I recommend playing Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. The space battles in that remind me of sea battles (The earlier part of the game anyway). That game actually inspires me, and I think that if stardock actually created a new empire building game, they could include kind of a zoom in function similar to that of Impeirum Galactica II, but use Nexus intense space battles

NO, NO, NO. AUTO BATTLES ALL THE WAY! Small little tactical battles are dumb.

i thought the ship battles in ST-THG where not all bad (specailly if graphics were up to date) . also if anyone has played the imperial galactic 3 demo (before it changed to NEXUS) was such a great way to have battles, the way the ships slowly manoverd and the nice affects as the sheilds took damage, i think a less sophisticated version of this would be good (just a watchin one so the main focus is kept on the bigger view)

I recall ST BotF space battles as pretty cool thou crappy graphics, but that was the sign of the times. I have some StarTrek game at home I played a bit thats less like a strategy game, more adventure, but it has good ship to ship combat. Its more or less realistic when it comes to most aspects of what sci-fi fans understand as space warfare. You got shields and boardign and tractor beams. Using all kinds of weapons and tryign to outmanuver the opponent, altough on a 2D field (Ships are fully rendered you just cant go up or down). That's a pretty cool space battle for a small scale engadgement. But if I had to control multiple ships that totally wouldnt work.

Yes I played Conquest: frointier wars, really good game IMO, but I am tad weak at micro in RTS since I've come of the advanced age (20+). It's really more for youngsters and their sharper minds. The space battles there where ok thou it's not realistic. I would think that in a realistic battle one would try to deal a spread out damage to disable as many ships as possible. In almost all RTS the idea is opposite where you want to focus on one ship at a time because the ships have the totaly bogus property of 100% functionality no matter how busted up they are. Down to 1% hps and can still fire and move at 100% the rate. Thats the big problem with amost all RTS games. It's not really strategic.

In Moo2 atleast there was loss of functionality as ship took damage. Firing your guns one by one hoping the crutial system is damaged like the targeting computer or engines and spreading the fire out made it more of a strategicly realistic game. Altough the taking of turns between players took away more realism. Still it was pretty good. Thou it wasnt the only game where the ship suffered functionality problems due to damage during battle, few other did to. Off the top of my head I can name space empires. But there you didnt have all the components of ship to ship combat, the game mainly lacked boarding.

Overall Moo2 had most of the thigns you would expect and more. It had fighters, tractors, beam weapons, projectile weapons, missles, energy missles, assualt shuttles(boarding), transporters(boarding), shields (with shield arcs), engine damage, self destruct, armor, other kinds of system damage, captins and crews, and bombs to mention the few. Plus a bunch of stuff you might not expect. Makes for very complex space battle, thou not most visually appealing. It is still ok graphically for its functionality.

As far as Battlestar, I dotn want to mix tv into it. But the new one has space combat very simular to Space: Above and Beyond. Where there are no shields, and there's a lot of pilot twitch involved.

I think he stated player sets his/her own angle

I think that in vastnes of space having good sensors and detection systems is of the great importance, as well as cloaking devices. So battles could resemble to those of submarines. And when two big fleets meet, that would look more like sea battle

i also think space battles would follow a similar path as naval battles (since both have a very similar way of fighting, i think like modern warfare and the battles of WW2 that big ships would play a big role but one of the most important roles would be smaller more nimble fighters (which i think one of the best ships u should be able to buy instead of a bigbattle ship would be a large carrier. one last note, my history is rough but wasnt midway won with a couple of small errors which lead to the destruction of japans main carriers

well seein by the time we make advance space flight and even meet an agressive race, then tech would probably get so advance that we could fly drones with brain waves and i think our tech would be so diffrent that the basic principles we take for granted . but i think for time being we should keep things more limited and i dare say ' down to earth'
for example when u were talkin about tech and concepts changin by the day, i think missles would become obsolete quite quickly , such as most carrier now have chain guns on them which can shoot down so i think a weapon much quicker would need to be used (or one that cant be shot down) . also a last question, wats the difference between a missle and a torpedo

Has anyone read the book "Risen Empire" and "Killing of Worlds?"

The battles in this book were very interesting.

The major space battle was between a Risen frigate (the Lynx) and a Rix battlecruiser. The objective of the Risen was to blow up the Rix's communication array, the Rix objective was to keep their comm set alive and kill the Risen.

The usual routine of battle is each ship releases a fleet of drones. In the first stage, the drones fight each other. In the second stage, the drones fight the capital ships. In the third stage, the capital ships fight each other.

It started with each ship releasing thousands of tiny drone craft. The Risen 'sandcasters' created a "minefield" of tiny shards of diamond. When you're approaching lightspeed, they can do serious damage. The Rix 'flockers,' finger-sized drone missiles, negating this by flying in a column through the sand. Eight of them hit the Lynx and severely damaged it. Next, the 'ramscatters' of the Risen began attacking the Rix ship. Black-coloured (and thereby nearly impossible to see) 'blackbodies' defended the Rix ship. After some battle, and some laser and railgun fire at long range between the two ships, a 'sandcaster' released its payload on the Rix comm array.

This might not be appropriate for Gal Civ 2. Any comments?

well the battle yiou were talkin about sounds quite plausable, but i think its more fun to see ur ships fire the crap out of each other

At the moment there is no tactical withdrawal feature, fights are to the death.

It's been suggested before though so you never know, it may yet happen. One previous suggestion was to link it to crew experience levels, a more experienced crew having a higher chance to escape than a rookie crew, who would basically be dead meat.

If we're talking realism... Dog fights in space would probably be impossible. Space combat in reality would probably be more like a naval battle with huge ships lobbing bombs at one another.

well actually not earth-like dog fights but actually you can have dog fights in space just not as Safe... (IE:your ship blows up you dead on earth Plane blows up you got a chance to surrvive fall into the ocean then get picked up by enemy then they rape you to death lest its a chance...)

Hmmm...I think you have things backwards. Evil might retreat without any thought for losses such as planets and population while good might sacrifice itself for the greater good of protecting the population. That being said, I think tying morality to the ability to retreat is not very good idea IMHO.