FreeOrion

In that case, there are a number of different solutions, many of which may be possible as options at game start, for example:

-Some algorithm could be set up to "clump up" as many as possible of a player's combats so that he just does one after another (or as close to this as possible) until all his combats are finished
-Allow players in multiplayer to "vote" on which combat would occur next
-Give an idle player notice that there are X combats remaining before they are needed for a battle
-Rotate player "priority" so that on one turn, player1 resolves all his battles first, then player2, then player3, etc. and then on the next turn player1 drops to lowest priority and rotates back through
-Etc. etc.

In virtually any of them, in the later game when players have fleets all over the place, if they are manually controlling every fight, players will have to expect the game pace to drastically slow down.

Again, it would accelerate things tremendously to overlap and if multiple players are involved in different conflicts they can both conduct their fights simultaneously. I don't know if this is doable from an implementation standpoint of generating two separate combat instances and then returning results to the server post-battle but it might be worth looking into. Anyways that's tangent to the topic.

I also don't think that if one player elects to manually control, that the other should be forced into it. I wouldn't see a need to waste everyone's time in a multiplayer game by kiting around an enemy death fleet with a scout for as long as I possibly could, but there are plenty of "internet heroes" who would. Allow me to just automate the fight and get it over with. I've played enough games with people who use "idiot tactics" in order to frustrate the opposition into quitting and consider it a great victory. If I can automate the fight, then some comedian who wants to kite around my death fleet can do so, while I move on and manually control a more important fight.


Understood.

-Ty.

Edit: Detail, clarity.

Well I think that if
Player 1 chooses Manual (unknown to player 2)
and
Player 2 chooses Auto-resolve (unknown to player 1)

Then I think Player #2 should have the opportunity to reconsider his choice. (since he might have to wait anyways)

The way I would do that is
1. Make the battle Manual if either player chose manual
2. Allow a player to turn the "Manual" over to the AI at any point in the battle (similar to MOO2)..even in the pre setup phase

If there is a limit to the number of manual combats a player can perform then it should work slightly differently, so that a player cannot force another player to auto resolve battles they want to do manually

This thread might be of interest: Picking Battles to Control Manually in Multiplayer

I think it would be useful to have a detailed description and evaluation on how MoO (or other similar turn-based 4x games) dealt with these issues. I never do mulitplayer and don't really know.
No reason to reinvent the wheel. It's a lot more compelling to say "Foo Game did it this way, and i (dis)liked it for the following reasons...", than to say "i think this mechanic that i totally made up will work."

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The cited post was referring to a specific scenario, and wasn't meant to imply that this would be the case in all multiplayer games.

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I don't know of any games where this was an issue.. MoO, MoO2, Master of Magic, etc. didn't have a multiplayer option, and the Civ games, Galciv2, etc., didn't feature tactical combat. Is anyone familiar with a game that included both multiplayer and phased tactical combat?


Already addressed, was a misunderstanding on my part.

-Ty.

No, MoO2 and 3 both had multiplayer -- going by the internet I don't have access to the games at the moment.

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You're correct.. I never played MoO3, but 2 had a multiplayer option which I just tested in hotseat mode.. The turns are separated by player and do not occur simultaneously. I can't speak for online multiplayer as I don't have anyone to test it with right now.

Player 1 has his turn, moves all his fleets, and selects which combats to engage in. Once a fleet has "engaged in combat" it can't be given any further orders that turn.
Player 2 then has his turn, etc. etc.

At the end of all player's turns, it appears that all players take turns resolving combats, regardless of the participants.

-Ty.

I would really, really like to make this work somehow.

One possibility would be to allow Blue to engage in a different combat at the same time Red is scouting around his fleet. If combat is initiated, some possibilities include:

-the Red-Blue combat is frozen until Blue is finished his other combat, at which point Blue can decide whether or not to manually or automatically resolve the combat

-Blue can be immediately notified when the Red-Blue combat is initiated, and decide whether he wants to continue his current combat, or to switch it to auto-resolve and manually control the Red-Blue combat (probably a bad idea, because it forces some implications about the ability to switch between combats in the middle of a quantum)

-Blue's forces are taken care of by the AI (probably also a bad idea)

Another possibility is that Red cannot begin his combat with Blue until Blue is free, even if Blue doesn't need to be present for the first several turns of combat. Blue would presumably be notified of the situation as soon as he detected a Red ship, and would be given the option to auto-resolve or resolve manually.

I would also add that if Blue had a ship with high detection which Red couldn't detect, Red's scouts might accidentally go in range of Blue's detector, and become visible, which would bring Blue into combat.

Also, the flight pattern of a fleet which is not under control of the player should be exactly the same as that of a fleet which is under the control of the player, but has merely been given orders to pass through the system or hold position, as the case may be. This way, Red might think that he is sneakily ambushing Blue, but actually, the Blue has some strong detectors that Red can't detect, perhaps hidden in an asteroid belt or a nebula, and is maneuvering his stealthy ships to take down Red.

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It's a very interesting concept, but I don't see that it's any different than any other combat.

1. If the blue player doesn't detect the red player, then they aren't given the option to engage. So if Red doesn't want to fight, he doesn't have to.

2. If Red wants to fight, Blue is going to have to decide whether he wants to control the battle or not, without knowing what he's up against.

3. Presuming he does go into the fight, Blue will then have to maneuver his ships on the tactical map until he finds Red, or until Red attacks him.

4. Given that there is only so much time in a quantum, Red could concievably kite Blue around and waste time, but only a limited amount of it. If Blue doesn't want to spend time on that tomfoolery, then he could just let the AI take over.

Step 2 is the one you're working to change here.. Saying that Blue won't get this decision until Red actually engages him on the tactical map.. It's interesting but brings up a ton of questions that you could answer a lot easier by saying "Enemy targeting systems have gone active in this system, but we can't detect the ships." at the start of the quantum in the list with all the other combats.

Of your options, I prefer best:


Obviously, this only applies when the player still has "manual combats" left to assign. If your multiplayer game is set up such that you can only control 1 battle per quantum (or more, but they have already been used), it's a moot point, battle would have to be auto-resolved.

-Ty.

Changing step two would most immediate, yes, but it's changing steps 3 and 4 that are my ultimate goal.

Consider 3. I don't think I even have to explain why it's not fun at all. One alternative (to what I'm suggesting) would be to force Red to place at least one of his ships within range of Blue detectors in the ship placement phase. This isn't really a good idea though, because either

-Red gains knowledge of Blue's detection ability based on where he can place his ships, or
-Red's options for placing his ships are based on his knowledge of Blue's detection, meaning that he gets a bonus to ship placement for having incomplete knowledge of Blues forces, which is just silly.

Another alternative would be for Red to be given knowledge of Blue's automatic flight path through the system, and have the option to set his ships up anywhere in the system. When Blue's fleet gets close enough to one of Red's pre-placed ships, the battle begins. This option has an issue though, that if Blue couldn't detect Red's ships on the galaxy map when they were in the same system, he will not be able to detect them on the battle map at any distance unless they start firing their weapons (the exceptions being ships hiding in an asteroid belt, or having some otherwise conditional stealth bonus). This could be solved by having the player explicitly order specific ships to begin firing when Blue is in range, but this would require the player to be able to coordinate such an attack using means other than the basic combat controls, which I feel would require far too many additional distinct commands for the player. It's better if a stealth fleet engaging an enemy fleet can actually happen in combat, using the basic combat commands, instead of adding a bunch of special rules for the scenario. In addition, this alternative has the further problem of assuming that Blue doesn't have a stealthy detector that Red doesn't know about. Ideally, there would be nothing to betray that fact to Red (another reason that all types of encounter should be handled by the same set of rules).

Tactically, it creates a great deal of interest if Red can scout around Blue's unknowing fleets without Blue's knowledge, and likewise if Blue can feign unawareness while actually being fully aware of Red's actions and preparing himself for the ambush.

Another potential problem is that even if Blue can see Red on the galaxy map, he might not be able to detect him from the starlane entry point. This would also lead to annoying issues with combat occurring before one side, or potentially all sides are visible to one another, which may or may not be a bad thing, but definitely needs some thought.

It might be fair in such a situation for Blue to be given a free combat, or at the very least an advance on his combat allowance.

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Alright, I’ve given the matter of Battle Authorization a significant amount of thought, and I’ve come up with something which I feel will allow the interesting tactics I mentioned above without enforcing a lot of special-case rules. I’ve been thinking a fair bit lately about how as much as possible should operate under the same uniform set of rules (I’m actually in favour of having only one victory condition: sole-survivor). This model is the ultimate embodiment of that principal, in terms of the tactical interface.

You’re not going to like it at first, I don’t think (whoever “you” ends up being), but I didn’t come to this conclusion lightly, and as you continue reading through and consider the implications this has for strategic and tactical gameplay, I think you’ll be able to see past the fact that this is a significant departure from a lot of unchallenged assumptions that just about everyone has regarding the role of the tactical interface.

The solution to the problem, which will allow all the strategic and tactical interest I mentioned in my above posts, is this: All action that occurs in a system takes place on the tactical map, under the same rules as ordinary combat, regardless of how many players are present (bear in mind that this doesn’t preclude the possibility of AI resolving system action for you, just that it will always take place on the tactical map).

In other words, a fleet holding position in a system takes place on the tactical map. A fleet moving through the system uncontested happens on the tactical map. A fleet bombarding a completely defenseless planet happens on the tactical map.

... I told you you weren’t going to like it... At any rate, there are obviously certain other aspects of the combat system that need to be addressed in relation to this principle. For starters,


Combat Authorization and When to Fight


I think we have all pretty much agreed that in multiplayer, from the start of the game, there are a set, player-selected number of battles the player can control per quantum.

In this case, there would be a certain number of system actions the player can choose to control per turn (SA points, for clarity, even if it’s a silly name). If the player wanted to manually control his fleet passing through a system for example, because he thought there may be cloaked ships hiding there, he has that option, but it costs an SA point, just like any other system action.

This means that the player also needs to define prioritized goals for each system action, each turn, as if it were a combat. This isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds though, because

- default orders for a fleet which has not moved since last quantum will be identical to the orders which they were given last quantum, and

- systems in which new objects are detected are clearly distinguished - via graphical indicators and list-sorting - from systems in which the situation has not changed at all since last quantum. (“New objects” includes your own forces, since that might make the player re-evaluate what he wants to do in that system. Systems where the player’s forces are the only things that changed however, should be distinguished from systems where objects unowned by the empire have changed/become visible.)

So this means that I don’t actually have to give orders to every single fleet in every single system every single turn - only the ones in which something interesting is actually going on. That is to say, when a fleet enters a system, you give it an order once and don’t even have to think about it, much less click about it, until something new happens in that system to draw attention to it. Thank goodness - I don’t actually have to micromanage every system in which I have a fleet stationed.

Ironically, the big problem with this isn’t in multiplayer, since each player still has a predefined number of SA points (though there is a problem in multiplayer too, and it’s actually very elegantly solved by the same mechanism that solves the single-player problem).

The big problem is in single-player, when the player will be compelled to manually control every single action in case he is engaged by stealthy forces.

The solution to this is a special rule for a situation in which a fleet is assaulted by stealthy forces which were not previously known to be in the system (I know I said that this system avoids special-case rules, but this is a rule for manual control of combat, not for strategic or tactical gameplay itself, so it doesn’t count at all, in any way, as the kind of special rule I was talking about earlier). Since there are no other players, and therefore nobody to keep waiting, it is entirely feasible for a given system action to occur automatically until forces belonging to a new empire (“new” meaning “not previously known to be present in the system") are detected, at which point [edit] the combat in which the new empire is detected [/edit] is paused, and brought to the player’s attention [edit] as soon as he is finished with his current combat [/edit], so that he can re-evaluate whether or not he wants to continue auto-resolution.

Usually, the player will choose to manually control the battle for at least a few turns, to see if there are more cloaked vessels, destroy the vessels he can detect, and try to discern any additional threat, then leave the rest of the system action to the AI (which should be possible at any time, in single-player or multi-player).

Note that if all assets (known to the player’s empire) belonging to a particular empire are destroyed, or leave combat through a starlane, that empire is considered to no longer be a part of the combat, and if any new ships belonging to that empire become visible, the player is notified once again (because that empire qualifies as a “new” empire), and can go back into the combat in question to re-evaluate the situation.

Now, there is a problem that needs to be solved in multi-player as well: Players are compelled to use all of their SA points, even if it’s totally unnecessary, just in case something important happens in one of the random system actions they chose that they should be aware of. This leads to maxed out combat time, every turn, on boring non-actions. Not fun. The surprisingly elegant solution to this is to simply apply the above rule in cases where the player who detects a “new” empire in a system still has some remaining SA points. This will effectively discourage the player from using up all of his system actions on random junk like passing through an empty system, because if he does waste them like that, he actually won’t be able to control his fleets while they are really being intercepted by cloaked ships. In essence, it actually encourages to player to save his SA points in case something comes up, which will end up decreasing total combat time per turn. (Edit: It's better if the combat manager works so that the player who is alerted of the new presence can be brought into the battle at any time, since he won't be in a combat when that can happen /edit)

In addition, the amount of time spent by the intercepting player in pause while waiting for the intercepted player to become available would be no greater, and in fact less that the amount of time he would have had to spend waiting around before the combat even started anyway, if the intercepted player had to be in the combat from the beginning (edit: should that player choose to manually resolve the combat. If he would have just auto-resolved, this actually does take more time. However, it is still preferable that this situation never come up, due to good combat scheduling /edit). Thank goodness once again - players won’t actually be spending any more time in combat than they would have otherwise; they’ll actually be spending less time in combat, because part of the combat between two empires can occur while one of them is engaged in another battle.

Presumably, this rule would also be applied if there was no set system action per turn limit in a multi-player game, ie all players have infinite SA points.


Battle Quanta (or Action Quanta, perhaps?)


On each Battle Quantum in which something is detected to have changed, the player is taken to the screen with the big list of all systems in which he currently has forces. As I’ve explained, no extra thought or clicking is given to the systems in which there is nothing new to report. What happens though, when there are systems in which the player could potentially take action, but nothing has changed which the player can detect?

Obviously, not all the quanta can just be auto-end-turned through just because there are no combats. But 9 out of 10 can be. If there is nothing which has changed in a system in the first quantum, the player can just click “continue”, and the quanta will auto-end-turn until something new is detected. If the player doesn’t want to do anything, this totals to a single extra thought and a single extra click (has anything changed? No. Continue). If the player does want to do something, well, he has the opportunity to do so, as he should.

Should the player, for whatever reason, want to take a system action in a different battle quantum (for example, reinforcements will be arriving the following quantum, and he wants to start the assault before they arrive, but not so long after that they can’t give timely reinforcement), but no new forces will be arriving in the system that quantum (and therefore the auto-end-turn would just roll by it, if nothing is detected in that quantum), he has the option to click “continue to quantum X” instead of plain old “continue”, in which case auto-end-turn would roll by until either something new is detected, or until the specified quantum came up, whichever happens first. This allows plenty of options for the player without a lot of extra clicks.


So I’ve explained in great detail how my system would work, and in doing so, a lot of the benefits of this system are implicit, but I’d still like to clarify exactly how this will improve the player’s experience:

- Players cannot be arbitrarily drawn into “combat” with an unseen enemy, who chooses not to show himself for the entire combat

- There do not need to be any special rules for colonization, bombardment, dropping troops and spies or the amount of time it takes to pass through a system, since these things are built into the system itself and take place according to exactly the same set of rules as all other in-system action

- Cloaked ships have a more interesting tactical advantage over unaware ships passing through a system, colonizing a planet, etc. since they can choose to engage the ships anywhere on their flight path without having previously alerted the other empire to their presence by summoning the emperor into combat

- No additional time is spent in combat in multi-player games - in fact, less time is spent because it is possible to resolve part of a combat without the presence of one or more of the empires involved

- If the player wants, he can observe the mundane actions of his fleet until he eventually gets tired of the majestic view of his ships flying through a system; it offers potential for a bit of in-character diversion, though the player is by no means compelled for any strategic reason to “waste” (a subjective term) his time in this way


There are probably more advantages that I haven’t thought of, since unifying everything under a single set of rules tends to iron out difficulties before you even know they exist.

At any rate, this is probably a huge digression from everyone’s assumptions about “combat”, but I feel that there are really significant advantages to this system, with no (as far as I can tell) obvious drawbacks, aside from an extra click here and there. Although my knowledge of the 4x space genre is certainly less than complete, I don’t know of any 4X space strategy game that uses this method, so while this would be a bold move for FreeOrion, it would, in my opinion, be an extremely rewarding one.

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I like it.

A Clarification

I'm assuming this applies to manual control of actions only. Which means that All actions (Drop Troops, Colonize, Move to system X) should have some "Auto-resolution" capacity, something you can order during the normal turn. SAs only get used if you decide to take manual, tactical, control... changing an auto-setting shouldn't require a SA (mostly because it does not require that much time.)

Definitely. That's what I was implying by this:

No matter what the player wants to do in the system, he should be able to set his goals and let the AI take care of it, and he should be able to do this for all systems in which he has fleets present, regardless of the limitations on manually controlling system actions in a given multiplayer game.

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I want to make sure I understand this..

Every time you give a fleet an order to do ANYTHING, hold position, bombard, move through a system, etc. etc. it ALWAYS happens on the tactical map, you just don't necessarily have to control it. (Though, you do have to watch it/place units?)

If I'm ordering a fleet to just hold position, and a stealth enemy attacks them, I get alerted to the fact that this has happened, and if I have enough SA left, I can manually take over from the AI at that point.

So.. this doesn't answer the question of "what if I'm involved in another fight at the same time?" I assume then that I can let my other fight auto-resolve and switch to this one? Or let this one auto-resolve and stick with the other. Because either way if I can't switch back and forth between combats, one or the other will have to be auto-resolved, even if I have SA remaining.

The concept is interesting, but I don't see a huge advantage over the vastly simpler "There are cloaked units here but we cannot determine what type." combat description at the start of a quantum. You're adding features that make stealth combat more interesting, but at the cost of forcing the hand of the player and introducing some potentially massively unbalanced strategies for stealth wave attacks. Consider what happens if I engage a player with 3 stealth scouts, one combat turn apart, while that player is already fighting a major battle. He either gets to ignore all my scouts and continue his battle, but if he decides to see what my scouts are up to, his important battle gets auto-resolved for no real gain.

Benefits: allows you to start a battle mid-quantum, and preserves the tactical advantage of stealth units during the engagement part of combat
Disadvantages: forces players to auto-resolve combats in order to deal with one or the other unless he's allowed to switch between combats at will, potentially unbalanced when attacked by multiple stealth units on same turn.

Tbh I'd rather not have the ability to chop up battle quantum even further. You already have the ability to introduce new units to an existing combat via reinforcement between quanta, being able to start a fight 30 seconds into a 1 minute battle quanta isn't enough "cool new functionality" to justify the annoyance of having to constantly switch between battles, or else be forced to allow the AI to take over for many of your battles (depending on the prevalence of stealth and detection levels).

-Ty.