Monthly Votes

Hey guys, there's a bitty update coming before I leave for a week + in a few days. As I return the new moves will be ready. First off:

These are our September winners!

Next off, here is the monthly monster vote for paid subs, and this months free shiny vote!

Part of the problem with my combat rework is that I have had trouble getting it balanced. Originally I was testing monsters with RESIST and AFFLICT values for applying effects and debuffs, but I finally decided to scrap that, since it is much less interesting to me than a system that (in its final form) only has meaningful moves with 100% accuracy and no crits which also guarantees promised status effects (boons and malus). Since ENERGY fills in for move uses the game choosing an expensive move has more of a tactical trade off when selecting moves. HOWEVER, it has also made balancing it difficult.

So far, with only WILD monsters in the game, having them choose a move at random (their TYPE jab or the zero cost bonk) feels fine. But the uh, trained and directed monsters need to make decisions based on a simple tactical basis. First I tried giving moves PRIORITY when the monster had the options to pick them, but that didn't turn out very well as they spammed their energy reserves empty and then switched or just used BONK. So I just scrapped that plan as well.

NOW I think that the first kind of enemy trainer should make their decisions based on three criteria, one check, and one overriding panic priority. Summarized in English: "Have I buffed myself with an available monster buff? @" "Have I debuffed the enemy with available monster debuff? @" "Can I use a powerful JAB move? (With a super effective result?) @" @ = Do I have the energy to do this?... Okay I can't do any of this I use [BONK].

PRIORITY: "WAS I just hit by a super effective move?! QUICK: SWITCH MONSTER!" This basic logic system will likely be good enough for now once I get it working.

Clever people will also have deduced that the FINAL scout vote is coming this month. There are two more scouts planned for the game, but after Tesla and Ariel are done, I won't be thinking about scouts for a LONG time. We can also look forward to a new kind of voting in the future as all the combat updates roll out.