My Take on Turn-Based Combat

[soggie]

Hi guys, I'm halfway through pre-production of my own CRPG and had a TB combat system designed. I was wondering if you guys can take a look at the basic mechanics and let me know if you think it's fun enough to play with.

Background

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world in some unknown little peninsula, where the rest of the world had been consumed by fatal viruses and a huge chunk of the world's elites have taken off into space, leaving the entire world leaderless overnight.

The game takes place 400 years after the apocalypse and by then nobody remembered what actually happened at that time. Many technologies were lost, and only basic techs relevant to survival had been retained - construction, basic engineering, metallurgy, gunnery, ammunition production and stuff like that.

Game Engine

The game would be presented in an isometric viewpoint that allows the player to pan and rotate the camera, and features a fully 3D world. Locational navigation and interaction is done in real time, combat in turn-based mode on the same map, while world navigation is done like Baldur's Gate's style where you "unlock" new areas through the storyline.

Here're the list of design elements:

• Text-based dialog trees
• Multiple branching storyline
• Multiple endings
• Failing missions as a plot advancement device is possible
• Destructible environment (walls, doors and such can be breeched with explosives)
• Multiple solutions to problems
• Mutually exclusive factions and quests
• No trivial quests
• No easter eggs
• Turn-based combat with AP
• Traditional experience level RPG progression system

Combat

Okay basically when combat begins, the system compiles an initiative list. The characters involved in the combat will all be placed on this list, and once all characters have executed or exhausted their AP a new round would be calculated with initiatives being recalculated. I won't go into that part yet though.

Turns are designed to be extremely short and fast. Unlike Fallout, where you can fire off one or two bursts and then do a tapdance in or out of a doorway in one turn if you have enough AP, you can probably only perform one major move in your turn before you exhaust your APs.

Meaning, in this game you have less AP and actions have higher AP requirements.

Major moves include:

• Aim (ranged only)
• Suppress (ranged only)
• Fire (ranged)/Attack (melee)
• Move
• Change Stance (Standing, Crouching, Prone)
• Throw
• Use Item

Characters can hunker down and do nothing on his turn and save up the AP for the next round, in which a character can accumulate at most twice his original AP amount. This is useful when you want to dash from one cover to the next but don't have enough AP to move that far.

Hex? Tiles? Neither

In this game no hexes or tiles would be used. Everything is calculated per-pixel, and translated to real metrics like feet and meters.

Damage

Combat is designed in this game to be as brutal as possible, in order to encourage players to make extensive use of cover. Damage model in the game is modeled differently in the sense that gaining levels does not mean you have a higher HP pool or better damage resistance. It merely means you have more skills at your disposal or simply move faster or stealthier; only by getting better armor (at the cost of reduced agility) or better tactics can one emerge victorious without spotting a missing arm or leg or a gaping gut wound.

Interrupts

I'm not sure what to call it, but for simplicity's sake I'll call it interrupts. In combat, interrupts can happen, but you have to set it up. For example:

Char A and Char B is both hiding behind cover, and Char A has the initiative. Char A selects suppress and points the suppress wedge (think of it as deploying a HMG unit in CoH) in the general direction of Char B, then ends turn (setting up suppression doesn't cost any AP).

Char B, being a n00b in the game, decides to pop out of his cover and rush Char A. He clicks a location appox 10 feet away and expects his character to run over. As the character comes out of the cover and into the suppression area of Char A, Char A rolls for an interrupt. If the roll is successful Char A opens fire, draining his unused AP and causing damage to Char B.

Char B is hit and is "interrupted" (stopped) 5 feet from his goal. He is bleeding and had tumbled, and now being wiser Char B decides to go back into his cover. He has enough AP left to return to his cover (run that 5 feet), but once he clicks and executes his actions Char A opens fire again (as he has enough AP to perform 2 bursts), killing Char B before he reaches cover.

This is how the interrupt system basically works.

Keys to tactical victory

Characters can be inflicted with status ailments like confusion, fear, and so on, and players can effectively pin down other units with properly set up interrupts.

The key to victory is to extensively employ small unit tactics, like flanking an opponent while keeping them suppressed. Grenades can also be used to flush enemies into killzones (since not all grenades detonate on the same round), or special weapons used to disrupt enemy status (flashbangs, flamethrowers, mortars, snipers, etc).

Players can also make use of explosives to destroy environments in order to gain new entry points. Most walls can be breeched, and covers can even be booby-trapped.

So what do you think?

I'm building a prototype with placeholder graphics as a proof of concept, but I'm pretty sure on how to implement all these technically. I'm not sure if this design can be converted into a dumbed-down real-time with pause mode for those who can't appreciate the beauty of turn-based combat, but that's not the main point.

What do you guys think of such a combat system?

Oh and BTW, I apologize if my english sounded funny. It's not my mother tongue - I'm from Malaysia. Greetings, codex.

 

[Phelot]

I think this sounds awesome. RTwP can never really match the intricate strategy of a well implemented turn based system.

I just hope this isn't a teaser and that this is seriously in development...

 

[soggie]

Thanks for the feedback. It is actually under pre-production.

We've secured enough funding to last us 6 months of development on a 3 man team, with outsourced music, animation & rigging, and prefab modelling. Right now I'm doing the pre-production with another friend (an artist) on a part-time basis until October 2009 where we'll kick it into full development.

But yeah, it's not vaporware. It's real, and that's why I'm asking for an opinion here so that if this system doesn't work, I still have time to change the design before going into development. :D

 

[Emotional Vampire]

RTwP can never really match the intricate strategy of a well implemented turn based system.

Hello, you're a moron.

OP, you described 3E DnD combat. With guns.

 

[soggie]

I did? I never played 3E before so I don't know how similar they are.

But the focus here is not on innovation but rather on whether will it be fun if implemented as a combat system in an RPG.

Your opinion?

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

Sounds good. Now go makymaky

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

Sounds good. But then, most designs do on paper. This isn't meant to sound discouraging, but simply that its usually difficult to imagine the 'fun-ness' of a game from a description, and results are often very different from how they were first envisioned.

If you are not familiar with the Jagged Alliance series of games, you may want to take a look at them, as many of the mechanics sound similar to what you have in mind.

Destructible environment (walls, doors and such can be breeched with explosives)

This is difficult to pull off properly in an RPG, which is probably why you don't see it often. Its not the technical aspects that can't be overcome, its that, effectively, your world has no walls, since the player can destroy them at any time. So, quests and NPCs will need to be set up in such a way that you can't ever assume the player came through a particular route, or that they have gotten a vital piece of information or key, script triggers will need to be placed so that they can respond to the player coming from any direction, etc.

Hex? Tiles? Neither

In this game no hexes or tiles would be used. Everything is calculated per-pixel, and translated to real metrics like feet and meters.

I've been playing through the Temple of Elemental Evil some lately, which has a similar system, and I've found that this often gets in the way of tactics. The game uses 3E DnD rules, which you mentioned that you aren't familiar with, though, so hopefully I can explain the issues properly.

One of the available movement options is the ability to take a 5 foot step. This is a small movement adjustment that takes no real time, and doesn't allow enemies to attack you when you close into melee range. Unfortunately, there have been more than a few times where I've used this option, thinking that my character will be within range for a melee attack, but the game determines that this isn't the case. Since the system doesn't allow additional movement in the same turn as a 5 foot step, I'm left with little choice but to end the character's turn.

Another problem is one of setting up a defensible line. I want my fighters to block a corridor, so the enemies can't reach my weaker spellcasters. However, there will often be holes in the line, which the computer has little problem finding. Similarly, when I try to gang up on a foe in a tight location, I simply have to guess how many of my characters will be able to fit into the area.

Since it sounds like most combat will be resolved from range, you may not have these problems. But, I can foresee times where the player may think they are behind cover, but in reality, are not. Or that the player may think a character has enough movement to reach cover, but doesn't. Or that a character can achieve line of sight to his target, and can't, and so on. I guess I'd have to see how its used, and play around with it some, in order to make any real judgment, which I suppose doesn't help you much.

 

[Khor1255]

While I don't agree with destructible environment being a hindrance to RPGs (unless the game has poor design) I do think a per pixel approach could be problematic tactically. Or rather let me say that this approach is going to be much harder to pull off. It does offer more precision but with this the necessity to assign variable damage and critical hit factors for each pixel (let alone the actual aiming and 'physics' calculations). If you have this even roughed out I say that is a great thing but I do think it is going to involve a lot of work for marginal tactical gain.

Again, I like it but if it takes you a year or two to pull this off (playetest as well as implement) it may be an albatross.

My main concern is with your treatment of interrupts. In many real situations these happen pretty much by accident and I think this needs to be factored in as well.

So, while I think you have some pretty cool ideas I believe it might serve you to look at combat not how you would like it to function but as it really does. Otherwise your system could end up playing rather nonsensically rather than intuitive.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

No easter eggs

these aren't inherently bad, you just have to keep the number reasonable and not hammer it down the player's throats. It can be quite fun to look for them / find them by coincidence.

 

[Khor1255]

Right. There is nothing wrong with Easter eggs unless your game depends on them. Life has it's Easter eggs.

What I really like about the idea is the possibility for truly non linear gameplay due to all of the reasons you listed. I think it is going to be hard to pull off but infinitely worth it in replay value and general sense of freedom you will get in playing the game.

 

[quasimodo]

I think this sounds awesome. RTwP can never really match the intricate strategy of a well implemented turn based system.

I just hope this isn't a teaser and that this is seriously in development...

What he said.

If you could come up with a TB combat system half as good as Jagged Alliance 2 you would have a better system than any RTwP game I have played.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

While I don't agree with destructible environment being a hindrance to RPGs (unless the game has poor design)

It really doesn't have a whole lot to do with being a hindrance, or poor design, but simply the magnitude of the problem. There's just a lot that needs to be considered and handled. Granted, I know as much as you about the project, but in the end, it simply boils down to a *significant* amount of extra work, in programming and scripting, but especially testing. Consider the number of bugs with quests in a 'standard' RPG of this sort, and then take into account the fact the player can go anywhere, at any time. Keeping track of all the quest variables is probably going to be a nightmare.

 

[Khor1255]

Yes, but properly constructed quests take destructible environments into account especially if they are built in a non linear system. Only poorly constructed or linear (isn't that some kind of game synonym?) systems cannot handle destructible environments.
The freedom in tactics and realism make destructible environments highly desirable. I'm not into sacrificing this so that quests are easier to write.

 

[soggie]

This is difficult to pull off properly in an RPG, which is probably why you don't see it often. Its not the technical aspects that can't be overcome, its that, effectively, your world has no walls, since the player can destroy them at any time. So, quests and NPCs will need to be set up in such a way that you can't ever assume the player came through a particular route, or that they have gotten a vital piece of information or key, script triggers will need to be placed so that they can respond to the player coming from any direction, etc.

I think I may have overstated the significance of the destructible environments. Firstly, only certain walls can be breeched. As a general rule of thumb, only brick and wooden walls can be breeched. Support beams cannot be taken out (except for wooden huts, where you can blow up the entire building instead), so that's a restriction I've placed to prevent complete levelling of a town. This means, you can blow off all four walls but still have the building standing in the end.

The second restriction is to restrict the destruction to vertical obstructions only. This means players cannot breech floors. Unrealistic yes, but the way the levels are designed, I can't really figure out how to do that yet.

How I implement this in the engine is quite simple actually. If the wall is breakable, I set a flag to allow explosives to be attached to it. Same with all other destructible structures. It has a set HP amount, and if the explosion takes out the wall, a "broken" wall would be swapped in under the explosion effect.

Now as to design wise, I wouldn't be so arrogant to say that I can predict all possible ways of how a character would approach the problem, including breeching walls to gain access. But I have made it a point in my design document to take that into account, since destructible walls, doors, vents, etc are a major game feature and I expect players to employ that as part of their arsenal when dealing with problems.

Hex? Tiles? Neither

In this game no hexes or tiles would be used. Everything is calculated per-pixel, and translated to real metrics like feet and meters.

I've been playing through the Temple of Elemental Evil some lately, which has a similar system, and I've found that this often gets in the way of tactics. The game uses 3E DnD rules, which you mentioned that you aren't familiar with, though, so hopefully I can explain the issues properly...

While I don't agree with destructible environment being a hindrance to RPGs (unless the game has poor design) I do think a per pixel approach could be problematic tactically.

Okay let me explain more on this per pixel approach. Again, I apologize for not making that clear enough, but what I actually have in mind is something like this:

You click on one of your PC (you get to control every single character in your party), and a semi transparent circle appears underneath him with him in the center. The circle shows how far you can move with the APs you have. When you move the mouse within the sphere, a series of dots like those in Silent Storm would denote the number of steps you can take. This way the player would have a clear indication of the range and capacities of his character.

Same thing with shooting. You click on the character and a circle appears underneath him, with sections of it grayed out to denote zero line-of-sight. A counter will appear next to the mouse to denote the range from the mouse to the character, like "20m" or "55m".

Now to the question of cover. Every character has a small ring underneath them that you can toggle on or off. An arrow shows which direction the character is facing, and colors would be use to display what level of cover the character has in all directions. Lets say a character takes cover behind a crate facing North. The northern portion of the ring would be green, denoting the size of cover the character is in, while the east, west and southern parts would be either yellow or red, denoting partial or no cover.

Is this too complex? Programming wise I kind of have a vague idea on how I can implement this, and I plan to whack out a quick prototype first during the pre-production phase to see if this can be done.

I'm just worried if its too unintuitive and cumbersome to players.

But hexes or per-pixel, the idea is to encourage suppression and flanking. The mechanics must provide facilities to the player to pin down the enemy troops, and then flank them or flush them out into the open or into killing zones. It should emphasize sound tactics, and punish players for the lack of it. It should also model a brutal combat system in which no matter how good your character is on paper, no matter how much skill you have and how high your attribute scores is, a battle is still a battle, and it'll always be deadly.

This also means that there are very few combat situations in the game compared to other RPGs. Yes, you can initiate combat against the entire town, but in most encounters people are more willing to avoid violence (self preservation is key in the wasteland) than resort to it to solve problems. On the other hand though, this also mean that if you ever get into combat, it'll be an experience to savor. You will pay attention to your tactics and plan every move carefully, and obviously this cannot happen too often or players would be fatigued by it.

In the end, what I want to achieve is to make combat meaningful other than just clicking and shooting, even in TB.

these aren't inherently bad, you just have to keep the number reasonable and not hammer it down the player's throats. It can be quite fun to look for them / find them by coincidence.

I guess I have a very anal artistic vision of how the game world should be, and I placed consistency at an extremely high priority. That's why my philosophy of not including any easter eggs at all... at least, not those that breaks the setting.

Not something like being able to travel aboard an alien ship...

The freedom in tactics and realism make destructible environments highly desirable. I'm not into sacrificing this so that quests are easier to write.

Amen to that.

 

[Khor1255]

I kind of like the per pixel approach. In fact I think it is a great idea but I do think it will be rather complex to code. In the end though, it does offer real tactical complexity and anything that aids in this is worth the extra work.

It is a good thing to have cover variable based on the exact orientation of a target to a shooter and whatever obstacle lies between. This is extremely relevant and does deserve a rather detailed handling.

Not only will it provide for more realism, but it will make the game more intuitive while making the player feel like he has really accomplished something when he makes a difficult shot. I am not really in favor of providing the player with details like exact range and such unless he has the kind of binoculars or scope that can determine this. I realize it is difficult to make a system where this isn't obvious and to higher level players it maybe should be, but more novice shooters always guess rather badly at things like range, windage and elevation. Having this represented in the system would be a good thing both from a gameplay and realism sense.

 

[ghostdog]

Sounds good, especially the fact that you can control all of your party. It would also be nice to have some good AI scripts to choose for your party memebers when you have some filler combat.

Also, will you be able to avoid combat through dialog or stealth ? And will this approach be rewarded accordingly? How will the experience/level up scheme work? Will you get experience for each and every kill, or will you be rewarded for completing certain tasks ? IMO the second option is better since it gives room for being able to complete each task with different approaches.

 

[soggie]

Sounds good, especially the fact that you can control all of your party. It would also be nice to have some good AI scripts to choose for your party memebers when you have some filler combat.

I try to avoid filler combat. There are duels though in some character's personal quest. The reason I try to avoid filler combat is because if the combat mechanics are going to be that detailed, players are going to spend lots of time in every battle. I want them to enjoy every battle by keeping them sufficiently challenged rather than having so many battles that instead of having them entertained you end up with frustrated groans.

Also, will you be able to avoid combat through dialog or stealth ? And will this approach be rewarded accordingly? How will the experience/level up scheme work? Will you get experience for each and every kill, or will you be rewarded for completing certain tasks ? IMO the second option is better since it gives room for being able to complete each task with different approaches.

The character development mechanic is still being brainstormed right now. But yes, you can avoid combat through dialog and stealth. You can even take it to the extreme in the sense that you can talk your way through the game (and even have other people fight for you) if you invest heavily in social skills, or be an anti-social and never interact with anybody but sneak your way to the ending.

As for rewards, I'm leaning towards only awarding the player experience points through quest/task completion. The rewards should reflect the effort put into solving the situation.

For example, you are tasked to clear a warehouse of bandits. The hardest path would obviously be to kill all the bandits. You can initiate combat and whop their asses, which nets you 5000 xp and allows you to loot their bodies. Or you can fill the entire warehouse with gas, killing the bandits too with much lesser effort but still you get 5000 xp and loot because the game rewards your creativity in solving this problem.

You can barge in and convince them to leave using any of your social skills, and you will get 6000 xp for effective usage of your conversation skills. You get more xp to compensate for not having the chance to loot them. But if you convince them to lay down their arms and leave, you must have built your character so epically that the game should reward your dedication to the path of a diplomat and reward you 6000 xp PLUS loot.

Also, if you snuck into the warehouse and scared the living crap out of the bandits by acting as a ghost, you too will get 6000 xp but no loot.

So basically, in this design, there're varying levels of resolution:

1) bandits all dead
2) bandits partially killed, the rest fled
3) bandits leave willingly
4) bandits leave willingly and lay down arms
5) bandits die, but destruction covers the warehouse partially
6) bandits die, taking down the entire warehouse together
7) bandits stay and you failed the mission

And each outcome should give the player a certain amount of XP regardless of how the player reached that resolution in the first place.

 

[The_scorpion]

If you are not familiar with the Jagged Alliance series of games, you may want to take a look at them, as many of the mechanics sound similar to what you have in mind.

quite unsurprisingly, i quote this part of that previous posting.

Because, no offense, but in my ears, this is another take at a fallout themed Ja2 Mod, but in 3d.
If it gets even half of that done, it'll be an incredibly good game, no doubt.

 

[Khor1255]

Maybe some of it does read like Ja2 or Fallout but I have always thought such systems should be the 'industry standard' by which more elaborate turn based systems are built from. Why invent the wheel twice?

 

[soggie]

I haven't played JA2 or SS yet, but I have a few concepts that I'm thinking of adding upon what I mentioned here.

Stuff like snap shooting (lesser chance of being interrupted; takes one step out, fires, and step back into position), blind shooting (shooting over cover), airburst grenades, bouncing grenades off walls, ricochet shots, and so forth.

 

[quasimodo]

I would think playing both JA2 and SS would be pretty essential background research for a developer of a squad TB combat system.

 

[soggie]

I'm sorry quasimodo, being here in Malaysia it's pretty hard to get my hands on those two games when they came out, so my main influence came from Fallout and the various D&D games in the past.

I built my TB-combat structure around the various improvements I thought possible in Fallout, and it was AFTER doing so that I discovered JA had already done so.

I'm planning to buy them these few days but haven't gotten to it with my heavy schedules.

 

[Khor1255]

SS is a poor let down compared to Ja2 but both have their merits. I didn't even play SS all the way through before I got bored.

Ja on the other hand has been 10 years and still playing.

 

[quasimodo]

I agree JA2 is a far better game, but SS is a rare example of squad TB in 3D.

 

[J1M]

Ok, here are my thoughts:
1) If you want to make a 3D world that's fine, but do not make the mistake of allowing the player to rotate the camera. Lock it in place or you will end up with all of the problems that games like NWN2 have with no additional benefit.

2) You need to play some games like TOEE to actually see per-pixel turn-based combat before trying to decide the merit of it. Frankly, grid based is superior for a number of reasons; some of which have been already mentioned.

3) This game is far too ambitious to do in 6 months with 3 people. Even if you buy all of the art. Even if you work 12 hours a day.