Seloun
Jul 30, 2013
Discussed it with Jack.
We'll be going with a resetting magazine approach.
So the ammunition type is specific to the magazine and the magazine is refilled after a fight.
Weapons retain their individual capacities. They are simply filled from the magazine at the start of a fight and with a reload action.
It's possible to run out of ammunition inside a fight now, though it's now impossible to run out of it outside of fights.
Cool. I think that ends up providing a bit more design space, as well as semi-common rewards that would work well as loot from optional encounters/quests; until you're full up on them, the magazines should always be pretty valuable without hugely increasing the overall party's strength.
That does beg the question, though - what happens if you run out ammo? Or will it only cover special ammo? Special ammo only seems safer, or perhaps an extra-long action to dig ammo out of your backpack instead of somewhere convenient? The main issue I would see regarding covering regular ammo is that the opportunity cost of bringing items becomes pretty high if regular ammo took item slots too (OTOH, in principle item usage should replace shooting and thus ammo, mitigating the impact somewhat, at least for items that aren't heavily specialized).
Lonestar51
Jul 30, 2013
I hope it will be difficult to run out of ammo with say the standard rifle or Laserpistol. Even using up a full magacine during the fight should be rare (say bosses or so.) - thus one "good" and one "standard" magacine might suffice.
However, if a char has a rocket launcher or similar, the ammo would take up the full backpack, and still the char might run out of ammo. But while the ammo lasts, the weapon will deal out lots of damage.
So this gives the player some option how to load out a char:
[list][*]damage dealer with rocket launcher
[*]damage dealer with less ammo for the heavy weapon, but a standard weapon in the backpack (so he will not be defenseless once the rockets are gone)
[*]support char, who has a standard weapon, one or two spare magacines (enough for any fight) and medpacks or similar.
[*]soldier, who has only a standard weapon, but a magacine each of every damage type (switching to the one which does work best for the current foe). Maybe one or two medpacks additionally, and a bit of standard ammo which does not work great against anyone, but works against everyone.[/list]
Anima_
Jul 30, 2013
That does beg the question, though - what happens if you run out ammo? Or will it only cover special ammo? Special ammo only seems safer, or perhaps an extra-long action to dig ammo out of your backpack instead of somewhere convenient? The main issue I would see regarding covering regular ammo is that the opportunity cost of bringing items becomes pretty high if regular ammo took item slots too (OTOH, in principle item usage should replace shooting and thus ammo, mitigating the impact somewhat, at least for items that aren't heavily specialized).
You pray that your team will finish the enemy quickly while taking cover or act as an obvious distraction and catch bullets? (No you can't use them even if you catch them.)
It was planned in the first place that at least one slot will be used for a magazine. Nothing has really changed in that regard.
I hope it will be difficult to run out of ammo with say the standard rifle or Laserpistol. Even using up a full magacine during the fight should be rare (say bosses or so.) - thus one "good" and one "standard" magacine might suffice.
The basic ammunition magazines will be pretty big and cheap, so that should be the case. Of course it will also depend on the ammunition usage, if you only use full auto you'll run out much sooner then someone who's more conservative with his ammunition.
However, if a char has a rocket launcher or similar, the ammo would take up the full backpack, and still the char might run out of ammo. But while the ammo lasts, the weapon will deal out lots of damage.
So this gives the player some option how to load out a char:
damage dealer with rocket launcher
damage dealer with less ammo for the heavy weapon, but a standard weapon in the backpack (so he will not be defenseless once the rockets are gone)
support char, who has a standard weapon, one or two spare magacines (enough for any fight) and medpacks or similar.
soldier, who has only a standard weapon, but a magacine each of every damage type (switching to the one which does work best for the current foe). Maybe one or two medpacks additionally, and a bit of standard ammo which does not work great against anyone, but works against everyone.
Yes that's the plan.
jack1974
Jul 30, 2013
Yes I expressed the same concerns to Anima, because I wanted the "low-level" ammo to always be unlimited, but instead he thinks there shouldn't be any unlimited ammo. Anima is the ultimate evil game designer!
Jokes apart, I think it will depend on difficulty level, obviously easier level there will be more ammo, or simply enemy will have lower HP (so as consequence you'll need less bullets to kill them).
In any case, no matter how we decide to do it, we haven't really thought what happens if one of your characters runs out of ammo. I mean, let's say just ONE of your characters runs out of ammo: what does he/she do in his/her turn? Can't be simply skipping the turn or be forced to use Psionics I think...? Something to consider, right now I don't have any ideas though!
Lonestar51
Jul 30, 2013
In any case, no matter how we decide to do it, we haven't really thought what happens if one of your characters runs out of ammo. I mean, let's say just ONE of your characters runs out of ammo: what does he/she do in his/her turn? Can't be simply skipping the turn or be forced to use Psionics I think...? Something to consider, right now I don't have any ideas though!
Is swapping stuff with other party members allowed (as in PS1)? In this case either the char gets ammo, or a spare weapon and continues blasting away, or a medpack and switches to support role. If no swapping is available, then the char must use psionics or defensive moves.
More interesting is the question: What if the whole party runs out of ammo? Say they use all rocket launchers, have bad luck when aiming, the enemies have high HP, big time healing and resistance to rocket blast damage. What then? Attack with bare hands and psionics? Run away? Play through x rounds before the defeat happens which could not be avoided anyway?
jack1974
Jul 30, 2013
I've so many projects going on that I don't remember the EXACT details, but I think that differently from PS1, you can't really do a "complete MISS" of a target. So the ammo you use, produces results in 99% of cases.
I'm more "worried" about the healing thing indeed. If enemies have a way to regain HP in a unlimited way, and the player have a limited ammo, obviously things could get bad.
But anyway, things can be adjusted, for now I like Anima's ideas. I think once the game reaches the beta testing phase I can see better what needs to be changed. But as said already there should be plenty of basic ammo available, so at least in easy/normal level shouldn't be much of an issue...and people playing at Hard/Nightmare mode, they're asking for trouble
FreeLancer
Jul 30, 2013
Will enemies be able to run out of ammo?
jack1974
Jul 30, 2013
I don't think, also many enemies won't really have "ammo", since are "creatures", some attack with melee, and so on. I am thinking that the ammo feature is more to balance the game, than to add realism.
Anima_
Jul 30, 2013
Will enemies be able to run out of ammo?
It's planned. If there are no serious problems with it you can expect them to run out as well. Though they will probably get bigger magazines to make up for lack of real long term planning.
Is swapping stuff with other party members allowed (as in PS1)? In this case either the char gets ammo, or a spare weapon and continues blasting away, or a medpack and switches to support role. If no swapping is available, then the char must use psionics or defensive moves.
I'm not sure yet. While it could lead to "storage" characters you have only four characters. So it shouldn't be much of an issue.
More interesting is the question: What if the whole party runs out of ammo? Say they use all rocket launchers, have bad luck when aiming, the enemies have high HP, big time healing and resistance to rocket blast damage. What then? Attack with bare hands and psionics? Run away? Play through x rounds before the defeat happens which could not be avoided anyway?
There will of course be the option to retry a fight so you don't have to fight if you think you've already lost. If you have no other option left to defeat the enemy you've lost. Not every strategy needs to work on every enemy.
Yes I expressed the same concerns to Anima, because I wanted the "low-level" ammo to always be unlimited, but instead he thinks there shouldn't be any unlimited ammo. Anima is the ultimate evil game designer!
Jokes apart, I think it will depend on difficulty level, obviously easier level there will be more ammo, or simply enemy will have lower HP (so as consequence you'll need less bullets to kill them).
In any case, no matter how we decide to do it, we haven't really thought what happens if one of your characters runs out of ammo. I mean, let's say just ONE of your characters runs out of ammo: what does he/she do in his/her turn? Can't be simply skipping the turn or be forced to use Psionics I think...? Something to consider, right now I don't have any ideas though!
In a world were people can design games with silent unwinnable states I'm quite far away from the ultimate evil.
Working on it though
Using your weapon is just one option, there are still all other options open. Some of them probably won't require limited resources. So there will be something to do for the character.
jack1974
Jul 30, 2013
Using your weapon is just one option, there are still all other options open. Some of them probably won't require limited resources. So there will be something to do for the character.
OK then it's good enough for me
Anima_
Jul 30, 2013
I don't think, also many enemies won't really have "ammo", since are "creatures", some attack with melee, and so on. I am thinking that the ammo feature is more to balance the game, than to add realism.
Of course, ammunition is only used for enemies that use guns. Others don't have to care about that. (Technically they get attacks with 0 ammunition cost.)
Seloun
Jul 31, 2013
That does beg the question, though - what happens if you run out ammo? Or will it only cover special ammo? Special ammo only seems safer, or perhaps an extra-long action to dig ammo out of your backpack instead of somewhere convenient? The main issue I would see regarding covering regular ammo is that the opportunity cost of bringing items becomes pretty high if regular ammo took item slots too (OTOH, in principle item usage should replace shooting and thus ammo, mitigating the impact somewhat, at least for items that aren't heavily specialized).
You pray that your team will finish the enemy quickly while taking cover or act as an obvious distraction and catch bullets? (No you can't use them even if you catch them.)
It was planned in the first place that at least one slot will be used for a magazine. Nothing has really changed in that regard.
This does result in an interesting design dilemma - since presumably you can always use an item slot on a magazine, you always have to consider the opportunity cost of the magazine you're giving up when deciding to bring an item, which means that the item you're bringing has to be worth at least the magazine you didn't bring. This is probably okay in terms of balancing weapon fire and item usage, since it's just a trade between longevity and flexibility (the options the item choice brings versus shooting for longer amount of time), and if the item ends up using up about the same amount of time as the magazine would have, everyone would still sort of 'run dry' at the same time.
That seems to imply though that most or all actions should be limited resources during at least the individual combat if they replicate things item slots can provide, unless they're very, very weak compared to the item choice (even then, magazine + unlimited option is probably more attractive than limited, stronger option unless the item option is extremely strong). If we take psionics as an example of player options that replicate item functions (shooting, healing, etc. - not sure what design space will be exclusive of item slots), it seems like it would make sense to make psionic resources non-regenerating (I think this is already planned?) and also to have an item slot trade-off (since this analysis suggests that item slots correlate pretty strongly to combat longevity otherwise). So item slots should probably be inversely correlated with psionic abilities (or anything else that provides an alternate longevity resources).
Anima_
Jul 31, 2013
Psionic Points don't regenerate and psionics have few item slots and low equipment capacity.
Also the usefulness of magazines is inversely proportional to the number of magazines already equipped.
jack1974
Aug 03, 2013
I thought about two things today (finally had peace at home so I could do an amazing thing: THINK!
):
1) about the ammo problem: it could be an incentive to swap the party members who fight. I am not sure yet how Anima wanted to handle this, but in the first game all your party members were available (unless for plot reasons) and you could select 4 out of 8 that would take part in the fight. So, if we allow the same thing, the ammo problem could be solved this way, each soldier carries an amount of ammo, so you would have an incentive to swap the soldiers between battles. Depending how the inventory is implemented though might be very simple to swap weapons/ammo between party members. Another idea was that if a party member is down in the battle, beside resurrecting him/her you could also choose to swap him/her with one of the other ones in "reserve". It might be also cool that in practice there was NO WAY to resurrect a KO player, except replacing him/her with the backup, and meanwhile he would get healed every turn. A bit like tag-team fights where the non-fighting characters slowly regain HP/PP
2) unavailable characters and max health damage: another idea, probably good only for the "iron mode" was that after every battle, each character would lose HP and PP based on how much hits they take and how much PP they use, to simulate injuries/fatigue. It would be another reason/incentive to rotate the party roster and not always use 4 characters through the whole game. Of course after each mission they would recover the full HP/PP.
those are just two random ideas that I thought to post to get feedback, but if they're horrible feel free to say it
Seloun
Aug 03, 2013
I thought about two things today (finally had peace at home so I could do an amazing thing: THINK! ):
1) about the ammo problem: it could be an incentive to swap the party members who fight. I am not sure yet how Anima wanted to handle this, but in the first game all your party members were available (unless for plot reasons) and you could select 4 out of 8 that would take part in the fight. So, if we allow the same thing, the ammo problem could be solved this way, each soldier carries an amount of ammo, so you would have an incentive to swap the soldiers between battles. Depending how the inventory is implemented though might be very simple to swap weapons/ammo between party members. Another idea was that if a party member is down in the battle, beside resurrecting him/her you could also choose to swap him/her with one of the other ones in "reserve". It might be also cool that in practice there was NO WAY to resurrect a KO player, except replacing him/her with the backup, and meanwhile he would get healed every turn. A bit like tag-team fights where the non-fighting characters slowly regain HP/PP
2) unavailable characters and max health damage: another idea, probably good only for the "iron mode" was that after every battle, each character would lose HP and PP based on how much hits they take and how much PP they use, to simulate injuries/fatigue. It would be another reason/incentive to rotate the party roster and not always use 4 characters through the whole game. Of course after each mission they would recover the full HP/PP.
those are just two random ideas that I thought to post to get feedback, but if they're horrible feel free to say it
I think balancing around ammo not regenerating after each battle would make it pretty challenging, since now you have to balance the entire mission as a whole for ammo consumption, and there will likely be a lot of variance in that (someone who's good enough to get by an early fight with little ammo probably doesn't need the ammo in the later fight as much as the person who has to use a lot of ammo to get through the first fight). Likewise for permanent (at least over the mission) resources; I don't know that you want to make it mandatory to rotate everyone each mission. Also, it'd feel like you had to save your 'A' team for the boss, and had to slog through the minions with a less than ideal setup.
I think a character swapping mechanic could be pretty good, though, and could indirectly address item space limitations if you could rotate back-up characters with specific roles without too much penalty (like the guy who specializes in fire against enemies vulnerable to fire). This would also help mitigate the penalty of not being spoiled (e.g. knowing beforehand you need the fire ammo), which is also pretty good. Also encourages specialization and the value of narrow application items and abilities, which I think is a good thing.
I don't think it's really necessary for the inactive players to regenerate though; if you had to manage the inactive players every fight, it's not really much different from having everyone active anyway. A simple but possibly sufficient solution might be to allow one swap; maybe a second if you have the initiative or zero if you're the one surprised (but if swapping was allowed at all, I'd make zero-swap situations pretty rare and/or telegraphed beforehand, as it would likely have significant impact on strategy). Alternatively for a more general approach, allow players to have less than 4 people groups; any empty slot would have an action with a moderately long usage time to 'call up' a reserve member; if an active character is disabled, or uses a retreat command, his slot becomes empty (and thus open to another 'call up'). Somewhat more complicated, and you'd still want to limit the usage somehow (e.g. once you retreat/disabled, you're done for the fight). The main downside to this approach is again whether or not this is sufficiently differentiated from having the whole party there.
Yet another possibility - you set up your 'lineup' beforehand, and each of the four positions is assigned to specific characters. For example, position A might be occupied by character 1 and 3, and while you can swap between the two, you can't have both at once (since both are assigned to position A); this provides a pretty flexible swapping mechanism but still differentiates it somewhat from just having everyone there. Other pre-formed groups could also work (e.g. everyone has a partner, and pairs get swapped in or out).
Anima_
Aug 26, 2013
About Speed
The Speed attribute affects several things in battle.
[list=1]
[*] Tie breaker if several people act on the same time count. The faster character will act first.
[*] Changes the execution time of skills. At the moment Speed/10 is subtracted from the execution time. The minimum execution time for all actions is 80% base execution time though. Negative Speed consequently will increase the execution time.
[*] Speed is greatly reduced under Cover.
[*] Sets the starting time for the character to 200-Speed, capped at 0.
[*] Starting time sets the initial amount of Fortitude every character gets.[/list]
The calculation for the initial Fortitude value is a bit complicated. It can be broken down to the following three values:
[list]
[*] Delta t: slowest character time - fastest character time
[*] Delta character: character time - fastest character time
[*] Delta team: own team slowest character time - enemy team fastest character time[/list]
The final calculation is:
Fortitude * (1.0 - (delta character*max(0, delta team)/delta t²)
Delta t is only there for normalisation. So the performance of each character is defined by her own speed and the performance of the whole team.
There are two noteworthy effects. The fastest character always has a full Fortitude pool regardless of the team performance. If the slowest character of Team A is faster then every character in Team B all members of Team A will have a full pool. Both are the results of a 0 in one part of the multiplication.
Seloun
Aug 27, 2013
Comments on speed mechanics -
2) Doesn't that form make speed more and more useful as you have more of it? Instead, better linear would be to treat speed as an increase in actions per time, rather than a decrease in time per action (given the relatively conservative cap, the effect is not that pronounced, however):
execution time = (base execution time) / (1 + Speed/800)
if you want to maintain 80% at Speed 200. I'm also assuming (possibly incorrectly) that you meant Speed/10 percent is subtracted from the base execution time; if not, this becomes harder to evaluate without specifics, due to nonlinearities, except that speed will have a (more) weird ROI in that model (increasingly valuable until the cap, where it loses most of its value, and speed being less valuable per point for longer actions).
3) Seems like a lot rides on that statement - in particular, how the reduction is handled (percentage from zero, or subtraction of constant, or something else?) Also suspect that this would be better handled as not a raw speed reduction but something which impact some/all of the derived values of speed (e.g. model it as an increased time for actions rather than as a speed reduction) to avoid unintended weirdness; conceptually more accurate anyway (being in cover doesn't make you actually slower, though it may make your actions take longer to complete). In particular, it's not clear if a) you can start in cover and b) if so, if that really should affect your start time and/or starting fortitude.
4) Is there any reason not to use (fastest speed in play) rather than 200? Only thing I can think of is if there's something which doesn't count as the person in play (environmental effects?) but even in those cases it seems like a speed could be assigned to those.
Fortitude, etc:
Except for the bit about the cap at 200, the delta values seem simpler written in terms of Speed (unless there are non-speed factors which will affect Start Time not listed here and should affect starting Fortitude):
dt = highest speed - lowest speed
d(char) = highest speed - character speed
d(team) = highest enemy speed - slowest friendly speed
It seems slightly strange that if everyone on your team is faster than everyone on the enemy team, except your slowest is very slightly slower than their fastest, you get a very different set of results than if their fastest was very slightly slower than your slowest. E.g. Speed 100, 90, 70, 50 vs 51 looks very different from Speed 100, 90, 70, 50 vs 49. Nevertheless I can see arguments for that sort of behavior in the model (one slow guy hurts the whole team's performance).
A somewhat different model which seems to preserve the intent might be:
cutoff speed = speed of slowest person on either side who is still faster than the entirety of the enemy team
fortitude multiplier = min( (character speed - slowest speed)/(cutoff speed - slowest speed), 1.0 )
which results in everyone who's faster than the entire opposing team starting with full fortitude, and everyone else scaled accordingly.
Overall it does feel like Speed is going to be *extremely* strong; in quick battles it'll be valuable to end threats quickly due to having strong initiative effects due to the starting fortitude; in long battles the extra actions are likely going to be decisive. If there's really a team level impact on Speed, it seems like everyone is going to have to prioritize it.
Anima_
Aug 27, 2013
Thanks for the critic, Seloun.
@2
The reduction is absolute. So with Speed 50 and an action with 100 execution time we get execution time 95.
I can see the argument for making the divisor a function of the base execution time ( something like Speed*base_execution_time/1000) Which results in 10% of speed if the action has execution time 100 and 5% of Speed if the execution time is 50.
At the moment I'd like to keep it simple and then adjust accordingly during the play test if speed becomes a problem. It certainly would smooth out the investment.
@3
The speed reduction only involves the execution time checks at the moment. The reduction is a normal segment, so it can be character specific, though you could treat it like a constant with additional modifiers based on character. Definitely should have mentioned that.
So it doesn't affect anything else at the moment.
@4
The difference is of course that using 200 caps the speed advantage naturally. It also makes the starting times more predictable for the interaction with timed events. I'm not totally opposed to the dynamic window version though.
@ Fortitude
The difference is actually rather minimal, at most you loose a single point thanks to cut off from int conversion. (The value on the left is the start time. The first four are Team A, the rest Team B.):
[code]50 1
75 0.9988888889
100 0.9977777778
125 0.9966666667
200 0
200 0
200 0
124 0.5066666667[/code]
If the last character has starting time 125 we have the first four at 1 and the last character at 0.5.
The reason I used time was that it saved me the more expensive attribute calls since it was already calculated.
Seloun
Aug 27, 2013
Absolute reduction is interesting, though tougher to analyze without knowing the expected action times and Speed values (though it seems implied 200 Speed should be the cap). The main issue is that it ends up benefitting fast actions a lot more, though conversely it means the cover penalties and any other abilities that impact Speed also hurt fast actions more. Probably workable if there are viable ways to reduce Speed (and since cover reduces Speed, that's already sort of in there) and if the abilities are balanced at some point besides Speed = 0 (probably simplest way is just to identify a target speed and apply the +/- from that point, e.g. (Speed - 50)/10, instead of specifying the skill delay at 0). It does introduce some odd breakpoints, but if Speed is fairly dynamic in battle (fair number of ways to adjust it up or down mid-fight) the breakpoints become more interesting than a downside. Also probably means to be careful to have a spectrum of delays in viable actions for each class/specialization.
Re: Fortitude calc -
I'd forgotten that d(team) isn't symmetric (i.e. d(team) for one team is not -d(team) of the other team), which is what confused me. That seems to emphasize the issue of the group speed thing, though - having a slow guy on your team ends up reducing the entire group's starting fortitude, which seems somewhat odd. I can see how that can be explained in fluff, and it introduces an interesting dynamic, but it does seem like it means Speed is going to be pretty important to everyone on your team (maybe can't really afford to bring a slow guy).
Anima_
Aug 29, 2013
The range I'm currently working with is 50 - 200, where 50 only goes to actions like reload or change position. Standard attacks won't go over 150 either. Speed should stay lower than 200, actually going over 100 should indicate a build focus. I'm also thinking about synchronizing the Speed percentage and the maximum reduction. So 10% of Speed would mean that the maximum reduction is 10 % of the base execution time.
The opening speed will only influence the first phase of combat. Remember that having higher speed comes with lower values in other attributes.
