I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a timescaled combat system, where you spend as much time playing out combat vs simulated battle time as you would playing out “scenes” vs simulated scene time. Most battle systems work on some assumption that e.g. 1 turn = 3 seconds of “world time”. This system would have similar strategic conscious player-control over outcomes to that of a real fight: very little beyond shifts in intent and the rest just game-simulations of instinct, body movement, applications of martial training, etc.
Throw initial conditions (e.g. initial intent of first action, like “hold ground and overpower incoming enemies” vs “charge and slash at any opening in this enemy’s guard”), plug in training and reflexes and trained reactions for the combatants, compute results, wham, five or ten seconds of combat have elapsed and the computer tells you that you just broke your arm while killing two goblins (possibly generating an epic recounting of your spectacular exploits, à la Dwarf Fortress). Ideally a computer would be doing all the heavy lifting, of course, which implies making software on top of designing rules, which implies way more time and effort than I’ve ever been motivated to put into something like this.
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a timescaled combat system, where you spend as much time playing out combat vs simulated battle time as you would playing out “scenes” vs simulated scene time. Most battle systems work on some assumption that e.g. 1 turn = 3 seconds of “world time”. This system would have similar strategic conscious player-control over outcomes to that of a real fight: very little beyond shifts in intent and the rest just game-simulations of instinct, body movement, applications of martial training, etc.
Throw initial conditions (e.g. initial intent of first action, like “hold ground and overpower incoming enemies” vs “charge and slash at any opening in this enemy’s guard”), plug in training and reflexes and trained reactions for the combatants, compute results, wham, five or ten seconds of combat have elapsed and the computer tells you that you just broke your arm while killing two goblins (possibly generating an epic recounting of your spectacular exploits, à la Dwarf Fortress). Ideally a computer would be doing all the heavy lifting, of course, which implies making software on top of designing rules, which implies way more time and effort than I’ve ever been motivated to put into something like this.