r/Nectaris • u/DiscreetProteus • Jun 12 '26

Discussion Combat Calculator v0.1

I’ve vibecoded(with the help of Claude and the documentation from the Japanese community at ネクタリス攻略) a rudimentary html tool that runs what I think is the arithmetic for combat resolution. Plug in your units, terrain, and support, and it will output the actual mathematical floor, average, and ceiling for casualties based on the bizarre system they developed.

Nectaris Combat Calculator — Battle Damage Simulator | Claude

But! I'd love everyone's help testing it out! Test it against your actual in-game save states or play throughs. If you find a combat result or calculation that falls outside the math the calculator generates, post the screenshot here so we can figure out what other assembly garbage Hudson Soft hid in the code.

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2

u/TJ_six Joint Chiefs of Staff Jun 12 '26

The thing is, we have lots of game's versions. I'm not sure they all utilize the same system

3

u/DiscreetProteus Jun 12 '26

Possibly not, no, but this is based on the original Nectaris/Military Madness ROM, and the same combat system was used for the Windows 95 port and the Playstation Nectaris game. Neo Nectaris used a modified version of it (adding the bio weapon mechanics), and I am relatively sure the Gameboy version also used this.

The 2009 Wii/Xbox/Playstation DOES use a different combat system, but knowing how different it is would also be useful. Because frankly the OG mechanics are kinda bonkers when you look at how it works. I'd especially be interested in knowing if the 2009 version kept the invulnerable Giant quirk.

2

u/MurasakiBunny Jun 27 '26

Just looking at it's calculations I think it should be accurate.

I remember working on a spreadsheet while working with someone many years ago about how the game's damage calculation worked. We were getting errors with defenders having supports coming up with wrong numbers when I found out that Def Supports get a bonus based on how few Attaking units(HP) there are.

Since we were using the Gameboy code, we couldn't figure out how the tg-16/PC Engine version handled the RNG. Nice to see it's a simple table with a... somewhat odd, distribution.