Resource management

[renke_]

I believe it will be not possible (or desirable) to prevent tactics like yaysword's (in)famous regen dances & equivalents, except some crude cut-off approach like "if the total amount of remaining HP of the enemies is below 10 % the fight will be automagically lost if not finished within 3 rounds*". You (as in the plural publisher you) can plan and execute as careful as you wish, We The Users will always find ways around restrictions. This makes balancing and implementing the perfect engine hard to impossible, but is (at least for me) one important point why computer games are such a great time sink.

*) glossary entry please :)

[jack1974]

Yes, players will always find a way to screw things
I exchanged some emails with Anima about interesting battle mechanics. They're pretty good, and we're evaluating which ones to add. But in general with next games we want to add stuff that interacts with the "dating sim" or "relationship part" if you prefer. Like reaching a certain value with a character could unlock special moves, or setting up a general mood/stance of the whole party unlock some powerful special attacks.
In practice focus more on the battle mechanics with interaction between each party member to make them feel even more alive

[Anima_]

While there are no perfect systems, some are better at achieving goals then others. You may disagree but if my choices are broken and boring or broken and exiting, then my pick is the second one every time.
A system that mitigates the problem would grant recovery based on how fast you can complete the encounter. Another approach is reducing recovery rates based on time passed. And a different one will only grant temporary SP up to the maximum SP that aren't carried over. SP costs would first be deducted from the temporary points and only if those are consumed from the normal points.

Recovery actions and null actions at the end of the battle are pretty much exchanging time for SP. That's why my idea from earlier about SP cutting down the delay for actions is actually pretty intuitive, it exchanges SP for time explicitly.

Glossary: Round, the time on a turn and before the next. Unit for effect durations. Depends on turn length.

I'm so going to put the glossary on collaborative access.

@ Jack
So the next recovery action is called Holding Hands? And boosted it becomes Heartfelt Hug?

[renke_]

Another approach is reducing recovery rates based on time passed.

I like this, some kind of exhaustion value that lowers performance over time. (But I'm biased as I prefer short battles ^^)

[Anima_]

My favourite is the temporary SP approach since it also works with potions and every other form of in battle recovery.

[renke_]

Battle field recovery only as a short-time fix? Similar to MDMA? Great possibility to make the games even more realistic: "After the battle you're in the sick bay for 3 weeks, Loren lost her left leg because of gangrene" :)

So "real" recovery should only be possible outside of combat with sleeping or buying food/drink in taverns?

[Anima_]

Pretty much. Though extending it to health would be another kind of beast. There may be quite a few repercussions hiding in the bush for that.

[renke_]

Actually I think your temp recover only approch would work better with HP. Mana/stamina/"the blue stuff" is the main driver for all the exciting fun skills: If your party is low on health enough SP can support you for one or two encounters more, high HP and low SP is still a workable team but only using the basic attack is boring.

[yayswords]

What we're probably doing if we go with a SP pool and if no one has a better idea, is to use a broad trigger based system. Every character can choose from a collection of recovery triggers one for the encounter. Things like Bloodlust:Regain SP when you kill an enemy, Rage:Regain SP when an ally was killed, Phoenix:Regain SP when you revive an ally, Pride:Regain SP when a character you protect kills an enemy, and so on...

All of these involve kills. Is that thematic? I don't wanna have to micro so hard that the Bloodlust characters get the finishing blows to restore their mana (and some Pride characters), and then deliberately try to get one of them killed so that Club Phoenix/Rage can get their mana back. The latter is more bizarre than my regen dance even.

On a (late edit) side note, I'm all for manipulating my party members to develop the best powers. I hope renke will datamine them.

[jack1974]

Loren lost her left leg because of gangrene"

WHat!!! don't touch Loren's legs!

So "real" recovery should only be possible outside of combat with sleeping or buying food/drink in taverns?

I like this idea, so that during battles you can get some sort of permanent injury, that is fixed only by doing something extra (at extra time/money cost).