Succubus Stories Combat System Deep Dive

You may have already realized it if you’ve been following the game’s development for some time, but I'm a big fan of systems and game mechanics. I have a lot of fun designing crunchier mechanics like the encounter system, the expedition system, alchemy, and things of that nature. So it's probably no surprise I had a lot of fun designing what is ultimately a very basic combat system.

I also like talking shop about this stuff, and I'm sure some of you find this sort of thing interesting as well, so I figured, why not make some CONTENT™ and talk about some under-the-hood specifics of the game’s combat.

Basic Mechanics and Stats

So to start off, let's talk about stats. Every character, including Priscilla, has 100 HP and 100 MP. Some enemies were given significantly higher defense to simulate higher HP; the way I thought of it was that HP and defense are basically the same thing, so having defense let me simplify the way HP works. I don't have to worry about different maximum HP totals to account for, say, healing. Everything is out of 100. Simple.

Attack and defense values for most actors are between 10 and 30, Priscilla has 20 attack and 10 defense, for example. Every "skill" in the game has things like a multiplier, a variance, and a critical hit chance, but more on that later. The idea is if one of Priscilla's skills deals 1.6 damage, that's 1.6 * 20, or 32 total damage. Enemy defense is percentage reduction, so 10 defense would make the attack deal 10% less damage. In the above case, the 32 damage dealt would result in about 28 total damage.

Skills

Everything is a skill, including basic attacks from enemies. All skills have an MP cost (which can be 0) and a cooldown (which can also be 0). The cooldown prevents characters from "spamming" their best attacks over and over. For example, many enemies have a variation of a normal attack that has a slightly higher than normal chance to miss in exchange for around a very high chance to critically hit. This skill doesn't cost MP, but has a fairly high cooldown to prevent it from coming up too much. Priscilla is basically coded the same way as an enemy, so she has the same thing going on, with cooldowns limiting her access to her best attacks.

I considered making a rudimentary AI system, basically just to have the actors look at their own HP and the enemy's HP to figure out what move might be best to use, but I decided this would be a waste of time. Instead, there's a list of moves an actor can do based on cooldowns, remaining MP, and a few combat conditions, and then one of those moves is randomly selected. If for some reason the skill list is empty, for example if they are out of MP or all their other skills are on cooldown, the actor will perform the normal attack skill.

Moves have several properties to set them apart. A base damage, which is a multiplier of attack, a variation value, which is a value between 0 and a multiplier of attack which is then randomized added to the damage, an accuracy, which determines the attack's chance to miss (by default, 5% chance to miss) and a critical hit chance. All critical hits deal 50% bonus damage before defense is factored in. This means you have attacks that behave slightly differently, one might have more variation compared to base damage, making it feel swingy in how much damage it does. Others might have higher crit chances or lower accuracy.

Finally, many skills, and other events, can trigger effects. Effects are basically status effects, but they are very simple in this system. I do think they add a layer of strategy though, so let's look them over.

Effects

The first effect to mention is "psyched up." Basically, when an enemy drops below 20 HP, they have a small chance to get "psyched up." This status grants some passive MP regen and a 10% attack power boost. The effect lasts until the fight ends. Importantly, characters have one chance to gain this status from taking damage; only the attack that first drops them below 20 HP without killing them outright can make them psyched up. If they are hit again after that and don't die, they don't get another chance to enter this state.

There are also two other ways to trigger "psyched up," but only for Priscilla. First, every time she uses her charge move when she's out of MP, she has a small chance to gain the effect. The player using the flirt option, which boost Prisicilla's MP at the cost of a lot of lust, also has a chance to trigger the effect.

Next, characters can be “stunned” by certain powerful attacks, including the player character's kick. The chances of this happening vary based on the skill in question. Stunned characters have their defense reduced by half for one turn, and any attack on them will also be boosted by about 20%. These attacks can also crit, and the damage bonus can stack with the "psyched up" state. The state only lasts for one turn, so if Priscilla fails to do damage, no benefit is gained.

The “defending” status is gained by enemies who use the "defend" skill. It also lasts one turn and boosts the defense power of the character for one turn. Defending and stunned cancel each other out, so if both are present on one actor, they'll just take normal damage.

The “focused” status gives a character a large boost to critical hit chance until they score a critical hit, at which point the bonus is removed. Only calming balms grant this status, so only Prisicilla can have it.

There is a "drowsy" effect, caused by the sleeping potion. Enemies under this effect have a chance to not act on their next turn. Sleeping potions also wreck enemy MP, and are great for enemies who use powerful spells, and that's probably the main reason to use this potion, but the chance to stop the enemy from attacking can also be useful.

Finally, there are effects caused by lust, but these are a bit different than the others, as their effects tend to scale with total lust, getting worse as lust goes up. At around 40% lust, actors take a critical hit chance penalty. This penalty increases as lust goes up. Starting at around 60% lust, actors take a penalty to their attack power, which also scales up as lust goes up. Finally, at 90% lust, actors take a defense penalty. This last penalty doesn't scale, but it is rather significant.

Priscilla

I already mentioned it, but Priscilla is basically just a special enemy. Like enemies she has a set of moves and does basically what she wants on each turn without your input.

I initially considered making her more traditionally "playable," think more like a Pokemon game. The player character is still hanging back, but you can choose her moves in addition to using potions and other actions. The more I thought about it though, the less I liked this idea.

For one, it's a bit weird. It makes Priscilla seem incompetent if you're there telling her what to do. For two, I actually think the micromanaging of her status is the actual challenge here. I didn't want to make a complex typing system, I wanted the player to primarily focus on healing and keeping her MP topped up. So why even make her controllable? If anything, the lack of control enhances the interesting challenges of being a healer, much like in an MMO or something like that.

I honestly have no idea how this will be received. I think combat in lewd games is generally bad, and I think my combat system is a level or two more simplified and less interactive than those games even tend to be. I think the idea of playing as a sort of healer can work, but it's hard to know if I've pulled it off. It can often degrade into just being forced to throw a healing potion on every single turn instead of anything tactically interesting. I've tried to make the healing potions strong without making things too easy, but I am worried players won't like this system.

That said, I think of it like the maid academy word puzzles. Even if you despise it, it's probably at least interesting to dip your toes into another style of gameplay for a bit, and it should be a small part of the overall game, so I don't think it will ruin the game for people who end up hating the system.

Some More Minor Details

Let's go over a few details I think are interesting or enlightening.

The first thing is that the number of potions that have combat use is actually relatively large. I initially planned for more: jizz bombs, "own brand," suggestion potions, rancid semen, and even piss liquors were all going to be usable in one way or another, and a lot of these still have code, I just hid the options. The number of options was so long it was really a bit too much.

You can feed Priscilla cum from on your body or even from in your ass if you have the butt plug and received a few anal creampies. These options grant a small heal with larger than normal lust gain, but are good for saving on potions or for dire circumstances. You can also use your breast milk to feed Prisicilla or the enemy via potion magic if you have the "Milk Maiden" trait, are lactating, and currently can lactate. This restores HP and MP to Prisicilla in exchange for a lot of lust. For enemies it raises their lust and inflicts drowsiness.

During exploration in dangerous areas between fights, Priscilla's HP and MP will restore slowly over time, and her lust will also naturally decrease. You can also give her potions, but only one at a time, and it takes her a period of exploration time to drink it, so you can't just spam her back to fill health between each fight. However, leaving and re-entering the exploration area will completely restore her status. Leaving and re-entering is usually not a huge deal, so this is a viable option if things are getting rough.

You'll notice that only one enemy appears in any given encounter. This is not technically a limitation of the mechanic, it is designed in a way to handle an arbitrary amount of actors. After all, remember that Prisicilla is basically an enemy. The actual limitation is… drumroll please… AI. Without an AI system or player control, it would be very frustrating to watch Prisicilla not focus down a given enemy. On top of that, multiple enemies would need to be weaker to make the fights not a slog, and the interface would be more confusing. Making sure you're targeting the same event as Prisicilla and stuff like that, plus making sure Prisicilla's AI follows up on openings you create. There are also considerations for UI, which make putting large numbers of enemies on-screen and the options to target them challenging. Overall, I think the 1v1 nature of the combat is the most sensible solution to all these problems. If the game were built around combat, or combat just played a really major role in it, I would probably dig deeper into a more complete AI system and a lot of these issues would disappear, though.

Conclusion

So what do you guys think of the combat in the game? Feel free to be brutally honest. I am interested to hear your thoughts. I’m proud of the system in terms of its look and feel, and I think it's competently designed in a gameplay sense, but I’m not sure I’ve nailed the balance and experience of it, and that’s something you guys can help me hone in on over time. I expect reactions to be somewhat mixed, and that’s okay.

I plan to include about two more dangerous areas/combat sequences in the main story of the game, and I also expect to include maybe one or two requests in the game that focus around combat unless the combat system is hated. But it’s never going to be a mainstay mechanic in the game, so if you don’t like it, try not to sweat it too much!

Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this little peek behind the scenes!