[Sodomy]

Popping out of cover and snapping a shot off only takes three clicks, by the way; Alt-Click around the corner so that you're facing the right way, click on the enemy to shoot him, Alt-Click back where you were stood to get back into cover.  Sure, it's more clicks than some games, but hardly insane...

Except it's unlikely that you'll want to alt-click back into cover; you'll probably want to move back behind cover at a normal rate of speed (especially given how far out from cover you have to move, given the game's utterly broken LOS calculation).  Which means 2 clicks to change movement type, and a bunch of fucking around while behind cover in order to face the correct direction again (since they didn't see fit to add a simple "turn to face this direction" command).  Given the amount of space-bar spamming that's required to get the correct distance out from cover (given that there's no "pause when I have an unblocked shot", only a "pause on sight"), and you end up with it easily taking 20 or 30 seconds to do such a simple action that, in a JA2 or Silent Storm, would take about 3 seconds.  The fact that the "pause on sight" commands apply at a squad level, rather than at an individual character level, make this even worse.  An example that happened from an actual combat, once I finally got the game working (which took most of a day, thanks to the uninstaller not working correctly):

The fight in question is the fight where you get your base.  I had three characters total- my char, Spartan, and Beaver.  The following shitty MS Paint image shows the rough tactical situation for the end of the fight(green dots my chars, red dots enemies, green x's the aim points of my chars on the SW corner):


Now, the enemies move out to take pot-shots at my guys in the SW corner, and I take advantage of the oppertunity to move my flanker in behind them (since I know that they're paying attention to the guys in the SW corner and are going to be spending a bunch of time aiming that way, giving Beaver plenty of time to put a pistol round in each of them).  The situation looks like this:


The problem- since my guys in the SW corner already saw the two enemies, there was no way to get an autopause on my flanker seeing him, which meant that I needed a bunch of spacebar mashing to determine exactly how far he needed to move to be able to get shots at both of them.

Another problem with the smart-pause system has to do with "enemy heard" and "taking fire" events.  You need it to pause on these (since they're brief, easy to miss, and vitally important)... but frequently they're irrelevant (yes, I know I'm taking fire from that angle), which leads the player into reflexively unpausing when it's not a "no order" or "enemy sighted" pause... a bad habit to put the player in.

[Morbus]

I must say all my arguments and proposals are regarding one-person parties and parties controlled like in Fallout. Not party based.

The problem- since my guys in the SW corner already saw the two enemies, there was no way to get an autopause on my flanker seeing him

Of course there was! Auto pause on enemy sighted! As simple as that.

And no, that doesn't have to mean that once ONE of your characters has seen the enemy, there is no more auto-pause for other characters.... You are just used to relatively fast paced RTwP systems, but that doesn't have to be the case. If there's one auto-pause for each character, we'd have about as much "pauses" as in a turn based system. At most. There is no reason to implement that restriction you're arguing against.

[Sodomy]

Of course there was! Auto pause on enemy sighted! As simple as that.

I have both auto pause on enemy sighted options on.  It will autopause if a new enemy is seen, or contact with a "lost" enemy is regained.  It will not pause if someone gains a line of sight towards an enemy that someone else already has contact with.

[quasimodo]

Because I recall Men of War (or something like that, a real time strategy game) and it had the awesomest looking real time combat system ever (with active pause) and it wasn't fun at all and barely playable...

Speaking about strategies, one of the best I've played uses RTwP. Blitzkrieg. Check it out. It's realistic and very interesting to play.

But really, asking for examples of RTwP games with better combat than your favorite TB titles is not entirely fair, since there are many factors besides time representation that affect quality of combat.

Seems fair to me.  Now that developers shun TB and love RTwP combat in games pretty much sucks. 

[Hector]

That's because they're trying to shoehorn TB mechanics into RT/P.  RT/P can work, but the mechanics need to be designed from the ground up for that style of play.  Combat in Dragon Age, for instance, is actually quite good.  There's far too much of it, but that's not a fault in the combat system so much as a fault in the quest design.

[Shemar]

Seems fair to me.  Now that developers shun TB and love RTwP combat in games pretty much sucks.

I agree.

I think TB and RTwP are two completely different concepts and the idea that RTwP can be made 'equivalent' to TB with some amount of smart or not, automatic or not, forced or not, pausing is ridiculous. RTwP cannot compare with TB even if they find a way to read my brain and auto-program the pauses at the exact perfect places I would want them. Thinking that RTwP and TB are only separated by the amount of pausing is simply missing the mark.

I have no problem playing RTwP games. I had no issues with BGs and NWNs and I am sure I will have no issues with DAs. But having the capability to play them and enjoying them as much as I would if they were TB are two different things.

[Morbus]

Of course there was! Auto pause on enemy sighted! As simple as that.

I have both auto pause on enemy sighted options on.  It will autopause if a new enemy is seen, or contact with a "lost" enemy is regained.  It will not pause if someone gains a line of sight towards an enemy that someone else already has contact with.

Sorry. I thought you were talking about design, not the game itself.

[quasimodo]

That's because they're trying to shoehorn TB mechanics into RT/P.  RT/P can work, but the mechanics need to be designed from the ground up for that style of play.  Combat in Dragon Age, for instance, is actually quite good.  There's far too much of it, but that's not a fault in the combat system so much as a fault in the quest design.

Hmm.....I must disagree.  I found combat in DA to be pretty bad.  Although I might have liked it better with a better camera.  (i.e. zoomed out a little farther so I could actually see what was happening.)   

[Morbus]

That's because they're trying to shoehorn TB mechanics into RT/P.  RT/P can work, but the mechanics need to be designed from the ground up for that style of play.  Combat in Dragon Age, for instance, is actually quite good.  There's far too much of it, but that's not a fault in the combat system so much as a fault in the quest design.

Hmm.....I must disagree.  I found combat in DA to be pretty bad. 

Yeah, same here.

[Sodomy]

DA's combat is ok at low levels.  Nothing special, but calling it "good" wouldn't be totally out-of-line.

At high levels, though, the stun/paralyze/freeze/petrify/etc. spamming gets totally out of line, and at that point, the system utterly fails.

[Hector]

To be fair, I never really got to high levels; I can never bring myself to finish the deep roads because the ridiculous amount of combat makes it feel like a chore.  If I could get past that part, I could probably finish the rest of the game happily enough, but I get to that bit, and can never be bothered to go any further.

[Oscar]

Strange, I wasn't annoyed by the deep roads... BUT I didn't explore them fully, I just bee-lined towards the ending location.