Simultaneous Turn Based Combat

[abyss]

How should it happen? Do you get a command phase and an action phase? Is the action phase interruptible? Do you watch the action phase play out in real time like one big movie like a Fallout style combat but with overlapping turns? Or do you watch the actions individually, with (optionally) POV changes and occasional close-ups? Or some combination of the above? How should faster/slower movement be presented in the pictures/movies?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jJrUY27O0Y

[MDF_MadDogFargo]

How should it happen? Do you get a command phase and an action phase? Is the action phase interruptible? Do you watch the action phase play out in real time like one big movie like a Fallout style combat but with overlapping turns? Or do you watch the actions individually, with (optionally) POV changes and occasional close-ups? Or some combination of the above? How should faster/slower movement be presented in the pictures/movies?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jJrUY27O0Y

Wow! Frozen Synapse is a really impressive game!

But I am not sure how this should translate into the Wasteland universe, because it's a primarily combat game. Wasteland isn't primarily combat. It offers lots of combat, but it balances with the rest of the game.

I've written more extensively over here:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=315&start=120#p32487

Maybe this would be a good time for us to decide what we think is a "balanced" game and how much fighting we should have versus how much other stuff. That is going to figure into how the battles are portrayed.

I'm all for simultaneous combat, whether it means short 10 second clips (or whatever) in "real" time, or something a bit different. But I don't want the game to have 10 minute battles. I think 5 minute battles would be too much. IMO, the most time consuming part of battles ought to be making the correct decisions, not watching the characters.

Frozen Synapse action is good, but can it fit into relatively quick battles that don't monopolize the game?

[abyss]

The planning system in Frozen Synapse is quick and powerful. Each turn only lasts 15 seconds of real time. It's the simulation phase which adds all the extra time in between turns - it causes players to rethink and redo their plans dozens of times over. If W2 does simulatenous turns, they could just remove simulation and combat would be quicker than any of the Fallouts. No cycling between all the entities in a map waiting for turns to finish, everything would just move at the same time.

10 minute battles are perfectly reasonable, it really just depends on the opponent. If I walk into a slaver camp and attack, I should have to prepare and consider tactics because of the danger involved. 10 minutes would be on the short side, even.

If I'm fighting a family of Deathclaws, or a house-sized robotic monstrosity, I want to have to cripple, surround, and range them down. 5 minutes seems right.

If I'm fighting a pack of nuke pooches, I'm going to use a frag grenade or autoresolve to end it instantly.

For many players, the combat IS roleplaying. It's something to be relished, more important than any prewritten plot point or piece of dialogue. If we create a party of organized rangers, we want to roleplay it in combat, using the tactics and coordination required to survive in a wasteland.

Adjustable difficulty should be the best customizer for how players want to play the game. If you savor combat, and want to be forced to use every tactical option available, pick a harder difficulty. If you want something less involved than that, keep it on normal. If you just want to line your guys up like a firingsquad and skip through fights so you can move on to the next plot point, change it to easy.

[MDF_MadDogFargo]

The planning system in Frozen Synapse is quick and powerful. Each turn only lasts 15 seconds of real time. It's the simulation phase which adds all the extra time in between turns - it causes players to rethink and redo their plans dozens of times over. If W2 does simulatenous turns, they could just remove simulation and combat would be quicker than any of the Fallouts. No cycling between all the entities in a map waiting for turns to finish, everything would just move at the same time.

Yes! That's very attractive.

10 minute battles are perfectly reasonable, it really just depends on the opponent. If I walk into a slaver camp and attack, I should have to prepare and consider tactics because of the danger involved. 10 minutes would be on the short side, even.

If I'm fighting a family of Deathclaws, or a house-sized robotic monstrosity, I want to have to cripple, surround, and range them down. 5 minutes seems right.

If I'm fighting a pack of nuke pooches, I'm going to use a frag grenade or autoresolve to end it instantly.

For many players, the combat IS roleplaying. It's something to be relished, more important than any prewritten plot point or piece of dialogue. If we create a party of organized rangers, we want to roleplay it in combat, using the tactics and coordination required to survive in a wasteland.

Adjustable difficulty should be the best customizer for how players want to play the game. If you savor combat, and want to be forced to use every tactical option available, pick a harder difficulty. If you want something less involved than that, keep it on normal. If you just want to line your guys up like a firingsquad and skip through fights so you can move on to the next plot point, change it to easy.

You've defended the place of combat in RPGs very well and I do not deny the attraction of the occasional 10 minute or 5 minute battle. But how often do these long battles happen and do I also get 10 minutes to do something else in between? Should there be lots of quick battles and just a few long battles?

I don't want the battle design phase of the game's development to monopolize its production, which I fear will happen if they have to program lots of battle modes and things. IMO the best thing they can do is provide us with a quick and easy combat format that can be easily adjusted or modified for mods and things.

I don't want WL2 to suffer from trying to be too many games in one. Wasteland isn't all about the combat; there's equal and ample opportunities for exploration, and plenty of story and puzzles to figure out. None of it bogs down the characters. I want WL2 to be like that.

I propose you can have a turn-based simultaneous combat like Frozen Synapse, but you can adapt it to the Wasteland universe by resolving actions the way Wasteland does it, in relatively few battle stages. The battle difficulty shouldn't be about how much time the player spends in battle, but how challenging the enemies are. Different challenges can come with different options that test different skills. I would like it if battles in Wasteland 2 tested your Leadership and Tactics skills, with improvements.

If you dropped something like Froze Synapse into the Wasteland battle format (the MSPE rule system), you could get a combat like this: A visual overhead view, with tactical positions and destructible obstacles, where some of your characters cooperate on group maneuvers together while others act independently, according to their skills. The command screen shows up as a heads-up display and it looks like Wasteland's but with more tactical, strategic options. You order characters to move to a position or give covering fire, or flank. or ambush, in addition to or in place of the simpler options from Wasteland. More complicated battles get higher level control options. Harder battles may take some more turns to resolve than simpler battles, but turns are resolved quickly by dice rolls and even five or six turns of battle can go by quickly.

If the game can rinse and repeat quickly and give you fresh imagery every time, the Wasteland/Frozen Synapse hybrid format of combat can be short and sweet.

[b0rsuk]

Frozen Synapse/Laser Squad Nemesis style combat may look discouraging to some. Planning a single turn can take 5 minutes or more. But this is due to 2 important reasons:

- Opponents in Frozen Synapse are smart. Humans will exploit your weaknesses ruthlessly if you make a poor move.
- Both teams are equal.

This will not be the case in Wasteland 2.

The opponents will be AI, and many of them will be deliberately made stupid (retarded mutants, beasts, simple robots)
Chances will be skewed by character skills and experience levels. There will be no point in making every fight equal.

So not only it won't take as much time, it will take less and it will be possible to make it a bit more detailed. Frozen Synapse has only what, 4 weapon types ? Grenade launcher, assault rifle, shotgun, sniper.