Is there any way there could be a toggle that switches the Turn Order; where combatant acts when Turn Value reaches zero, instead of greatest value?

Right now in the turn calculation for turn based battles, the combatant with the highest turn value goes first. After working with it for a bit I have found it to be problematic to design for because it is hard to forecast what any combatant's Turn Value is at any given moment in a battle. This makes Turn Order mechanics and related stats difficult to design and balance, and also makes it even more difficult to debug why combatants aren't acting in the order the design says they should.

I've been looking at Final Fantasy X for how they determine their turn order. It is based on a subtractive method as compared to ORK's additive method.

Each combatant has a Counter. Every tick, this Counter reduces by 1. Anyone whose Counter has dropped to 0 may take their next turn. [In this way, Counter would be roughly equivalent to ORK's Turn Value]

When a combatant takes an action, their Counter value is set based on their Tick Speed and the ability used, which decreases each tick until they act again. Thus, lower Counter values are faster characters, and vice versa.
Counter = Tick Speed x Skill Rank x Haste Status
Where Rank refers to the Rank of the ability used, and Haste Status is either 1/2 for Haste, 1 for Normal and 2 for Slow. When under Haste status, Counter will be rounded up if a fraction remains.

Each combatant has a Tick Speed. This is an integer worked out from the combatant's Agility. This number ranges from 3-16, the greater the number, the slower the combatant gets their turn.

Each ability has a Rank that designates exactly how fast the ability is. Lower ranked abilities take less time than higher ranked abilities, and the progression is linear: a Rank 8 ability will take eight times as long to recover from as opposed to a Rank 1 ability.
Rank 3 is the default speed for any ability.

Info cribbed from section V. AGILITY in SinirothX's FFX Stat Mechanics FAQ on GameFAQs
  • Did you try the Invert Turn Order setting in the turn calculation settings?
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  • Thanks for the response, sorry it took me so long to get back to you. The Invert turn order sounds like it could be what I need, but it's only available for classic turn based mode and I'm using multi turns.

    To figure out why Invert isn't available for Multi, I reread through the documentation, if I combine Invert Turn Order, Turn Calculation, and Multi Turns, it seems to work like this:
    1. A combatant can have multiple turns before another combatant had a turn.
    2. A formula is used to calculate a turn value for every combatant.
    3. Afterwards the values are sorted ascending.
    4. The combatant with the lowest turn value performs the first action, followed by the combatant with the next highest value.
    5. A combatant's turn value will be reset to 0 after finishing its turn, and the turn value of all combatants will be [increased*] using Turn Calculation.
    Reading through it, it seems the reason why Invert Turn Order is only available for classic is that
    A combatant's turn value will be reset to 0 after finishing its turn
    so it is impossible to sort ascending with low values acting because the reset would cause the same combatant to always act.

    Another issue is when Turn Calculation is executed, and how values are decreased. If turn Calculation is always done for every combatant but the one that just acted, after every action, it's going to have a compounding effect where all combatants but the fastest can be effectively pushed out of the queue.

    So here's my proposed changes to make Invert Turn Order work with Multi turns:
    1. A combatant can have multiple turns before another combatant has a turn.
    2. A formula is used to calculate a turn value for every combatant.
    3. Afterwards the values are sorted ascending.
    4a. The combatant with the lowest turn value performs the first action, followed by the combatant with the next highest value.
    4b. *Alternatively, the combatant will act when their turn value reaches 0, with time passing and turn values decreasing until a combatant is ready to act.
    5. A combatant's turn value will be recalculated(increased) using Turn Calculation after finishing its turn.
    6. The turn value of all combatants will be decreased by 1 every time unit.
    In addition to it also being compatible with Multi Turns, this also makes it so that instead of calculating Turn Calculation all the time, it's just subtracting 1.
  • Will look into it once the grid battles are implemented.
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  • Cool, thanks!
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