Well, a solution for the relationship between strength and defense may have been found, and it can be summed up in one simple rule: the 150 rule. This rule is simple, between a unit’s strength and defense, the total cannot exceed 150. This solves many problems, and keeps players from making armies of maxed out units.
Out of the five attributes in Tactics Game Online, one has been difficult to describe, that of defense. To keep things as simple as possible, strength, defense, and speed all have values between 0 and 100. Range and splash could be given these ranges as well, but these seem better and easier for players to understand if they mean literally 5 range for 5 squares distance, and 2 splash for 2 squares from target square. More on these examples another day for those that this confuses.
Defense, though, if more difficult to determine because its relationship with strength has a huge impact on combat. There are a couple of scenarios. Some relationship are extremely simple and allow players to predict combat results quickly, others would be more complex. The question that must be asked is if the tradeoff between complexity and a more fluid combat system is worth it.
The most simple approach is to have damage equal to the attackers strength minus the defenders defense value. How much simpler can you get? Some disadvantages are that this can create many situations where units have no possible way of damaging other units. For example, a unit with a strength of 20 would almost never be able to hurt an enemy with a defense of 70. And would about units that have 100 defense? How do you hurt these tanks?
Another, more appealing approach is to have defense depict the percentage of absorbable damage. So, if a unit with a strength of 50 attacks a unit with a defense of 50, the defending unit takes 25 damage (50% of 50 damage). Pretty simple still, but again, this situation runs into the challenge of what happens with units with defense values of 100.
A goal I have is to have units be able to inflict some amount of damage to all units, regardless of how high their defense values are. One way to allow for this in either scenario mentioned above would be to allow units to inflict greater damage if they attack the back of their enemies. Appealing, but a greater level of complexity to battle dynamics.
Here we are, two weeks into development, and the army builder section of the game is finally functional. This section allows you to build your first armies for the game. Game dimensions have been considered in this process too, and I thought it best to go for 900 x 500. This is a good maximum window that should fit in most users browsers these days. There may be an option at some point to allow for a full screen mode.
More features will be added to the army builder eventually. This initial release has the bare essentials for your viewing pleasure. And let me share with you a reason why not much attention is going to be devoted to game balancing at this point. A built-in tracking system is being implemented that will save every game and the factors involved in the winning players success. Over time, this data will be used to alter point values of units, attributes, and abilities. The system for altering points has been built in already too.
So the final attributes that made it into Tactics Game Online are strength, defense, speed, range, and splash. These five attributes added with status effects that change units attribute values in battle should allow for plenty of variety.
The saving system in the army builder has been designed to make it transparent to the player. When you add a unit to an army, that unit is saved to the server immediately. When changes are made to the attributes of the unit, these are saved every minute or when the player selects a different unit.
For now, explanations on attributes and the point system will have to be handled on our website. An integrated help system will be implemented down the road. The simplicity of this game should minimize players need to rely heavily on a help system.