Ok, fair enough, and no hard feelings.
You and I differ on whether the tactical combat can be salvaged by making improvements to the existing system, we both know that it will be hard, slow, and a pain to 'get it' the way it needs to be.
The difference is that you think they CAN get this one right, while I see that they will not get it right, not for lack of programming skill, but for lack of proper vision. For example...
We both see that NGD is thinking that they have essentially finished the game, and are now going into polishing and bug fixing mode, however;
Missiles don't have a greater range (by far) than non-seeking weapons
Planetary defenses provide your CP, and remain as limited (and all but useless) as they were in MoO2. A simple and yet uncorrected mistake, made over 20 years ago.
Because of the above, they will never 'get it' with proper planetary defenses being hoards of orbitals, not 1 of each type. A simple and yet uncorrected mistake, made over 20 years ago.
We also have no way to design our planetary defenses, just as was the case in MoO2. A simple and yet uncorrected mistake, made over 20 years ago.
There is no thought given to 'range', and no, the overly simplistic 'fuel range' in MoO2 doesn't pass muster. A simple and yet uncorrected mistake, made over 20 years ago.
I could go on and on, but hopefully I am getting this across, The Dev's are not thinking properly. We need folks to sit down and discuss what was wrong/broken in MoO2, and decide on the best solutions for those problems, and only then start working on a new game. We all heard the nonsense about 'focusing on what matters', which seems to translate to "Spend as little as we have to, in order to make as much as we can", which any and all businesses could and should do, but they don't seem to know that people want a better game, not just 'PRETTY'. How much did they waste on VA for the game, how did they fail to have an option to turn off all those 'limited gaming time-wasting cut scenes' ? A simple mistake, and not one made over 20 years ago.
They have added topography to the star systems and the map. Improvement over MoO2, and a good thing, but not enough and not all good, but still a step in the right direction.
Folks don't think things through, and recognize the glaringly obvious goofs that have been built into the game, and so they go uncorrected. Here is a pet peeve of mine.
Long ago, I was introduced to a game called Star Fire, and the guy that I knew that got me to play that game got into a debate about a goof that the game designers made, in that game, you had smallest to largest ship sizes were.
ES = escorts
CT = corvettes
FG = frigates
DD = destroyers
CL = cruisers, light
CA = cruisers, heavy (used to be 'armored', hence the "A"
BC = battle cruisers
BB = battleships
SD = super dreadnoughts
The problem here, of course, is that the DD in not bigger than the FG, the FG is the traditionally larger and badder-assed warship of the two, but my friend didn't know any better and actually argued the point, telling me I was wrong and the game designers were right. I then broke out the books, and looked up Frigates. "The largest ship, smaller than a ship of the line", establishing the days of old, and then went and got information of then current and back to WWII warships of the two different types (this was in the days before WIKI *shudders*), and we went over several classes, and in all cases the Frigates were in fact larger (displacement wise) than the Destroyers. So I won my point, but is seems that every single game company is doomed to repeat this error, and for no other reason than they are to lazy to actually think things through, trusting instead to "Well, the other fellows did it this way, and they must have gotten it right, so lets just go with that".
And so it is in MoO2 and MoO4, where the traditionally larger FG is incorrectly represented as less than a DD.
Anyway, this kind of thing always happens to me, I ramble on and on, and my mind wanders off topic. I will leave this ramble here, though, so you can see that while there is often a lengthy gap between my posts, it is not that I take forever to make a short reply, but rather that I have to go back and delete all the rambling content, usually several times, before hitting the post button.
So, for me anyway, MoO4 is not going to get fixed properly, and thus I want to start talking about laying the groundwork for a PROPER MoO5 now, before the same old mistakes once again rear their ugly heads in the form of code already written.
Thanks.