Round/Phase based vs. Turn based

GhanBuriGhan · Jun 27, 2006

This comes up often in discussions about RtwP games. An uninitiated, happy, blue-eyed RPG noob will say: "But KOTOR/BG/etc. is really turn based, you can make it stop after every turn, so what's your problem?!?" and then a gloomy Codexer with callused lips will barge in : "Pshaww! That's a PHASE based game, and it sucks! And you are an idiot!". Then things get ugly.

So, in principle, and neglecting the real-time aspect, do you consider turn based systems (everyone moves sequentially) inherently superior to round-based ones (everyone moves simultaneously), and why? I can see that the the phase based aproach introduces more uncertainty, since you decide your move, not knowing the enemies moves during the phase. This is different from turn based, where the enemy performs no, or only passive actions during your turn. On the other hand, isn't that merely an additional strategic challenge, predicting the enemies move? Isn't the problem more in the implementation and the tactical options you are given instead of the system?

Then, considering the above, and assuming a pause every round option is implemented, why do many of you think such a game can never be as deeply tactical as a turn-based game?

Finally, are there alternatives? I imagine e.g. a system where you can cue your actions as far ahead as you want. E.g. go here, fight this guy, then this one, archer moves here and fires at will... Just like in many phase based games. There are no phases however. Everyone moves simultaneously on the smalles units of time. The speed of time passing can be freely changed, and orders can be changed at any time. I guess I am basically describing a real time system where you have complete control over the time scale.

Vault Dweller · Jun 27, 2006

Try playing chess when "everyone moves simultaneously" and see which system is better.

sheek · Jun 27, 2006

I thought phase-based/simultaneous turn-based/real-time with pause was cool when I was fourteen.

And concluded that the traditional system is the only one that works.

ad hominem · Jun 27, 2006

I think it's that phase/RTwP just precludes a lot of depth of thought and action, which is what most people here enjoy the most. Take VD's chess example: chess is just too deep of a game--with the great masters thinking 12 moves ahead or more--to not be able to take all moves into account. It seems like phase is usually used to hide a lackluster combat system.

bryce777 · Jun 27, 2006

Personally, I don't think phasebased is the biggest problem.

Calling it a hybrid is stupid, though.

If kotor were turnbased then it would not make any difference. Why? Because of the perspective. Position doesn't matter at all to the game. Right there, 80% of the strategy is cut out.

All that leaves is deciding what the chracters do. There do not seem to be too many options here, either. the force characters come off a bit better and can do some stuff, but for the most part it seems the best thing is to give everyone a light saber and run around like a psychotic pack of weedwackers, occasionally using a potion, er, med pack.

To top it off, there is zilch challenge in the first place. You could perhaps make a party with a whole ton of supporting characters to help your main character and ultrabuff him, but there is no point in doing so as everything dies in one hit anyhow.

GhanBuriGhan · Jun 27, 2006

Vault Dweller said:
Try playing chess when "everyone moves simultaneously" and see which system is better.

A RPG combat system is not chess, though, and I don't think it's trying to be. Chess is based on the complexity that comes out of the very simple rules of the game, allowing to think ahead, recognizing tactical situations, etc. Turn-based RPG combat is nothing like chess. It revolves around managing very variable challenges (terrain, opponents, available equipment, etc), bringing your characters skills to bear. The "pieces" have variable and freqeuntly undpredictable options and behaviors, managing the surprises is a big part of the fun. The chess comparison does not really answer why phase-based would be less tactical as a RPG combat system.

sheek said:
I thought phase-based/simultaneous turn-based/real-time with pause was cool when I was fourteen.

And concluded that the traditional system is the only one that works.

As an experience based conclusion that is fine, but the idea here was to analyze why it's the only one that works, and if that is really true.

LCJr. · Jun 27, 2006

Vault Dweller said:
Try playing chess when "everyone moves simultaneously" and see which system is better.

One of my favorite beer&pretzel wargames was GDW's Blue Max. Each turn moves were plotted and then done simultaneously. Made for very fun gameplay. Just required a simple adjustment in thinking from IGO-UGO's "They are here." to WEGO's "Where will they be?". In PC gaming the WEGO system has worked extremely well in the Combat Mission series.

I think it's ignorant to make broad statements like System A good, System B bad. You have to look at the whole package to determine if it's good or bad. If the game requires a lot of micromangement and thought then I'd prefer TB. RTwP might be accectable but if you end up paused the majority of the time the developer should have gone TB. In less complex games like Darklands or Prince of Qin RTwP didn't detract from my enjoyment any. For a fairly simple, solo game like Sacred I can live with realtime. Each system has it's uses and advantages/disadvantages and it's up to the developers to get it right.

bryce777 · Jun 27, 2006

LCJr. said:
Vault Dweller said:

Try playing chess when "everyone moves simultaneously" and see which system is better.

Click to expand...

One of my favorite beer&pretzel wargames was GDW's Blue Max. Each turn moves were plotted and then done simultaneously. Made for very fun gameplay. Just required a simple adjustment in thinking from IGO-UGO's "They are here." to WEGO's "Where will they be?". In PC gaming the WEGO system has worked extremely well in the Combat Mission series.

I think it's ignorant to make broad statements like System A good, System B bad. You have to look at the whole package to determine if it's good or bad. If the game requires a lot of micromangement and thought then I'd prefer TB. RTwP might be accectable but if you end up paused the majority of the time the developer should have gone TB. In less complex games like Darklands or Prince of Qin RTwP didn't detract from my enjoyment any. For a fairly simple, solo game like Sacred I can live with realtime. Each system has it's uses and advantages/disadvantages and it's up to the developers to get it right.

I think this sums it up. I also think that because of their nature realtime and realtiem with pause imply less complexity. I get the most annoyed when a game is semi complex but you have to do it in realtime with pause or even realtime, though.

GhanBuriGhan · Jun 27, 2006

bryce777 said:
LCJr. said:

Vault Dweller said:

Try playing chess when "everyone moves simultaneously" and see which system is better.

Click to expand...

One of my favorite beer&pretzel wargames was GDW's Blue Max. Each turn moves were plotted and then done simultaneously. Made for very fun gameplay. Just required a simple adjustment in thinking from IGO-UGO's "They are here." to WEGO's "Where will they be?". In PC gaming the WEGO system has worked extremely well in the Combat Mission series.

I think it's ignorant to make broad statements like System A good, System B bad. You have to look at the whole package to determine if it's good or bad. If the game requires a lot of micromangement and thought then I'd prefer TB. RTwP might be accectable but if you end up paused the majority of the time the developer should have gone TB. In less complex games like Darklands or Prince of Qin RTwP didn't detract from my enjoyment any. For a fairly simple, solo game like Sacred I can live with realtime. Each system has it's uses and advantages/disadvantages and it's up to the developers to get it right.

Click to expand...

I think this sums it up. I also think that because of their nature realtime and realtiem with pause imply less complexity. I get the most annoyed when a game is semi complex but you have to do it in realtime with pause or even realtime, though.

That may indeed be a problem with realtime. Although I think that if KoTOR had supported movement better (and included bonuses for position, attack from the back, simultaneous attacks, etc. it could have been quite tactical. I don't think it was the perspective, or the phase based design, but the lack of a "go to" command, that made it so limited. And the dificulty, of course, but that's a trivial problem really.

bryce777 · Jun 27, 2006

GhanBuriGhan said:
bryce777 said:

LCJr. said:

Vault Dweller said:

Try playing chess when "everyone moves simultaneously" and see which system is better.

Click to expand...

One of my favorite beer&pretzel wargames was GDW's Blue Max. Each turn moves were plotted and then done simultaneously. Made for very fun gameplay. Just required a simple adjustment in thinking from IGO-UGO's "They are here." to WEGO's "Where will they be?". In PC gaming the WEGO system has worked extremely well in the Combat Mission series.

I think it's ignorant to make broad statements like System A good, System B bad. You have to look at the whole package to determine if it's good or bad. If the game requires a lot of micromangement and thought then I'd prefer TB. RTwP might be accectable but if you end up paused the majority of the time the developer should have gone TB. In less complex games like Darklands or Prince of Qin RTwP didn't detract from my enjoyment any. For a fairly simple, solo game like Sacred I can live with realtime. Each system has it's uses and advantages/disadvantages and it's up to the developers to get it right.

Click to expand...

I think this sums it up. I also think that because of their nature realtime and realtiem with pause imply less complexity. I get the most annoyed when a game is semi complex but you have to do it in realtime with pause or even realtime, though.

Click to expand...

That may indeed be a problem with realtime. Although I think that if KoTOR had supported movement better (and included bonuses for position, attack from the back, simultaneous attacks, etc. it could have been quite tactical. I don't think it was the perspective, or the phase based design, but the lack of a "go to" command, that made it so limited. And the dificulty, of course, but that's a trivial problem really.

It also gets to be a big problem with realtime with pause. Every time an action is done you have to stop. In rtwp in BG the actual implementation is ridiculously poor as well, because running and actions are separate issues. I can beat a hugely more powerful character with a halfling with a sling just by running in circles and firing as I run.

The only thing good about it is the easy battles (ie most battles) run very quickly, but a good turnbased implementation can accomplish this, too. Like in toee. In the bigger battles you spend more time paused than not. The autopausing sucks (to me) even more than the manual pausing. None of the ways you pause make sense because if you wait til the end of the turn then you can't do anything and you usually need to position youself somehow before doing an action, so I would constantly either a)start casting a spell and then when I pause forget a spell is being cast already and so lose it or b) end up not casting/attacking that round.

A phase based system is not bad - it would be 100x better in the case of BG. People can argue all they want, but rtwp, and ESPECIALLY the implementation of it in BG just fucking sucks. It sucks for realism, it sucks for tactics, and it sucks for ease of use, and it sucks due to exploitability - you end up fighting in BG in ridiculous, ludicrous ways in oder to win, and in many combats (especially in the IWD series) you have little chance to win if you don't. Having everyone run for 6 seconds, stop and fire an arrow/cast a spell ad nauseum is just a fucking joke.

"Although I think that if KoTOR had supported movement better (and included bonuses for position, attack from the back, simultaneous attacks, etc. it could have been quite tactical. I don't think it was the perspective, or the phase based design, but the lack of a "go to" command, that made it so limited. And the dificulty, of course, but that's a trivial problem really."

Well, here you are trying to do things that first person perspective just isn't suited for. You can hack some of them in but it's just going to be awkward.

You could also make things a little more tactical by varying the different attacks and the force options you can use.

Basically, the first person perspective boils down to combat like in wasteland or bard's tale. You can make it fairly tactical but mostly only by giving different types of attacks or spells or whatever. trying to do positional stuff will suck, as bard's tale 3 proved.

Zomg · Jun 27, 2006

My number one problem with RTw/P that isn't a matter of taste is the goddamn pathing. Pathing management is probably the motivator of 50% or more of the combat commands in Darklands, Baldur's Gate or KotOR. Conflating traditional phase based games with the BG paused RTS style cuts out the fact that most phase based games either totally abstract spatial concerns (ex. Wasteland) or have discrete space movement (ex. Laser Squad). My second biggest non-taste problem with RTw/P is that it is inherently hostile to balance, as you increase player power as a function of pause rate, meaning the rate at which you insert human decisions. If they ever balanced one of those games with the idea that the player would perpetually use the maximum pause rate in combat, they wouldn't be getting any realtimer sales.

bryce777 · Jun 27, 2006

Zomg said:
My number one problem with RTw/P that isn't a matter of taste is the goddamn pathing. Pathing management is probably the motivator of 50% or more of the combat commands in Darklands, Baldur's Gate or KotOR. Conflating traditional phase based games with the BG paused RTS style cuts out the fact that most phase based games either totally abstract spatial concerns (ex. Wasteland) or have discrete space movement (ex. Laser Squad). My second biggest non-taste problem with RTw/P is that it is inherently hostile to balance, as you increase player power as a function of pause rate, meaning the rate at which you insert human decisions. If they ever balanced one of those games with the idea that the player would perpetually use the maximum pause rate in combat, they wouldn't be getting any realtimer sales.

Well, that's just because bioware (and most companies) seem to employ incompetent programmers.

elander_ · Jun 27, 2006

GhanBuriGhan said:
why do many of you think such a game can never be as deeply tactical as a turn-based game?

Turn-base is not sacred not even in board games. The mechanics of a turn-base game are very simple to understand. Imagine a poker game where each one has a turn and in each turn there is a set of actions the player can choose to do or pass away. When everyone has played his turn in sequence we say that a round was done and a new can start.

The reason why people stick to this scheme (in most board games i know) is because it works and theres is no noticeable benefit on changing it. If you try the classic board games that are considered references their quality depends more on the imagination and magic of their specific game rules and not much if the game is tb or some other variant.

GhanBuriGhan said:
Finally, are there alternatives? I imagine e.g. a system where you can cue your actions as far ahead as you want. E.g. go here, fight this guy, then this one, archer moves here and fires at will... Just like in many phase based games. There are no phases however. Everyone moves simultaneously on the smalles units of time. The speed of time passing can be freely changed, and orders can be changed at any time. I guess I am basically describing a real time system where you have complete control over the time scale.

That could be done with a turn-base game where you plan your turns ahead of time. I don't see any problem with this. If you remove rounds and turn-base is much harder to evaluate your oponient strengths and weaknesses.

GhanBuriGhan · Jun 27, 2006

bryce777 said:
It also gets to be a big problem with realtime with pause. Every time an action is done you have to stop.

RtwP was what I meant yes. BTW, I am not trying to make a case for RTwP, it's by no means my preferred system. I do wonder however if it couldn't be implemented better as it has been in the past, or if there is something inherent in the aproach that invariably kills deeper tactics. Why do you see it as a problem to stop after every action? How is that different from turn based?

In rtwp in BG the actual implementation is ridiculously poor as well, because running and actions are separate issues. I can beat a hugely more powerful character with a halfling with a sling just by running in circles and firing as I run.

As you say, that is an implementation problem. It could happen in a badly desgnid turn based game just as well.

The only thing good about it is the easy battles (ie most battles) run very quickly, but a good turnbased implementation can accomplish this, too. Like in toee. In the bigger battles you spend more time paused than not.

Not having played ToEE, how does it work? Basically an autoplay feature for turn based combat? the only disadvantages I can see to that is that it may look strange.

The autopausing sucks (to me) even more than the manual pausing. None of the ways you pause make sense because if you wait til the end of the turn then you can't do anything and you usually need to position youself somehow before doing an action, so I would constantly either a)start casting a spell and then when I pause forget a spell is being cast already and so lose it or b) end up not casting/attacking that round.

Loosing spells was a problem in BG, I remember that. However, it was not a big problem with the queing system e.g. in KotoR, I think.

A phase based system is not bad - it would be 100x better in the case of BG. People can argue all they want, but rtwp, and ESPECIALLY the implementation of it in BG just fucking sucks. It sucks for realism, it sucks for tactics, and it sucks for ease of use, and it sucks due to exploitability - you end up fighting in BG in ridiculous, ludicrous ways in oder to win, and in many combats (especially in the IWD series) you have little chance to win if you don't. Having everyone run for 6 seconds, stop and fire an arrow/cast a spell ad nauseum is just a fucking joke.

While I never resorted to the tactics you describe, it is certainly not my favourite system, nor implementation. Although a lot of that had to do with the pathfinding problems (see Zomgs post). However, isnt' BG already a phase based, WEGO system already?

"Although I think that if KoTOR had supported movement better (and included bonuses for position, attack from the back, simultaneous attacks, etc. it could have been quite tactical. I don't think it was the perspective, or the phase based design, but the lack of a "go to" command, that made it so limited. And the dificulty, of course, but that's a trivial problem really."

Well, here you are trying to do things that first person perspective just isn't suited for. You can hack some of them in but it's just going to be awkward.

You could also make things a little more tactical by varying the different attacks and the force options you can use.

KoTOR is 3rd person, not first. Even in first, I am not so sure. Take tactical shooters, despite first (or 3rd) person and real time they can be quite tactical. Although I'd probably vote for a free camera a la spellforce for a game like that. Still, I think the lack of tactics in the KOTOR games was mostly in the implementation: lack of control over character movement and positioning being the biggest factor.

Basically, the first person perspective boils down to combat like in wasteland or bard's tale. You can make it fairly tactical but mostly only by giving different types of attacks or spells or whatever. trying to do positional stuff will suck, as bard's tale 3 proved.

Haven't played bards tale 3. Again, although its a different genre again, I liked the controls in Spellforce, though. A versatile camera (birds eye to place your units, closeing in to 3rd person to direct the actual battle), lots of interface control over your units. Something like that could work.

LCJr. · Jun 27, 2006

My number one problem with RTw/P that isn't a matter of taste is the goddamn pathing. Pathing management is probably the motivator of 50% or more of the combat commands in Darklands, Baldur's Gate or KotOR.

Ever played Geneforge? TB and pathing in combat is horrible.

From the Codex review;

In combat, sometimes the pathfinding gets a little screwy. This is more of a problem for a melee character than it is for the ranged fighters, since a melee character has to move passed his creations to get to the enemy. In fact, a lot of times it will tell you that you can't move to a desired location when you can if you babystep your character.

And if you don't babystep they'll take a longer route and waste their AP's.

Pathing is messed up in a lot of games regardless of the system used. Most games suffer from the "shortest distance between points is to circumnavigate the globe in the opposite direction" syndrome.

Oarfish · Jun 27, 2006

I think phase based is better for a simulation feel - the Combat Mission series being a superb example. You do feel like you have slightly less control though. And for unrealistic, abstract combat involving small groups (like every RPG ever) turn based is probably preferable for pacing and intimacy with your character(s).

For controling large number of actors, when those actors can decide to act independently I think a phase base system is best. Combat Mission's system with higher level objectives for squads so you dont have to micromanage 3 bloody companies would be pretty close to my dream wargame.

elander_ · Jun 28, 2006

LCJr. said:
And if you don't babystep they'll take a longer route and waste their AP's.
Pathing is messed up in a lot of games regardless of the system used. Most games suffer from the "shortest distance between points is to circumnavigate the globe in the opposite direction" syndrome.

Bad pathfinding is a problem that afects all games be it real-time, phase-base or turn-base. In fact this shows how turn-base is superior to the other systems in some points because it's more evident what is going on when you play in turn-base mode. TB let's see what is going on with much more clarity while phase-base only adds a degree of uncertainty with the added bonus that things become more actiony.

Like GBG sugested let the player "program" his rounds on a sort of queue if pausing the game too much becomes nuissance (it had to me in some ocasions while playing Fallout 2). This is a much better solution than to loose TB and dumb down the game into an action game with pause.

bryce777 · Jun 28, 2006

The issue with a queue is that it will quickly become invalidated through the course of combat.

Also, for it to make sense, it would have to be relatively high level stuff, which would take away a lot of control.

Even worse...just think of the implementation. I am really good at UI design, and nothing easy leaps at me for this one, to say the least. Even worse, in a world where 80-90% of all games have really terrible pathfinding, the chance that programmers will be up to this sort of AI task is vanishingly small. In most games, AI of any sort is a complete afterthought, with no real attention given to it til the last minute.

I don't think it's impossible to design or implement, but when the more mundane stuff is usually implemented in the most halfassed manner or at the least has one or two big flaws, I would not expect any real success from a game that was attempted using something like this.

Human Shield · Jun 28, 2006

Managing a limited resource planned into the future will always require more thought then the constant stream of real-time. With turn based you have the weight going around the corner standing up for more time later or prone for more accuracy, with real-time you can just crawl everywhere; things like this affect every level of gameplay.

It is a different experience and simulation that still has its place for gameplay revolving more on planning and thought then bodycount, comparisons of realism are bullshit.

AlanC9 · Jun 28, 2006

Human Shield said:
With turn based you have the weight going around the corner standing up for more time later or prone for more accuracy, with real-time you can just crawl everywhere; things like this affect every level of gameplay.

It is a different experience and simulation that still has its place for gameplay revolving more on planning and thought then bodycount, comparisons of realism are bullshit.

Meaning that tactical games aren't realistic, or that they shouldn't be?

I'm guessing the latter from your example. The decision about changing stance is being driven by how many APs the character has per round. This is a completely artificial phenomenon that has no bearing on anything in the real world.

GhanBuriGhan · Jun 28, 2006

bryce777 said:
The issue with a queue is that it will quickly become invalidated through the course of combat.

Also, for it to make sense, it would have to be relatively high level stuff, which would take away a lot of control.

Even worse...just think of the implementation. I am really good at UI design, and nothing easy leaps at me for this one, to say the least. Even worse, in a world where 80-90% of all games have really terrible pathfinding, the chance that programmers will be up to this sort of AI task is vanishingly small. In most games, AI of any sort is a complete afterthought, with no real attention given to it til the last minute.

I don't think it's impossible to design or implement, but when the more mundane stuff is usually implemented in the most halfassed manner or at the least has one or two big flaws, I would not expect any real success from a game that was attempted using something like this.

That makes a lot of sense, yes. I'd really hope for a game to be successful in this despite the difficulty, though. Since real-time with pause seems to be here to stay I would like to see developers put more thought into it at least.

Human Shield said:
Managing a limited resource planned into the future will always require more thought then the constant stream of real-time. With turn based you have the weight going around the corner standing up for more time later or prone for more accuracy, with real-time you can just crawl everywhere; things like this affect every level of gameplay.

It is a different experience and simulation that still has its place for gameplay revolving more on planning and thought then bodycount, comparisons of realism are bullshit.

I agree, it's a different playing style for sure, and although both can be tactical in their way, it's hard to compare them. I was more interested in the question of phase based versus turn based though, mainly because it seems that most developers apparently see real-time (with pause) as a must these days, and those systems are usually phase based to look better in real time.
What I am wondering is how deep, in principle, a tactical combat system could be using a phase based system - or in other words, if it's truly impossible to create a phase based system designed with a real-time option, that would be satisfying when played as a tactical, round based system - satisfying at the level of Fallout or JA, say.

The comments here lead me to believe that it would be very hard, but not impossible. It seems the real time component has a need for high-level actions, while the turn based play needs access to lower level actions and micromanagement of movement and detailed tactical rules (e.g. terrain advantages, different attacks with advantages and disadvantages, etc.).
Would a system of hierarchical combat instructions be feasible? E.g. imagine something like the radial interface in TOEE (no, i didnt play it, just tried the demo) - in real time mode, only a first ring of instructions is visible, basically high-level stuff like KOTOR. If you switch to pause mode, detailed instructions come up, e.g. where to go, attack vs. defensive stances, how much time to spend on aiming, etc.

An argument against this was that it would be impossible to balance both playstyles - but couldn't that be handled by a game option "preferred palystyle" that sets some difficulty and AI parameters? I don't think it's bad if the game cheats, as long as the player has fun because of it?

Human Shield · Jun 28, 2006

AlanC9 said:
Meaning that tactical games aren't realistic, or that they shouldn't be?

They should be playable and consistent, which TB does better IMO. Real-time games haven't offered the same amount of options and limits consequences that end up feeling less realistic. In TB if an enemy gets an interupt on you they could fire multiple times, in real-time mode you can retreat instantly, if they use the same damage model system the RT mode becomes shoddy; the RT mode has to change everything and either bullets do more damage and the game gets annoying or they do the same damage and the game feels basic. Also note that you can move AND shoot in TB mode while I haven't seen that yet in RT.

I'm guessing the latter from your example. The decision about changing stance is being driven by how many APs the character has per round. This is a completely artificial phenomenon that has no bearing on anything in the real world.

So you wouldn't be able to get more shots off before the enemy fires back by poping out of the corner instead of crawling out prone?

It leads to more decision-based gameplay and makes time a more important factor. RT games usually turn into prone matches, or bullets do such light damage that running across a field covered with snipers is easy in RT, and the game becomes run and gun, while the enemy would take you down in TB.

TB is able to better present more options and at the same time make them each useful and tactical.

bryce777 · Jun 28, 2006

GhanBuriGhan said:
bryce777 said:

The issue with a queue is that it will quickly become invalidated through the course of combat.

Also, for it to make sense, it would have to be relatively high level stuff, which would take away a lot of control.

Even worse...just think of the implementation. I am really good at UI design, and nothing easy leaps at me for this one, to say the least. Even worse, in a world where 80-90% of all games have really terrible pathfinding, the chance that programmers will be up to this sort of AI task is vanishingly small. In most games, AI of any sort is a complete afterthought, with no real attention given to it til the last minute.

I don't think it's impossible to design or implement, but when the more mundane stuff is usually implemented in the most halfassed manner or at the least has one or two big flaws, I would not expect any real success from a game that was attempted using something like this.

Click to expand...

That makes a lot of sense, yes. I'd really hope for a game to be successful in this despite the difficulty, though. Since real-time with pause seems to be here to stay I would like to see developers put more thought into it at least.

I do think it is interesting, though.

If you can actually design something and flesh it out a bit, I will put it into my gaming system I am developing. Not that it will ever see the light of day, but if people at least see a working design they might get ideas for things even better some day....

Gambler · Jun 28, 2006

Real-time games haven't offered the same amount of options and limits consequences that end up feeling less realistic.

F.E.A.R. has combat superior to anything I've seen in RPGs, and it's pretty real-time.

elander_ · Jun 28, 2006

Somehow i doubt anything can beat Full Spectrum Warrior in terms of real-time strategic combat games. That's a game where we control two teams and simulate real war situations with real war tactics like supression fire, covering areas of enemy fire, combined team maneuvers, hiding behind destructable objects, crouching, running/sneaking, grenade fighting tactics, realistic use of amunnition per mission, etc. It works because like in true combat, combat is slow and with cautious movement and we have to work as a team.

http://www.fullspectrumwarrior.com/index2.php

One thing i strongly dislike in actions games is unnatural movement. A problem that simply doesn't exist in turn-base games. In UT for example bots dont stride naturaly they skate with impossible movements. Another example in Oblivion in a n empty hand fight i switched to 3rd view and saw an npc ORBITING around my char with an impossible movement, not only that but the guy often step in my face making it impossible to see anything. So it's not hard to see why people dislike real-time games. People should play games like Streetfighter to see a good example of real-time tactics and natural movements.

Howver real-time games even if well done will allways impose a limitation both in gui (needs to be quick and easy to access) and in tactics than can be applied in combat.

Fallout Tactics used a different system. Instead of making a RT with pause they made a TB with a real-time option. The two things are completely different. TB with real-time is a TB game with a grid and everything a TB game should have, except that when we press the ENTER key to switch to real-time the game switches turns automaticaly and gives each action point a small fraction of a second. I think that in Fallout Tactics it was 1/4 of a second and if you fired a weapon to quickly your actions would drop to zero and you would have to recover your APs at the rate of 1/4 a second or whatever.

Round/Phase based vs. Turn based

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Prophet

Arbiter

Erudite

Augur

Liturgist

Erudite

Augur

Erudite

Augur

Arbiter