[Ammutseba]

Hey trisphee,

Maybe you can help me out, here. I have a project I'm fiddling around with, but I'm concerned I may not be able to do it right.

I'm tinkering with the battle memory system in Rockman Xover, trying to make it simpler for a different game. In this game, you control a squad of 12 OVER-1 model reploids, and can deploy them into maverick-controlled areas to combat enemies. With luck and proper development, it should combine the qualities of a strategy game with those of an action platformer. However, the system from Xover is just too complex. I need to scale it back if I'm going to do this at all, and that's where I was hoping to get some input.

In Xover, you assigned your OVER with a type of armor fitting to how you wanted to play, decided on an element to use, and then acquired "battle memories" to increase your statistics. The elements were Neutral, Fire, Ice, Wind and Electric. Every element except Neutral was a trap.

Every type of armor had its own basic stats (life, attack and defense) and a grid of slots you put the battle memories in. Each slot had any of several special qualities about it. Generally, you could equip 4, 5 or 6 battle memories at a time, although two armors allowed for 8 at the cost of having either no bonuses for them, or significantly fewer bonuses.

Battle memories had names, each named battle memory had its own unique stat array, might have an element, might have a skill, which could be any of these:
- Atk Up: Attack will increase.
- Def Up: Defense will increase.
- C. Atk Up: Charge Shots will deal more damage.
- C. Boost: Charge Gauge will increase more (always active).
- Heal: Health will recover at the beginning of your turn (always active).
- Atk Down: Enemy’s Attack will be lowered.
- Def Down: Enemy’s Defense will be lowered.
- Heat: Enemy will lose health at the beginning of their turn.
- Wet: Enemy Skills won’t activate.
- Slow: Enemy has a chance of missing when they attack.
- Shock: Enemy will be paralyzed for one turn.

If the memory did have a skill, it might be any of these 5 types:
- α: Standard activation.
- β: Affects all players.
- Σ: More effective at full health.
- Ω: More effective at half health.
- μ: More effective at low health.

You also had to pay attention to a battle memory's rarity and cost. To make one useful, you needed to feed it money and other memories to increase its level. A memory's rarity controlled its maximum level; more rare memories could have higher levels. Cost controlled a memory's potential for growth. Finally, fusing two identical, maximum level memories would create a single memory with a +10% level cap increase and a +2 skill level cap increase, and could be done up to 5 times to a given memory.

In other words, super complicated and time consuming.



I'm thinking of gutting out random drops, rarity and elements first. And the thing with fusing memories (ugh). Turn-based effects will go, as will several of those skills. And the defense stat, since in a normal megaman game, life and defense are basically the same thing. A speed stat might go in the defense stat's place.

I am definitely not sure what to do with the armors and their grid slots et cetera. Any ideas?

[Tohopekaliga]

It's a shame Xover was never released outside Japan. It seems like it would have been cool to play. Being unable to read or understand Japanese, I did not play it. :(

As for what to do with slots, well. I suppose it depends on how much control you want to give the player over aspects...and how precisely the game is controlled.

[Coda]

I really, really like elements. I like having elements to strategy when it comes to gearing up that go beyond "pick the biggest numbers." I wouldn't drop them, though I might change how they work.

I would keep enemy drops but supplement them with stuff you can buy from shops. Rarity can be dropped as an explicit thing; if you want something to be rare for game balance purposes, make it expensive or hard to find.

You might consider dropping the level-up aspect entirely, or you might just have them gain experience as you use them / fight battles / take damage / whatever. If you do drop the level-up aspect you'll need to have various tiers over the course of the game to give the player upgrades.

Come up with your own list of skills that make sense in the context of your own game.

I like the idea of having the skills include conditional bonuses or penalties and I would consider preserving that and possibly even expanding on it.

[Ammutseba]

I'm not sure how much control I want to give players over their squad. I'll have to give it some thought.

I know you won't be able to keep more than two of them with you at a time. Their core stats are rather minimal, and they can't be given upgrades (because they have their own armors), don't get the benefits of rescuing reploids, and can't be assigned elves.

My initial thoughts on behaviors are that they will have multiple behavior types the player can assign individually, making them moderate, aggressive or cautious and; attacking, supporting, defending or controlling. Their default behavior will be moderate-attacking, which I don't personally consider to be optimized, but does fit a "basic soldier" mentality. Each armor type an OVER can use will have its own unique behavior type that goes with it, since its statistics and abilities are different from the basic OVER-1. Also, the player will not be able to assert more direct control over their OVERs.

The rest of the game goes a lot like what you'd expect from a megaman game in the X4-X6 segment, except instead of "giga attacks," you've got "whatever my unique ability is," and a few more menus for looking at things like your main character, your reserve characters, your circuits and elves, and deciding which navigator to use for a deployment.

Edit: Of course you'd post while I was typing this. :I

[Ammutseba]

So, elements and random drops in, levels out. Or at least, levels as Xover understands them out. I can agree with that. Going up to level 105 with an exhaustively designed battle memory is excessive. Going up to level 9 or 10 with an extensively used memory is not so bad.

Something about elements would have to change, for sure. The way Xover had it, Neutral won at everything by dint of not interacting at all and of being the most common drop. Keeping elements would also make figuring out what to do with memory slots easier, since they could be kept essentially the same, with element match bonuses and bonus line effect changed only on a numeric scale (think more like +1 or +2, instead of +25% or +50%).

Okay, good thoughts. Thanks.

And you'd like a system that has more to it than getting the biggest numbers. I can appreciate that. Anything else you have in mind? Or someone else? Otherwise, I'll be putting together a first draft right after this hydro sets in.

[Coda]

Neutral SHOULD be the all-around winner, and elements should be chosen based on a strategic advantage for the mission at hand. Situational advantages means that an item that would normally be a little bit behind the curve can really shine in the right circumstances. The problem is that Xover's leveling system makes "situationally useful" stuff far too much of a pain to achieve progression on, so even WHEN the elemental stuff would have an advantage, it's underleveled and therefore not likely to be worth it.

As for avoiding it always being about numbers: Combat-wise, one of the big points of divergence of the Mega Man X series from the classic Mega Man series is that elemental weaknesses in MMX don't necessarily deal more damage than, say, a fully-charged buster shot, but they have other effects in the fight -- interrupting attack patterns and taking control of the battle instead of just hitting harder.

Since I'm not familiar enough with the source material, I think it would be useful to see the first draft before making any more specific suggestions.

[Ammutseba]

Well, despite 10mg of hydrocodone, my migraine is still wiping the pavement with me, so it's going to take me a little while to put it together. I'm trying to de-stress by playing a no-buster run of X3, seeing if that helps.

[Ammutseba]

Keep in mind that as I type this, my head is swimming from a narcotic. If something looks weird or doesn't completely make sense, that's probably why. Just ask for clarification, and I'll do my best. So, let's see here... it looks like I should be keeping Element, Level, Stats and Skills.

Nomenclature will be changed. Rather than referring to characters or enemies, each memory will refer to its purpose, suggesting its overall design or effectiveness. Also, they probably won't be called memories. Maybe modules or something like that...

Elements are Neutral, Electric, Wind, Water and Fire. The cycle of strengths goes Electric > Fire > Wind > Water> Electric; Neutral. This is different from the Xover cycle, but adheres more closely to the weakness ideals of the X and Zero series. Not perfectly, though, sadly.

Levels are 1 through 5, gained automatically after a memory acquires a certain amount of experience. A memory gains experience when the OVER it's equipped to suffers damage, destroys an enemy, inflicts a status effect, or spends 15 consecutive seconds near one or more dangerous enemies. Gaining each level will take a significant amount of time, each one more than the last.


That's all I can say for now. I'm getting pretty tired. I'll come back and do that bit on Stats and skills after I eat or wake up or both.

Edit: Oh, and the details on elemental effects.

[Coda]

Why not crib MMBN's weakness cycle? Water>Fire>Wood>Elec>Water. It helps to remember that wind is associated with wood in Eastern alchemy.

Otherwise that sounds good to me.

[Ammutseba]

Xover also associates Wind with Wood. That particular element is actually called Wind/Wood, and it's a little weird to me that they smished those two elements into one thing. That cycle also matches what's been done in Xover, but the reason I opted for the other cycle is because the rest of the game tries to adhere to the Classic/X/Zero cycle, since most of its material is sourced there.

I have hit a little snag, but I'll smooth it out soon. I can't remember for the life of me what I was thinking while I wrote that last post, but it looks like something I would have said. I'm glad I left a note for myself on what to do next. Please forgive my poor organizational skills; it's just the way I think, and I'll be typing from thought to word from here on out.


Elements
Fire may overheat enemies, causing damage to them over time. Water may short out enemies, interrupting their movement or attacks as they happen. Wind may push back enemies, and Electric may depolarize enemies or projectiles, stopping them from moving for a short time. Each element also suffers a Power penalty against enemies of another element. No, that's not opposed by a power bonus on the other side. There are plenty of places to get bonuses as it is, and it gives Neutral a de facto edge over other elements.

These effects will have a low chance of triggering, likely around 10%. Additional memories of the same elemental type equipped to a given OVER would increase this proc chance (I'm guessing by as much as 4%). This makes your elemental armors, which have element bonuses on each slot, excellent choices under the proper conditions. Each effect is directly based on the interaction between a weapon from the X series and an enemy weak to that element.


Stats
I guess I move on to Stats, now. Life, Power, Speed and Jump. Interestingly, this is more stats than Xover had, but the style of gameplay is different, too. Xover was on rails, and remiX is a sidescrolling platformer.

The numbers we're looking at, partially as a result of slot mechanics not being majorly changed, are reasonably small. Level bonuses for a given memory might look like 0, +1, 0, 0, and by the time that same memory reaches level 5, it would look like +4, +2, +2, 0. When we consider that a single OVER can equip between 4 and 8 memories, and all of them can reach level 5, we can understand why these numbers have to stay small to preserve balance. That memory I described might be one of the expensive ones, anyway.

Not all stats are created equally. In order of value, I think you're generally looking at Power > Life > Speed > Jump. Depending on your exact needs and the armor an OVER is using, you might be able to move each of those things up a tier or down one.


Skills
I've been avoiding thinking about Skills. I guess there's no way out now. I'm keeping these ones:
- Defense Plus: Damage resistance increases by 1/16.
- Charge Boost: Charge Gauge charges 10% more quickly.
- Recovery Nanites: OVER repairs 1 life cell per 6 seconds spent inactive.
- Magnetic Inhibitor: Nearest enemy within 10m (totally arbitrary measurement) suffers -1 Power penalty.
- Overheat: Nearest enemy within 10m suffers 1 damage per 6 seconds.
- Short-Circuit: Nearest enemy within 10m cannot move for 2 seconds.
- Process Inhibitor: Nearest enemy within 10m cannot attack for 2 seconds.
- Depolarizer: Nearest enemy projectile within 10m is erased.

The above describes the base effectiveness of given skills. The effectiveness or interval of a skill improves when the memory it belongs to reaches level 5.


These are the modifiers I'm keeping. The chance of a skill having a modifier is probably around 20%, unless bought from a shop, in which case the game tells you exactly what you're paying for.
- α: Affects the installed OVER or a single target at 120% efficiency.
- β: Affects nearby OVERs or enemies at 60% efficiency.
- Σ: 25% more effective at 100% life.
- μ: 40% more effective at <=10% life.

All decimals round down.

OVERs won't use all of their skills often, but at this point, it's a minigame of force multipliers, so take that with a grain of salt. Each skill comes with behavior on how and when to use it, and a chance to use the skill once per interval (probably once per 30 seconds at levels 1 through 4, and once per 15 seconds at level 5). The chance increases based on how many slots are equipped with the given skill.


OVER-1
Okay... what am I forgetting? OVER stats? Yeah, probably that. Let's start with a comparison to a hypothetical average playable character.

Our average character has 16 life, 0/16 damage resistance, has shielding (the 3-ish seconds of invulnerability after being hit), a 2-power buster weapon with up to 2 levels of charge, 2 VWES slots, 16 speed, a basic EAS (emergency acceleration system, or "dash"), and can equip 2 fortinite circuits with 4 tolerance per slot. This is B-rank combat ability.

Our basic OVER-1 has 8 life, 0/16 damage resistance, does not have shielding (1-ish second of invulnerability after being hit), a 1-power buster weapon with up to 1 level of charge, no VWES slots, 10 speed, no EAS, and can equip 0 fortinite circuits, and has 5 memory slots with 8 bonus lines. This is E-rank combat ability, but memories can change that. Each other OVER armor has its own basic stats.

Pretty lackluster, but you get several of them, and all of the above stuff to deck them out with. Also, their individual names get generated from a list. Probably a big list.


Edit: Little bit of wall of text in here. Gonna break it up a little.

[Coda]

Sounds like I'd be playing mostly Water with those side effects. In a platformer, the Wind effect isn't going to be particularly useful, and the Fire effect is only going to be useful on things with tons of HP -- though since that includes bosses, this does suggest that Fire's effect is appropriately balanced.

I would consider other effects for Wind that might be more useful. I can see things like an air burst centered on the player to shove everything (including enemy projectiles) away as a defensive technique against swarms, or like Tornado Hold (MM8) causing the target to be momentarily juggled into the air so it can't advance.

I'm also not certain that 14% is often enough to make elements strategically useful -- at such a low rate, that's hard to use tactically because you can't be sure it'll proc when you need it most. Maybe instead of randomness, the side effect could be on a cooldown, and same-element bonuses will reduce it?

For a directly-controlled player character in a run-and-gun sidescroller, I think you'll find Power > Jump (up to a threshold) > Speed > Life > Jump (over the threshold) is more likely to be the priority for highly skilled players. Life is of minimal importance for top-tier players because literally every other stat contributes to never taking the damage in the first place. The only reason Jump has a threshold is because there comes a time when jumping too high or too fast becomes a liability instead of a benefit; aside from that, Power means the fight is over sooner (and therefore less opportunities to get hit) and Jump and Speed let you avoid incoming attacks and place your own more precisely. Life is a dump stat for when you can't get more Power and your Jump and Speed are already at the highest useful level. (Meanwhile, Life is probably going to be the MOST valuable stat for AI-controlled allies because you can't make them dodge, with Power being a close second and Speed only being necessary to keep up with the player-controlled character.)

How do those skills actually work? Do they need to be actively triggered by a button, or are they passive? How often can you use them?

[Ammutseba]

It looks like I've miscommunicated something at the most basic level. You, the player, don't play as any of the OVERs. They're controlled by you indirectly, based on the behaviors that you assign to them, the armor they wear, and the skills at their disposal. Instead, you control a playable protagonist (choice from 8) that gains points during missions into maverick-controlled zones.

Once you accumulate enough points to be promoted to Lieutenant, you are awarded a squad of 12 basic OVER-1s. Before you start a mission, you can deploy your OVERs, in any number, into areas of the zone that you've explored, barring any places where you've found a boss. Once inside a zone, you can also deploy OVERs to your current location, or have up to 2 of the OVERs from your squad follow you (within the best of their ability).


I will consider options other than knockback for Wind effects. And, I agree that 14% is not statistically significant enough to warrant using an element. And, it looks like there's something important I forgot to mention, so thank you for bringing that up.

Each additional memory of a given element would increases proc rate of elemental effect. As an example, if we look at the memory slot grid for the basic armor, OVER-1, we have this:


There are 5 different memory slots, each of which can have a single memory assigned to it. The lines drawn between them are called bonus lines. When two memories of the same element are connected by a bonus line, their properties gain bonuses. In our case, we're looking at a +1 bonus for any of Life, Power, Speed or Jump as long as the relevant stat already provides at least a +1 bonus, and elemental effect procs gain a +2% bonus.

So, if we attach a Water element memory (Level 1 Nightmare Razor with +0, +1, +1, +0 and Charge Boost-β) to the upper left slot, and another Water element memory (Level 3 Nervous Demon with +2, +0, +3, +1) to the upper right slot, then the OVER-1 will have a Water-element buster shot that has a (10+4+2+2)% chance to cause a short on hit, and the Nightmare Razor would get +1 power and +1 speed, and the Nervous Demon would get +1 life, +1 speed and +1 jump. Adding another Water element memory to the center slot would increase the chance by another 12% (the center slot provides a +4% bonus, then gains +4% from the 2 Water memories connected to it, and increases each of those memories' chance by 2%), and whatever bonuses of +1 or more it provides would also be increased by +1.

Meanwhile, we have the elemental armors. The scheme for each elemental armor's memory slots looks the same. The Water armor is shown here:


Although it doesn't have bonus lines, it does have elemental match slots. Whenever a Water element memory of any kind is equipped to one of those slots, any bonus it provides increases by +1, its Water effect proc chance doubles, and its chance to use an indicated for skill increases by 5%.


I agree with your assessment on stat values.


The skills are passive. In most cases, an OVER will check for whether or not it uses a skill it has as soon as the conditions of its use trigger, but no more than once per 30 seconds. Times it wouldn't include if the OVER is blind, frozen, shorted-out, in the middle using another skill, et cetera. An OVER has a 10% chance to use a skill they have equipped when the condition calls for it, for each memory they have with that particular skill. I'd suppose a menu would allow you to address the priority of skill uses.

When a skill's memory reaches level 5, the maximum interval for it decreases to 15 seconds (even if it's the only level 5 memory for that skill the OVER is using), and the chance to use it increases by 5% (for each memory with that skill at level 5).

Defense Plus checks when the affected OVER takes damage.
Charge Boost checks when the affected over begins charging their buster.
Recovery Nanites checks when the OVER has spent the last 6 seconds doing nothing.
Magnetic Inhibitor checks when an enemy enters the range of the ability. So do Short-Circuit, Process Inhibitor and Depolarizer.
Overheat checks after an enemy has been in the skill's range for 6 cumulative seconds (not necessarily consecutive, though).

[Coda]

Hmm... How much of this stuff is actually applicable to the player, then? Because I've been mentally operating under the assumption that this stuff is intended for the player and just happens to also work on your support squad.

[Ammutseba]

It's all for your support squad. Just, you know, you get to build them from the foundation up. :)

Also, based on progress so far, I think the only things left to do here are make a list of memories (or build a generator), find a new name for memories (still don't like "battle memories"), and balance out the figures.

Of course, you could always try to play The Big Guy is With Me, but you'd really have to get your head around the indirect control scheme. And it would take quite a while to get there.

Aw, heck. That means I have to go back to work on the tedious stuff again. :I

[Coda]

Well, that throws my entire spiel about stat weightings out the window. :P (If these guys are a limited resource that don't come back if they die, then that makes Life an absurdly valuable stat to the exclusion of all others.)

And for what it's worth, the tactical landscape for the elemental effects changes pretty dramatically too -- knockback is still a bad idea (you NEVER want to have your AI allies shove something out of your line of fire) but the fact that you'll have more than one source of the effects makes the lower proc rate less of a problem. Different types of enemy-impairing effects (stun, slowdown, projectile attack limitations, etc.) are going to be the most valuable against non-boss opponents, while you probably want to have bosses resist some of that stuff which makes damage-over-time (and maybe some projectile counters) more valuable there. (This is a good thing because it means you have to gear up your squad based on what you think you're going to need more help with, and you can't just optimize against the entire mission.)

I think that it might be a nice touch to have the player be able to equip some of this stuff. Being able to customize your leader's weapon and armor with elemental attributes and stat bonuses would make the player feel more in control of the character's growth over the course of the game.

[Ammutseba]

Oh heck, you've got a brutal mind! XD If your OVERs die in an area, they come back afterward, although you might get commentary from them about it.

Players will have plenty of things they can equip. These OVER-specific items are different from the sorts of things that players will have for their main character and reserves.

Although, I can see the appeal of giving your character elemental attributes for their basic weapons. Being the Blue King of the Tsunami Team sounds pretty exciting, yeah? Actually, this gives me some ideas for that other tedious project, which I really appreciate.