SE5 - Strategies

[Renegade 13]

People have mentioned retreat being an option. While I like this idea, there is one problem. Does anyone else remember how retreat is SEIII worked? Often, an enemy colony ship or transport could run off the end of the map every single time you attacked it. This became annoying, because the only way to destroy that ship was to push it into the corner of the system map, and block (with other ships) the 3 possible escape routes, so they could not retreat from the combat.

If there is to be a retreat option in combat, my request would be to have it so situations such as the one described above can not occur. Unfortunately, I'm not at all sure how that would be implemented!

[Fyron]

Make it so that you can only retreat if either:

1) You move faster than all of the enemy warships. You should always be able to run away if you are faster.

2) You mill about at the edge of the map for 10 turns without being fired at. If you are slower, but the enemy is not chasing you down, why can you not just continue on your merry way? Or, if your warships set out to engage the enemy warships so that the non-combatants can get away, why should this not be allowable? There are many realistic situations in which this occurs. Naturally, this option will require making the AI smart enough to send at least one warship against each fleeing enemy non-combatant if there are no enemy warships, or only sending ships after fleeing non-combatants if there are enough warships to devote to crushing the enemy fleet.

[Instar]

Im a fan of more complex strategies myself, like setting up flanking or whatever. Scriptable AI would be great though, it would make things tougher to mod maybe, but it'd be nice to have.

[Thermodyne]

"People have mentioned retreat being an option. While I like this idea, there is one problem. Does anyone else remember how retreat is SEIII worked?"

It was a good option for getting past warp point defences too

[Master Belisarius]

"People have mentioned retreat being an option. While I like this idea, there is one problem. Does anyone else remember how retreat is SEIII worked?"

It was a good option for getting past warp point defences too

Exactly my friend! Always I have considered the tricks around the SE3's retreat, as a feature! Not a bug or problem!

[Azselendor]

I'm sure this has been mentioned already, but how about being able to draw out generic strategies like a football game plan. This way, in strategic combat, a player can still hold some control over thier fleet.

Perhaps a 'fog of war' option for combat too.

[Paul1980au]

how would you work with a fog of war option in combat - you would have to factor in cloaking levels, scanners, computer tech levels, defensive bonuses - movement ability - other special tech.

It sounds interesting but perhaps fog of war is better kept to the actual empire level part of the game - the overhead manangement part.

[Raging Deadstar]

I think all these stratergy suggestions are great and all but I think we really need to keep things simple with the option of customisation. We might be "veterans" of the Space Empires but new players probably don't want to be swamped in options.

Also A better Combat Simulator to test them out would be a start.

[FLX]

That's true, i miss a damages report at the combat simulator. Something like the log's combat report would be much more usefull than just knowing the units you have lost

[dogscoff]

I would dearly love to see the retrerat option brought back, but the SEIII model would need some improvement:

Make it so that you can only retreat if either:
1) You move faster than all of the enemy warships. You should always be able to run away if you are faster.

Agreed, with a few modifications:
You can only retreat if you are faster than any enemy warships AND you are not in any enemy firing range AND you are at the edge of the map/not hemmed in by enemy ships. This Last clause might be hard to code, so instead of having a specific "retreat" button which may or may not be available at any given time, I have another suggestion- a "run like hell" button:

2) You mill about at the edge of the map for 10 turns without being fired at.

A lot of the current complaints about combat (ships getting stuck in corners etc) could be solved simply by making the combat arena much much bigger. In fact, a kind of de-facto retreat option could be supplied by simply making the combat map so big that any ship fast enough to outrun enemy pursuers has the opportunity to do just that. The map would have to be at least twice as big as the fastest conceivable ship could possibly travel in the given amount of combat turns, added to twice the range of the longest-range weapon. Plus one. Better yet, make the size of the combat map moddable, and that way we can mod our own retreat options in and out as we see fit. in the event of such a retreat the two forces would remain in the same sector after combat, but as long as the game is tweaked so that combat isn't automatically triggered again and again, this shouldn't cause a problem.

However my biggest gripe with the retreat option was retreating through warp points- in SEIII you used to be able to go into combat at a warp point, then retreat immediately, before the enemy's ships and bases can fire on you. Next turn, you just move freely through the warp point, no matter how heavily fortified it may be. You can pull a similar trick in se4 if the enemy's forces are only static ones, by simply hanging around beyond the range of their guns until combat is over.
Given the fact that SE4 is completely built around warp points, and almost all SE strategy revolves around controlling chokepoints, this is not a Good Thing.
What I'm sayig is, if the retreat option is brought back (and even if it isn't, come to think about it) then you should ONLY be able to pass through a warp point if (A) there are no (visible) hostile forces in the sector OR (B) you can go into tactical or strategic combat and actually defeat/evade the enemy to fly your ship(s) into the warp point.