I'm new to Veeky Forums but I need some help on a game I'm developing (computer game, but please read on)...

I'm new to Veeky Forums but I need some help on a game I'm developing (computer game, but please read on), it's a simplistic RPG game, and I need a decent turn based combat system, so I'd like to get some advice on how to construct the best combat system possible, with decent rules.

Your query won't be an issue if you had experience with tabletop games.
Your question should not be what's the best combat system but wich one fits your taste and game the better.

The last time I did this it didn't go well, I'm not good at creating game rules, but I'm okay at playing them.

I play DnD 4e and HackMaster, but those are very overcomplicated for what I'm trying to do.

I came here to see what people actually wanted out of a battle system.

I've got everything except the creativity here.

As far as simplistic turn based combat with rpg elements go, you could look into the new XCOM games.

I've got the RPG elements down, I just need a simple turn based battle system, and even then, I just need rules on how it should work.

You want I should post my old system to look over?

That could help, some anons better than me will surely be able to help you

You can't get simpler than Retrophaze

There is no one true ideal turn based system. Anything created in a vacuum will feel bland and rpgmaker amateurish.

We need to know more about the ideal flow of your game.
What is the core gameplay block?
What sort of duration and complexity are you expecting in battles?
What is your vision for flow?

Further questions....

How transparent do you want this system to be to the player? Should they be getting down and dirty with the number or should thinks quietly grind away in the background?

How many entities should does this system need to deal with?

Will relative positioning be important? Will there be a combat map?

Here's how the old system worked:
Damage = ATK - DEF
Turn order was:
Player SPD > Opponent SPD, player goes first and vice versa
Player SPD = Opponent SPD, player decides who goes first
If the player allows the opponent to go first, they are rewarded with 5XP.
Each levelup, you get building points (Level / 2). Each building point can be applied to one stat to raise it and make your character better as you go on.

During battle, the opponent's actions are decided by a random number generator, 0-32768, depending on the value, a different action is selected.
If the action is to attack, damage is dealt (opponent attack - player defense). If the damage is less than 0, it becomes 0.

If defend is chosen, the player's attack stat is divided by 2 and rounded up. If their attack if for some reason below 1, it becomes 1. This is reset at the end of the battle.
If run is selected, the opponent must have higher speed than the player to successfully escape. If the opponent is special or a boss, it cannot select the run option at all. The RNG will loop until a different action is selected.

On the player's turn, you can choose to use magic, an item, attack, defend, check stats, or run.

Check stats is self explanatory, magic is determined by scrolls, their damage is calculated as (player level * remaining MP - enemy defense).
Using an item is obvious as well, you can use an ether to regain MP, or a potion to regain HP.
Running is a 50/50 chance for players.
attacking and defending are the same for players and opponents.

It's going to all be done entirely in the background.
This will only deal with one enemy at a time.
The whole game is text based, so there wikll not be a combat map, nor will relative positioning have an effect.

Think Pokemon, but massively simplified and without graphics or sound.

The complexity of the battles - see above
Vision of the flow? Turn switches until one side runs or dies.
contd. next

contd.
boss monsters are encountered at specific points in the map, though they have not been implemented just yet. The only difference is that they will not be random, and they cannot run from a battle.

Epic enemies, which occur on a 1/128 chance, have +5 to all stats and cannot flee from battle either.

duration is (hopefully) at max of 2 minutes long. Most battles should not take longer than about 30 seconds anyways.

Core gameplay? I guess right now it's just move around and kill things until I get a proper map set up.

A few notes quick, battles can only happen when moving any of the cardinal directions excluding South.

When you win a battle, you will gain a set amount of XP for that type of monster and a random amount of gold (called Tildes in game) between 5 and 10.

There is a level cap of 20. Every time your level increases, the amount of XP you have to gain to level up is increased by 50.

That is my entire, overcomplicated battle system that I've been using for about a year now. I think it either needs some serious remodeling or needs to be replaced altogether.

Look at final Fantasy tactics on ps1.

Do away with their initiative system for something that makes speed more reasonable.

Balance the jobs and skills better, so there's a reason to actually play/take each one.

Get rid of the job tree and just let you build/recruit characters of the appropriate class you want.

Done.

For the most part this is how turn based tabletop combats work anyways.

Hmm. While that is an excellent idea, there is the fatal flaw that you are the only character and your class cannot be changed in game.

>makes speed more reasonable
I'm not sure I understand this.

All base stats are single digits for most everything, if that's what you're asking.

In fft, it counts ticks. A sp9 character has 3x the turns of a sp3 char.
This is a bad idea. Don't copy it

There can be no real time element, keep in mind this is text only through the Windows console

No real time element is involved.
Each character has a spd stat.
Between turns, the computer counts 1 initiative tick, then adds your speed value to your current ct count. When sometimes hits 100, they get a turn.

As a result speed is one of the most important stats because of your speed stat is at 10 you go twice as often as someone at 5.

>I've got everything except the creativity here.
How many dozen different systems have you played?

1 dozen? 2 dozen? If your answer isn't at least "3 dozen", you shouldn't be attempting to make your own (computer-based or not).

I've played *plenty* of computer games, I'm in the middle of a DnD 4e campaign, I've run a few HackMaster campaigns, and I'm in the middle of playing one right now as well.

Well, I'm not playing right this second, but we play every Tuesday afternoon, so you get the point.

I've got plenty of consoles as well that I've played.

I have made three games in the past (technically two, if you don't count the complete rework of the first game I did). This will be the fourth, and I just thought it might be time for change, after having the same broken battle mechanics as usual for the last year now.

If he's played even 10 that are all quite different from eachother, he'll have solid ideas of different approaches.

Honestly,

Just Play d&d, fate, mutants and masterminds, shadowrun/wod, unisystem, gurps, runequest/warhammer/40k/call of cthulhu, and savage worlds, and you've got a pretty good idea.

And that's 7.

Most other games are very similar to one of those.

Simple idea?

You can move X spaces in a turn, then do an action, like attacking or using an ability.

You have an attack and a defense stat, when you make an attack there's some kind of comparison between your attack and the opponent's defense; roll a die and add it to your attack, something like that.

You have how much damage you do, and they have how much armor/soak/whatever that reduces damage; the remainder is dealt to your health.

There's no map; it's all text based. Pic related is a screenshot of what the old combat menu looked like.

I haven't got terribly much to work with, the terminal is only 80x25 characters, which means that even if I use all 5 block characters, the best image I can have is 80x24 (one line for Press any key to continue...).

>Rpg combat
>No map
Oh. I had assumed text based graphics.

Then the best you can likely do is basically pokemon combat.

Tabletop combat pretty universally includes positioning as a major element.

Yeah, that's what I thought at first as well.

Any ideas on what I might need to change on my old system to make it better?

Questions? Opinions?

Logarithmic function, nigga

Easy solution

What will the battles look like? Will they all be one-on-one? Will the player get a party or a single character?

Also, interface idea: A=attack, S=spell, D=defend, F=flee

They will all be one-on-one, unless I decide I want some NPC intervention somewhere in the game for a tutorial or something.

The lettered inputs are a good idea, but I'll stick with numbers until I've got a working system, in which case I'll change it over to letters.

Reason being that the letters require all capitalizations to work correctly.

If it's one-on-one then pokemon style combat should be alright. The player selects an action and then whether the enemy gets to take action first is determined randomly based on the speed of both units and on some bonuses or penalties from the actions they're taking. If it's a game with many different units fighting at once, this can get a little wonky, but even for 16 or fewer combatants it shouldn't be a problem.

What language are you using? C?

Also more interface ideas: (Q)uaff a potion or use an item, (W)ear/wield equipment
Keyboard controls where all the inputs are next to each other are sexy

>what language are you using?
>c?
Batch script!
1500+ lines, too, and it's not even remotely done yet!

>keyboard controls where all the keys are next to each other is sexy
numpad works fine for this.

Earlier I posted about flow.

Flow results from the interaction of timing, pacing, and gameplay activity.

The flow of diablo 2 is something like

(low intensity) piss about town and gather quests -> (medium intensity) kill mobs of mobs, repeating -> (high intensity) kill boss -> (low intensity) turn in quests, parse over loot

With a simple pokemon style fighting system, I would advise less combat rather than more. Keep the hp bars low and the damage high. You don't want you core repeating gameplay element to feel like a grind.