On Friday in the Dev Stream it was announced that the combat viewer will not be in the next beta. I'm only concerned by this in that I want to know how combat is resolved so I can make informed choices for ship design. I assume there is an internal tool to see how combat resolves that is not graphical, I would like to be able to see that. Personally I could care less if the game ships with the equivalent of stick figure ships because I can't control the combat I just need to know that the choices I made in ship design work as intended so after a battle or 2 I won't watch the battles unless something surprises me. So I have 2 requests, first the text version of the combat viewer in beta 3 and in the final game either an option to watch the battle after I already said no I don't want to watch it or to know the outcome of the battle before I decide to watch the battle.
As I already said I won't watch most battles, I can't control the action so watching or not makes no difference but if I expected to win the battle but lost then I want to see the battle so I can adjust my ship designs or research something to negate the advantage my enemy has. I don't remember how it worked in GC2 but I assume it was when a battle happened you got the option of watching or not with some information on what types of ships were in the battle on either side, like ship sizes and attack and defense ratings and that choice was final, if you didn't watch you just got a synopsis of ships destroyed on either side or you watched the battle. If this was already implemented in GC2 or is already planned for GC3, just one request, for the text version of the battle viewer in beta 3.