Ok, my first post here... and I start of with a few heavy questions.

First I must say that everything I have read and learned about this game seem to indicate that it will be a fun and interesting experience.

I'm also somewhat surprised that this forum have such low activity, what's up with that?
The game seem quite close to release so I was just surprised, that's all.

I find, that, for a game this close to release there seem to be a rather low amount information available so I wanted to ask a few questions. If your able to answer them that is.


Space combat is full 3D and real-time. Now, I do have a few questions about this. The first being if I will be able to pause the game and give order to my ships in single player mode?
This is important for an old strategy gamer like me that can't handle much stressful input and enjoy a battle at the same time.

Another question is about fleet engagement and the size of them. Are we talking about a few ships a side up to a few dozen ships in bigger battles or hundreds of ships?
I'm not counting fighters as ships in this equation. Personally, I like battles with fewer more important ships, it makes large engagements feel more epic when you follow the exchange of fire between ships or have your fighters swarm an important enemy capital ship etc...

Another question regarding space combat is fleet control and formations. Are we going to need to control every ships movement individually or will there be some formation control option available?
I don't call band boxing ships as formation control here. By formation I mean assigning smaller vessels as escort for a bigger vessel or simply have some form of formation manager where we can create formations that can then be used in combat or some such. Just some info on the control of the fleets would be nice.

In regards to empire management my main concern in any game like this is the one of balance. Most games have a huge problem with the snowball effect. Especially where the acquirement of more systems/planets always is better than keeping things small and specialized. That is, there is hardly any problem of keeping your population happy and there are usually no internal function for presenting the problems of huge empires.
This, I know, usually stems from the fact that Galaxy conquest are usually one of the main goals in sandbox mode and are probably one of the main problem why this is a problem.
So, how is the snowball effect curbed in the game to allow for a multitude of play-styles?

I'm thankful for any insight...

Hi Jorgen!

Thanks for your interest and your questions. We are hard at work on the game and there should be some more information pouring out soon.

There is a function to pause battles at the moment in our build. But we are not sure if we should keep it for the final game. That is up to balancing and should be decided in the testing run.

We have not decided on a specific amount of ships that make up a battle in Legends of Pegasus. All I can say for now is that we are aiming for a more tactical approach to battles than other games. We dont want you to shove 400 ships out there and just fire and forget. You should take good care for your people and your ships and micro-manage them really well.

Formations: Very interesting point! I wonder why nobody has touched upon that yet. We have a pretty cool fleet manager in the game. Basically, you set up a formation and behavior for a specific fleet, let's say "Fleet Alpha". The next time that fleet goes into battle, it will start in that formation and with the behavior you have selected in the fleet manager. Of course, you can still change formations in real-time battle. But you dont have to manage your ships new in each battle, pulling back the support ships behind the line of fire, etc.

Galaxy Management: I see your point here. Of course it is very hard to keep an interesting balance between an easy to manage empire and new challenges. In Legends of Pegasus, you can use a grand-scale approach and for example, set a unified tax rate for your whole empire. That works but it will not be very effective. But you can also micro-manage your colonies and set specific tax bonuses or higher tax rates on each planet to maximize productivity and morale. Moreover, we are using random events to keep you busy. And the research and battles systems give you a lot to do as well.

If you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Many greetings,
Chris

(26-03-2012 08:22 AM)Kalypsochris Wrote:  There is a function to pause battles at the moment in our build. But we are not sure if we should keep it for the final game. That is up to balancing and should be decided in the testing run.

Please retain the pause function for battles. Us slowpokes who play mostly singleplayer campaigns badly need one, even in the rare games where battles aren't ridiculously fast-paced!

(26-03-2012 05:19 PM)Martok Wrote:  

(26-03-2012 08:22 AM)Kalypsochris Wrote:  There is a function to pause battles at the moment in our build. But we are not sure if we should keep it for the final game. That is up to balancing and should be decided in the testing run.

Please retain the pause function for battles. Us slowpokes who play mostly singleplayer campaigns badly need one, even in the rare games where battles aren't ridiculously fast-paced!

I agree.. perhaps if there is multi-player you can have an option to use pause or not, or give people limited pauses, or (timeouts) For single player game play, Keep the pause,. there is no reason to take that out. If it makes the game to easy, id think it should be up to the player to decide.

Perhaps have fun with it.. a little messaged sent to people that pause often.. with humorous sayings..

Most games just disable the pause function for multi-player and I think that is the best solution. Most people that play multiplayer can handle it. People like me can't very well since I'm more of a strategist.

So, I would hope you leave it in for single play but not for multi-play.

(26-03-2012 08:36 PM)Jorgen_CAB Wrote:  Most games just disable the pause function for multi-player and I think that is the best solution. Most people that play multiplayer can handle it. People like me can't very well since I'm more of a strategist.

So, I would hope you leave it in for single play but not for multi-play.

That's what I was thinking of as well. I don't expect to be able to pause battles in MP matches, just in singleplayer.

there should be a multiplayer pause though.. People do have RL kick in from time to time.. so a simple accept box could work..

Hey, i got a phone call, pause for a min..

Sure np man..



though i still have no issues if people wanted to use pause in MP if both sides agreed. There could be an auto pause, perhaps ever 2 mins the game pauses, Or set that up to 5 or 10.. there are so many ways you can go about this


Also what about over all game speed? I wouldn't mind seeing settings especially for single player. Though i just hope for MP they wouldn't go to fast. I hate it in RTS, when the common setting becomes Fastest, (aka starcraft) and really just ruins the micro.

Some people like a longer slower game.. I really hope we have this option for all us slow old people that really like to think about our next move.

Hello,

A few questions about this one

Quote:Formations: Very interesting point! I wonder why nobody has touched upon that yet. We have a pretty cool fleet manager in the game. Basically, you set up a formation and behavior for a specific fleet, let's say "Fleet Alpha". The next time that fleet goes into battle, it will start in that formation and with the behavior you have selected in the fleet manager. Of course, you can still change formations in real-time battle. But you dont have to manage your ships new in each battle, pulling back the support ships behind the line of fire, etc.

Can we give mission orders to specific ships. I'll make my self clear with an exemple :

Lest's imagine that we have in our fleet destroyers fregates and some big guns such as cruisers, dreadnaughts or carriers.

Making open attack without weakening the opposing fleet will be suicide but weakaning your own fleet will be a suicide as well. Can we set lets say frigates as medium to close range support for carriers and cruisers (defense against bombers and torpedos) and set destroyers to harass the enemy fleet on their flanks and preparing the big guns for a devastating blow. What I mean is can we devide fleet in groups and set a mission for each group while in combat. This allows us to focus more on the big picture while still micromanaging the units.

Thank you