Battle Behavior - "Retreat" and "Hold at maximum weapon range"

from GalCiv3 Forums

So I guess my first question is will there ever be a "role" or some other sort of pre-defined behaviour that will allow ships to retreat if a battle gets too hot?  I realize that retreat is not currently implemented (and wasn't in Galciv2 either) though I've never been able to figure out why.

 

Second question may be a bit more easy to implement.  I'm curious if there will ever be a ship role that allows, say a missile ship, to hold at maximum weapon range and pound an opponent with shorter range weapon without closing the range.  I could see this implemented as a "kiting" behavior that keeps the range open and a hold at range that brings the ship to its maximum weapon range and stops (but doesn't actively keep the range open).

 

Thoughts?

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Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I'm pretty certain the answer to your first question is a simple NO... they said something about that recently and they did not want ships able to retreat since it would make it difficult to kill of enemy fleets that just bounces of you. I can't say I agree with that decision because you can include mechanics that dynamically fixes it, but I don't think it will ever happen.

 

On the second question I'm pretty certain we will see some added features to the battle viewer in coming patches and in expansions. The current one is very rudimentary and do have some glaring flaws even if it works as intended and is functional.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


So I guess my first question is will there ever be a "role" or some other sort of pre-defined behaviour that will allow ships to retreat if a battle gets too hot?  I realize that retreat is not currently implemented (and wasn't in Galciv2 either) though I've never been able to figure out why.

Because chasing down retreating enemies and grinding them down for several turns is a pain, especially when on larger maps you might end up with dozens of battles every turn.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

"Running battles" are historically legitimate.

Why shouldn't it be a factor?

Also, if my ships have better engines, and inferior weapons/defenses, why exactly am I sticking around to die?

"Jumping to hyperdrive" and "jumping to warp" are both longstanding canonical options.

Why do we move into the future, lose options, and get dumber?

Sigh.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I guess it is just a design decision we have to live with. I would also prefer if ships could retreat from a battle or even flee before a battle begins.

 

Now, there are no such mechanics and I can live with it. I just have to use my sensor scouts to make sure I only engage in battles of my own choosing, that is easy enough.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Well as you can infer from watching the battleviewer, ship battles are fought at sub-light speeds.  So here are some reasons why ships can't flee from battles:

 

1) Firing up your faster than light drives takes several hours.  Since most of the ships hyperspace drives are some form of advanced and complicated nuclear engines, it is easy to imagine that it could takes hours or at least many minutes to start them up (since many of our current "low tech" nuclear power plants do).  Obviously when enemy ships are blasting away at you, you don't have several hours to get your engines running to jump away with ftl travel...

 

2) Calculating ftl travel jumps is a tricky business.  All of the localized gravitational disturbances (ie: all the ships flying around in combat) makes it impossible to calculate a hyperspace jump with any chance of success.  So rather than a 100% chance to obliterate themselves by jumping straight into some sort of space debris, pretty much all spaceship crews would rather take their chances with getting to an escape pod as their ship blows up in combat.

 

3) Pick any number of creative choices you can think of for yourself.  This is all (mostly) fantasy anyways, so just let the right side of your brain come up with whatever reason it wants as to why ships can't flee from space battles :P