The Question on Defense
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.