Shot 1 shows the player in the middle of ‘standard combat’ with the firefly (achieved by right clicking on the firefly originally to start combat and reveal the attack icons). They have stacked up two attacks, Punch and Shield Ram by clicking on the attack icons. This is shown by the attacks selected having been lit up green, and their icons being displayed as hovering minutures attached to the mouse. The attack bar is also somewhat drained after these two attacks have been selected, and is about half full. To unleash these attacks, the player would just have to right click on the firefly, and they would be executed either one after another, or possibly as a combo move.

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/922/driftmooncombatmockup1.png

Before executing the attacks, however, the player suddenly decided that the firefly was so ferocious that another attack was required. In Shot 2, the player has now selected an extra attack (Stab), which is shown by the main Stab icon being lit up green, and it’s miniture added to Punch and Shield Ram on the mouse. The attack bar has also been decreased further. However, since now there are less points remaining than it requires to selected the Whirl Attack move, this icon is grayed out, and can no longer be selected. To select this attack, the player would have to execute the stacked moves by right clicking on the enemy, and then wait for the attack bar to recharge.

http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/5989/driftmooncombatmockup2.png

Once again, comments and particularly criticism would be greatly appreciated, thanks guys.
(Dammit, now I want to go re-watch Firefly. )

The problem I have with ranged weapons is that in this system, you’d have to right click on an enemy to engage in ‘standard combat’ with it, and reveal the ‘special attack’ icons. Since (I think) ranged weapons would be special attacks, it would be strange to use them, as at this point you’d already be in close combat and wouldn’t be using a bow. So, ideas on how could this issue could be solved in regards to this context? Perhaps right clicking on an enemy would enter standard melee combat where your character runs up to the enemy (with melee special attacks like headbutts and whirl attack), while double-right-clicking would enter standard ranged combat, where your character stands on the spot and doesn’t approach the enemy (with ranged special attacks like double shot and fire arrows). Again, this sounds complicated but I don’t think it would be overly; lots of games use double-right click in gameplay (often to charge the enemy).

Hey pete! The mockup is close, but not quiiiite what I was thinking. I’ll put together one myself to help demonstrate the idea better. Check back in an hour or so!

Tactical systems usually substitute the reflex and hand-eye-coordination parts, timing and other such things present in ‘real-time’ combat with positioning and tactical decisions on what to use and when but they can be just as demanding from the player as any other system, if not more so.

Take Fallout or X-Com, both of the examples mentioned: I’ve finished Fallout with a very low-level character by using positioning and tactical use of my APs to minimize enemy chances to deal damage and maximize mine. And as anyone who has played X-Com knows, if you do not place everything correctly you /will/ die, if you do you still might. That game focuses on squad-based tactics and the perfect possible use of spotter/shooter pair dynamics, using cover and line of sight, explosives(modifying the terrain), tanks as moving cover, breach and clear… and the enemies do it too.

In other news, I like Zex’s idea.

Just throwing that out there because i feel like the hitpoint system has gone rather far from where it began and where it was intended to simulate (the “original” hit points in wargames from which D&D was developed number one or two per character or so). I see this development as negative. You may agree or disagree with me there.

Just as a sidenote, armor lowering damage dealt rather than making the object more difficult to hit does not seem to me in any way logical. Also: exhaustion systems = good.

As for ranged attack, the “attack bar” works just fine: each time you use your bow, it consumes a bit of your attack bar “energy”. Of course we could add to the system some stuff like a “chance-to-hit” for ranged weapons (when you fire an arrow or throw a fireball, it might fail if your archery/magic skills are not high enough; an higher level may increace your to-hit chances and maybe damage, if such projectile is, like I said, a magic-based one).

I would only add some kind of endurance to the current combat system (Or the one in Notrium), so that running in circles and smashing the mouse button repeately would only get you exhausted and killed. Getting exhausted could also lower your attack so you would do less damage after a long fight and make you think twice before trying to kill 10 wolves in a row.

This could even work well with the current mouse controlled control system, which I think makes the exploration quite pleasant in the preview version. With most of the other fighting options we’d have to move to keyboard controlled movement. And I think that (=keyboard controls) would make the exploration part of the game less fun, but I know it’s a matter of taste.

You are right: Ranged combat may loose a little something with this approach… But there are drawbacks to all systems, I think. I was also wondering whether it might be possible to incorporate an easy to handle block/defend system in this idea – does someone have thoughts on that??