Hello there. It has been a while, but before I get into today's topic, which will be combat, a short update. The game is now beta feature-complete, so the essential things of what I described so far and will describe today, plus a good amount of stuff I haven't talked about at all is implemented and live. My current focus is content creation, zones, encounters, enemies, quests, all that fun stuff I described. So if you want to jump in early and help with testing and feedback you are welcome to.
That out of the way, let's talk about combat. First about combat in text-based games in general and what I try to avoid and create with claimgame's combat system. While possible to create a reaction-based combat system, it would be rather tricky and while I might attempt something like that in the future, the current system is a turn-based combat system. Actually it is built on a speed-meter, so while turn-based, it doesn't mean that you and your enemy will take turns hitting each other. Generally, this means, if you faster than your enemy, you will get to act more frequently, for example if your speed is 20 and your opponent's speed is 10 you would get to act twice as often. This also allows for haste, slow or stun effects which manipulate the speed-meter in one way or another.
Of course this also means, that the speed-meter determines who goes first, for the most part. Because before actual combat ensues we have to look at all factors setting the rules. Based on your character, equipment, memories, environment, etc. It all applies modifiers to you and your enemy, changing stats like chance to hit, chance to evade, damage, effects on hit or being hit, etc. So as combat begins and it is determined who goes first, all the base stats of you and your opponent are calculated, but there are abilities and effects which may manipulate them during the course of combat. For example a blinding effect would temporarily reduce the hit chance or a bleed effect would cause damage over time.
So let's say you are in combat and the speed-meter determined it is your turn to act. What can you actually do? Well, the simplest thing to attack. This option launches an attack where your hit rating matches up against the enemy evade rating to determine your hit chance. It will be more likely to hit a sluggish or weaker opponent over a fast and agile one. If you manage to hit damage is calculated, essentially taking your damage and reducing it by the enemy resistance. Now damage is not just a flat number, because there are different damage types, currently piercing, slashing, blunt and void. This allows to give different weapons, attacks and enemies different strengths and weaknesses. A spear for example will cause piercing damage, a sword slashing and a hammer blunt. So far so simple, but there may be different types of weapons which combine damage types or abilities which change the damage type of weapon. A flail for example would be mostly blunt damage, but also causes some slashing damage. Same with enemies, claws will slash, while teeth will pierce. If we look to resistances, a bear would likely be more resistant to blunt attacks than piercing, while a skeleton is probably the opposite of it. It allows to gear vs certain encounters, requiring you to learn and eventually know your foe and adding another layer to combat.
Now dealing damage is not necessary the last step of an attack, because you might apply effects. Your weapon could apply a bleeding or stun effect for example. For example, a good hit with a hammer might briefly stun an enemy, essentially delaying their next action which might give you another time to act. Let's assume this happened, what else can you do when it is your turn? Well, the second option is using an ability. Abilities are for the most part acquired through forged memories which I have talked about before. In short, you can acquire forged memories and use them to slot abilities into your claimed one.
Abilities are typically on a cooldown and sometimes have other requirements, like a certain weapon type equipped or a HP threshold. When to activate them is a choice which the player has to make, creating more decisions and agency for the player. Abilities will affect your next attack or may be buffs or debuffs. Let's say you have an ability "mighty hammer time" (not in game, just an example). This ability would give you double damage, by striking your enemy twice, but at the cost of delaying your next action significantly. Obviously you would need a hammer-style weapon to use it and a good time to do so would be, if you think you can finish off your enemy with the attack. Another example would be "impaling strike" which requires a spear and if you hit does high damage and applies a bleed effect, but also leaves you open to a counter attack, reducing your evade rating. The possibilities for abilities are endless and it will be up to the player to decide which abilities to bring and figure out what works. Did I mention I want players to have a lot of decisions to make?
Same as you, your enemy has abilities as well. Let's have a look at some of two of them. First we have the wolverine, who likes to claw and bite at you, causing mostly slashing and some piercing damage. As the wolverine fights and gets progressively more aggressive it will resort to more reckless attacks. Eventually the cooldown of its flurry attack will finish (it starts on cooldown) leading to a furious attack dealing high damage, but reducing his evade rating to next to nothing. So if you can survive it, you can finish him off. This leaves you two ways to deal with a wolverine, kill it fast before it goes berserk or have enough slashing and some piercing resistance to mitigate the attack. A second enemy you might encounter relatively soon is a ram, to be less ambiguous a male sheep. They can be quite aggressive and make you find out why it is a called a battering ram real quick. As you can imagine, being rammed is blunt damage, so blunt resistance could help, but it is also easier to sidestep the charge, so if you are quick on your feet and invested some points in speed and dexterity you might just evade the devastating attacks. At the same time the wool will dampen blunt damage, but can't really do much against piercing attacks.
The third option you can take is fleeing, which is a sensible choice in many situations. It will end combat, but not until your next turn, so if you decide to flee at 1 hp you are likely to die and a last hurrah might be a better option. Same enemies might attempt to flee as well. Enemies have a cowardice stat, which basically determines at which hp threshold they will attempt to flee. Not all enemies will do that, but if they manage to flee you will not get any loot, which opens the door for nets and other retreat delaying items in the future. Generally there will be a fourth option of using a consumable, potions, throwing weapons and the likes. This is not in for the beta, for the most part because the current economy does not support it yet.
As you see, combat has much more depth than simply trading blows and allows for many considerations and more important a lot of additions in the future, limiting the options only to imagination (and development time). I hope you enjoyed getting a clearer picture of combat and if you want to join in with testing or have some sensible suggestions for abilities, enemies, effects, etc. you are welcome to join https://discord.gg/w93dD3sG
That is it for today, I am not sure yet what to talk about next time, maybe it is time to talk about tokens, I don't know yet.
BR
thatclaimgamedev