Brigade E5 - a promising tactical game.

[obediah]

Less realistic? Do you want to explain how tactical turn-based is less realistic than having two characters hack at each other until the other's health goes down because real time doesn't allow for anything else?

I propose an expirement: Find two steet urchins that won't be missed, given them each a knife and pit them in a fight to the death. Then see if a: They take turns hacking at each other, or b: the "hack at each other until the other's health goes down". I know where I'm putting my money down. If that's not tactical enough for your, take two teams of 10 urchins and repeat. I still win.

Now if you replace 'realistic' with 'fun', I'll agree with you.. My beef with realitime is that is too realisitc, no time to think or plan, and it's impossible (at least for my retarded reflexes) to control multilpe bodies in real time (which is an unrealistic goal in and of itself). I'm learning to deal with realtime w/ pause, it's not ideal, but if it's that or nothing I'm willing to give it a shot.

 

[Fez]

I propose an expirement: Find two steet urchins that won't be missed, given them each a knife and pit them in a fight to the death. Then see if a: They take turns hacking at each other, or b: the "hack at each other until the other's health goes down". I know where I'm putting my money down. If that's not tactical enough for your, take two teams of 10 urchins and repeat. I still win.

Nine times out of ten I find they simply turn around and both kill and rob the person who was stupid enough to arm them.

 

[obediah]

I propose an expirement: Find two steet urchins that won't be missed, given them each a knife and pit them in a fight to the death. Then see if a: They take turns hacking at each other, or b: the "hack at each other until the other's health goes down". I know where I'm putting my money down. If that's not tactical enough for your, take two teams of 10 urchins and repeat. I still win.

Nine times out of ten I find they simply turn around and both kill and rob the person who was stupid enough to arm them.

Well as long as they don't roll initiative first and then take turns with said person, my point holds. Although I must admit this is getting pretty far out of my area of expertise.

 

[Mangler]

I think you guys have pretty much explained the major downsides of TB / Vs. RT (W/Pause or not).

RT: More 'realistic', difficult to control (let alone a part of X members).
TB: Not 'realisitic', easy(er) to control.

Has there even been a 'modern' Phase-baised game?

You know, queue up your actions, then perform them in real time. Run out of actions/ queue limit, hit an interupt then add more actions/commands... I think this would solve both problems, if implimented well.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

RT: More 'realistic', difficult to control (let alone a part of X members).
TB: Not 'realisitic', easy(er) to control.

No.

RT: Less 'realistic', difficult to control.
TB: More 'realistic', easier to control, tons more strategy options.

And there have been no recent PB games that I know of.

 

[Elwro]

Wasn't UFO:Aftermath sth like that?

 

[Mangler]

About UFO, welll I played the demo for 30 seconds... It made my eyes bleed, horrible GFX bugs.. and the interface was irritating me. No it seemed more like a RT + pause kinda game (PB looked tacked on).

Actually off the top of my head I can't think of many PB games that provide a good example.

Also E5 demo (mine's much older than v5), I liked the bullet time RT system.
There are a few issues with that interface however, whenever you want a character to do something invariably you issue the orders and they do it, BUT the other guy would usually just stand there...
This game needs a 'commit orders' button once the user has selected what they wanted to do... The developers were heading in the right direction but need to go that extra mile to really have a good(ish) system.

Well the old argument was that RT simulates 'everybody attacking at the same time', better than TB.
However in some situations I think the differance would be nonexistant, like in a Napoleonic or American war of Independance, type simulation.

'Traditional' TB as it stands now does not convey how two Dudes stand next to each other with SMGs firing full-auto. Whoever fires the part of the burst first wins invariably.
Round-Robin/Turn Initiation handling methods aside.

'X-Com/JA2' TB do this much better, but still its not perfect. Because when you get a 'Interrupt' nearly all of the time (if you have APs) you can perform a 'full' action, like emptying the whole clip into that nearby enemy. The enemy gets no chance to dodge/fire back.

TB does a poor job of modeling "real" tactical combat situations. (it IS good for most strategy however)

I think because TB was never meant for such situations, it has its roots in many board games, like RISK / AXIS & ALLIES... and so on.

RT has its roots in simulation / arcade type games / simulators. (Racing games/ Flight sims, Fighting games, just about every arcade game)

A Good system when the players skill actually means something, (racing / fighting / flight sims).

However in a RPG, the whole tenent of 'Player skill' goes out the window. Thus RT is inappropriate for such a game.

What I'm trying to say is: Neither does a totally convincing job.
Phase Baised would at least attempt to bridge the gap between the two. Sortofa Real-Time sliced into tiny little elements which the player has all the time in the world to change but the PC does not. Or a Turn-Baised where the turns are really short and happen simultainously, for everyone. There are many ways to do PB, but few have steped up to the plate. The only game I can think of with even a vagely similar idea is Laser Squad Nemesis, (mind you I have not actually played it but I hear its similar to PB)

 

[obediah]

RT: More 'realistic', difficult to control (let alone a part of X members).
TB: Not 'realisitic', easy(er) to control.

No.

RT: Less 'realistic', difficult to control.
TB: More 'realistic', easier to control, tons more strategy options.

And there have been no recent PB games that I know of.

Why do you say that turn based combat is more realistic? Are you basing it on particular implementations? If you have a reason to say this other than a dislike of RT games, I'd like to hear them. Otherwise I thik you're letting your vitriol cloud your judgement. In the real world combat occurs in real time. TB combat is a discreet abstraction to make it easier for us chit and dice geeks to approximate the factors that affect real combat. A well designed RT w/ pause system would allow better (more realistic) tactics and strategies than a comparable well designed TB system, and it will be able to track many more variables that provide extra realism.

If you take a look at matrix games or other strategy grognards, you'll see a lot of recent realtime games on the tactical level. These aren't popular games, they are the uber complicated strategy nuts embracing realtime pause because it can more accurately model real combat.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Why do you say that turn based combat is more realistic? Are you basing it on particular implementations?

I've stated my reasons in like three different threads as well as this one. See page one. Unless you have all the training and skills that the character you are playing does, there is NO WAY you can emulate what that character would do in any given situation during real time play. Turn based is required to allow you to be able to sift through the options available to you and choose the right course. Granted, this is not realistic in the sense of real word happenings. But is IS realistic in the sense that you are able to play your character to the best ability capable without having to go take real world courses in whatever skills that character possesses.

I want to play a stealthy sniper who lives life on the edge, not take all the training regiments a real one would take just so I could control my game character in real time.

 

[obediah]

Why do you say that turn based combat is more realistic? Are you basing it on particular implementations?

I've stated my reasons in like three different threads as well as this one. See page one. Unless you have all the training and skills that the character you are playing does, there is NO WAY you can emulate what that character would do in any given situation during real time play. Turn based is required to allow you to be able to sift through the options available to you and choose the right course. Granted, this is not realistic in the sense of real word happenings. But is IS realistic in the sense that you are able to play your character to the best ability capable without having to go take real world courses in whatever skills that character possesses.

I want to play a stealthy sniper who lives life on the edge, not take all the training regiments a real one would take just so I could control my game character in real time.

Well let's take pure RT out of the conversation. I agree it's crap, and your comments here and earlier are sufficiently damning. However, RTwP addresses all of these concerns, allowing you to take turns whenever you want, and gettng rid of the artificial strategies like on my turn - walk around corner, fire, walk back around corner ,and repeat until monster is dead, and the other quirks that turns implement.

Geeks have been tweaking turn based rules for longer than I've been alive. Realtime w/ pause on a complex level is still pretty recent, so it's understandable that most of the implmentations have been crap. In the long run, RtwP has much more potential than turn based - not the twitch crap coming up from RTS junk, but the detailed systems coming down from strategy games.

Your comments from page 1 were valid issues, but they were implementation issues rather than a fault with RTwP. To restate my stance, RTwP offers more realistic combat than TB, but implementations so far have failed to impress. Just like turn based came down from the Avalon Hill grognards above, RTwP systems providing much more realism than TB, but offering the same ability to plan at your own pace.

 

[Vi]

RTwP?

Let us imagine the ideal TB game. The game that has minimal or no disadvantage of TB system - I mean the effect of time quantization, when you can do nothing while another side move.

To achieve this, we need to minimize the turn duration. For example, if each step takes the whole turn and aiming takes several turns, this emulates real life quite good. No more stupid tactics like "fast approach-knife hit-run away" N times against machinegunner. Because it will cost you a lot of turns to approach this machinegunner and much less for him to shoot you.

Now we have the most realistic TB game - the game with very small turns and actions that could cost more than one turn to perform. The only one problem here is a number of turns required to move from one point to another.

Will anyone argue?

TBC

 

[Fez]

What you describe is getting closer to the table top games like WH or Space Crusade.

Everyone taking a movement turn first and then an action turn would have a similar result.

P.S. Welcome to the Codex. Keep your hands away from the bars.

 

[Avé]

Why has no-one mentioned LSN's system?

 

[Fez]

Because you smell.

 

[Avé]

Because you smell.

LSN conducts your moves in turn based, with the results in real time.

*wanders off to take a shower

 

[Sol Invictus]

LSN is phase based, not turn-based.

 

[Trash]

Jeeeezus, not again that boring rt/tb discussion... Anyone got something interesting to say about that game or demo? Or a link?

 

[Balor]

There IS a demo, but it's not English. At least, not fully english, heh.
Ask Vi, he's one of developers. I recall they promised to put it up for a time...
It's rather large - about 600 megs.

 

[Avé]

LSN is phase based, not turn-based.

It is turn based, with concurrent execution(whether or not that is what phased base is, I dont really care)

I dont keep up with all the names people keep coming up with for their new "revolutionary" games, but LSN is the hybrid of TB & RT, and it works rather excellently.

 

[Sol Invictus]

It's phase based, and you just described it.

 

[Avé]

It's phase based, and you just described it.

"whether or not that is what phased base is, I dont really care"

 

[Sol Invictus]

It helps to know the proper terms, otherwise you're no better than the legions of idiotic reviewers who think KOTOR is turn-based.

 

[Fez]

Wait for it...

 

[Vi]

Re: RTwP?

Let us imagine the ideal TB game.
...
Now we have the most realistic TB game - the game with very small turns and actions that could cost more than one turn to perform. The only one problem here is a number of turns required to move from one point to another.

Continuing with inventing of ideal TB system
Now, how to solve the problem described above, because it is really a problem.

For example, if you need your soldier to move ten metres forward (that it, say, 10 steps) this simple action will take ten turns, because in our ideal game each step costs you all APs you have for one turn.
The obvious idea is to allow planning of your turns. So in the same situation you just give a command "move ten steps forward" and game remembers this, so during next ten turns if nothing happens you will just press 'end turn' button. But note, you still have a full control, because if something happens (for example, enemy encountered), you could always change your mind and change your orders. And how realistic it is! With such small turns you and enemy move and act virtually simultaneously!
The only problem remaining is this 'end turn' button you are to press ten times to move ten metres. And also long actions, that cost more than one turn - you are to press 'end turn' button several times to perform single action - not good.

But aside this problem the system is perfect - any arguments?

TBC

 

[Astromarine]

is it me or are you carefully laying out a proof that a RT system is perfect?