I really like the story idea as well, it fits much better than the current system.
[quote=Snowskeeper]Ewan is correct. The real sequence is "Flare flare evade evade salvo." Despite the additional length, it is not any more fun than the current system.
[/quote]
Meh. Only if you like to waste time in an almost completely predetermined fight, and increase your odds of getting shot.
That’s why combat isn’t fun. Either the AI has picked a routine that is almost guaranteed to damage you, or you’re guaranteed to two shot them. The only place evasion has come into play for me personally, is monsters with distance-locked attacks, that deal hundreds of hull damage and have hundreds of hull damage. Then you can and must exploit evasion. Otherwise, the fastest and the biggest guns win IMO. Sure, you can be effective at combat evading as the system is intended to work. I just see absolutely zero point in drawing out combats longer than they need to run. Even for observation, which is basically just fragments (i.e. experience) for fights that you’d get in virtually every other RPG.
I’m not trying to be insulting, but the tone of "Yeah, if you’re not evading, you’re wrong" irritates me. There is nothing in game to justify a statement like that. Especially given how many people are playing Merciful.
edited by Nenjin on 7/16/2014
That’s what make (a little, not enough) tense encounters with Lorn Flukes and Mt Nomad, even with 100 and more in mirrors, veils and iron.
They don’t have a set series of attacks they will always use, sometimes they will use their peculiar abilities, that hurt your hull and illuminate you a little, and you can use that time to hurt them. Then when your illumination goes too up you evade to avoid their ultimate attack.
Others times they will seek you, so you will have to counter with an evasion, to prevent them one shooting you.
Yeah, I’m not saying that you are "wrong" if you don’t evade. Even if I’m not sure of what you mean by "wrong".
But you are penalizing yourself by not using the system as it is intended, even if the system is very grindy, and not terribly fun.
You should take a read of the thread on combat down there at the steam community page, there are some good ideas.
The best I saw is combat as a continuation of the story system, with choices and checks based on your equipment.
It would mean scrapping the current system, but if something is not fun it should go, or at least go under a big revision.
If anything needs to change it’s observations. The reward for observations is disproportionate to how much time and risk you take to get them.
Agreed. I thought that the Observation concept was really really cool, and I never bother because the payoff is so low.
[li]if you stick to a card system, scrub the time factor and automatic movement. both players choose an attack, evade, run away, special (illuminate), or move forward card, both play concurrently and the weighted randomizer runs and spits out the results. modifiers for type of attack … distance at time of attack … what enemy is doing … etc. may seem simple, but simple rules can lead to great complexity.
[li]of course, the reverse is also true - you can build a wildly complicated rule set and end up with very stiff and repetitive results (simple ends).
I’ve been thinking about Sunless Sea’s combat in terms of this this article: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/7-yomi-spies-of-the-mind.html
Maybe I’m missing something, but I feel it lacks the Rock, Paper, Scissors quality described.
I partly agree and partly disagree on not liking the combat system. The AI for the lower level monsters is pretty dumb. I feel like pirates of various sizes got smarter and more interesting to fight somewhere in the last few updates. Lifebergs are still a bit white-knuckle for me. However on the whole it still does feel like it doesn’t fit in well with the rest of the FL/SS universe.
I also agree that rewards from Observations seem disproportionately low to the amount of trouble. Also would suggest scaling the rewards for pirate ships differently - taking down 1 big pirate is harder than taking down 3 small pirates once you get above the level where it’s easy to kill small pirates.