[Suggestion][Tactical Combat]Simultaneous Turns

Ok, so am I on a boat out here by myself?  Nobody else is excited by the idea of a tbs tactical battle game that has simultaneous moves?  Nobody is thinking ahead about how painful multiplayer is going to be while the other guys ploddingly move their units one at a time? 

Wouldn't you rather be planning out the entire battle field while your opponent is doing the same? 

If you are interested, please give a shout out.  We would need a lot of momentum to make this happen.

would my idea in the thread below acheive most of what you want?

https://forums.elementalgame.com/393348

I think your other thread would be a great improvement. I would greatly prefer that over the current system.

One thing I am looking for is to maximize strategic decisions divided by time.  I also want to maximize time spent making decisions versus time spent watching/waiting.   This will be critical if you ever want to play multiplayer.

If you look at the possible systems in that light.  Simultaneous turns really maximizes those key areas.   In multiplayer, both players are contemplating/issuing  their moves at the same time.  So, no down time.  When playing single player, you don't have to watch the computer make all its moves.

From a game development standpoint, it is also much more interesting.  There are tons of move one unit at a time games, but I don't know of any simultaneous move games.  The closest would be RTS games, but I don't like the click fest involved with that.

There are also some issues that make the mechanics of simultaneous movement difficult to implement, but I feel pretty confident that they are all solvable. 

Simultaneous turns in tactical combat, which essentially means a D&D-like combat system (Baldur's Gate, NWN, etc) was actually the original planned implementation of tactical combat in Elemental. But, according to SD, they didn't like how it came out, so they changed it to turn based instead. I partly think the time it took to make the change ended up stinging them a bit, since it left less time to make a real smooth turn-based combat system.

I wonder why they went for the current simplistic "player gets to move all his units" model. I understand they had little time to turn around after the real-time with pause thingy got canned, but the current implementation of tactical battles is the worst/naive system I can think of. Any argument in favor of the current implementation against a combat speed/initiative order à la HoMM?

Why do you want to turn one of the first real tactical turn based games in the last decade into yet another RTS?

Yes, the system has its problems,but with a little more tweaking of the numbers aspect and a little working with the idea of giving units the capacity for semi-unique abilities (first strike, ignore armor, poison, etc...) you could make it work really nicely within the bounds of the game it is shaping up to be.

I paid for the game the day they allowed people to start pre-orders and would be very disappointed if the tactical combat became what you just described.

The only thing I remember reading is Frogboy likening it to MoM's "style" (note I realize groups and damages and etc worked different in MoM). Other than that, who knows. Maybe they're not fans of an initiative based system in general?

Just to be clear.  I am not advocating an RTS style.  I would hate that and I agree that is not the right direction. 

What I am talking about in a turn based combat system that is resolved simultaneously.

So, each individual turn would look very much like it is today, with the exception that they are all resolved at once.  Does this make sense at all?

In other words, you would select all the attack commands for each unit, and then hit an order complete button.  The other side would do the same.  Then you watch all the attacks/moves resolved at once.

Rinse and repeat.  It would still be a heavily tactical turn based system with no time pressure or click fests.

I only mentioned RTS because if you watched a time lapsed video of all the turns in order, it would look to be more like a combat out of an RTS game since all the units are actiing continuously.

Does this make sense?

Is there a thread where they went over their reasoning? 

Some early dev journals gave some details about the initial vision Stardock had with tactical battles (search for 'continuous'). I never really got what they were thinking about with the "continuous turn-based" thing. And remember battles were supposed to have thousands of soldiers on the field simultaneously.

Then reality kicked in...

I guess I am wondering how on the fringe is this idea.  What do people think?

Are any of the devs considering this? 

What about the multiplayer community?  This would really streamline the downtime for that, yet still preserve (or enhance) the turn based tactical nature of combat.  For me, MP without it is basically unplayable.

If it comes to down to it, what about people in the modding community?  Is anybody else excited/interested in diving into the python code once it is released?

Let me know your thoughts.

Would #2 From here Work?

https://forums.elementalgame.com/394258

Lee

It would be better since it moves closer to simultaneous moves. It at least eliminates the huge discrepancy between being on offense versus defense.  In particular, I don't think it is ok that every ranged unit and spellcaster gets to take multiple shots at a target before it can do anything.  I mean, that basically means that your sovereign can be eliminated before you even get a turn.  That would suck if you are accidently caught on enemy turf.

My question to you:  Why not go all the way?   The initiative system is a good first step, but why not complete the journey? 

Mainly it takes a lot more code and work to do the simultaneous, as you have to work out all the exceptions, If 2 units move to the same square, and things like that.

The Initiative system is more of a Tweak than an overhaul, and would allow the "back and forth" stuff Brad was talking about.

Both can be good systems, Init would be I believe fairly easy to do. May try it myself when the Python code is out.
Lee 

I was wondering when someone was going to bring this up.  Yes, there are tons of exceptions, but I think it is possible to come up with a pretty good system to minimize these.

The other problem is movement.  You can't just have a move command, you need a move towards a particular enemy as well.

Also, depending on the timing of attacks vs moves, you will have targets coming in/out of range.

So, granted, it is much more complex, but if you could actually pull it off, you would have something unique and innovative.  It would also be tremendously fun.

There were a lot of discussions on simultaneous turns in beta.  It kinda ended up being referred to as WeGo (We Go, as opposed to I Go then You Go).  A quick search on "WeGo" turns up a few  threads, which I reckon reference other, earlier threads:

A better combat system: we-go

Tactical Combat discussion continuation

Implementing simultaneous turns is very interesting/desirable to many of us, and garnered a lot of support back then.  It's nice to see this brought up and I hope you and others keep offering ideas here.

Note: WeGo doesn't make a game RTS, it can still be turn-based.

A WeGo system IS turn-based. Noone played combat mission here ?

And while in the beta they were a lot of discussion about it.

Why not base when a unit moves on dex, level, or speed?  Didn't the Steel Panther series do some thing like this (I and II, never played the battalion level one)?  I can't quite remember that far back.  Or no, what they did was alot action points to each unit.  If you saved some you could then have opportunity fire or cover fire.  Of course they also has suppression, are damage, and all sorts of goodies.  I don't think there has been as good of a tactical combat game since.

Steel panthers wasn't a wego system. So no conflict of "I moved there before you !"

Noone ever played combat mission ?

Can't remember.  Was that the Microsoft one?  I seem to remember playing a WWII themed one from Microsoft after SP.  They used facing, arcs of fire, etc.  I thought it was pretty good too.  One of the things I really enjoyed about SP was its armor, and damage systems system, and the way they did aircraft.  I'm surprised no one has copied the system.

It seems too few game devs played steel panthers. But if you look at matrix games you'll see that a lot of wargames that have better systems than SP had

Combat Mission was : you give orders, click send (or calculate, i don't remmeber) and it would show you a video of what was happening. After 1 minute of action you could give the next orders.

-deleted- , I started new thread.

I'd say turns should be unit based, not "side" based. I'll quote what I wrote in this suggestion post

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395918

- Now, when I mentioned unit speed in the sub-title, I was refering to the way the game handles turns. Personally, I don't think it should be "First attacker, then defender". In fact, turns shouldn't be determined by side, but by each unit individually. And how to determine which unit is supposed to move first? Well, their speed stat/rating. So, let's say side KINGDOM has 2 cavalry units, a hero on foot and 2 archers, and side EMPIRE has 2 units of heavy infantry, a catapult and a mounted hero with a SHORTSWORD OF MIGHTY SPEED. Now, the turn order would be something like this:

Mounted hero (E) -> Cavalry (K) -> Archers (K) -> Hero (K) - > Heavy infantry (E) -> Catapult (E).

Now, this order is mantained until a unit gets their speed buffed/debuffed. This system gives fast units an advantage that doesn't really overpower them (like the hability to attack FOREVER if you have a shortsword equipped), and it doesn't put the defender in a terrible disadvantage like the current system does. Now, this doesn't mean units would get only 1 move per "round" (round as in, everytime this turn cycle gets completed). The speed difference may be so big between some units, the fast one will get 2 or 3 moves before the slow one can make 1 move. Making it exagerated, it'd be something like this, with 3 units only:

fast unit -> fast unit -> normal unit -> fast unit -> normal unit -> slow unit.

 Having a side based turn system like this it's like, if you were playing chess and you were able to move all your pieces ONCE, and once you're done, your opponent does the same.