Quasi Turn-Based Combat

[daliawithoutanh]

I don't know how much interest there is for intellectual discourse on this topic these days but I remember seeing a few (as in, at least one singular instance of) mods on the Nexus back in the day that were building on the idea of implementing a turn-based combat system for New Vegas.

 

I, for one, prefer to use VATS in combat and my non-VATS part of fighting basically serves the purpose of waiting for my AP to regenerate. Right now AP, aside from sprinting mods, is a really underused mechanic in the game that you only ever have to think about when you do use VATS, but I think it has the potential to make combat an overall less repetitive and more of a tactical experience. This only bugs me from time to time and yes, it's not really that big of a deal but I'm a lazy person and I don't like moving the mouse too much. For this reason, the other day I had a think about it during my lunch and I sort of came up with a general idea. An NVSE plugin that makes using weapons and various combat related actions (outside of VATS, of course) only available when a certain amount of AP is available, for both the player and NPCs. For example, a gun only fires if you have at least as much AP as its cost that is set in the GECK, or you can only reload / use a consumable / change apparel when you have at least X amount (maybe using a formula based on weight and item type), etc. and this cost is substracted per use. An obvious exception is running of course, which would drain AP, but you could run regardless.

 

Now, I do see the problems on the technical side of question (or maybe it's actually the opposite, I don't, because I don't know how or what exactly NVSE or its plugins do because I don't know too much C++, and thus have never taken a look at its source code on GitHub), but that's besides the point. My question is: What you think its effects on the flow of the combat would be if it were implemented this way?

 

Would it make combat too slow? Clunky? Still wouldn't promote tactial thinking? Would it be enjoyable at all? Have any of you had any alternative ideas?

[Radioactivelad]

It sounds like it would just be Vanilla action combat but a lot clunkier and annoying because AP costs (and weapons themselves) aren't balanced around that.

 

I'm not sure if NPCs even have action points either. (You could create a facsimile through scripting, but that's more overhead for what's probably going to be a heady mod overall.)

 

For that matter, VATs is really not a replacement for general combat in of itself, hence why most every body just uses it primarily for spamming shots for lethal damage on a single close-range target.

 

I have some ideas on how a Squad-Commander Mini-game could work, but trying to turn New Vegas in to that, just by messing with AP and VATs isn't going to be anything remotely comparable to a proper TBC system.

[daliawithoutanh]

Well, you've got a fair point about balance, I only really thought about making Action Points a thing in general combat.

 

I had a quick look at the Fallout Wikia and according to it the basic formula for AP yields 80 points for a character with 5 Agility (which I guess could be regarded as the average), which regenerates in 16.33 seconds.

The .357 Revoler's AP cost per shot is 26, so it could be fired about 3 times per 80 AP, or 3 shots per 16 seconds, which is a firing rate of 0.187... That's like, only a tenth of its actual firing rate, if my math is any good.

 

My train of thought was basically if DPS and Damage/AP seem to correlate then the system wouldn't break how powerful weapons are in relation to each other, and AP cost and regeneration could emulate combat turns. The reason I thought it was a good idea to begin with was that it would be refreshing make combat less about spamming the left mouse button and more about making impactful decisions, but now that I think about it, even that would really only make sense if we buffed combat damage, otherwise it would just be the same at a slower pace, which isn't exactly what I had in mind. But I guess it looks like that damage modifier would have to be ridiculously high just to break even after the lowered firing rate. Or retweak the AP costs to have the same rate as normally, but that sounds very hackish, even in theory.

 

I'm not sure what you meant by the Mini-game. I wasn't talking about an X-COM-like thing, if that's what you had were referring to. Though it does sound cool. I'd assume it would somehow involve JIP's CC&C mod to control the squad(?).