What is Continuous Turn Based battle?

I myself like the Sins of a Solar Empire system, it's essentially realtime but slow paced enough that one can still use some planning and strategy; the only reason they don't call it an "RTS" is, I suspect, to avoid the "fast-paced zero-strategy clickfest" stigma that most RTS games have created, which certainly does not apply to SoaSE (disclaimer, I'm not a big fan of SoaSE, the economy, diplomacy, ship design, etc is too shallow for my taste, but the combat is great imo). If Elemental's combat played out similarly I'd be very happy.

Option 2 sounds great as well, in the distant past I played an empire-building game with combat like that and it worked well (realtime, but every x seconds - each "turn" - it would auto-pause so each player could issue new orders before hitting "play" again to watch those orders carried out. It was a combination of both "realtime" and "simultaneous turn-based" in a way, if you can believe that). Really I'm confident the Stardock people will come up with a good system either way, and eagerly waiting for them to tell us something about it.

Did you bring up this topic because Elemental is going to use "Continuous turn based" in tactical battles?  I don't mind these as options but I hope they have standard turn based as well.  If this was mentioned in the past I have forgotten.

If this is in I would opt for the second but would like it to work like Baldur's gate.  Game should stop immediately, not finish up the current turn.  Without pause I feel rushed and that's not something I want from a deep strategy game.  Might be annoying in multiplayer though.

By "Continuous Turn Based" I think he means like Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age. It's live but you can pause it any time you want to give orders. Un-pause it and you watch your oders unfold.

Preferably it should have a option for both. One game that did this well back in the day was X-Com Apocalypse. It could be purely turn based combat, or it was live and you could pause as needed. You could pick this option or not at the begining of each combat.

Sins is not turn based. I really don't get where that is coming from. Sins is realtime at a slower speed then your typical RTS (but most older RTS games had a speed option anyway, Starcraft on slow is actually a similar pace).

If what they mean by "continuous turn based" is "RTS", then we really need some clarification.

They call it an "RT4X", because they want to emphasize the larger scale then a typical RTS, not because it's not an RTS. In fact, the very first entry in the FAQ says its an RTS.

Continous turns to me means simultaneous turns like in Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.

That's fantastic for those who haven't met but once you meet it should become turnbased.

My thoughts are that it's more like 1 than it is like the others.

That wiki post you (original poster) quoted implies neither of your possibilities. It seems to imply something like the system in Laser Squad Nemesis. First, the game is paused and you issue orders to units. When both sides are finished, the game plays out the orders for say, 10 seconds or so, then pauses again for more orders.

I believe its like Paradox's Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron series, with discrete units for time (EU3 for instance uses days, two actions taken one at the "start" of the day and the other at the "end" of it will finish at the same time, as the game doesn't measure hours), but that is played by default in real-time, ie: as if everyone was continuously clicking "end turn" in a traditional turn-based title.

Continuous turns: Think Balder's Gate style battles.

Yay I was right

Are you sure that it will work well in a game like Elemental? Frankly...I don't know. Maybe it will...all I am saying is that I've never seen a good TBS game which had a continuous turn based battle system. Besides I don't understand that why was it necessary to drop the "real" turn based combat system idea. [...or was it always planned as a continous turn based system?]

..and one more thing: What about the multiplayer tactical battles? Will it be possible to pause the battle whenever we want? If it's not possible: bad. If it's possible: bad again, because it will be annoying if a player will pause the game in every second.

Tormy- Remember Gal Civ 2's battles? Granted the player didn't have control over them, but when watching them it was like a movie in a way. This will be the same way except the player will have control. Imagine being able to pause Gal Civ 2's battles and give orders to your ships. Then unpause it and watch them carry out your orders.

To be fair, it wasn't dropped. This has been the description of combat from the very beginning.

Solution: auto-pause at the end of each 'round.' Possibly make all orders be given during that time, and when everyone is ready they press the ready button. When everyone has pressed ready (or after a time limit if people choose one in the game settings), the combat unpauses and everyone watch what happens in that turn. Rinse and repeat...

Please, no real time. I have problems playing starcraft at the lowest speed. My hands are shaking after every game I play.

COntinuous turn based battle was an idea I also intedended to use. It was for a space war fare game.

First each player selected their formations and decided a movement pattern they were going to use ( they did not move individual ships). Then they would have decided how many fighters stayed on defense and how many on offense and select the primary targets for fighter. Finally, the player would set priorities like target that type of ship or weaker ship, etc. After some battle, the game would have stoped and ask the player if he would change their strategy, then the battle would have continued. A battle was supposed to last 4 turns, because the ships where passing though each other to exchange fire, so after the time is exhausted, ships were too far from each other to continue fighting again.

I think elemental could use a system like this. I prefer that the game stops by itself and ask you for new objectives and new spells to cast. This is especially good in multiplayer because each player pause the battle and get to play at the same time. It also removes the stress of watching everything and trying to pause at the right moment. When the battle is split in segments, you know that if something bad happened, you cannot do anything to patch things up until the segment ends. So it prevent the players from pausing at every 2 seconds.

So personally I thing that predetermined pauses will remove stress during battle and will make them easier to enjoy by watching your army fight,

And what about a combat mission style ? You give orders to your troops, then the next minute of battle is calculated (with real-time calculations, ballistics etc.) then after a minute the game pauses and you can select orders like advance, run, assault, hide, advance with caution, take cover, support another, suppression fire, etc.

PS: a link to combat mission : http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=60&Itemid=100

Erm...what turn/round? We won't have turns or rounds in tactical combat.

Erm...what turn/round? We won't have turns or rounds in tactical combat. 

End of quote

Yes we will... If we didn't it wouldn't be called continuous turn-based combat. Frogboy for example said to think along the lines of combat in Baldur's Gate, but in the context of army combat rather than party combat.

It's just that if you choose the appropriate settings then you have to look closely to be able to see where the turns start and end, because it flows relatively smoothly - the turns are there, they are just 'under the hood'. But you could also choose settings so that the combat would auto-pause at the conclusion of each turn, giving you all the time in the world to decide what'll happen next round. (all this in addition to being able to pause-at-will, too, of course).

My brothers really enjoyed the Baldur's Gate style battles... they'll be pleased to hear this information.  

Allright. Hopefully it will work like a charm.

Baldur's Gate...? So I can click my unit to move, but it will only happen if the next turn has come? So if I cast a spell but no before the actual turn (a little after it started), than I will start casting the spell in the NEXT turn? Confusing system, I have to say.

Yes, I'm not sure how it'll translate into this sort of combat... It's a wait-and-see thing I suppose!

One clarification is that in Baldur's gate you could pause the game (or not pause it) mid-turn and change unit orders so long as they haven't already acted (if i recall correctly - it's done like this in many other games, as well). In single player I think this would function just fine. In multi-player I think you'd have to be restricted to just the pre-turn orders phase.