[quote=“phaethon, post:10, topic:3066”]The big problem with X-COM style combat is that the amount of time IRL you have to spend directing your characters scales up linearly with your allies. This is fine if that is a central element to the game (like in X-COM). It can be a major gameplay pacing problem if not. In X-COM, battles are very “episodic” and tactical, so it works. Fights in Cataclysm are continuous and sometimes unexpected, so it would be non-stop micromanagement. Not to mention that “turns” in cataclysm are much more granular than turns in X-COM. If anyone has played the old flash game Caravaneer, toward the end of the game you have to manually control like 20 or 30 characters. The micromanagement (perhaps enjoyed by some) makes each turn take forever. Not to mention that having god-like control over multiple characters isn’t very realistic.
As an alternative, an approach for making allies better that I’ve seen implemented really well is the idea of “automatas,” which are a simple set of rules that you want your team member to follow. The Player doesn’t control allies directly. Instead, each turn the NPC goes down its list of directions in order to see if the given instruction should be followed. It’s essentially just a series of if statements, but it can provide a pretty deep strategic component without slowing down ongoing gameplay. It could be something like:
[ol][li]if my health is below 30% and a zombie is next to me, flee[/li]
[li]if my health is below 30%, try to use first aid or bandages[/li]
[li]if I have no ammo, reload[/li]
[li]shoot the enemy with the most health if I see an enemy[/li]
[li]bash the nearest enemy if I see an enemy[/li][/ol]
In this example, fleeing at low health is the highest priority since it is first. Line 2 just says to heal up if at low health (and there is not a zombie next to you), and ideally the game engine would ensure that we don’t waste a turn trying to do something we can’t do. So if our NPC was out of healing items, line 2 would always be ignored in favor of trying one of the next actions. What’s cool is that you can setup your allies to all have different roles this way. AND, once they’re setup, you don’t have to micromanage them. It’s also more realistic in the sense that survivors would communicate strategy guidelines about how to work together without actually controlling each other. The game engine could also “eat its own dogfood” and use this internally to express default NPC behavior. Also, if a player didn’t like this strategic component of the game, they could probably get by just letting NPCs use their default set of automatas and keep gameplay the same (or better) as it is now.
This was implemented very well in a classic RPG Flash game I stumbled upon by Edgebee studios (link: http://www.edgebee.com/games?id=1). The interface there is nice, and I think it is possible to expose this kind of feature in a way that is intuitive to non-programmers and doesn’t just look like if statements (if statements are already intuitive to programmers, so that’s not an issue). I think Edgebee got the idea from one of the final fantasy games. I haven’t seen it implemented too many other places. I think it’s a brilliant way to add depth and strategy to an RPG without making things all about tactical micromanagement.
I would love to see something like that in the cards for NPCs.[/quote]
Something like FF12’s gambit system comes to mind with this.
Just make sure the rules use 3 fields instead of 2:
status -> modifier -> action
health -> >50% -> use healing item
