Tactica Online Interview

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Written by BuckGB on April 6th, 2005

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Q: Another major departure for the genre is turn-based combat. Can you describe the combat system? How do you balance (or even achieve) "fast-paced" combat with this system?

A: This is the $64,000 question, isn't it? Like most turn-based systems, combat is a sequential set of moves by each character. Characters, rather than players, take turns according to initiative, so part of the reason things move quickly is that there is usually only one or two actions before the next player gets to take another action. Each action is a simple thing - fire at an enemy, move there and set a trap, desecrate the pagan altar - it's only in combination that actions become complex, so usually it's ten to 15 seconds between turns.

Each player has a time limit for all moves combined, often around ten minutes but depending on the mission, and they lose the battle if their time limit is reached, so there's an incentive to be quick as well.

Of course, there's no shortage of things to do while your opponents' characters are moving - you're checking options, assessing the changing battlefield, and modifying your strategy to take account of your opponents' moves - which adds to the sense of things moving quickly.

None of which says anything about balance. A wide open skill-based system like this needs a lot of work on balance. We've been testing internally for a while, and we'll be expanding that to public testing in the next couple of months. We have a powerful tool to help us achieve balance in the points system - if a skill is too powerful, it's easy to make it cost more to bring it back to where it should be, for example - and we expect to be refining things all the way through to release, and even beyond if necessary.

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