Improvements to Turn based combat

[Bryce777]

I've said it before in another thread, but I'd highly suggest taking a few pointers on movement, cover and destructible terrain from Jagged Alliance 2. It's from around the same era, and has an extremely engaging tactical combat system.

The gunfights and movement themselves were better in Ja2 than FT, but FT had vehicules and stuff like that which was pretty cool. You couldn't shoot through a wooden fence or blow up a concrete wall with dynamite in Tactics though, IIRC. JA2 had stuff like turn interruption, overwatch, etc.

Jagged Alliance took about 4 years to make and JA 2 was an interative progression over the course of several releases and expansions. Making a bog standard old school RPG in 18 months from nothing seems kind of impossible already. Trying to emulate JA on top of that is not going to happen. It might not come out so well unless you had some serious experience with that level of tactical combat either, and would require a huge amount of play testing. I doubt any RPG ever made had half the time put into combat as that game, even including temple of elemental evil.

The reason you never see it is most devs can't do it, period. Even if they can, it is going to take way more resources than an already resource intensive RPG can spare, and a million bucks or even two simply won't give us 3 years of development (which is why people need to keep trying to get people to pledge, and to put in as much as they comfortably can). Even for games concentrating on that none are as good. Even XCom is pretty well just broken mess compared to JA 2 - it's no just that it's well done but it's incredibly detailed and polished in a way you seldom see in either game systems or software in general.

It's not bad to look at it for some of the mechanics but the best we could hope for is to have several sequels that slowly build the complexity up to that level, which is how the original got made.

Unless they get funded for 4-5 million then the sky really will be the limit and this could become a reality. But more likely there will need to be a kickstarter some day for a true sequel to Jagged Alliance 3.

Also on top of that the whole way you explore sectors etc. is much different than a typical RPG. Not being able to find the enemy in an RPG full of combat would be annoying and would drive a lot of people off, and the time spent would dominate the other aspects of the game like lootan and levelan up.

THERE IS ONE EXCEPTION
Turn based planning and countdowned realtime execution.
Everyone should take a look at Frozen Synapse.

Yeah but it pretty much sucks. Not the game but the concept itself, if you take it out of its online context.

[Hiver]

A lot of good examples. But its already very late here and im trying to cut down on allnighters spent on forums posting about Wasteland2. Ahh...what the hell. One more cant hurt. Ill sleep whole day tomorow.

I've said it before in another thread, but I'd highly suggest taking a few pointers on movement, cover and destructible terrain from Jagged Alliance 2. It's from around the same era, and has an extremely engaging tactical combat system.

I havent played JA myself, yet so thats why i wasnt talking about it. Glad to see someone who knows intimately how good it is. Tell us more.
destructible terrain would certainly be awesome to have although i think we might not get that far.
Still i hope we will be able to blast or shoot down at least some parts of the game
Atleast doors and vaults

/ a truly turn based system has a specific ruleset that allows a higher level of control). It also mostly creates a level of fairness between the player and the AI (reaction/calculation time is irrelevant). It also allows for a much more advanced AI.

That is one thing a lot of people miss that should be always pointed out, i think.
In turn based system, the player and the "computer" are playing on a complete level field. Equal in everything except Ai
And a good Ai is a matter we could talk about.

If Brian's team has a clever idea to have both elements merge seamlessly into an interesting package. By all means, go for it. But for the love of whatever passes for God... Don't just force realtime on a turn based system. It can only end with disaster. They're antithetic concepts. It takes alot of careful crafting for it to be even remotely passable, and with only one year of production time I'm not convinced it would end well.

Of course i agree and i dont see any point in doing this.
Today we had two confirmations that they are going for TB combat and even if they just add some RT it will not play well.
I think a much smarter move would be to make such a good TB system that will turn a lot of people that base their experience on some rather unsuccessful or bad ones.

Learning from JA in this sense can only improve the whole thing so i think i will just copy paste your other post from "nuts and bolts" thread.

Also, today on Gamebanshee:
http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/1 ... rview.html

GB: How do you envision the turn-based combat system working, exactly? Aside from the original Wasteland, are there any earlier games that you feel did turn-based right, and you might look to for inspiration?

Brian: Again I hesitate to mention other games right now for fear of overreaction to what the final decision will be. But, obviously Fallout 1/2 did some great things with turn based combat so we certainly have that reference point. And we have been getting a fair amount of feedback from the boards that people liked the way Fallout Tactics handled aspects of combat. They didn't like the game in its entirety but they seemed to respond to the depth of the systems.

So, old Fallouts and Tactics seem to be an inspiration. And in right ways. I dont think it would hurt to add JA to that lineup.

I was thinking about how DoomRL's turn-based gameplay works and how it might apply to a party vs party game like WL2, and I think it might be neat. Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if this has been done before and I just don't know about it...

Different actions would take different spans of time - say, firing a pistol is 0.3 seconds, swapping to a shotgun is 1 second, moving, reloading, taking cover, firing from behind cover, etc etc all take different amounts of time... So they dictate how soon your next turn will be.
And there could be a 'time bar' that shows when the different character's turns would happen - and thus, also their order.

I didnt play that so i cant comment in depth but it sounds good. of course its a roguelike so in presentation it looks quite different than what we are aiming for here. Quite fast on the youtube video of gameplay, which is understandable since its emulating Doom general style. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVya_S0GFeA
But i couldnt say more unless i played it.
Mechanics sound nice, of course. Although usual action points do represent time needed to do something, very often.

Why are people referring to Fallout Tactics like it has realtime combat? Nobody in their right mind played that game in real time mode.

I would prefer if we really drop this subject here all together.
But i do appreciate the input. Also, i recommend reading the gamebanshee interview too. So many good stuff i dont even know where to start.

[Brother None]

There is a thread here to discuss the nature of Wasteland's combat system, which can branch out into a RTwP discussion if you so like. Please keep this thread to discussing turn-based combat systems for WL2.

[Hiver]

Thank you BN.

Guys, i didnt write this as a thread where we discuss which system or hybrid is better. This thread is meant to discuss only what could make a new TB system better, thats all. I`ll even change the title to make it more clear.

So, ill just paste this post from "nuts and bolts" thread since it is very relevant.

snipped

- in JA2

When you shoot at someone and miss, or he "dodges" (would have hit if he didin't have action points left), he looses his armed stance, and might even loose even more AP at every successive shot AND recieve moral damage. If you keep a few AP on your own guies, you WILL still be in aiming stance, and having initative, while he would need to stand, then draw weapon, then fire.

The thing is ,if you are already aiming in his direction, once he steps up, you will have an interrup opportunity. If he draws his gun, you will have an interrupt opportunity, if he tries shooting you might even interrupt him again at that point. As well as having gained yourself morale for having "suppressed" him, and he having lost his, giving you an additionnal edge.

With his already reduced AP pool, once he stands up, he'll be running short on AP. Once you fire at him in your interrupt, he'll likely either die or loose even more AP, possibly stranding up with no action left to act. Being a sitting duck on your next, refreshed pool turn.

The full auto fire purpose is almost exclusively this. Especially on the minimi.

Considering this setting worked "well enough", if we improve on this, and have "overwatch" or similar, or having an actual suppression option, etc. It could very well be done. It doesn't have to be a linear "turn based" like a warhammer tabletop.

Even tabletops like infinity manages interesting idea on turn based tactical game.

This is certainly a mechanic i would love to have in the game with TB combat.
Another layer that keeps the player thinking and outweighing different options and their possible result.

[The_Scorpion]

I agree with the people who wrote before and in other threads that when it comes to turn based combat, it would be best to start at what is the "current benchmark" so to say and that would be Ja2. Then, in a second step, a few adjustments for W2 might be in order, also a few tweaks to avoid issues with TB combat taking to much time or being to slow as well as other details people sometimes complain about.

of course since we know very little about various elements of the game's design yet, it's hard to tell what kind of adjustments will be necessary or beneficial compared to games like Ja2. Relevant elements may be: scope of combat encounters, variety of opponents and maps/ settings, sci-fi/ monsters, vehicles/ robots/ scorpitrons, typcial squad sizes, lethality in combat, etc.

Then a few of the issues some people have with speed of TB combat may be adressed within TB combat systems. For example AI movement outside the player's field of view can be sped up, civilians that are currently neutral in combat may simply be "denied" their turn (less plausible though, so maybe have this a toggleable option) and the opponent's turn can be made less "boring" through various design mechanics like sounds, text, or similar.

Rigidity of turns: More varied interrupts can make turns less rigid. For example a kind of reflex-return fire like we see it very rarely with Ja2, when you fire at a high level enemy and the enemy gets an interrupt pretty much immediately after you shot at him. Also muzzle flashes at night and the like. A mechanic like this should mitigate certain effects that whoever has initivate first can unleash his entire magazine into the enemy before the enemy can react. Automatic fire must be looked at under close scrutiny, too, as well as suppressive fire mechanics because they tend to make the taking turns of actions more rigid. There's also the option to make turns generally longer or shorter, with longer turns (more action points for each unit) means more movement and therefore more tactical options, shorter turns means less movement more shoot-outs. So by scaling the lengtht of turns, the speed or dynamic of TB combat can be influenced. May also be an idea to give the player an option to use a slider or something in preferences how long turns should be, or do it on the fly depending on scale of encounter/ combat.

[Bryce777]

People who think turn based combat is too slow are just never going to like it, dumbing it down for them is a pointless waste of time. Of course any genuine performance problems like those SS had will hopefully be avoided.

[The_Scorpion]

People who think turn based combat is too slow are just never going to like it, dumbing it down for them is a pointless waste of time.

you might have a point there, still it's a bit simple to say that haters gonna hate
so long that there's potential within TB combat systems that's untapped, we can still discuss it. I don't think my suggestions were so much dumbing down, most of them would make the system rahter more intricate

[jackthemayor]

Personally I don't find the pace of turn based games to be all that bad. There are some improvements that can be made though. For giving the player the opportunity to skip animations or speed them up or slow them down. Omit the animations of any party not in view. Other than that there really isn't a whole lot you can really do to turn based combat other than make the animations really flashy but that isn't necessarily in the spirit of this style of rpg.

As for things like cover. I personally think Company of Heroes had a great idea. The type of cover has a big influence over the amount of protection. Hide behind a wooden fence, and you might still end up getting shot because it doesn't offer a lot of protection from bullet penetration. Hide behind a stone wall and the likelihood of you getting hurt is significantly less because the stone offers better protection in a gun fight. Crouching and going prone should definitely be in the game. I can't count the number of times I wished there was some kind of cover or defensive bonus system in the original fallout.

[Oesophagus]

In all honesty, I don't think the TB system has to be overtly complex. This is primarily an RPG after all. So the combat should be complex enough to justify having a team, but not so much that one mistake can end up in terrible death for your team a'la JA2.

A good way to speed up combat is to omit redundant animations. Fo1/2 did it with fast combat, and it could be even improved by having simplified animations or omitting them altogether for the AI's aiming.

Or, since the AI can calculate really fast what it will do during it's turn, if a few AI controlled enemies are to have their turns in sequence, make them act out simultaneously. All the system would need to do is take into account what happened before what.

So for example:

Let's say the AI has three guys with guns having their turns in sequence. They all shoot at you, they all hit you. It happens simultaneously, but it is registered as the first guy hits you and takes away your hp, the second one too, and the third one hits you and kills you. While the AI turn would last only a third of the time, the game would still register it as having happened in sequence

[undecaf]

I can't count the number of times I wished there was some kind of cover or defensive bonus system in the original fallout.

I agree. Not that I whished for a cover system in Fallout, but that if cleverly implemented and supported by other features, it could really benefit the combat.

I also like the idea of interruptions. Like if I decide to move my character from spot A to spot B, and if the enemy then has LOS, he could shoot at my character with a possibility to pin him down (and probably even cause some moralityloss resulting reduced AP or even losing control of him for the time he's "panicing) or even killing him - not too high a chance, though, so that the combat doesn't get reduced to firing blind from behind covers for frustrating amounts of time. But anyway, interruptions (or attacks of opportunity) and morale effects could well add a nice layer of tactical decisionmaking in combatsituations if implemented well.

Morale was something I found really fun in Grisby's Steel Panthers games (although a different genre, I think it could work here too).

[dmazz]

An aim to speed up turn based combat I view as more of a desire to make it useable in a RPG like Wasteland 2, since no way in hell will it have turn based combat as slow as JA2, which means it may be tactically shallower!. I consider my attitude to be very productive if you want Wasteland not to have dumbed down combat.

I think to improve turn based combat we'll need to speed up user combat choices. That is essentially what turn based combat is, a limited amount of combat choices in a unlimited period of time. (ones turn)

A few suggestons.
--A turn time limit - visual and aural, doesn't have to be a definitive bell of doom, unclear actions would be brought to your attention, unallocated ap's for example wouldn't. Should be an option.
--Scriptable actions executed as one command - The user will also have access to action presets, action sets and stackable actions.
An action preset is a 'if this, do this' command. An action set is a group of actions one performs one after the other automatically. Stackable actions are actions one performs one after the other, but not automatically, but with a 'yes - no' level of user input. Action sets are stackable too.
--Choice for A.I to take over your turn as well as individual character turns (when it's really obvious, such as shooting back when being shot at, and you just shot at them last turn).
--Real time user controlled combat speed slider. (hotkey + mousewheel toggle would be nice) This will allow one to 'fast forward' combat that you find dull or you just want to move up to the character who is in a more tactically interesting position. For example, rat number 7 biting you for the 3rd time or your character shooting rat number 6.
--Option to skip turn of a character once or for the rest of the turn.
--Faster enemy A.I turns - The computer will crunch numbers as you make choices in combat. So the A.I will not 'freeze' when it's your turn, but dynamically begin to act on your actions in the background, as you make them in real time. Here's a post where I go into more detail on how enemy A.I can be sped up by npc's having action presets, acton sets and stackable actions too. Essentially npc's will have A.I 'combat behavior' that is more executed rather than calculated on the fly to various variables, which is more cpu intensive. This is more realistic too since behavior to gunshots and getting shot at varies little from person to person.
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=216&start=10
-- Time control - Be able to reverse time will enable one to go back and check a characters actions, to not only relive a juicy tactical moment but also just get ones bearings if your blazing through combat choices. Ability to enact slow motion is not only viscerally satisfying, but will serve as a contrast for interesting combat moments, encouraging players to skip over repetitive and dull combat lest they get bored.

I'll also stress a dynamic response to combat even turn based combat. That is to say things should not be buried in the options menu but able to be directly controlled by the player fairly easily, in that way one can change the combat speed on the fly, speeding up dull, repetitive combat and even slowing down tactically interesting combat.

[The_Scorpion]

I can't count the number of times I wished there was some kind of cover or defensive bonus system in the original fallout.

I agree. Not that I whished for a cover system in Fallout, but that if cleverly implemented and supported by other features, it could really benefit the combat.

I also like the idea of interruptions. Like if I decide to move my character from spot A to spot B, and if the enemy then has LOS, he could shoot at my character with a possibility to pin him down (and probably even cause some moralityloss resulting reduced AP or even losing control of him for the time he's "panicing) or even killing him - not too high a chance, though, so that the combat doesn't get reduced to firing blind from behind covers for frustrating amounts of time. But anyway, interruptions (or attacks of opportunity) and morale effects could well add a nice layer of tactical decisionmaking in combatsituations if implemented well.

that's one of the many reaons why me and many others have suggested to start with Ja2's combat as a conceptual starting point. it already has all of these basic features. then as follow up steps, only a few tweaks to make it fit to whatever the nw Wasteland will be like will be neceeary from a conceptual point of view.

and don't get me wrong guise, none of my suggestions are aimed at the people who don't like or don't understand TB combat, frankly speaking i think they have no business in this thread anyway, i'm directing suggestions at people who like TB combat but still see additional potential in it.

[lakoros]

The best system as "Brigade E5 New Jagged Union/7.62" smart pause. but I'm unsure whether it is suitable for wasteland

[UniversalWolf]

The best turn-based combat I've seen has been from JA2 1.13 and Temple of Elemental Evil, and I don't think anyone has even tried to move the bar up from them. Cover, destructable terrain, different stances, weapon attachments...I want it all. It doesn't need to have 500 different guns like JA2 1.13, but the mechanics of any action that could be taken in real life combat should be there. Bolt-action rifles should require an extra cost to rechamber a round after firing. You should be able to go prone on the second or third story of a building and spot enemies through a scope. You should be able to crouch behind a stack of barrels and lob a grenade over the top. If the barrels are full of something dangerous, they should explode if they get shot.

As a compromise there ought to be a quick combat mode that closely resembles the combat in Wasteland 1.

[Hiver]

of course since we know very little about various elements of the game's design yet, it's hard to tell what kind of adjustments will be necessary or beneficial compared to games like Ja2. Relevant elements may be: scope of combat encounters, variety of opponents and maps/ settings, sci-fi/ monsters, vehicles/ robots/ scorpitrons, typcial squad sizes, lethality in combat, etc.

Yup.

Then a few of the issues some people have with speed of TB combat may be adressed within TB combat systems. For example AI movement outside the player's field of view can be sped up, civilians that are currently neutral in combat may simply be "denied" their turn (less plausible though, so maybe have this a toggleable option) and the opponent's turn can be made less "boring" through various design mechanics like sounds, text, or similar.

All good suggestions. Getting rid of unnecessary chaff is a part of it. As for civilians or neutral NPCs in a fight they could all move at once in one turn. Or if they have a good enough Ai they can just remain RT and run away or hide although that might look weird. What should be definitely avoided is a whole town or a settlement going hostile all at once unless there is a very good reason for it.

The rest of your post contains many good suggestions that of course depend on what they will aim for overall but should be considered if the system could support them.

Personally I don't find the pace of turn based games to be all that bad. There are some improvements that can be made though. For giving the player the opportunity to skip animations or speed them up or slow them down. Omit the animations of any party not in view. Other than that there really isn't a whole lot you can really do to turn based combat other than make the animations really flashy but that isn't necessarily in the spirit of this style of rpg.

I think that is not really correct.
The primary effect of turn based combat is requirement of thinking about the whole situation it requires from player.
Thats why it is interesting.
So the more good options and their consequences the player has to consider the more it all becomes engaging.
The more its engaging and tactically interesting the less of "slow effect" can be noticed.

I dont remember anyone ever telling me that turn based combat in temple of Elemental evil was slow.
Not even against numerous low level mobs later on. Nor any kind of big groups at all or... anyone else. I wonder why.
Animations of characters were a bit smoother but it didnt play much faster than any other system.

As for things like cover. I personally think Company of Heroes had a great idea. The type of cover has a big influence over the amount of protection. Hide behind a wooden fence, and you might still end up getting shot because it doesn't offer a lot of protection from bullet penetration. Hide behind a stone wall and the likelihood of you getting hurt is significantly less because the stone offers better protection in a gun fight. Crouching and going prone should definitely be in the game. I can't count the number of times I wished there was some kind of cover or defensive bonus system in the original fallout.

I think such implementation of cover is just understandable by itself.
One thing to think about here is not to add extra "cover points" or cover structures of any kind where there shouldnt be any. We want to be able to use cover if there is any. Not have it strewn around every location and area and conferring invulnerability. We want tb tactical combat, not cover based combat.

The difference is substantial.

I also like the idea of interruptions. Like if I decide to move my character from spot A to spot B, and if the enemy then has LOS, he could shoot at my character with a possibility to pin him down (and probably even cause some moralityloss resulting reduced AP or even losing control of him for the time he's "panicing) or even killing him - not too high a chance, though, so that the combat doesn't get reduced to firing blind from behind covers for frustrating amounts of time. But anyway, interruptions (or attacks of opportunity) and morale effects could well add a nice layer of tactical decisionmaking in combatsituations if implemented well.

Agreed. Of course, anyone that likes tb combat will.

Ill get to other posts a bit later, all good stuff.

[The_Scorpion]

The best turn-based combat I've seen has been from JA2 1.13 and Temple of Elemental Evil, and I don't think anyone has even tried to move the bar up from them. Cover, destructable terrain, different stances, weapon attachments...I want it all. It doesn't need to have 500 different guns like JA2 1.13, but the mechanics of any action that could be taken in real life combat should be there. Bolt-action rifles should require an extra cost to rechamber a round after firing. You should be able to go prone on the second or third story of a building and spot enemies through a scope. You should be able to crouch behind a stack of barrels and lob a grenade over the top. If the barrels are full of something dangerous, they should explode if they get shot.

As a compromise there ought to be a quick combat mode that closely resembles the combat in Wasteland 1.

i agree on pretty much everything

i know it may be daydreaming to be trying to raise the bar from that above starting point, but then again, ideas never shared with anybody are essentially dead ideas.

one more thing about Ja2 and Ja2 1.13's combat that could be tweaked is how automatic fire is handled. Those of you who have played Ja2 might know the "spread fire" feature where you can attack multiple targets in a row. I think this feature is criminally underdeveloped The player should, if faced with a few attackers, be forced to decide whether to attack them individually with aimed shots or short bursts (while at the risk of "return fire" or interrupts from the other targets) or to engage them in one, arcadeish sweep with inferiour accuracy but the chance to have some suppression effects (and a lower chance for interrupts) and then be able to reatreat into cover without being fired upon all too much by reaction fire.
The idea isn't to annihilate entire hordes of enemies rambo-style by fireing 200 rounds in a row, but to give another viable tactical option, and a rather dynamic one, too.

So spread fire could become like automatic fire (1.13 style) but with a much better interface to engage multiple targets, at the penalty of a big accuracy loss (spray and pray style). Engaging more than one target in one action also makes the battlefield come alive a bit more, and less units on the screen will be Idle during the actions taken by the player or the AI.

[valcik]

First of all, excuse me for any grammar mistakes please, not a native English speaker. I'm popping up just to add my two cents to this topic, it won't take long.

While playing the original Wasteland, some enhanced defensive possibilities have crossed my mind. You all remember "evade" option, right? For those who don't, there was an option during the combat turn to try to evade an enemy fire. Evading character spent his turn without any other action but with highly increased chance to avoid any kind of harm.
Now, this is my point. Instead of evading only, I'm thinking about two other defensive choices:

1.) Distracting attack

Some brave, healthy, well armoured ranger will decide to obtain precious time for his buddies in the heat of combat. During his turn, he will jump out of cover against the enemy, screaming like a mad man, shooting wildly.

Good things:
- Sequence (or speed) of this brave soldier should be increased, probably even doubled during his turn, due to the adrenaline rush.
- Confused enemies will focus all their firepower at this uncovered kamikaze during their next turn. Other rangers should safely regroup, reload, provide first aid for those who needs it or even attack an enemy without any fear of being hit during this turn.
- Also all the splash/burst shots will be aimed at the brave kamikaze, so other members of a friendly team doesn't receive any damage from those area-effects in the next turn.
(Evetnually, there should be some chance for a battle-hardened enemies to recognize false threat, so they will decide to ignore this crazy attacker completely. Check based on an opponent's weapon skill comes to mind. Some players will be pissed off, I'm sure, but what's better than defeating smart or skilled enemy, hehe.)

Bad thing:
- Kamikaze will suffer with massive penalty to his attack and defensive rolls during this turn. Eventually, he will be completely inactive during the next turn too.

2.) Covering fire

Almost the same as before. In short: instead of a crazy attack mentioned before, one ranger will pop up out of his cover during his turn just to spray some bullets at enemy group, very carefully. There will be some differences in comparison to the regular attack, though:

Good things:
- Aiming carefully, he will most likely hit the target. Decent attack roll bonus for this turn.
- Due to this surprising attack, any of enemies who are hit by should suffer with some kind of penalty for next turn. (Small attack roll penalty, for instance.)

Bad things:
- Small defense roll penalty for one turn to the brave ranger.

Both actions should be available only for those who are armed with an automatic weapon or so, add anything else what you want. That's all for now. If it's unreadable or it sounds like a nonsense, feel free to delete my post anytime!

[Hiver]

i know it may be daydreaming to be trying to raise the bar from that above starting point, but then again, ideas never shared with anybody are essentially dead ideas.

one more thing about Ja2 and Ja2 1.13's combat that could be tweaked is how automatic fire is handled. Those of you who have played Ja2 might know the "spread fire" feature where you can attack multiple targets in a row. I think this feature is criminally underdeveloped The player should, if faced with a few attackers, be forced to decide whether to attack them individually with aimed shots or short bursts (while at the risk of "return fire" or interrupts from the other targets) or to engage them in one, arcadeish sweep with inferiour accuracy but the chance to have some suppression effects (and a lower chance for interrupts) and then be able to reatreat into cover without being fired upon all too much by reaction fire.
The idea isn't to annihilate entire hordes of enemies rambo-style by fireing 200 rounds in a row, but to give another viable tactical option, and a rather dynamic one, too.

So spread fire could become like automatic fire (1.13 style) but with a much better interface to engage multiple targets, at the penalty of a big accuracy loss (spray and pray style). Engaging more than one target in one action also makes the battlefield come alive a bit more, and less units on the screen will be Idle during the actions taken by the player or the AI.

Only if the enemies have the same capability. Thats one of the golden rules or foundations.

We have heard recently that inXile is looking at Fallouts and Fallout tactics as main sources of inspiration, for now. And they probably have their own ideas too.
But i thought adding JA to that list would be a good thing. not as something that must be completely copied but as an inspiration and a system that has been developed for a long time and is well known.

http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/1 ... rview.html

- obviously Fallout 1/2 did some great things with turn based combat so we certainly have that reference point. And we have been getting a fair amount of feedback from the boards that people liked the way Fallout Tactics handled aspects of combat. They didn't like the game in its entirety but they seemed to respond to the depth of the systems.

There are other nuances of TB combat that dont come to mind initially but are very important for the overall depth and quality of playability of Tb combat. One of the things that made TOEE or even BG games combat good was that you used your team - as a team. Everyone had their own sets of abilities that compliment each other and work best when you correlate them all together in smart ways. Not like there was one single way to mix it all but you could almost completely freely come to your own tactics. Of course very dependent on what types of characters you choose or make.
and finding the right combinations of a group that isnt so familiar to yourself in terms of their skills was half of fun.
And interesting variety of enemies only helps further.

This should be present in Wasteland.
And i think it is generally better to stop looking at "how to make it faster, faster, FASTEEEERRR!" and rather look at how to make it better, deeper and more diverse.

Brian agrees with the sentiment and who am i to tell him otherwise, eh

interview on NMA:
http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=60856

"Party and turn based combat is an absolute critical requirement for me. I like finding the right mix of Desert Rangers combined with NPC's and I enjoy the tactics that come from that dynamic. Players will spend more time doing combat than most anything in an RPG so it needs to be deep and rewarding.

- valcik, welcome to the thread.
ive just finished writing this part above so ill take a detailed look over your post a bit later. From what i see in the beginning its just a thing we needed here. If we are talking and taking inspiration from other good Tb combat games we certainly need not to forget the Wasteland itself and take everything good from it.

[Cowboy Moment]

I have the feeling that a lot of the posters worried about turn-based combat being "too slow" don't have a lot of experience concerning TB games, and are basing their opinion on one or two titles - and I can totally understand that someone who played Fallout 1 and liberated Adytum would have this kind of concern. Others seem to take a game with RT or RTwP combat, like BG2, imagine it with turns, and conclude "man, that would be slow and tedious as all hell". This is also true.

Even though this thread is about "mechanics", more often than not what makes combat enjoyable in any given game is encounter design. ToEE and IWD2 both use D&D3E rules, but the way encounters are designed is completely different. IWD2, for instance, often uses a Diablo-like trick, where attacking an archer or mage of a given group of enemies aggros another nearby group. This is fine for a game where disposing of a group of enemies takes little time, and the purpose of it is to wear the player down and force them into an unfavourable position. In a TB game, this would be extremely frustrating, and ToEE very intentionally avoids it.

The point I'm trying to make, is that different combatmechanics work well with different combat encounters. In BG2, you could spend half an hour hacking through 5-6 groups of enemies, and gain a certain amount of XP and loot for your trouble. In ToEE, you could spend the same amount of time on two groups, with equivalent rewards within the game's context. In a sense, it doesn't matter how fast the combat is, as long as the game is designed with the given speed in mind. Even if it's slow, you can just have one combat encounter with a bunch of supermutant rats instead of five encounters with shitty cannon fodder rats, and end up at the same point. Except the former would probably be more of a challenge.

[Oesophagus]

What I'm really looking forward to is what the team will come up with themselves. I know that by virtue of being a squad TB game it will bear a lot of resemblance to FT and JA, that's a given. But I'm wondering what new things they'll implement. Surely not everything has been done yet.

@CowboyMovement

Yeah, it seems to me like people saying TB is too slow don't realise that during the AI turn you're still playing. You're looking at what the AI's doing and thinking how to react. If you're expecting a game where all combat comes down to see enemy > target enemy > kill enemy, then you might be disappointed