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Elouda

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LARGE VERSIONS AVAILABLE ON SOTS II WIKI

Updated 01/12/11 to remove outdated information. New versions coming soon.

Updated 01/11/11 with new versions.

Here's a little reference on tactical combat until the manual is updated to include that stuff.

newtactical101.png


Here's the second installment;

newtactical102.png


Page one of the third one;

newtactical103.png


Also, feel free to reuse and redistribute any of this stuff in any way you want. No need to credit anything, all that matters is getting the information people need to play the game to them.

-------------------------------------------------------

Here are some links to printer friendly (white background) versions of the guides;

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/9589/newtactical101printer.png

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/2888/newtactical102printer.png

http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/6928/newtactical103printer.png
 
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Thanks most helpful. Just another case of the best reference material coming from the players themselves.
 
It like to point out, its possible to make your colors really dark. I made the mistake of making a hiver AI unit black..so they had black icons on the tactical map...and yea......not fair. lol Thanks for the info though!
 
The sad thing is, I think a lot of fans would have happily cooked up some reference material in exchange for beta access or whatever. This took me a few hours, most of it trail and error and digging through the data files. With a little support it would have taken half of that.

As there seems to be a lot of confusion over there about tactical controls, could anyone with access to the Steam forum repost this or link this thread there? I applied for a forum account, but I've been waiting for it to be 'activated' for the better part of a day.

Is there any interest in a chart explaining weapon damage profiles? The 'damage' value in the tech display really does not explain the reality.
 
Is there any interest in a chart explaining weapon damage profiles? The 'damage' value in the tech display really does not explain the reality.

Yes please. I understand that it has a range comparison, I still don't get what the colour and aptitude on the chart means.

Also, every time I start the combat, I have to force fire for the enemy to become hostile, however my ships don't pursue the enemy, nor do they shoot automatically. I can't micromanage several ships to keep short distance with enemy moving fleet while having to click every time for them to fire at something. Meantime they are hostile and clearly shooting back.

What am I doing wrong?
 
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Also, every time I start the combat, I have to force fire for the enemy to become hostile, however my ships don't pursue the enemy, nor do they shoot automatically. I can't micromanage several ships to keep short distance with enemy moving fleet while having to click every time for them to fire at something. Meantime they are hostile and clearly shooting back.

What am I doing wrong?

The automated ship behaviours do not seem to work in the current version. I'm hoping they'll be fixed tommorow, in which case I'll add them to the reference sheet.

If you want the enemy auto hostile, go to diplomacy and then declare, to declare war. Its the only diplomatic option that seems to work.

I'm working on collecting all the info on the various weapon damage profiles, but its a long process, so I'll probably only have it done tommorow.
 
Thanks very much for the reply, I will just spam drones as Morrigi then. As for the weapon profiles, I really just want to understand what the graphical representation is and what those graphs mean, I wouldn't dream of asking someone to compile a completely different representation of the stats.
 
Thanks very much for the reply, I will just spam drones as Morrigi then. As for the weapon profiles, I really just want to understand what the graphical representation is and what those graphs mean, I wouldn't dream of asking someone to compile a completely different representation of the stats.

Drones are unfortunately also non-functional at the moment. Personally I'm finding missiles to do a good job. =D

In short, the graphs represent deviation and damage across range. The yellow section is point blank (ie short), the green effective (ie medium), and red maximum (ie long-extreme) range. The vertical lines at certain points correspond to the stat boxes, which display exact info at those points. There is one for each section.

Weapons fire shots in a cone extending towards the target. Deviation is how far off the target the shot can be, measured in degrees. Lower is better, obviously.

Damage is more complex. Each weapon has a profile of how it will damage the armour of the target ship, so for example one weapon might be;

oxxxxo
oxxxxo
ooxxoo
oooooo

And another could be

ooxxoo
oxxxxo
ooxxoo
oooooo

Where 'x' is damaged armour, and 'o' is undamaged. The upper weapon would be rated at '10' damage most likely, and the lower as '8'. These profiles can change depending on the range, as some weapons become weaker or stronger over distance. Any damage that goes 'past' the bottom of the armour grid is dealt to internals, aka, the hitpoints of the section itself (shown as 'structure' in the design screen, under the armour section).

The blue lines outside the armour grid represent 'armour resistance' or 'damage reduction'. Their number depends on ship class (Cruisers 1, Dreadnoughts 2, Leviathans 3) and can be increased with tech. So a weapon with a base profile of

ooxxoo
ooxxoo
ooxxoo
oooooo

Would only inflict

ooxxoo
oooooo

when it hits a Dreadnought. It would do nothing at all to a Leviathan. This is why, even though beam weapons 'look' low damage in the details screen, they are still powerful as almost all of that damage tends to be directed inwards.

More on this tommorow, with Tactical Combat 102 - Weapons, Damage and Armour. ;D
 
Kerberos should hire you because they seemingly cannot explain the game details in a manual even with months advance on the release date.You did the combat UI in a few days.

I know right.. It's like, how hard is it to spend 1 minute writing a few sentences on how combat works? I guess they were too busy bugfixing the game. Oh wait.... >_>
 
I can mention two things for tactical

- ctrl-pageup speeds up time, ctrl-pagedown speeds it down. This is the same as in SOTS1. It is not the same as "accelerated time" ,which is used for travelling. This will speed up exploring a system to find your enemies

- bug: after battle, you see the results and click ok. Do NOT click a second time ok, even if the game takes a bunch of seconds to respond. Clicking a second time "OK" might get you crashed to desktop (this is not confirmed, as it rarely happened, so it might be something else)
 
The green circles in the Defense Manager represent Planetary defense ranges! This is a useful tool and you can save A LOT of time by putting your fleets on the other side of the system where the enemy will usually jump into. The accelerated time is a great feature as it makes finding the fleet easier without having to waste too much time! The combat system in this game is sooo full of potential.. Imagine a fleet fight lasting multiple turns and in multiple areas of the system.. then both sides sending in re-enforcements that get allocated to different parts of the fight! Meat grinder!

An Unfortunate Bug in the game is the AI's ability to jump stations into other systems.. I've had the Morrigi jump a naval base in multiple times!
 
How do you get into tac combat? I hit "ok" it says "defeated" but nothing actually dies and every turn I have the option to get into combat come up (well that was when could start a game, Im asking for referrence and in case other people have the same Issue I did now)