By Alec Meer on July 4th, 2009 at 12:18 am.
In space, no-one can hear you be gratuitous.
Space is gratuitous. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly gratuitous it is.
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Gratuitous.
Ack, it’s no good. I just can’t decide which stereotypical sci-fi quote to tiresomely rip-off. Instead, just watch this video of Cliffski ‘Gets A Bit Feisty’ Harris’ new’un. BOOM.
A pretty apt demonstration of the hard split between scheming and smashing, no? Also: I can’t help but dig the John Williams-esque score.
Very much looking forward to this one – but if it isn’t at least 84% gratuitous, I’m going to kick the ear off a man so hard that it hits a planet three solar systems away and makes a sun explode while 12,000 naked girls dance in celebration and a 399,996,534 foot slug sings La Cucaracha. And then spontaneously combusts. GRATUITOUS.
04/07/2009 at 00:28 Jimi! says:
Jimi says you can’t complain about angry internet men and simultaneously bait them with every other post. Come on!!!! Come on! !!! There’s a game?! CLIFFSKI. Say what you like, I thought unreal tournement was worth our time. I remember… PAYING FOR IT. Of course man, you know me.
04/07/2009 at 00:28 Meatloaf says:
How Gratuitous.
04/07/2009 at 00:37 Alec Meer says:
Oh Jimi, dear, there’s more than one man called Cliff in the world.
04/07/2009 at 00:37 panik says:
sheer gratuity rules
04/07/2009 at 00:39 Bret says:
Needs more GRATUITOUSnessosity.
Otherwise, looks fun.
04/07/2009 at 00:46 Empyreal says:
The only thing I don’t like is how the ships flash red when damages. It takes away from the whole thing, which otherwise is relatively atmospheric. Besides that, looks amazing.
04/07/2009 at 00:46 AndrewC says:
So is there any player control at all once the space battles start happening?
04/07/2009 at 00:48 Empyreal says:
Er. Damaged, not damages. Sorry.
04/07/2009 at 00:49 The_B says:
@Alec For a minute, I thought this was from Dance artist Calvin Harris, who was going to employ Dizzee Rascal to invite us to ‘Blast Into Space With Me’.
04/07/2009 at 00:52 Dizet Sma says:
Experiencing A Significant Gratuitous Shortfall
or
What Are The Civilian Applications?
04/07/2009 at 00:54 Pags says:
@The_B And for another minute, I thought it might be Cliff Richard going all viral to promote his next christmas single (albeit in July).
This looks pretty excellent though.
04/07/2009 at 00:55 Nakki says:
Looks cool, but if it doesn’t have multiplayer I doubt it’ll be worth buying unless it’s really cheap.
04/07/2009 at 00:56 Nakki says:
Oh yeah, and by multiplayer I definately mean more than one player per side.
04/07/2009 at 00:57 Fat says:
Are you guy gonna do a piece on Trine? It came out yesterday on Steam. Demo was pretty fun, think i might wait for an ‘offer’ weekend or something to get it though.
Fun or not, £20 is a bit steep for what sounds like quite a short game, being a student and all.
04/07/2009 at 01:10 MA6200 says:
Looks pretty cool. Not a big fan of the red flashing either, but everything else looks very nice – the explosions are really well done, and I like how the pace of the game looks. The beginning mentions tower defense – anyone know how much control you have of your ships?
Any plans to put this on Steam?
04/07/2009 at 01:12 yutt says:
Oh goodness, that battle layout looks like Star Control 2. I’m sold.
04/07/2009 at 01:18 pirate0r says:
Do you know what this game reminds me of? A 2D version of nexus: the Jupiter incident.
Cliffski, you had me at Gratuitous.
Will there me any type of extended single player? Like a campaign set in an entire solar system where I get to tell ships where to go and fight?
04/07/2009 at 02:19 Rhooke says:
@Dizet Banks’ ship names are fantastic. I’d probably try and come up with similarly awesome ones for my fleet… except I get the feeling that I shouldn’t grow to attached to anything in this game.
04/07/2009 at 03:21 Marcin says:
That is a yummeh trailer. It has gratuitous, and space, and battles.
That’s all I got.
Oh okay, one more thing. Sold!
04/07/2009 at 04:15 Caiman says:
Looking much better than the last trailer, it’s definitely on the radar now. If there’s no control in the battles (classic tower defence) then I hope they up the gratuitousness a bit more – ships exploding into discrete pieces, pieces hitting other ships and damaging them, internal fires causes explosions, even random comets and meteorites. One of my favourite space battle games was Haegemonia – this looks like it could get a similar feel going.
But Plants vs. Zombies has spoiled us in terms of “interactive tower defence”. I hope there’s at least something to do during the battles, because it’s what made me buy PvZ and leave, say, Defence Grid: The Awakening on the virtual shelf.
04/07/2009 at 04:24 Tyler says:
Sold!
04/07/2009 at 04:44 The Unshaven says:
@Caiman: I actually found Defence Grid good on that score. It’s quite dynamic, in terms of being able to shape enemy paths as they move by building new towers, and timing whether you want to upgrade towers or get more interest from leaving money in the bank…
Overall, this does look fun. But I too think the ships flashing red looks a bit arcadey to me.
- The Unshaven.
04/07/2009 at 05:26 Al3xand3r says:
Tower Defense? Interest went from over 9000 to -10…
04/07/2009 at 05:36 Al3xand3r says:
I would have preffered a larger scale, prettier, Return to Infinite Space as it seemed to be at first. Focused on the combat aspect only of course. It even has a similar interface for outfitting weapons and gear to your ships.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pKmpqiz9ak
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Digital_Eel/WW/WW_page.html
04/07/2009 at 06:24 Skye Nathaniel says:
This is looking really awesome. Now that footage of the interface has been shown, my imagination is running. I just need to know that there are things to be done during battle, that it’s not just pump-and-fire. Some tech trees and support role ships would be cool. I’m looking to this game to scratch every sci-fi itch I can find through my pilot suit.
04/07/2009 at 06:38 Mad Doc MacRae says:
This continues to look (gratuitously) marvelous.
04/07/2009 at 07:10 Jezebeau says:
Reminds me of Battleships Forever .
04/07/2009 at 08:04 greenB says:
What’s that make us?
Big damn gratuitous, sir!
04/07/2009 at 08:52 Larington says:
Might I suggest (Assuming this doesn’t have technical issues), that instead of representing ship damage with red flashes you have little explosions that turn into space-borne fires… The more the ship is in flames, the heavier the damage. It seems to me to be a far more natural way of representing the condition of your (And enemies) fleet that comes complete with it’s own coolness factor.
04/07/2009 at 08:53 Larington says:
Also, possibly, very heavily damaged ships could suicide ram a nearby enemy ship if the opportunity presents itself, for massive damage.
04/07/2009 at 09:15 sigma83 says:
Very awesome
04/07/2009 at 09:20 cliffski says:
Thanks for everyone’s comments. The ‘non-interactive’ bit is a design decision because of the way the ‘play-by-email’ style challenges work (you can send your fleet to another player to act as his opponent). That’s not to say there are any technical limitations engine-wise to me adding an interactive element at a later stage.
Enough people have mentioned the red flashing that I need to fix it. Basically that is armour absorbing impacts, as opposed to the explosions, which indicate actual hull damage (after the armour is blasted-through).
I’ll come up with something better for the armour effect…
04/07/2009 at 09:30 Baka says:
This could be my kind of fun.
04/07/2009 at 09:46 EyeMessiah says:
Looks rocking. Any thoughts on the pricepoint yet Cliffski?
04/07/2009 at 10:36 Fat Zombie says:
See, I’m not really a fan of strategy games. Or Tower Defence.
But THIS looks like awesome on toast. Space! Explosions! Giant, slow-moving leviathan starships fighting shooty lasers at each other! PEW PEW PEW etc.
See, I think I’d actually prefer the non-interactive battles. I find that most strategy games have you concentrating too much to enjoy the ‘splodes. So this looks goooood.
04/07/2009 at 10:49 cliffski says:
You can also slow down speed up and pause, then zoom and scroll around, so you get to zip through the battles if you just want results and no eye candy, or you can observe each laser blast impact in detail if you like that sort of thing. (I do :D)
04/07/2009 at 10:59 Magnus says:
Looks very impressive! Seven shades of impressive even!
Haven’t played a space-strategy game in ages, may have to pick this up.
04/07/2009 at 10:59 arqueturus says:
Do want!
I can see the Eve influences all over this cliffski, would that I had any programming ability whatsoever and I might have come up with something similar myself.
I know you do a demo but consider me sold, the only thing that I feel I even need the demo for is to see if the ‘non-interactive’ aspect of the game is acceptable to my pallete.
I’ve always considered the ability to play an instrument well as something special and I’ve long wondered if musicians find it fantastic to be able to play music that they want to listen too. You’re doing the same thing with games you jammy devil :)
04/07/2009 at 11:40 Homunculus says:
I’m imagining this married with Star Control 2′s exploratory aspects and it’s making me slightly a-quiver.
Is there going to be some sort of pre-battle random text generation of ludicrous reasons why the sides are going to war?
04/07/2009 at 11:43 dejay says:
I think the red flashing is meant to indicate a shield strike, as ships do appear to be on fire and thus heavily damaged during the video.
04/07/2009 at 11:46 dejay says:
Oops, missed cliffski’s comments earlier.
04/07/2009 at 11:52 Myros says:
Sorry to be so OT, but why is RPS the only site on the internet I go to that crashes my IE7 browser, about 80% of the time? Just started a couple weeks back ..what yas change?
Anyway, game looks cool … would love it if the was a rpg/strategic level to it in the vein of 4x.
04/07/2009 at 11:56 cliffski says:
I had thought about a system where all of the battles had some incredibly silly original justification such as an argument about hover-car parking spaces that escalates into intergalactic megadeath, but I haven’t actually done it yet :D
04/07/2009 at 12:00 PC Monster says:
An interesting beast. I don’t like Tower defence games at all, and yet I’m sorely tempted to pick this one up. The battles look amazing and I’m moderately moistened by the idea of meticulously planning my loadouts and tactics before sitting back to watch the show….and yes, the ability to slow down and focus on certain things could be fun!
04/07/2009 at 12:02 tapanister says:
Just wanted to say that I found the red circle shield thing pretty obvious and just saying, I don’t think it needs to be changed. Then again I just woke up, so I might have missed something.
04/07/2009 at 12:17 Cigol says:
Looking good.
Maybe the red shield thing could be a pulsing gradient emanating from where it was hit – as opposed to just the whole of the ship.
04/07/2009 at 12:45 Cooper says:
I like the idea of this, and, yes, does remind me of battleships forever too. Which is no bad thing, as that was an excellent game that just needed a bit more felshing out. But the ship designer was the best bit about that game.
It’s not clear from the video, but are the ship structures pre-determined – it looked like you slot items onto slots of pre-figured ships. It’d be very nice to have a ship design systm a la battleships forever or GalCiv…
04/07/2009 at 12:47 Diogo Ribeiro says:
“over-the-top explodiness”
Sold :)
04/07/2009 at 12:48 DrazharLn says:
@Dizet Sma
If this game includes a culture style ship name generator, then I’d buy it just for that.
Then again, I’m a Banksonian (I may have just made that word up)
04/07/2009 at 12:56 Gurrah says:
Uhhhh, I’m liking it! Looks very much like an updated version of Weird World: Return to infinite space’s sandbox-mode. Colour me interested.
04/07/2009 at 13:13 DMJ says:
Hearty congratulations on a soundtrack which sounds like it is truer to the spirit of the original trilogy of Star Wars than the three prequels’ soundtracks.
04/07/2009 at 13:35 Larington says:
Certainly looks to be very tempting, I’ll be keeping my eye on this for sure. Well, when I say “Keeping my eye on this”, really I mean, wait for further coverage of it here on RPS. :-)
04/07/2009 at 13:39 Heliocentric says:
When will we see a demo cliff? And whats the price point cliffski? Will there be a bargin post this week? If not i have a few to point out, but no forum access.
04/07/2009 at 13:41 sigma83 says:
Myros: Switch to firefox, dude. Or Chrome.
04/07/2009 at 13:45 Heliocentric says:
I’m on a mobile phone. 3/10 see me after school.
04/07/2009 at 13:47 Larington says:
I switched away from IE7 when it suddenly decided to stop loading this – and only this- website all of a sudden. No reason I could discern, eventually gave up and installed firefox. That was pretty much the last straw for me.
04/07/2009 at 13:57 Persus-9 says:
Looks great! I’m not a huge fan to tower defence either but on the other hand I really loved Defence Grid and PvZ so I may be acquiring the taste.
This one particularly appeals to me partly because it’s both tongue in cheek but also appears comparatively realistic in it’s mechanics for a space combat sim in that if you did have two huge close range battle fleets about to come to blows then if you were commanding one of them then choosing an exact formation and setup and setting them going and keeping your fingers crossed would seem about right tactic. There are a couple of reasons for this, firstly micromanaging a large fleet just seems a really bad idea and the other is that space combat might well all happen really fast. I think the later would actually make a really good in game explanation of why you can’t order your ships around mid-battle, it could be claimed that the battles actually take place in something around a second and the instant resolution is real-time option and it all happen too fast for you to see and the only way for your feeble human mind can keep up with what actually happened and learn from it is to view the battle in super slow motion.
I’m not a huge fan of culture style ship naming but the option to name ships would be very cool and with that in place a culture style name generator option could only be a good thing.
This one has fired my imagination somewhat so if the price is similar to Cliffski’s other games I’ll very likely buy it.
04/07/2009 at 13:58 Stromko says:
It’s looking pretty good. I was going to suggest much the same thing as Cigol for a replacement to the entire ship glowing red.
If it’s meant to signify the armor absorbing a hit, a localized effect would look a lot more immersive, like perhaps the spot turns brighter or redder as though made hot by the force of the impact and then it fades away.
Maybe even little bits of red-hot shrapnel floating away from the impact like shards of ablative armor.
04/07/2009 at 14:17 Frye says:
Hey that looks sweet. I’m still playing Homeworld 2 and Sins of a Solar Empire (get the expansion! nearly free) , so it’s pretty much up my alley. Theres a niche the size of Grand Canyon in the space strategy genre i think. Finally someone jumping at it. I hope you didnt make the same old ‘let’s build totally massive carrier ships and even bigger starbases’ mistake like they all do. Unless you’re flying a tiny ship yourself, which of course hardly ever happens in a strategy game, size is pretty meaningless in a space game. You just zoom out more. Homeworld does it to the point that the drawing distance becomes too near. Am i rambling about techie details again? Anyways go go indies!
04/07/2009 at 14:26 Heliocentric says:
You play homeworld 2? We need to hook up! Me i like carrier games with slow res, feels more like a real skirmish.
04/07/2009 at 14:26 Pags says:
Everything about this sentence is perfect, more developers like this please.
04/07/2009 at 14:55 DeliriumWartner says:
This has probably already been mentioned in various places but I’d love to see localised damage. The explosion of the single ship at the end was cool but it didn’t seem to affect the model at all. I’d prefer to see half of a ripped apart by the blast, rather than little fires etc. Difficult? Probably. Worth it? Totally.
04/07/2009 at 15:08 Dizet Sma says:
“DrazharLn says:
Then again, I’m a Banksonian (I may have just made that word up)”
No, some-one else got there before you:
http://banksoniain.netfirms.com/
04/07/2009 at 15:16 Coulla says:
This is looking really exciting now. I liked the look of it in the early vids, but now I’ve seen the prep screens, I can’t wait!
Do we have any idea how individual the ships are? Can you configure every ship individually, or are the smaller ships generic?
04/07/2009 at 15:18 Hypocee says:
Finally, a Positech game that interests me. Soon, I will be giving money to Cliffski despite disliking him.
It’s probably a sin against gaming to like games where the player relinquishes control as much as I do.
04/07/2009 at 15:19 Tei says:
/clap /clap /clap /clap /clap /clap :-)
looks awesome, soo far. Looking forward for it :-)
04/07/2009 at 15:39 TCM says:
This looks like a game I might actually buy, Cliffski. Reminds me a bit of Battleships Forever, with bigger scale, and more gratuitous.
04/07/2009 at 15:58 cheeba says:
Looks excellent, might well be a must buy for me.
Personally I don’t mind the red flashes, they’ll certainly help to tell which craft are taking shield hits, regardless how small the ships are or how much carnage is going on. Yes it’s arcadey, but arcade damage systems are designed like that for a good reason. Anything else is only going to reduce clarity there.
04/07/2009 at 17:47 Myros says:
Sorry back to OT: agree on the firefox browser. I have both, just a bad habit I have of clicking IE … comes from lotsa years of internet browsing/time-wasting ;p But as it seems from web logs IE is still a hugely popular browser so having a website that causes it to crash is kinda bad for business IMO. Just wanted to make sure the web site devs we aware of the issue.
04/07/2009 at 17:50 Skye Nathaniel says:
The problem with sit-back-and-watch battles to my mind is that they have the potential to become tedious and quite explicitly game-like (unimmersive). Let’s say you get to Battle/Mission 7 and your first attempt at putting together a fleet yields player-side annihilation; what are you going to do? Try again, tweaking your approach here and there, and then watch the new battle unfold. Maybe you’ll watch more carefully and study which laser blast comes from where and start thinking about what further adjustments you can make to take advantage of the precise positioning and loadout of each enemy warship. Once you’ve begun to think that way (and if there’s nothing to do but watch, then why wouldn’t you?), the game will become a chore of trial-and-error in which you repeatedly make small changes and then watch their effects, accumulating and banking upon foreknowledge of the enemy’s strategy.
That’s my concern with the non-interactive aspect. Now, I like the spirit of the idea there, and I’m not looking to have this become another RTS or Plants vs. Zombies. My suggestion is that some lesser forms of interactivity be implemented during battles; things the player can do that are helpful but small in scale and effect when compared to the importance of all the setup. For example, individual ships could have abilities (based on their modules) that share some form of charge, and the player could make on-the-fly adjustments to how they allocate that if one need if unexpectedly perceived as more important mid-battle. Or perhaps some small trajectory manipulation could be allowed so that the starting formation remains the primary thing but can be built upon somewhat.
Barring these sorts of actions, if they do compromise the play-by-email plan (and I suppose they would, as I can imagine a battle set up well enough that both players could win through small in-battle changes to the tide), then I think some increased depth of information could assuage the potential repetitive quality of setting up battles and letting them fly. This depth could include stuff like appointing command personnel to the vessels and then being able to view or at least read up-to-the-minute reports about how they handle situations from the interior like fire suppression, emergency staff redistribution, tactical decisions, self-sacrifice vs. cowardice, and other condensed forms of classic starship bridge activity. If you did something like that, it would not only give the player something less Newtonian to observe during battle but would also provide an interesting way (assigning the big ship commanders and maybe fighter squadron leaders) to tweak the behavior of units in a way that equipped tech would not. It might also present an opportunity for surviving personnel to gain ranks or levels that allot bonuses to their command, sort of like Cannon Fodder or more recently games such as Company of Heroes. That wouldn’t work in non-campaign standalone skirmishes of course since there would be no continuity from battle to battle, but maybe that opens up the idea of play-by-email campaigns in addition to one-time challenges.
Whatever you decide on this front, I am glad that you are avoiding certain aspects of RTS play. If you had the player effecting an area-of-effect superlaser from his god’s eye view or choosing the moment to use a board-wide space climate change bonus (Advanced Wars style) that gave his side a maneuverability advantage amidst an unforeseen wave of solar wind, I would just cry.
Anyway, the game looks wonderful. I’m a sucker for the kind of abstract component-based, setting-building customization and action you get in games like Homeworld and Battleships Forever, and I know that GSB will pull be in right away. Keep up the good work!
04/07/2009 at 19:11 Flappybat says:
I’m sold already.
04/07/2009 at 19:58 Hypocee says:
The new armour impact effect seems like a pretty decent choice.
04/07/2009 at 22:01 James Allen says:
Non-interactive battles seemed to work out pretty well for Dominions 3.
05/07/2009 at 00:12 Nakki says:
@James Allen:
If the game is more like Space Empires 4 / Galactic Civilizations / whatever turn based space 4X you can compare it to the (currently a bit overpriced) jewel of a game called Dominions 3. Dominions 3 has a lot more in it than just non-interactive battles. Research, army mobility on strategic map, non-combat spells etc.
05/07/2009 at 00:16 Radicand says:
I like the set-up-and-run aspect of the gameplay, but I worry that without any interactivity it the battles at all, gorgeous as they are, after a while you’ll just want to skip through them. I’d prefer it if you had a few points in the battle where you could change your orders a bit, perhaps Laser Squad Nemesis style, so that at least you had some reason to pay attention.
05/07/2009 at 00:30 DrazharLn says:
@Dizet Sma
Damn! Foiled again!
Thanks for the link though, I may read a few of those…
05/07/2009 at 00:32 CalebArchon says:
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only gratuitousness.
05/07/2009 at 03:41 Hypocee says:
You pay attention to find out the detailed results of your orders – ‘Oh, when I have a carrier(?) with a PD destroyer (?) in this arrangement and set the PD to high aggression, the shields help out the fighter wing…’ etc.
05/07/2009 at 08:03 Spectre-7 says:
If I could make a suggestion, I think a round gradient (red at the edges, yellow-orange at the center) emanating from the point of impact that quickly shrinks would work. It should give the impression of a piece of metal being heated up and then quickly cooling down.
Game looks smashing, BTW. :)
05/07/2009 at 08:06 Spectre-7 says:
Whoops. Seems someone else suggest pretty much the exact same thing. -10 originality points. :(
05/07/2009 at 10:22 Mike says:
I almost switched off when it said ‘Tower Defence In Space’. This seems much, much more fun than that.
05/07/2009 at 10:28 sigma83 says:
Yes there is a pickle. How to market it to appeal to both the tower defense crowd and those who may not ordinarily enjoy tower defense titles but would like the space splosioney bits.
05/07/2009 at 12:32 Paul says:
Some of the ship shapes (hehe) look very similar to the ones from Independence War, while a handful others are reminiscent of MoO2.
05/07/2009 at 15:40 Ashbery76 says:
This battle system in a 4x sandbox campaign would be awesome.
05/07/2009 at 19:08 machineisbored says:
@Dizet Sma
It’s Diziet not Dizet.
05/07/2009 at 20:53 Turin Turambar says:
Heh heh, i am reading Use of Weapons right now…
05/07/2009 at 22:50 Dizet Sma says:
“machineisbored says:
It’s Diziet not Dizet.”
Diziet Sma is a character in a book. I’m not. :o)
06/07/2009 at 02:06 Andy says:
I can’t wait to try this out!
The whole thing just looks amazing, the different weapons and fighters with capital ships. Kind of like the battle at Endor…or when they have those big battles in star wars.
The only thing that bothers me (kinda), if I’ve read correctly, is the lack of sandbox/galaxy domination gameplay involved? It’s just the battles? No tech-tree advantages to be had or ship building priorities?
(I know these would add to the development time, and I’m not expecting them to be in. But after initially watching the videos I was suprised to learn those elements were not in a game like this.)
Aside from that though, I’m sure this will knock mine and everyone elses socks off once we get a go!
06/07/2009 at 18:01 postx says:
Reminds me of “Return to Infinite Space”. It was a fantastic little game adventuring and collecting artifacts, only problem was the short length. Anyway I’m interested in this game.
09/07/2009 at 12:13 Stromko says:
My only disappointment with Infinite Space was that there wasn’t that much content. Each playthrough was meant to be short, but subsequent playthrough would encounter much the same content. Perhaps the game didn’t sell well enough to rationalize it, but I for one would’ve snapped up expansion packs just to keep the fun stuff coming. The interplay of things was interesting, and play could become more advanced as you became aware of the many options and how to take advantage of them. It’s just hard to be interested in shuffling the deck and trying again when you know it’s going to be the same 20 things just in a different order.
Looking forward to Space Exploration – Serpens Sector for more of that kind of gameplay though.
Gratuitous Space Battles mostly has my interest for the shipbuilding and fleet mechanics. The lack of control during the battle just keeps the focus purely on the preparation phase. If I could change the outcome of the fight by jumping in and giving out orders, then I could fail for no fault of my designing and preparation phase. If, instead, victory or defeat comes from the design of the fleet, then I’ll just back into the fleet design step every single time, tweaking and refining it, and each attempt will start with something new.
In other words, I think it could be more repetitive to have to go through the motions during the fight, herding cats as RTSes usually amount to, just to have a chance of winning, even /after/ putting together the right fleet.
It’s kind of like how in Rainbow Six (the original PC version), you’d need to set up these complicated tactical plans before getting into the action. Even if you designed it perfectly, you could come around a corner and die because you didn’t click the fire button fast enough. That’s why it was a tactical FPS, not a tactical planning game.