A few observations/suggestions

There’s a different between add/improve a game to change the game overall from the original purpose, which will be it in this case.

It have nothing to do that people do not want it etc. - It’s an objective and rational perspective on how the game industry works. What I see from people who is “pro-change” regarding GSB gets all emotionally, but they forget how things work. I’m all for the changes in GSB2 not in GSB, because I know it wouldn’t happen (check my previous reasons why).

You seem to be irrationally hung up on that your opinion is objective and rational whereas people who differ are emotional. I guess there is no point in arguing it with you.

The point is, you are asking for real-time interaction for your units during battle in a game which wasn’t designed with that in mind. It was created with the sole purpose of creating a wide variety of fleets to send them to battle and [size=120]watch[/size] the carnage.

Cliffski wasn’t thinking of making a RTS with cool ships when he did this game. The “I am not able to interact with my ships mid-battle” problem some people have is a feature of the game which makes it more unique. When I bought GSB I didn’t want to buy another Starcraft with spaceships (sorry for the comparison, GSB breaks the “law” of having only 3 factions most strategy games unfortunately follow).

Hell, if you gave this game mid-battle interaction it would be another goddamn shooter. You can’t give RTI as an option always or you may break the game and possibly what makes it fun. You can create a game with situations with control or without control but not both options fully working in the same situation. Or you have control with inexistent or limited automatic AI or you have advanced customizable AI with no player control. Is stupid giving the possibility of complex AI programing to the player for his units when he can just right click where he wants them to go and what he wants them to attack real-time.

And even if there was this feature avaiable for GSB it would need some major changes (fix enemy AI, rework difficulty in scenarios and change the challenges to be real-time or something to keep them being so) which I think Cliffski would never be able to do because he is already working on his next game. I even doubt there will be many more updates for GSB.

But, the fact that it’s something it was never planned for GSB 1 doesn’t mean that GSB 2 couldn’t be real-time, as Thalic has said. I know Cliffski reads the suggestions forum and it’s possible he may have this feature in mind for future games. Or even he may give a try to experiment with situations with both possibilities, that is what I like about indie developers.

I’ve only bothered to write this post because I’m starting to see a growing quantity of people who seem obstinated to change how GSB was originally created. I don’t want to stop seeing suggestions which, despite many could be unlikely to happen in GSB, could benefit how future games by positech could be. I only dislike how some people are reacting when other forum members point out that the game was made like this. I don’t expect to change anything with this little wall of text but I needed to write my opinion about the topic.

I agree with SirJamon, real-time interaction (in addition to being outside of the spirit of the game as developed) would introduce a cascade of other things that have to be changed. As minimum I can think of:

  • An AI rewrite to make it react to (possibly very frequent and, given human players, unpredictable) mid-battle order changes.
  • A thorough code review to remove lazy calculations where the engine pre-calculates things (a sensible technique in a game like this and it can be really hard to track down such things).
  • An expansion of the user interaction capabilities.
  • A whole range of new orders and related options (people will expect at least waypointing and dynamic grouping/formations).
  • Throw challenges out the window because pre-defined fleet and orders versus real-time control has a very predictable and boring endpoint.
  • Rebalancing of all ships and modules, especially the weapons.
  • Many more months of testing to make sure the functionality works as expected (especially as it has been wedged into a game that wasn’t designed for it), and to account for players breaking the simulation in new and interesting ways.
  • Listen to players forever asking for multiplayer now that it’s interactive. After all, the only thing Cliff has to do is add some network code, right?

After all that, someone can’t just play without interaction, as 1) the enemy AI is going to be much more intelligent than pre-defined orders, and 2) the ships and modules have been rebalanced to account for player control.

In fact, the pre-battle orders might as well be taken out, as most interactive players are going to complain that they have an extra screen to click through when they’re just going to give orders in the battle anyway.

I’m sorry, but for a suggestion forum, the only thing I’m hearing in hear is that the game is just fine the way it is, which makes a pretty loud statement.

It had potential, but I’m over it.

No.
They’re saying the game is fine without direct interaction, which is a core aspect of the gameplay, and they’re actually supporting their arguments.

You’re just prone to unnecessary histrionics.

You’re missing the difference between “fine as it is” and “infeasible to implement the feature you want”. Also, yes, I think it’s fine as it is :wink:

Lol I sure hope this doesn’t turn into yet another time management game. I can’t play games that require 200 clicks per minute.

Well it’s sort of like that as is on the challenger’s side.