Suggestions for the Melee screen

from Elemental Forums

I would really like some additions to stream line the melee screen for battles.  I would like all these to be available from the melee screen.

  1. Have the ability to turn off weapon and/or death animations to speed up battles.
  2. Have a button/keystroke for the current unit to take 1 turn on it's own.
  3. Show owned shards so we know where our strength areas are.
  4. When giving spell damage estimates, give actual range of values in addition to how it is calculated.  That is for instance instead of showing a damage as 8 (+4 per fire shard), do the actual math with bonuses and number of shards taken into account and give the range of possible outcomes.

Thanks,

Martinsa

5,108 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

The main thing that bothers me about the combat is that if you play with Amarian blood (Pariden race) then it takes a long time to start the battle because each unit has to buff itself. If the devs could make that instant then it would speed things up a bit.

 

The other thing that bothers me is that auto-combat uses mana. Please add a no-mana auto-combat option. 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top


I would really like some additions to stream line the melee screen for battles.  I would like all these to be available from the melee screen.


Have the ability to turn off weapon and/or death animations to speed up battles.
Have a button/keystroke for the current unit to take 1 turn on it's own.
Show owned shards so we know where our strength areas are.
When giving spell damage estimates, give actual range of values in addition to how it is calculated.  That is for instance instead of showing a damage as 8 (+4 per fire shard), do the actual math with bonuses and number of shards taken into account and give the range of possible outcomes.

Thanks,

Martinsa

End of quote

Some sort of additional animation adjustment I agree with.  I forget the spell (Titan's breath or some such).  I used this against a large army, and it takes....a while for the enemy to get back up.  Mostly I don't mind...but it was a battle were I was severely out matched and I had to use all of my mana to get though it...a lot of breathing  :)

Single AI turn.  Not too sure about this, I've never encountered the circumstance where I am going to entrust a turn to the AI but not the battle, so I'm not too clear how useful this is.

Shards - Tooltips - I don't think the shards are that important as much as the tooltips but I can see the reasoning.  If you have a 'fire mage' and a defensive 'earth mage' and it's one or the other's turn and you want to know whether to spend the mana on this guy or is your mana better used on your other mage.  Thing is I don't think it's that crucial once you learn to remember where your shard makeup is.  I do think the tooltips should show a more accurate damage assessment (inclusion of targets defenses isn't required to me, just a baseline...I'll figure out if the troll is going to take more or less damage than the tool-tip indicates.)

 

Edit - autoresolve sans mana - I kinda feel the same way.  I'd hate to have my pack of casters blast away an army of spiders when they are armored to the teeth.  But I have to say, so far, I haven't seen this happen.  I've watched too, because there was times when I needed to teleport or needed my pool over 100 for defending against a large army and have cringed while hitting auto-resolve...but the mana always stayed the same.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dctrjons, reply 2

quoting post
I would really like some additions to stream line the melee screen for battles.  I would like all these to be available from the melee screen.


Have the ability to turn off weapon and/or death animations to speed up battles.
Have a button/keystroke for the current unit to take 1 turn on it's own.
Show owned shards so we know where our strength areas are.
When giving spell damage estimates, give actual range of values in addition to how it is calculated.  That is for instance instead of showing a damage as 8 (+4 per fire shard), do the actual math with bonuses and number of shards taken into account and give the range of possible outcomes.

Thanks,

Martinsa



Some sort of additional animation adjustment I agree with.  I forget the spell (Titan's breath or some such).  I used this against a large army, and it takes....a while for the enemy to get back up.  Mostly I don't mind...but it was a battle were I was severely out matched and I had to use all of my mana to get though it...a lot of breathing 

Single AI turn.  Not too sure about this, I've never encountered the circumstance where I am going to entrust a turn to the AI but not the battle, so I'm not too clear how useful this is.

Shards - Tooltips - I don't think the shards are that important as much as the tooltips but I can see the reasoning.  If you have a 'fire mage' and a defensive 'earth mage' and it's one or the other's turn and you want to know whether to spend the mana on this guy or is your mana better used on your other mage.  Thing is I don't think it's that crucial once you learn to remember where your shard makeup is.  I do think the tooltips should show a more accurate damage assessment (inclusion of targets defenses isn't required to me, just a baseline...I'll figure out if the troll is going to take more or less damage than the tool-tip indicates.)

 

Edit - autoresolve sans mana - I kinda feel the same way.  I'd hate to have my pack of casters blast away an army of spiders when they are armored to the teeth.  But I have to say, so far, I haven't seen this happen.  I've watched too, because there was times when I needed to teleport or needed my pool over 100 for defending against a large army and have cringed while hitting auto-resolve...but the mana always stayed the same.
End of dctrjons's quote

 

The single AI turn is for when I'm perfectly happy with what they are going to do, I just don't want have to try to mess with full blown auto play to have them do it.  I envision something like the "S" key as the short cut.  As I play my left hand is on the keyboard to press either "S" or spacebar to skip and my right is on my mouse to for when I want to do the action.

For the shards, not having to remember the make up is the whole point.  Why not just have the little picture on the top right that shows it like in the main screen?

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Auto-resolve doesn't use mana. If you go into a battle and then let the AI play for you, it does waste lots of mana on buffs that you don't need. 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Show owned shards so we know where our strength areas are.
When giving spell damage estimates, give actual range of values in addition to how it is calculated.  That is for instance instead of showing a damage as 8 (+4 per fire shard), do the actual math with bonuses and number of shards taken into account and give the range of possible outcomes.
End of quote

These are very obvious and good points, I want this too (as long as you can still see the original description of the spell, so you know what it actually scales with.

Then again I would like to see magic scale less with shards, and more with the caster...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej