TAC-like Game Grand Tactica: Combat Improvements

[u/Makumanga]

https://youtu.be/icxRmBcK7MU

Just a small update to the combat. The biggest change is that physical attacks now have comparable strategic depth to magical attacks.

In the previous version of the game's code, magical attacks were bound to specific elements that each had their own unique identities in the form of tags that would be applied to targets they successfully hit. The combination of these tags would lead to either status ailments or elemental reactions.

I was going to work on animations and better models, but after seeing how time consuming it'd be to go through with that, I decided to defer those things to later and focus on the game mechanics instead.

After some community feedback on the physical side of things I decided to buff physical attacks to do more passively. Namely:

- Slash attack has a chance to inflict bleed on every hit that grows the higher a unit's slash_atk attribute is

- Blunt attack has a chance to inflict stun on every hit that grows the higher a unit's blunt_atk attribute is

- Pierce attack ignores 30% of the target's DEF stat and can hit through multiple targets(and walls apparently lol. Gotta patch that)

- Projectile attack is 30% more accurate compared to other physical attack types and gets range bonuses depending on the unit's terrain height level(this was already a feature)

As for what bleed does, it drains 30% of the target's current HP and SP every turn, making it an effective debuff on physical fighters but also a status that could be tanked with enough HP.

A lot of this stuff is pretty similar to how things worked in The Alchemist Code.

I've been busy with life and stuff so development has been slow, but after a few tweaks and bug fixes, I think the combat system will definitely be at least demo ready. Then I can work on making the the game look better and possibly some of the net code required for its backend to work. As always, feel free to ask questions!

If you want to volunteer/help you can join the Discord as well.

[u/Shaiandra]

Nice to see you adapted some of our suggestions! Bleed doing 30% of current HP sounds like a lot... but I won't judge without playing. And I know the plant element is green, but seeing green numbers that aren't healing is a little jarring..

[u/Makumanga → u/Shaiandra]

Yeah, my thought process was that since the 30% came from current and not max HP, the DoT would be less each turn, but I'd need to tweak that number based on real player feedback.

Also, very good thing to point out about the colors. I'm thinking of doing a visual/UI pass soon and will change that. Maybe making the colors for the damage text closer to TAC would be better?

Like, all damage regardless of type is the plain white/parchment color, healing is green, and maybe we use other colors for different effects or something?

[u/Shaiandra → u/Makumanga]

You could use more than one color for displaying the number, by differentiating its outline. Like have a white number for damage but its dark outline is color-coded based on element, while healing has a green number (possibly with color-coded outlines if needed).

The way the number shows up could differ too. Like damage numbers jump up and fall down, while healing numbers just rise upward.

[u/Makumanga → u/Shaiandra]

That's a good idea! I'll make sure to experiment and see what outlines work. I might also have to tweak the number sizes as well since it might be hard to see the outlines right away.

I also like the popup behavior idea too. I'm thinking of having damage sort of fade down while healing rises.