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Original post by Spoonbender Well, how do I, as a player, know which skills it would be tactically wise to bring to the fight?

Feedback can come before the battle, during it, or after it. Assume that players can learn about opponents from others, and/or can typically survive enough fights to learn strengths and weaknesses.

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Maybe an idea would be to reuse the 'phases' idea from earlier. Divide the combat up into two or three phases, but allow user input in between them. So the first phase(s) can be used mostly to test your opponent, figure out which tactics you should use, and then in the last phase(s), you can unleash your specially composed skills and tactics.

I'm not really worried about how to get that information to the player. I'm worried about the actual game design and mathematical/statistical model behind the choosing of tactics and the way in which combat is resolved based upon them.

Perhaps I'm not making myself clear, so I'll attempt to rephrase what I'm getting at. Outside of computer RPGs, you have games that resolve themselves in many different ways: Tic-Tac-Toe, Blackjack, Chess, Magic: The Gathering, Dominoes, Rock-Paper-Scissors. etc. Yet in computer RPGs, we almost always defer to a system of needing X% to hit, and merely perturbing that percentage to account for skills and the like. Generally it isn't very tactically rewarding to merely maximise a percentage and then wait to roll enough hits. I'd like to see systems that reward more player skill by giving you more meaningful choices, and in this case ideally before the combat rather than during it.

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Original post by Iftah We need to think of more parameters to have more clever attacks. Having acid/lightning/fire/ice types is just a small addition.

Yes, this is the basic thought I keep coming back to - different attack types, and characters have resistance to some and susceptibility to others. It's still a little trivial though, isn't it? I also need to think of non-magical aspects, so fire/acid/lightning/etc are out. Bash/slash/pierce are the traditional ones, but some more abstract ideas would be good.

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Or each round is like a game of biding (where each bid costs). The two opponent mages bid different energy levels (up to a certain maximum?) the winner deals damage to the other as the round and the looser looses half the energy he bid (well something of this sort).

That's a decent idea. I have also been told of a system used by Shadowrun RPG, which allows you to choose how many points to spend on your attack, knowing that those points will then not be available for your defence. The hard part there is ensuring that there's no obviously best answer each round, otherwise there's no point having the option.

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I don't like the "set ahead and watch the battle play itself" idea. I very much prefer interactive battles.

Yes, I appreciate that not all players will enjoy my system, but I am aiming at a different crowd to the usual gamer.

hi,

note I edited my post a bit,
I like the AI-contest idea. I thought of it in the 2d grid context but I guess it can be done without 2d. If you have multi-char and you can set different AI parameters for each char in your group and this can be very interesting. For example set parameters which unit to attack (least hps? the one that deals the most damage? the one that heals? spread damage?) which unit to guard? and thresholds (heal when hps<10%) and rule based exceptions, like in mail filters (flee when hps < 20% and out of heals unless enemy has less hps)
etc...

I also like the energy-biding idea...

BTW - a major plus of setting parameters in advance is that you can make the game a web applications and players can fight eachother without having both players online at the same time.

Iftah

hmmm,

The way I see it you basically have two types of contests used in games Hard and Soft. In a hard contest Rock always beats scissors, while in a soft one Rock beats sissors 90% of the time. Most computer games tend use soft systems so player can focus on number crunching. It sounds like you want to get away from that to some degree and instead of a soft system. Maybe you could adapt a system from one medium and use in your game. I remember there was an old western themed CCG that had combat resolved by playing a hand of poker.
The hard part is coming up with a soft system the complex enough to allow tatical choices but simple enough


What about a tile system?
Each tile has a score and an element.
Combatents take turns playing tiles from their "hand" against each other called a trick.
If both tiles are the same element the two counter each other out.
If the opposing elements the superior element doubles its points.
The trick is one by the tile with the most points and the loosing tiles are removed.

Bonus tiles could be awarded for doubles, triples, runs, and flushes.
Victory is determined either by having the mosts points on the table after all tricks have been played, whoever one the most tricks, or bid system when you have to say at the start of combat how many tricks you want to win.

Each piece of equipment a character has would contribute a title.
So a longbow might give you a 6 Wood, while and iron helm 4 Iron.

It could work, but it's probably not instant enough for my needs. :)

So far, I'm toying with a combination of some or all of the following:

- deciding how much of your skill to allocate to attack and how much to defence
- Random techniques chosen from your own pool and that of your opponent, then an R/P/S mechanic applied to them
- R/P/S style biases to different situations, such as weapon vs. armour, weapon vs. space to wield it, weapon vs. target size/shape, armour vs. opponent speed, etc.

And the following which may also not be instant enough:

- A single technique needing to be countered by an appropriate technique, or multiple inappropriate techniques. (ie. choosing whether to sacrifice future attacks to defend now, or not.) This may be too slow for me, as with the last suggestion.
- A Luck/Fate score that you can choose to test at any point to potentially gain a significant bonus (or penalty) to hit, but which drops when you succeed and rises when you fail
- some sort of dominos-like system, where each move you play relates to your opponent's last move (hopefully as some sort of block, counter, riposte, etc), and also sets a target for them to respond to.