The Future for SE IV? Does it have one?

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by klausD:

But if the battle was bigger, it was a real horror to keep oversight of who did what and when. So I think an impulse system could be fine, but just if you have a few ships (or fleet formations without the option to split them down to single ships).

With the computer keeping track, it would be pretty simple. Like I wrote, every impulses movement phase the units you could move that impulse would be highlighted, ever impulses fire phase the units which could fire that impulse would be highlighted. Just click any highlighted one and give it an order, click "end orders" when you've done all the ones you want to do.

Originally posted by klausD:

BTW: GDW`s "Invasion Earth" was a great game. I liked it too (also 5th frontier war and Imperium/dark nebula - from the series) But again I think to implement a similar system for SE5 would be too complex. Just imagine how long an invasion earth like combat would Last. And then multiply it with the amount of invasions one strategic turn in SE4 could theoretically have.

Well, I would probably limit the number of tactical turns in a ground combat, as SEIV does now with a space combat, except just have the battle carry over into the next turn. I forget the time scale of Invasion Earth, but I'm pretty sure the whole game took several months of in-game time. Also, that was an invasion by a major race of a major race's homeworld. The typical invasion would be smaller. IE is the general idea of what I'd like to see ideally, though. 5th Frontier War would also be an interesting basic concept if you don't want to deal with planetary maps. Either way, my ideal would be for units to be designed in a simplified form of what is used in scenario creation for Norm Kroger's OPART series and the "equipments" assigned to the units being what you design like "troops" in SEIV.

Originally posted by klausD:

Simple Manoevring rules could be:
turning 90 Degree: a ship has to travel at least one square before turning 90 degree. If a ship has advanced manoevre it can turn without traveling one square. If a ship has a certain size and is not very manoevrable it has to travel at least X squares before turning. thats it.

Ever play Starfire or Starfleet Battles? Starfire was originally designed by the same guy that did Starfleet Battles as a simplified system (as compared to SFB) in which battles could be fought with fairly large fleets and you could design your own ships. The SE series was heavily influenced on Starfire (more obvious in SEIII than SEIV, though). The concept you describe was in both as "turn modes". A ship's turn mode is how many hexes (or squares in SEIV) it has to travel in a straight line befoure it can turn by 1 hex side. In SFB a ship has a speed at any given time which determines the column it uses on the impulse chart (in which every impulse has a row that tells you whether a ship moving that speed moves that impulse) and it's turn mode varies according ots speed, with smaller/more manueverable ships have a smaller turn mode than big ones at any given speed. SF simplified this by having every ship move its max speed but able to "move" during an impulse by expending a movement point in place (which counts toward its turn mode), and giving each ship the same turn mode at all speeds. Bigger ships also have bigger turn modes in SF, but "Advanced Manuevering" can reduce it by 1. SF did not really use the same sort of impulse system as SFB, but was readily adaptable to do so.

As an aside, turn modes would not work so well with a square grid. They'd really need to go hexagonal.

Originally posted by klausD:

A ship designer has only the option to make bigger ships (he has not to, because dreadnoughts could also occupy just one square as it is in SE4) and to pre-define the squares they occupy during the design - but with the same graphical quality as now.

The fact that you can't stack ships in SEIV is a simplification. In SF you could. The point is that one square on the tactical map is still a whole lot of space. No ship really "fills" the square it occuppies, much less hangs over into multiple squares. Not even stars and gas giants overflow their square.