Combat changes?

One of my problems with the how the gameplay affects combat is that it feels like there are not enough Strength based races. You basically get the best one, Centaur, as a basic creature and while Centaurs are cool and effective, I'm just surprised that there doesn't feel like a meaningful upgrade to them among the hybrids.

No Name

I'd personally best appreciate a hybrid of the two: something along the lines of having 3AP to spend however you want, and certain "big" actions take 2AP(ranged attacks, healing, etc.), 3 tiles of favored terrain per 1AP of movement(totals at about 9, close to what is possible now), 2 on neutral, etc. I like the idea of a smaller, fixed AP amount, but not necessarily the idea of having it be a 1 MP/1 AP split.

Jaywalker

Well, for what I can see you already have a pretty solid idea of what you want, and how to implement it. By itself, I'd say certainly go for it, test it with us, see what works and what doesn't. From my experience so far, I can say this: - All in all, at the moment, in combat, pretty much comes down to characters with high strength, high lust, and useful abilities (in this order). - This way, most of the depth of the system you created kind of falls off. some attack skills are seldom used while movement skills are VERY powerful. Generally, once you get a couple of high damage centaurs or fliers, a good healer and someone with high lust, you're pretty much set forever. - Consequence of this, I hardly bred some of the races, mostly because they weren't combat efficient as others. Might be intended or not, of course - So, yeah. I agree with your idea. Simplifying that part of combat could open up some interesting choices later for the rest.

DPM

My main concerns are "engaged in combat" and the move limits. Now if engaged in combat means they are next to an enemy, aka in melee range, I can see a lot of gameplay value. Rush the dangerous opponents limiting them to 1 move a turn while holding back casters and the like who can dish out damage/lust by not being engaged. However, if engaged in combat just means attacked something / attacked by something I worry it would just be one turn of blowing every big boy cd and then slogging out the rest of the fight 1 move at a time. The other concern I have is the one move when engaged limitation. Yes, this gives you a strategic choice between attack or run, but for melee-focused characters it's basically bop once and done. Aka no tactics. To boil it down: Character uses ability/movement to get into melee (1st Action), character uses an attack or best ability (2nd action) turn over. Next turn character uses an attack or best ability not on cooldown, turn over. Repeat 1 bop or ability until dead or target dead. So yes there is strategy in when and where to engage, but once engaged you are just doing math at that point. Who's hp will last longer. It also hurts any support or multifunction characters as they lose half their action pool if they get into melee (assuming that's the definition of engaged in combat being used). Take the newly added ghost race. I've enjoyed the caster with mana drain on melee. In this new system attacking to get the mana drain would mean they couldn't heal/cast any longer or it would be strangely complex. Heal (1st action 1st turn), move into combat (2nd action 1st turn), melee attack for mana (1st action 2nd turn), movement/ability to get out of combat (1st action 3rd turn), Heal (1st action 4th turn), move back into melee to repeat (2nd action 4th turn). Meanwhile that's 4 turns of heal/protect/greater heal spam from a dedicated caster. Aka I don't see the value of interesting effects/combos holding up to a pure caster getting double the abilities each turn.

Short-term, I'd like to see more sexiness incorporated into battle; where sex skill may be used as a tool both by my team and opponents. Long-term I'd like the a reasonably safe option to Auto-Battle. By safe I mean an AI that doesn't run up to a centaur with 8 max hp. Nice work as always Syvaron, this last patch was a real treat, hope you relaxed a bit during the holiday.

Tribe

yes, those are understandable arguments! hm... a game i know kinda solves this by giving 2 actions but specifies them as 1 movement and 1 "other" action, though the second can also be a movement. Also, if you are in combat, you only have the "other" action, which means you would need to spend that one for moving. Maybe you can do something like that?

True Administrator

without the action point penalty, the character that starts a battle is always at a big disadvantage,as the enemy can counter-attack with 2 actions which just feels weird. Initiative is always really weird, sometimes you want certain characters to act later than others, so high initiative is sometimes bad, or having multiple characters act in a row is often the best etc. and having some kind of pass/turn delay thing always slows things down so much, in addition to the slowness of constantly passing the turn/reacting to what the opponent did etc.

Syvaron

I think some kind of "Initiative"-value would give the combat a lot more structure. (highest speed = first turn?) If you have a clear order and dont have to click around between all your characters you make it a lot simpler. You have to be careful though, as the difficulty should not be too high/low in the end. The idea with the two actions is good i think, but rather than having only one action if you are in combat, i think there should just be some actions (like running from combat) that cost two actions. Some characters can maybe also have three actions i think. But anyways, if you start in combat you should have the opportuinty to focus on dealing dmg or other stuff. Having just one in combat at all times is too limiting, i think, and mostly hits melee chars with lots of attacks.

True Administrator

personally i dont really have a problem with the current combat system, you still can make the decision, for example, to quickly move in an knock out one or two opponents, or hang back, maybe even bunch up against powerful foes. also managing your AP more or less optimally is appealing. but i can see the advantages of the suggested system, as it solves some problems like suddenly a 10+ strength enemy being next to one of your weak characters.

srk-ares

I have noticed that bows tend to fall off in the combat mostly because you cannot replenish the uses/arrows, unless there is a way that you are able to replenish them and I'm just not seeing it. If there is a way for you to replenish the uses/arrows for the bows then that would be nice.

RogueRandom

the general idea of the 2 shared actions is that you can move and attack an enemy or start next to an enemy and because you'll only get 1 action you have to choose between attacking or moving away. That way its easy for slower enemies to catch up if they arent engaged in another way, by using 2 moves.

Syvaron

In my opinion the biggest things that would help with the combat would be keyboard and mouse shortcuts/usability that make it very easy and quick to play once you get the hang of it. Having a clear order of characters and being able to tab through them and quickly see how many actions they have on their portrait without selecting them would help a lot. The idea to change movement would make a lot of sense though, and is worth doing for sure. Another idea that would really help, would be having enemies movement and "range" being displayed or able to be toggled(mouse over a part of the UI or press a key) quickly so you can make swift decisions on positioning. So on a melee character like a centaur it would show how much they can move in a turn and still attack in red, the squares that it could move in range of a tease(lust attack etc) in pink and ranged damage in a different shade of red(diagonally striped or something. Having two actions per character is a great idea too, but IMO it should be 1 movement action(either walking or casting something like charge, (but not every movement ability would be required to use the movement action) and then another action to either cast an ability or attack an enemy(either lust or melee) which could be shown as a green and a purple(white-green) square on a corner of their character tile or portrait. Then some characters could have exceptions, ie centaurs get 2 movement and 1 attack, succubus could have 1 movement 1 attack and 1 lust specific attack(pink square) and the mosquito could have 1 movement or attack and 1 attack. Lavagirls and sages could have 1 spell specific(blue square) action and some healing race subsets could have a healing only action. That would make positioning more important(being able to move with no demerit to combat would mean a lot), make the game easier to follow and quicker to play and it would allow for a ton of species-identity since different characters can have different rules and characters that have bad actions(ie just the base green+purple) could have more powerful stats to offset that. It would be great for special forms too, because the speed form as an example could have 3 green and 2 purple allowing it to move everywhere and attack several times if needed.

John Belmont