I just finished a test plan for work that''s been haunting me for the past few weeks (this one was short, only about 40 pages, but it was still a royal pain in the butt). Anyway, my personal issues aside, as usual when I finish a large chunk of work, I was taking a small break before I get back at it (deadlines, blecch!) and started thinking about combat in the game I''m working on. I was thinking about how most RPGs (mine included until this very minute) had a very limited view of tactics. All enemies predictably come at you and try to dismember you while you predictably try to find the right combination of brawn and magic to defeat the enemy. (Don''t mistake me for saying that I don''t have fun with these games -- Lord knows, I do). Anyway, I was thinking about another non-RPG game that had a VERY good grasp of tactics -- Rainbow 6. In that game, you would plan where your guys would go, and what they would do when they got there. So, what if in an RPG, you had that freedom with your team? You could tell your mage to drop back to a safe location, and hurl fireballs at the strongest enemy... You could tell your thief to hide around a corner until the enemy walked past him, and, assuming that he wasn''t spotted by the enemy, to try to stab him in the back of the head... You could have your archer run up on the enemy, and shoot a few arrows at them just to piss them off, while the rest of your characters lay in wait and attack when you give the signal... Given that the NPC''s will have schedules, say that you know exactly when the Evil Archduke''s caravan will be passing a good ambush point, and you, well, ambush them... The obvious difficulty here would be to figure out how to hammer out a lot of possibilities for the characters without making battles overly long and tedious (I personally dislike RPG battles, most likely for the reasons I stated in the second paragraph). The other diffculty would be to make it flow in with the rest of the game (no "breaking out to a battle screen" -- I think it could be done with a mini-map that''s updated based on where they are). However, if done right, I think there could be a good chance of making battles, which are generally one of the more exciting parts of Pen and Paper RPGs and Fantasy movies, fun again. Just an idea to grease the brain wheels. Tell me what you think. (Or if any good games exist right now that have this type of control -- I highly doubt I''m the first to come up with this) -Chris

I''m up for that...I''m also sick of the old "I hit you, you hit me back" RPG battles. Being able to move characters in real time would be great.

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If you put one monkey at one typewriter, he would scratch his head and type something like this: "g d asds"

Is this definitely a multi-character one-player game?

George D. Filiotis
Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

I think that in MP games, there is also a distinct paucity of tactics. No one bothers to take the time to communicate anything and so it ends up like every man for himself... just in the same general direction.

Part of that has to do with the "invincibility" syndrome. That is, if a character dies, he will be right back to join his commrades after a brief pause. That takes away the fear of dying and the caution that should result.

Anyway, Rainbow 6''s tactics engine was great. I never played the expansions so I don''t know if they improved on it at all. There were some issues that I found with the team members not expressing some autonomy if things went bad, however. That is something that can be adressed over time. Perhaps a combo of Rainbow 6''s planning and Close Combat''s "order driven" real time stuff?

Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development
"Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

quote: Original post by Symphonic
Is this definitely a multi-character one-player game?

I was thinking of it for a one player, multi-char game (where I think it would work best -- at least in the version in my brain). I guess to some extent, if it''s designed properly by the right person (not me -- I''m not big into writing Multi-player stuff, even though I''m a network engineer ), it could be used in larger systems. This is just my "fell off the toilet and banged my head" core of an idea, so I don''t have a lot in terms of detail, yet.

-Chris