra's flagship starts to get overwhelmed in the battle and kiting tactics are more necessary. Towards end game the hydra flagships just seems worthless to me as even with the best researches i find that one stray weapon shot takes  my shields down to nothing and damages my hull by 10%. Also each battle consists of 10-20 enemy ships but defeating them only destroys 2-4 of the enemies armadas when they have over 100 total so the battles turn into a repetitive kiting slug fest.

One way of fixing this without resorting to making the Hydra's flagship overpowered is to give the hydra a way of creating its own armadas via buying goons or maybe manufacturing them via some hidden moonbase. These armadas could then join in the battles with the flagship if the player choices but would be uncontrollable like ally ships. These armadas could also have scaling creation costs to limit the player from creating a huge fighting force like the other races. One could also outsource these armadas to other races for influence points or to defend underdog races until they can get back on their feet.

I know we have the squadrons to aid the flagship in battle but they are weak, limited in deployments per battle, and very stupid in that they blindly run into weapon fire with no aspect of self preservation. It would be nice to have some form of hydra moonbase where one could build GI class ships or maybe our own planetcrackers which of course would make the other races mad and force you to have to spend solar time protecting the base or risk losing your investment.

[SuperCactus]

I feel like this is actually the progression in the game, you begin as a relatively overpowered mercenary, at this point you can take on armadas easily, before progressively getting overwhelmed by the other races development which forces you to play the game in a more cloack and dagger fashion. In my opinion the mid-end game is not meant for you to have a real military impact on large scale wars (when you fight in wars it is for credits and influence -----> manipulation  ), when the time comes you need to play the politics like hell to achieve victory, the end game is about: "you only get out of it what you put in it". If you planned good early on it works like a charm. There's no need for you to have a huge fleet, the federation can already have one if you made the good choices and didn't have some catastrophic early play or ultra hard playthrough (It happens sometimes, I have been surprised by some underdog who ended up becoming a huge monster devouring the whole system  , but now I watch them!). Actually even in the end game you can still win the fights by being careful and using your subsystems ability to destroy incoming shots on activation (I talk about normal combat difficulty here, I haven't tried harder combat modes by now so I don't know how hard this can become.).

[Draco18s]

To what degree does the player actually need to participate in the extended combats to play the game, I wonder? For example, has anyone tried a 'no combat' game where you only manipulate events via strategy-mode things plus, say, tech theft and spacefaring tech drop missions?

I'm currently running a do-nothing game.  Effectively observer mode without having actually checked observer mode.  Sadly the game only ran for 9 years overnight before I was attacked by assassins (had to resolve that this morning) so that game will probably run for a while.

Shame there's no fastforward / x2 buttons when not on dispatches.

[NichG]

It does seem like this is hardest to do in the early game, where combats don't get tedious, and becomes easier later on, so at least the structure of it nicely dovetails with that. It seems from my own playthrough though that earning credits in the late game is still best done by going to some homeworld with massive defense fleets and just running through dozens of attacks on their armada; the x3 multiplier means you can get ~4k credits per fight, which basically trumps almost every other option I've found to earn credits. When you're trying to build up 50k to ask the Skylaxians to get someone into the Federation, it can seem like this sort of grinding is basically what you should be doing, but it doesn't really make logical sense. It also means that you can raise very large amounts of credits over the course of a short time, given some conflict like that to meddle in, which may or may not be a good thing for strategic depth.

I think honestly autoresolve doesn't mesh with the way the game is currently working, especially with Permadeath from fights disabled by default. Rather, its probably best to just increase the degree to which you can actually accomplish things without personally doing all the fighting - that means more non-combat ways to score reasonable credit income, non-combat ways to influence enemy fleets, etc.

[Misery]

It does seem like this is hardest to do in the early game, where combats don't get tedious, and becomes easier later on, so at least the structure of it nicely dovetails with that. It seems from my own playthrough though that earning credits in the late game is still best done by going to some homeworld with massive defense fleets and just running through dozens of attacks on their armada; the x3 multiplier means you can get ~4k credits per fight, which basically trumps almost every other option I've found to earn credits. When you're trying to build up 50k to ask the Skylaxians to get someone into the Federation, it can seem like this sort of grinding is basically what you should be doing, but it doesn't really make logical sense. It also means that you can raise very large amounts of credits over the course of a short time, given some conflict like that to meddle in, which may or may not be a good thing for strategic depth.

I think honestly autoresolve doesn't mesh with the way the game is currently working, especially with Permadeath from fights disabled by default. Rather, its probably best to just increase the degree to which you can actually accomplish things without personally doing all the fighting - that means more non-combat ways to score reasonable credit income, non-combat ways to influence enemy fleets, etc.

That though would not solve the problem of the players who simply dont want to do it whatsoever, which is the main point of such an addition.

[casualsax]

I'm currently running a do-nothing game.  Effectively observer mode without having actually checked observer mode.  Sadly the game only ran for 9 years overnight before I was attacked by assassins (had to resolve that this morning) so that game will probably run for a while.

Shame there's no fastforward / x2 buttons when not on dispatches.

That's a great point - is that in Mantis?

[topper]

I'm currently running a do-nothing game.  Effectively observer mode without having actually checked observer mode.  Sadly the game only ran for 9 years overnight before I was attacked by assassins (had to resolve that this morning) so that game will probably run for a while.

Shame there's no fastforward / x2 buttons when not on dispatches.

That's a great point - is that in Mantis?

The reason they removed the fast forward buttons is because you should never be doing nothing. You should always be doing a dispatch if you want to just watch (or be in observer mode). If they add in the fast forward again, it will mislead players into bad strategy.

[GC13]

Yeah. I mean, if nothing else you could improve a planet's economy, get a little bit of credit, and a little bit of influence. Why would you want to do nothing?

[Misery]

Yeah. I mean, if nothing else you could improve a planet's economy, get a little bit of credit, and a little bit of influence. Why would you want to do nothing?

Exactly.

This is pretty much the case with any strategy game.... you should always be doing SOMETHING.  If theres a point where you're literally doing nothing, you;re making yourself less effective/inefficient.   I cant think of one where this really isnt the case, particularly because that'd be pretty crappy game design, really.


If you want to pass a few months just to see if a certain something occurs or how a war ends, find some option that might be helpful... get some quick credits for yourself, build armadas to defend allies, whatever.  There's little reason NOT to.

[Draco18s]

I realize that what I'm doing it intentionally not supposed to be done.  That's kind of why I'm doing it.

[Misery]

I realize that what I'm doing it intentionally not supposed to be done.  That's kind of why I'm doing it.

....considering the game has a proper observer mode, designed to work for exactly that idea, doing it the other way doesnt provide logical reason at all for the existence of such buttons in the normal mode.

If you're in observer mode, then it makes sense to have it.  If you're actually PLAYING the game, there's seriously zero reason to ever fast forward without doing even a totally randomly chosen dispatch. 

If not having it is THAT much of an issue, then by all means, go and post the suggestion and reasons into Mantis, and they may do it. No reason not to, after all, yeah?  But it still just is not really needed at all.

[Draco18s]

It's not that big of a deal, it was just noticeable and made me go "aww."
Not going to worry about it.