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The new framework I'm working on for Planet Stronghold 2 tracks all durations by time, not by turns. So that's one problem already taken care of.

Could you please elaborate? Does each action advance a global timer or something?

Yes there's a sort of global timer, so the duration of effects and other timed stuff is really measured in time units and not "turns"

I take it this timer ticks down based on the delay of the skills used, and not a set amount for any action then? It's the lesser of two evils when it comes to my exploit creativity

Since we're talking combat anyway: I find the primary difficulty of hard mode is recovering from the first barrage of blows. I get like, one thief to act, and then all six enemies go to town on me. And after that, the monsters are suddenly mysteriously slow compared to my party. You could make monsters a little tougher if the player was at least allowed to throw some Guards around before the onslaught. Much as I detest starting a fight by rezzing Myrth, it's not very challenging if I'm allowed to do everything according to plan. I'm thinking a monster health increase would be the right step, so it would take longer to reduce the incoming damage.

BTW, does anyone else use a 3x cyclopes fight as the party's performance meter? I find that tougher than most bossfights, but then again Chambara isn't on my A-team. Edit: Okay, Ramas with Zeal's sword for the win.

In the current framework effects are only evaluated on the characters turn and it didn't care how long ago the last turn was. The duration was in turns.
The new framework evaluates effects every time a characters turn comes up for all characters and it does care how long ago the last turn was and if the effects ended in the meantime. The duration is in ticks of the global timer. Which also tracks the action specific delay for the characters turn of course.

Since we're talking combat anyway: I find the primary difficulty of hard mode is recovering from the first barrage of blows. I get like, one thief to act, and then all six enemies go to town on me. And after that, the monsters are suddenly mysteriously slow compared to my party. You could make monsters a little tougher if the player was at least allowed to throw some Guards around before the onslaught. Much as I detest starting a fight by rezzing Myrth, it's not very challenging if I'm allowed to do everything according to plan. I'm thinking a monster health increase would be the right step, so it would take longer to reduce the incoming damage.

That happens because speed decides who goes first in the beginning and afterwards action delay is the major factor on turn order.

Okay too tricky words for me, so I'll just mention the exploit I had in mind right away one variety of it anyway:

It is my turn. After me is a paralyzed enemy. Could a fast (short delay) action cause the global timer to tick so little he's still paralyzed where a slow action wouldn't?

Yes. Say the paralyse effect has 60 ticks duration left. Any action with a shorter delay than 60 will occur before that/allow a second action against the paralysed target. I'm not quite sure how that constitutes an exploit though. Could you elaborate?

The advantage (if not "exploit") is that if I use a <60 delay action, then my opponent has to waste his turn sitting in paralysis. Similarly, I could game with delay for the following effects:
- Use a fast action so that an ally keeps an important buff for their turn
- Use a slow action so that an ally loses an important debuff before their turn
- Use a slow action so that an enemy loses an important buff before their turn

Unless I misunderstood you and you merely meant a <60 delay action from my character will allow that character to act again against the target. So to clear that up: It's Loren's turn, and the paralyzed monster is next. There is no available action so short that Loren can squeeze in two actions. Can the delay of Loren's chosen action decide whether or not the monster will get out of paralysis for its turn or not? Does the delay of every action taken push the global timer forward by as many units?

No, no matter how you take your turns the effect will end at the same time. (Unless the actions itself changes the effect explicitly of course.) Actions don't advance the timeline in that way. Instead the timeline will advance to the next unresolved action.
All effects have a specific end point in the timeline. Say the paralyse ends at tick 600 and your current characters turn comes up at tick 540. If you take an actions with 50 ticks delay your next turn will come up at tick 590 so the paralyse effect is still active. If the enemies turn comes up at tick 580 she will still suffer from the paralyse effect, even if she took an action with 10 ticks delay she will still suffer from paralyse. Even taking an infinite amount of 0 delay actions would not change that fact. But as soon as the timeline advance to 600 and beyond she will no longer be paralysed, even if an other characters turn occurs before her own.

Example wrote: 0: Your turn: You cause paralyse to the enemy with duration 120, your delay is 100
40: Enemy turn: Paralysed, defends. Her delay is 100 as well.
100: Your turn: You attack the paralysed enemy, your delay is 100
120: Paralyse expires
140: Enemy turn: No longer paralysed, ...

I see. It looks like you have thought this through well. That means I will have to actually play the system to break it. /snicker