ATTEBS (Active Time Tactical Encounter Battle System)
pronounced: At-Ebs, is that battle system Idea I came up with on that 6 hour car ride I was talking about. I finally got around to writing it down.
this post will attempts to explain in detail how the system would work. I've deliberately posted this in general game development because I have no intention of ever scripting this for Rpg Maker I do plan on making this for ARC when ARC gets far enough along but it is safe to sya that an atempt will not be made for at least a year.
Design
The system works on a random encounter basis but draws elements from ATB (Final Fantasy 3 and 4 style active time battle), ABS (Blizz ABS style), and TB (Fire emblem Tactical Battle) systems. and even draws a little bit from the fallout 1 and 2 games.
the idea is thus. when the player encounters a monster on the field they are transported to a map that is defined for the area they are in. the map may or may not have randomly generated obstacles but the there is some form of terrain that blocks movement or attacks ect. the maps is overlaid with a grid and the player and monsters/enemies can take up different amounts of space on that grid.
the battle is and "Active Time Battle" like system so as soon as the battle starts a clock starts running and based on the characters or monster/enemy's agility their action bar fills up. as a different rate. the higher the agility the faster it fills. but only like the Final Fantasy system where when the bar was full the entity got to perform one action the entity a quires an "action-point". actions on the battle field cost different amounts of action points. movement for example would cost one action point and the distance on the grid movable on one point would be determined by dexterity and agility. because the amounts of points spent during a battle would be much larger than the amount of individual actions taken action-points would accumulate much faster than actions in FF.
players may or may not start the battle with action points to spend and are spent to take any action on the field. from casting a spell which might also cost ,ama or skill points to moving around to changing a character stance. one possible stance change is a change to go from normal to resting. in the resting state action points would accumulate faster but the character would be unable to move. thus it would be recommended to rest behind cover. going in and out of this state would cost two action points. there would be no upward limit of action points a character can accumulate.
attacks/skills/items used on the battle field would have areas of effect and all actions woud all take place with the battle clock still running. so while you charging up that super powered attack your enemies is still able to use its action poins to swoop in for a kill or put up a shield to counter it. or while you moving into position to use a tag team attack the enemy could move behind cover meaning you would have to plan ahead to restrain the enemie. this combined with the non turn based system and tha fact that entites cnt take up different amounts of space make the system would have a very Action Battle like feel to it.
The Possibilities
ok so the design is all well and good but what makes this system so great? well what the design enables is a simply incredible blend of action packed battles with power full AOE skill flying every which way and the ability to create battles where true tactics would have to be used to win. one of the great flaws i feel that games like golden sun and ff had was that you could win by button smashing a and grinding. true if you wanted a real challenge in golden sun the optional supper bosses were no joke and you had to employ strategy to beat them but for the most part just about every battle in the gave could be won through the use of party healing and normal attacks.
what would really make this system great is the use of an AI system that was both intelligent and programmable. so you could have the magnificently complex boss fights and intelligent random encounters. enemies would have enough since to get out of the way of big attacks and attack when you venerable and work together. enemies would be able to learn by observing attacks. setting could control how fast this happens but after seeing an attack a few times an enemies would know how big the area off effect was or what the nature of the attack was so that a shield or status effect that canceled lighting based attacks could be set up so that your blast of lightning bolts would not be as effective. a threat system could also be used that that enemies would attack the most dangerous player first or attack your healer to disable them and take out the rest of your characters. this would all be controllable by the games creator.
and other feature that would be a real cool addition to this system is the ability to change the terrain of the battle field. skills that put up walls to hide behind and attack though, or box monsters in to attack them with something big.
Conclutions
I view this system as the ultimate battle system that appeals to me. it's learning curve would be pretty high so it would be best used in games for non casual gamers. or at the very least care should be taken not to make the early battles too hard so that a player new to the concept could ease into it.