the more i think about it the more i'm not sure if the accuracy and dodge changes will work well. this will give all weapons a good chance of doing near max dmg every hit, with no chance for the opponent to actually dodge anything. it will always hit if accuracy and dodge work for ranges instead of actually hitting or dodging anything. to take out the dodge factor completely for smaller ships, and put everything on defense like that... well it's very unrealistic for one. one reason smaller ships are good and popular in life is because of their ability to dodge and get in close range for good accuracy. i really think that accuracy, dodge, and targeting need more tweaking in order to make combat more realistic and thus easier for players to understand.
If I had my way, miss chances would be removed from the game entirely. We already have a wide randomization through the weapon and defense values going from 1 to max. That already creates a decent amount of uncertainty. Why do we need more?
Further, as far as player understanding, unless the fleet UI is changed, I would bet a lot of people don't even know this mechanic exists. When you click on an enemy fleet, you learn two main things: Its offense and its defense. Its range, accuracy, and dodge are all hidden mechanics, so people aren't considering it in their tactics.
Now in previous GC series, there was an issue where "bigger is always better", and generally you only saw big ships in the late game. However, I feel the new slot design has mitigated that, slot for slot smaller ships are superior to larger ones for the logistics cost (once you get some miniaturization). That's great, it gives smaller ships a solid niche, you don't need dodge chances to make that even stronger.
For me, the biggest areas to improve in combat is to make it faster. GC combat is NOT tactical, not at all, its strategic. Its about fleet positioning, scouting, building fleets to counter other ones. So I don't want complex combat mechanics, I want things clear and simple so I can make these strategic choices. If anything I want combat to move faster:
- I wish there was a threshold where an enemy fleet was so "weak" it cost you no time to kill it, maybe an "overrun" option where I suffer a -75% to my offense/defense but my moves are not insta dropped to 0 and I can still make more moves and attacks. Its annoying to me that a lone ship can still siege my colony so I have to kill it, but it consumes my fleets move unless I spend the effort to break up and rebuild my fleet. I want to bowl over the weak!
- Would love an autokill option for some of my ships. You get to a point where you know the enemy fleets can't kill you, and I would like a sentry mode that was "seek and destroy", and just kept killing ships that got in the area. I don't mind taking the risk that a sudden "super fleet" comes around if it saves me a lot of time and trouble.
