What makes for good turn-based combat?

[setzer777]

I'm interested in turn-based combat, partly because I'd love (as a personal challenge) to design a fun system myself.

The main pitfalls to avoid seem to be:

1. Having a system where most of your options are useless, and the correct course of action is obvious (stereotypically the obvious correct choice is the basic "attack" command, or some other action that has high basic damage output at little to no cost.)

2. Having a system where the main challenge is mathematical in nature, trying to decipher the arcane stat/damage formulas.

How can a game avoid these downfalls? This seems particularly difficult in game systems that also lack a spatial element (timing and positioning seem like relatively straightforward ways to add challenge to a system).

[Dark567]

Have you played Final Fantasy Tactics? Probably the best turn-based combat system I have ever played. But that has spacial element.

I definitely think there are games that avoid those to pitfalls though but they need to have something else in place. Heck most games have other things like selecting a party, selecting weapons and magic or growing pokemon or whatever. Turn-based Battles(Final Fantasy, Pokemon, Chronotrigger) without a spacial element are too boring in of themselves so they need other stuff around them.

[setzer777]

Yeah, just started playing it relatively recently. It is a lot of fun (and space does play a big part of that), but I do think it suffers a little bit from certain choices being obviously sub-optimal. Almost every time I use a negative status effect (except for things like sword techniques that do tons of guaranteed damage and have a chance of inflicting a status as frosting on the cake), I feel like I'm doing it intentionally to add variety to the game rather than trying my hardest to win.

Edit: Actually I think the sword techniques in that game might be the best way to handle powerful status effects: have them attached to an ability that also has some guaranteed effect.

[Dark567]

I feel like negative status effect magic in all the Final Fantasy's until XIII was mostly useless. Really the key to making all the turn-based battles in Final Fantasy better is to make the generic attack weaker and force the player to use status effects and magic. Which they fixed in XIII.

Actually the other thing about XIII that helps is that the turns are quicker and less important. By having a lot of quick less important turns, wasting one trying a status effect isn't as big a deal.

[SecondTalon]

Yeah, just started playing it relatively recently. It is a lot of fun (and space does play a big part of that), but I do think it suffers a little bit from certain choices being obviously sub-optimal. Almost every time I use a negative status effect (except for things like sword techniques that do tons of guaranteed damage and have a chance of inflicting a status as frosting on the cake), I feel like I'm doing it intentionally to add variety to the game rather than trying my hardest to win.

Edit: Actually I think the sword techniques in that game might be the best way to handle powerful status effects: have them attached to an ability that also has some guaranteed effect.

Wait, are you just using melee status effects? Try some Time Magic. Slow is a hell of a thing.



But to answer your question - just standing around and taking turns whacking isn't really cutting it most of the time. If nothing else, you need to work one-two or even a one-two-three rank arrangement, where there's a front line and a back line (and maybe a middle line). Preferable is something like Shining Force or Tactics or Valkyria Chronicles or X-Com or even Space Hulk, where placement of troops matters, and in the latter three cases where troops have a certain amount of action points or time and can save time to react during the enemy's turn, more or less.

Basically taking it from the Fight/Defend/Item menu to something that involves placement and attack/armor bonuses for terrain placement and even facing bonuses/penalties so that it's possible to essentially sneak up behind troops and potentially do sneak attacks/backstabs or what have you. Make it not just Side One vs Side Two, but Side One vs Side Two and both sides Vs/Allied with the terrain, depending on how they take advantage of the field of battle.

[Jebobek]

My first suggestion would be an attack style depreciation forcing you to change up your moves, like Super Smash Bros, where the damage % depreciates the more you use the same move.

This could be built right into the lore, where your enemies will make passive comments in Act 1 like "they're using 1h swords, we're going to start using shields" or "They're using poisons, we're going to start carrying antidotes." This could force the player to bring along their black Mage for much of Act 2. Building this out of a game like Final Fantasy Tactics is my example, as many are aware of how deep the bag of trickses can be. This allows programmers to fix balancing issues in the same motion.

When it comes to damage, its hard to escape math, as we base everything off of it in our combat systems. There are ways to get rid of things like, say, experience points. In Paper Mario, you level every 100 stars. An enemy that gives 2 stars at lvl 1 gives only 1 at lvl 2. It eventually gives 0 at lvl 4 or so. It eliminates over-grinding and under-grinding at the same time, as getting 10 stars off something out of your league will level you up quickly. There are obviously means of math programming behind the scenes, but the player only sees those little stars build up.

You could try limb damage with background math working on success rate. Aim for the hands with fire spells to disable, aim for the legs with ice to immobilize, etc. The problem is that if the application of these debuffs are strictly chance-based, players will be looking on Gamefaqs for the underpinning % chances for the best moves. You either go the paper mario style for button-pressing minigames to enhance buffs/debuffs/damage, or go without and get buried in the math.

[setzer777]

Wait, are you just using melee status effects? Try some Time Magic. Slow is a hell of a thing.

That's true, I didn't think about Time Magic. Slow and Immobilize can both be quite powerful (Steal Heart seems like another strong ability too). I was mainly thinking of all of the useless Mystic, Geomancer, Knight, and Orator abilities. Low success rates combined with the fact that other classes can often take out 1/3-1/2 of most enemies' max HP in one swing.

It's interesting how difficult it seems to be to make a successful system that doesn't include positioning. Even FF13 had positioning when it came to AOE abilities (it also had a speed requirement due to the ATB gauge). I guess it's hard to add sufficient complexity without position in a way that still feels intuitive to humans (I can think of all sorts of ways to add complexity to two sides lined up, but most ways seem really arbitrary and annoying to memorize).

My first suggestion would be an attack style depreciation forcing you to change up your moves, like Super Smash Bros, where the damage % depreciates the more you use the same move.

Yeah, I had a similar thought of including something like the style meter from Devil May Cry, where you get more points the more variety you use (within the scope of a single battle), and you get better loot the more style points you build up.

The problem is that if the application of these debuffs are strictly chance-based, players will be looking on Gamefaqs for the underpinning % chances for the best moves. You either go the paper mario style for button-pressing minigames to enhance buffs/debuffs/damage, or go without and get buried in the math.

Oh, I'm not opposed to having math be a factor, I just meant that the challenge shouldn't primarily take the form of learning complicated formulas. It's cool if ability X has a 30% chance of inflicting status Y. To me the problem is when in order to strategize effectively you have to know that ability X does damage based on (Strength * Agility)/2 - 100/(enemy level + armor).

[Magnanimous]

It would be cool (but difficult) to have a 3d battlefield, instead of the 2d-ish fields in Tactics. Maybe if all of the characters can fly...

I was mainly thinking of all of the useless Mystic, Geomancer, Knight, and Orator abilities. Low success rates combined with the fact that other classes can often take out 1/3-1/2 of most enemies' max HP in one swing.

AKA, this?

[Jesse]

Never played FFT, what are we talking about here, Turn-based as in Final Fantasy VII's combat, or the sublime, best-game-ever, Vandal Hearts style of game? If so, the answer is to make it exactly the same as Vandal Hearts, because that's the best game ever.

[philsov]

What makes for good turn-based combat?

- Non-random turn order. There is nothing more annoying than having a boss act last on one turn and then act first on the next resulting a game over scenario (or your healer-type doing the opposite, equally as annoying) -- fuck YOU, many early DQ titles. FFT does a wonderful job with this and their Speed/CT system (as does Tactics Ogre, to a lesser degree). Simple AT charge gauges also suffice (as seen in later FF's). Etrain Odyssey does well with this as well, with a unit's Agi stat being the primary aspect of determining turn order, but also takes into account the performing action -- healing and buffing in general gets an effective Agi boost to move the character up on the action list, while some of the hardest hitting abilities will resolve last for a given turn.

- Choice. Part of this is game design with regards to difficulty, but if the Attack command will outright kill the enemy 100% of the time, why would anyone ever choose to render an enemy immobile for two rounds with a 50% success rate? Also extends to allowing for a flexible party in either straight characters with distinct differences or a job system or something (read: out of battle choice) , especially if coupled with the thought that "no single party should be able to beat everything." But this is me projecting, because I want that choice to mean something instead of "I'm playing with Ayla in my party because she's a strong cavewoman and that's awesome."

All I can think of atm, really.

I was mainly thinking of all of the useless Mystic, Geomancer, Knight, and Orator abilities.

/gasp

Life Drain works on bosses so you're able to 4 shot anything in the game.. Trumped only by Lich and Demi 2, but those lack the self-healing facet.
Elemental is more about an instant, 5 range, moderate AoE damage with no MP cost. The status effects (~20%) are just icing.
Battle Skill... hardly worthwhile. Stat breaking bosses can be useful, but for the most part it's a PvP skillset for a game without a PvP element
Orator is good for only Mimic Daravon in battle. Br/Fa modding is wickedly powerful though.

Charge and Basic Skill top my useless list, fwiw.

[pseudoidiot]

It may also be helpful to consider tabletop rpg's. Very few tabletop games simulate simultaneous combat very well and even then there's an element of it being turn-based.

An interesting mechanic that comes to mind is in the new Marvel Heroic RPG. I've only played in a short demo so my grasp on the rules aren't very good. But the idea is that in combat the active player gets to choose who goes next (including the GM). And the GM has doom pool (or something like that) that is used for doing stuff and it will just keep growing, so eventually you'll want the GM to go before it gets out of hand. Also, I believe that regardless of anyone choosing the GM to go, they always get to go once all PC's have acted, so if you're not paying attention the GM might get to go twice in a row. I'm not entirely sure on how the first person to act is chosen -- I suspect just simply speaking up first. Of course the NPC/NPCs aren't just sitting there sucking up whatever punishment you dish out. You'll still be rolling vs. the GM and if they roll better you could be in a world of hurt.

Something like that could perhaps work in a video game. Your opponent just stands there reacting (and like above reacting includes ability to counter-attack and such) to everything you're doing until you eventually let them go, but the entire time there's a sort of doom counter that keeps creeping up which corresponds to how much power they can unleash. There'd be a fair bit of strategy in deciding when to let your enemies act and what order to let your side act in as well as who should act before/after your enemies.

Damn now I want to play that Marvel game again.

[Snark]

When it comes to damage, its hard to escape math, as we base everything off of it in our combat systems. There are ways to get rid of things like, say, experience points. In Paper Mario, you level every 100 stars. An enemy that gives 2 stars at lvl 1 gives only 1 at lvl 2. It eventually gives 0 at lvl 4 or so. It eliminates over-grinding and under-grinding at the same time, as getting 10 stars off something out of your league will level you up quickly. There are obviously means of math programming behind the scenes, but the player only sees those little stars build up.

I loved Paper Mario. The Badge system was awesome.

The easiest way I can think of to simultaneously make optimal and suboptimal moves difficult to distinguish between and reduce maths, is to remove information from the game. For instance, in chess, all information is known, and there are many different quantifiable techniques for evaluating the value of different positions and moves. In games where each player chooses a bank of actions and modifiers pre-game (such as building a deck in a trading card game), it becomes less about math and more about guessing what the other player's available moves are. Math's become less useful as they involve the odds of your opponent having a particular playing style (which in most cases, is difficult to quantify).

Note: If I missed your point, I apologize. Just my first thoughts.

[Adam H]

A couple conceptual things from someone who doesn't have much experience with turn based games.

1) Mechanics similar to Rock-Paper-Scissors, where each move has an optimal counter-move, but you don't know which move your enemy will choose until you've chosen your move.
2) Deception - moves can setup future moves, which, coupled with #1, implies the possibility of feints, or at least hiding your intentions.
3) Randomness - different moves have different variances. If you are losing a battle, it's better to use a high variance move even if the expected payoff is less. It's difficult to estimate/calculate, so it becomes a matter of taste (if implemented properly). There's loads of examples in other kinds of games and sports - it's a natural and correct tendency to go "all-in" if you're losing.

If this is single player, then the tricky part is designing an AI that isn't a predictable idiot. Semi-random behavior is the key, I think.

I don't know if these features are more or less standard. I've played a couple older FF games, but never got into them (probably because I never figured out anything better than attack-attack-attack-attack-heal-attack-attack...).

[++$_]

A variation on decaying attack strength is to make each ability cost more resources the more frequently you do it. Of course the amount required would go back down to the minimum if you left the ability unused for a while.

One way to ensure that every ability gets used is to make the resource cost actually drop for abilities you haven't used in a long time, until it becomes practically free. Of course, this wouldn't work if you still had to use a full turn on the ability -- turns are a resource too. Maybe you could have each ability take a certain amount of time to use, which controls when you get to take your next action. So if you used an ability that took "4 seconds" to use, you would get your next turn sooner than if you used an ability that took "8 seconds". And the idea would be that if you don't use your 8-second ability because it is underpowered, the time required would drop slowly until it got down to 0.1 seconds and you'd be a fool not to use it.

[Menacing Spike]

I'd suggest looking up the Radiant Historia and Dofus combat systems.

[omgryebread]

Radiant Historia was fun, but the random battles could get tedious quick with "shove everything in one square, hit with your hardest shit."

Game designers seem on an opposing constraint as well, in that they want to make characters with a strong power curve, that feel satisfying to level and grow. That makes combat a lot easier. It was super fun to unlock new things in Xenogears, but things like System Id and Wild Smile, while fun to get and use because they were so powerful, made things super easy.

A lot of times, one mechanic overwhelms others. Orlandu in Final Fantasy Tactics was kind of anti-fun, just because of how much he dominated. Golden Sun had an excellent class system, where you could drastically change your characters based on what Djinn they had equipped. Except Summons existed, so the best strategy was to have a character with Djinn of their own element, and just have them spam Djinn and summons. (In The Lost Age, have Garet or Jenna with Flash equipped, and just have them use him, set him back, and repeat.)

Characters that are similiar are boring (Final Fantasy 12), characters that are too different need to be balanced carefully, or the optimal strategy is to never use one, or always use one. Citan and Billy in Xenogears are extremely good in character battles. Rico is terrible. Devdan in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance should never be used, because Nephenee is strictly superior.


Now things that have made a system stand out for me:
Different characters for different things. In one dungeon, maybe take party members A, B, and C, but in the next, you should swap A and C for D and E. I haven't really see a game do this too incredibly that I can recall, though. Skies of Arcadia you wanted Aika against magic-using enemies and Enrique against physical hitters, but most bosses where you needed any sort of tactics used both, and you should take both Enrique and Aika.

Gimmicks can work. I'm looking at you, Legend of Dragoon. Additions were super-gimmicky and didn't provide real depth, but hey there were fun. Vagrant Story, while not strictly turn based, is also neat in this aspect.

Similiar to the last one, something to make the game indepth is super cool. Valkyria Chronicles was a turn based strategy in the "you move all your dudes, enemy moves all his dudes" style. Except when moving a dude, it switched to a third person perspective, where you controlled the individual soldier. You also could move a unit more than once per turn, with diminished movement capability and limited ammo, but then you lost points to move other units.


In general though, what makes a turn-based battle system memorable is it being different and new. The countless battle systems that are essentially Final Fantasy Tactics with a different story line and different animations and spell names are, for the most part, totally forgettable. A few stand out just because they're very good (Tactics Ogre and Vandal Hearts) and a few stand out because of some weird difference (Phantom Brave). Gear battles in Xenogears and ship battles in Skies of Arcadia also made the games stand out. All three Xenogears games had battle systems that aren't really like any other.

[SecondTalon]

....The countless battle systems that are essentially Final Fantasy Tactics with a different story line and different animations and spell names are, for the most part, totally forgettable. A few stand out just because they're very good (Tactics Ogre and Vandal Hearts) ...

I find it telling for how good FFT was - that you refer to a game that predated it by two years as being "A FFT-like game that stands out by being good".

[Quizatzhaderac]

One of the big things that can be done wrong is the economics of an action, or what limits the action from being used all of the time. That's why plain attack/magic/item systems can be so boring.
Per dungeon magic (like where it is only restored at n inn or savepoint) is problematic because it encourages saving for the end of dungeon, so players try to just rely on attack to get to the boss.
Items are worse because they can be saved for the whole game (or the money to buy them). This often leads to many items being saved till they're irrelevant, or the player not considering the item when a good use arrives (get the smoke bomb in dungeon two, in five dungeon I really need to blind the boss, but how? my caster's silenced).

One option is per battle abilities. Like making magic regenerate outside of combat, or simply start each battle with full magic. Therefore making magic appropriate to use in every battle. Like in the golden sun series. Or instead of a pool of magic that resets have specific abilities that can only be used once per battle. Like in Chrono cross you could use each spell once per battle.

The economics could be on a shorter scale as well. In WoW rogues used "energy" which would regenerate in 10 seconds (one action per second, 2 or 3 actions to deplete energy). Or alternately a cooldown, where you can use some move every five turns or so.

Another possibility is set-ups for actions. Attack does 100 damage, De-balance does 0 and is removed at the start of next turn. Have the fast guy do De-balance, and the big guy do attack and do a lot more damage than either of them. In FFXIII you'd always want a commando AND a ravager as both would be more than the sum of their parts.

Blue shells/desperation moves. Doing poorly is frustrating enough; doing poorly and having diminished capacity is worse. Combat with a trivial chance of going poorly can be boring. If one person is KO, a second is paralyzed, and the last one is at 10% hp: let him do something crazy powerful. One of my favorite was in the wild arms series: each character had a force gauge that went up when they were damaged. When it got to 100% their status would be cleared. So if the whole party got paralyzed after a certain amount of beating you'd regain control.

Fewer/longer trash fights. This is already pretty normal nowadays. Don't have the battles so short they can be settled with two rounds of attacks, they need to be long enough for something interesting to happen. Likewise don't have so many that you have the exact same battle more than a few times; at least change up the combinations of the monsters.

Also I'd recommend looking through the abilities list and making sure each one has frequent situations where it's a bad idea.

Enemy should act like stupid humans. Not randomly without sense, not the following an unalterable script. They should take at least obvious opportunities. Predictability is actually a good thing, as long as there's something to predict "He's going to use uber attack on white mage, she should defend". Manipulablity is also a good thing; a good example of that is aggro control in mmorpgs.

[Derek]

When doing this kind of analysis you have to be careful not to draw conclusions based on dumb (and sometimes also cheating) AI. This can often make the best strategy "attackattackattack", when if you were playing a more intelligent opponent (ie, a real human) you would need much greater strategy. An excellent example of this is Pokemon, where fighting the AI mostly consists of using whatever move is super effective, but playing against humans requires much more strategy, pokemon fill different roles in the lineup, and support moves become not just useful but essential.

So if a game only has you playing against AI, it can be difficult to judge if the battle mechanics are actually well balanced, or if the AI is just dumb as bricks.

[Zcorp]

Turn based games lack a significant aspect of tactics. They lack of precise execution of maneuvers, and positions that give significant tactical advantages. Games that can some how make of for this lack of precision and important positioning make the best TBS's.

Radiant Historia attempts to do so using its initiative and movement manipulation. FFT (still the best TBS out imo, and not just for its mechanics, frustrating that FFTAs were so poor) does so with charged spells, and various movement mechanics.


Additionally having a engagement curve that doesn't just result in all the players blowing all their big abilities at the beginning and then mopping up. A problem 4e DnD has in general. Having waves of enemies, phases enemies go through or various other things that require smarter resources management than 2-3 rounds of encounter powers and then at-wills. Even encounter cooldown abilities that have significant boosts in certain tactical situations adds value. They just can't be hard enough to get that players spend all combat getting that situation/advantage and their ability has little effect cause everything is dead anyway.

If you are interested I'm alpha testing a TTRPG and dungeon crawler TBS board game/iOS game using the same system. I'm looking for players.

[Gelsamel]

Try Gungnir. It's very positioning and combo dependant. It also has cast delay as well as movement delay. Consumable items have to be equipped and are limited use, and you have to take control of strategic points on the map to be any good.

[Menacing Spike]

Try Gungnir. It's very positioning and combo dependant. It also has cast delay as well as movement delay. Consumable items have to be equipped and are limited use, and you have to take control of strategic points on the map to be any good.

The interface is also incredibly complex, obscure, and hostile.

[bigglesworth]

It's very telling that tabletop games are moving away from absolute turn-based systems. Reactions, seizing initiative - all more popular now than they were 30 years ago.

[Derek]

Turn based games lack a significant aspect of tactics. They lack of precise execution of maneuvers, and positions that give significant tactical advantages. Games that can some how make of for this lack of precision and important positioning make the best TBS's.

What? Positioning is hugely important in pretty much every TBS. The genre would be incredibly boring without it.

[Zcorp]

Turn based games lack a significant aspect of tactics. They lack of precise execution of maneuvers, and positions that give significant tactical advantages. Games that can some how make of for this lack of precision and important positioning make the best TBS's.

What? Positioning is hugely important in pretty much every TBS. The genre would be incredibly boring without it.

What positioning do you speak of? In most TBS getting LoS (which is also rarely blocked and if so it is due to FoW) and within range to attack is all that is significant. In some cases there are terrain advantages, but really it is just about getting in range to attack. Some games give bonuses for back and or side attacks, such as Gungnir, but then units don't impeded enemy movement so units move easily to get positions attack. Enemy units move behind or to the side of your units and attack, then you move to the side or behind the enemy and attack. Which just becomes a silly dance.

Positioning is far less important than in any other genre, and those positions offer less significant tactical advantages than in a FPS or RTS.

[Gelsamel]

Try Gungnir. It's very positioning and combo dependant. It also has cast delay as well as movement delay. Consumable items have to be equipped and are limited use, and you have to take control of strategic points on the map to be any good.

The interface is also incredibly complex, obscure, and hostile.

It's less the interface layout and more the interface aesthetics. The Dept. Heaven games are all like this.

[philsov]

What positioning do you speak of?

A few examples:
- Tanking at choke points. Fire Emblem does a lot of this. If the hallway is two units wide, the two units at the front better have good defenses and dodge.
- Unit facing can make a big deal regarding evasion, game specific
- Unit clustering -- in fft, punch art skills and basic-level buffs (haste, protect, etc) have poor vertical tolerances so placing units on land that is the same height together works very much to your advantage
- Archers and height/range advantage
- Zone of Control - I can't cite many games with this mechanic aside from Battle for Wesnoth, but most units can't simply run past others and attack whatever they want. When they run into an enemy unit, they are stopped at all adjacent parts. When the turn starts and they have enemies next to them, they can move at most 1 hex away. A pincered unit cannot flee.

[bigglesworth]

Huh, Civ V appears to have all of those now, except for facing.

[Zcorp]

What positioning do you speak of?

A few examples:
- Tanking at choke points. Fire Emblem does a lot of this. If the hallway is two units wide, the two units at the front better have good defenses and dodge.
- Unit facing can make a big deal regarding evasion, game specific
- Unit clustering -- in fft, punch art skills and basic-level buffs (haste, protect, etc) have poor vertical tolerances so placing units on land that is the same height together works very much to your advantage
- Archers and height/range advantage
- Zone of Control - I can't cite many games with this mechanic aside from Battle for Wesnoth, but most units can't simply run past others and attack whatever they want. When they run into an enemy unit, they are stopped at all adjacent parts. When the turn starts and they have enemies next to them, they can move at most 1 hex away. A pincered unit cannot flee.

I stated "positions that give significant tactical advantages." Tactical advantages give bonuses to execution of actions (generally attacks) or defensive bonuses against the execution of actions from enemies. You examples are almsot entirely strategic advantages. TBS's in accordance with their name are largely about strategy. The removal of real time greatly reduces the opportunities for tactics. Games in this genre that strive to make up for that are generally fare more interesting mechanically. A half decent way of describing one of the differences is that strategy utilizes static aspects of a field (like terrain) while tactics utilizes changing elements or changes elements of the field (cover fire is a tactic). It adds a new element to a action (the enemy has to weigh the possibility of getting hit if they stand up out of cover to shoot the person you are covering for).

- Choke points, are strategic not tactical.
- Unit facing is a tactical advantage, but everyone that does it does it very poorly. As I mentioned with Gungnir, these systems don't also utilize movement impediments (i.e. Opportunity Attacks in DnD) so units just circle each other always striking each others back. While you can clump your units a bit to type and stop this advantage you open yourself up to AoE attacks and it can often reduce your strategic positioning. A small advantage for a significant disadvantage. I stated 'significant tactical advantage.' While this could potentially be a significant advantage by greatly increasing the bonus you get for back or side attacks I've never played a game that had done it and could give a great many reasons as why they shouldn't.
- Unit clustering, strategic.
- Archers & height, strategic. Unless you are some how creating this advantage during the game, say a spell that raises the height of terrain. At which point it is a strategic decision to create a tactical advantage.
- Zone of control, strategic.

Unit facing is an example of this, as is a flanking bonus you could get in D&D. However, in the case of D&D as it gives a 'combat advantage' bonus that is non-stacking and easy to get without flanking position . Which removes the importance of that tactical position and thus the strategy of gaining that tactically advantageous position.

[Gelsamel]

Uh, there are heaps of impediments to just moving to the back of an enemy. If you just mindlessly moved to the rear of an enemy in Gungnir on any difficulty that isn't normal you'd get destroyed in an instant. You have to constantly make sure your units are set up for beats and boosts and also avoid the enemy's beats and boosts... and if you just walk behind enemies you'll be constantly getting 1 hit killed with combos.

I also think you misunderstand how most people use the word "tactics". Tactics are just about the plans and steps you take to win a battle, while strategy is about the plans and steps you take to win a war. Consider that all these games, FFT/A/A2, Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem, Gungnir, ETC. are in the genre called 'Tactical Roleplaying Games'.

Of course, you can use the word however you want, but even if we do accept your definition... then who cares whether it's 'tactics' or 'strategy' because the games are still highly position dependant. Your own personal distinction between which is tactics and which is strategy is largely meaningless and only serves to arbitrarily demarcate gameplay into two types you personally feel different about.

[Zcorp]

I also think you misunderstand how most people use the word "tactics". Tactics are just about the plans and steps you take to win a battle, while strategy is about the plans and steps you take to win a war. Consider that all these games, FFT/A/A2, Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem, Gungnir, ETC. are in the genre called 'Tactical Roleplaying Games'

And calling them tactics is a misnomer. But you are correct in that what is important is the concept not the word.

Of course, you can use the word however you want, but even if we do accept your definition... then who cares whether it's 'tactics' or 'strategy' because the games are still highly position dependant. Your own personal distinction between which is tactics and which is strategy is largely meaningless and only serves to arbitrarily demarcate gameplay into two types you personally feel different about.

It isn't what 'I personally feel different' about them. It is a consistent observation about what makes deeper game play.

I agree entirely that position is important in all of these games. Maybe my statement of 'tactical positioning' isn't specific or clear enough. How about, good TBS's create enough options to gain a tactical advantage (bonuses to actions that would exist in a real time game that can't in a turn based one, and instead give numerical superiority instead of easing the execution of maneuvers like they would in a real time game) that players try to get through strategic decisions. Is that more clear? Turn based games are inherently not tactical as there is little opportunity for precision of execution. In a real time game there isn't a flat bonus gained from attacking a unit you are flanking, it is a position used to gain a tactical advantage. To increase the likelihood of success. How tactically adept different players or units are in relation to that situation dictates their success. While in Turn Based Strategies we often use random factors like dice instead of tactical precision and give bonuses to that dice roll based on tactical advantages.

Tactics in a military world isn't about winning a battle instead of war. It isn't about the scale of the conflict. It is about engagement of conflict and actions within a conflict. Specific means to achieve the goals of your strategy. Within a battle there is both strategy and tactics. See Military tactics and Military Strategy.

[bigglesworth]

From your links:

Military tactics, the science and art of organizing a military force, are the techniques for using weapons or military units in combination for engaging and defeating an enemy in battle [1]

The father of modern strategic study, Carl von Clausewitz, defined military strategy as "the employment of battles to gain the end of war." B. H. Liddell Hart's definition put less emphasis on battles, defining strategy as "the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy"

[Zcorp]

There are about 20 definitions of strategy in the linked article and we can squabble over definitions for a while (i.e what is a campaign vs a battle in a video game? is a game of DOTA or LoL a campaign with lots of battles or a battle with lots of areas of conflict and skirmishes. If the latter does that mean these games have no strategy?), but fair enough it was unfair of me to assert a standard definition. I'll try to be more clear.

Turn Based Strategies by their nature remove precision and most control from the player when executing actions. Game play mechanics that try to make up for this create deeper gameplay. This could include giving bonuses, offensive or defensive, for certain positions relative to the enemy (I do not mean positions relative to the field) or give bonuses for cooperation between allies to pull off significant effects.

Say I have a mage that takes 3 ticks to cast a fireball and it can target a unit and deal 5 damage and always hit them or can target the ground and deal 8 damage to the unit in that space. Normally those 3 ticks prevent targeting a space on the ground while expecting to hit an enemy unit that is in that space. I also control a rogue and a knight. The rogue has an attack which in addition to damage prevents an enemy from moving for a turn if his target is flanked, or delays their turn by 4 ticks. If you can get the knight set up so that the rogue can easily get in position to flank and attack the enemy the mage is now set up to deal additional damage in addition to the benefits of preventing the targets movement/delaying their turn.

Of course with mechanics like this you need to have sufficient balance so flanking isn't trivial but not so difficult it costs more resources than it gains in effects. And the bonuses have to be significant but not overpowered. If an enemy has 15 HP and my knight moves to attack and deals 5 damage, the rogue moves to flank and attack an deals 5 damage and then my mage deals 8 damage by targeting the space; you gain no benefit for all from the bonus damage as it didn't change the outcome of anything but if they have 17, 22 or 36 HP you are saving your team a significant amount of resources.

Something like the above creates a combat that is largely about trying to get and prevent such bonuses. Much like how real time games often are about trying to get slight advantages in position for easier or safer execution of maneuvers/abilities. Which is what I meant when I used the phrase 'tactical positioning. Hopefully these paragraphs illustrate what I'm trying to say.

[SecondTalon]

I hate arguments over whether or not Strategic or Tactic is the correct word to use. So, let it go.

[Gelsamel]

I don't see why it's better to have the game ingrain some mechanic which makes flanking harder (or more balanced) rather than have the player/computer simply use good positioning to make flanking harder for the other team. The examples of FFT and Gungnir all allow you to use effective positioning to make flanking harder, or more dangerous. Almost always flanking puts you deeper into the enemy formation which means it's a tradeoff.

[Zcorp]

I'm not sure what you are saying here. Make flanking harder than what?

Flanking is a single example of how to create an advantage that exists in real time games that does not exist in turn based games. A potential situational advantage that gives bonuses to executing actions. Creating a element in game play that players are positioning to create or prevent adds depth and more interesting decisions. Neither FFT nor Gungnir give bonuses for flanking, so I'm confused why you mention them in relation to it.


Gungnir has beats, boosts and flags. FFT has casting times, some shoves, abusable AI and some initiative manipulation, at least for a little bit until cast time classes become irrelevant.

[novax6]

Well you're also talking about only the specific tactics genre exemplified by FFT and others, not all games that are turn based. Loads of strategy and military games are turn based, and turn based combat that uses DnD rules, such as Temple of Elemental Evil.

Just wanted to make that distinction, because you make it sound like by the game being turn based instead of realtime, it somehow loses tactical or strategic depth, which is not the case at all.

[EdgarJPublius]

Well you're also talking about only the specific tactics genre exemplified by FFT and others, not all games that are turn based. Loads of strategy and military games are turn based, and turn based combat that uses DnD rules, such as Temple of Elemental Evil.

Just wanted to make that distinction, because you make it sound like by the game being turn based instead of realtime, it somehow loses tactical or strategic depth, which is not the case at all.

Yes. When I think 'turn based combat' I don't think Final Fantasy Tactics or any of it's related ilk. Especially not if you add the 'good' qualifier. I think of games like Jagged Alliance, or more recently, Frozen Synapse and Flotilla. Games where the main element of depth is movement and positioning, either relative (creating advantageous formations of friendly units, presenting strong profiles to enemies), absolute (correctly using the environment/cover, choke points and objectives) or some combination.

Status effects and whatnot are just leftover cruft from JRPG 'combat systems', it's not really 'combat' at all, more like a card-game, or an elaborate game of rock-paper-scissors.

[philsov]

Status effects and whatnot are just leftover cruft from JRPG 'combat systems', it's not really 'combat' at all, more like a card-game, or an elaborate game of rock-paper-scissors.

I disagree, at least for the well-done portion of status effects. They provide additional choices with regards to party setup both pre-battle and mid-battle. Having a choice between medium damage and no status effect (hand grenade) and light* damage with the ability to knock the opponent down (stun grenade), for example, is superior over never having stun grenades.

*or no damage? It's been a while since I've played jagged alliance.

[EdgarJPublius]

Well sure, good game design has plenty of room for exceptions.

In Jagged Alliance, the relatively small number of status-effects (stun, tear gas, nerve gas in Jagged Alliance 2) are minor add-ons to the largely position-based gameplay.

In FFT, you have basically the whole range of jrpg status effects with a positive/negative pair for just about every stat, plus a few extras because, why not, and then a bulky, rudimentary movement/position system that adds a limited amount of depth for the large impact it has on every other aspect of gameplay.