Combat System Explained + Encounter Improvement Brainstorm

[002 - Zero Two]

Hi everyone, it took me a bit of observation and time to figure out exactly how the combat works on a attack-by-attack basis, but I think I've finally figured it out. Many people (including myself) seem to have a hard time understanding how exactly clash calculations and ability effects are made.

Every attack has a set number of "coins" that can either add to, subtract from, or multiply the initial attack's value (I have only seen addition coins on sinners' moves so far though). In addition to the initial value given to the move, during a clash, any coins that land on heads will apply their effect to the moves final calculation. What is not made very clear at first is that during any clash, all coin slots are checked for heads/tails at the point of calculation. Some moves will result in more than one clash. This is because all coins that are present in a move have to be "exhausted" before the winner of a clash is determined. A clash between two moves will continually occur until either side has no coins left on their move. Draws in clashes result in a reroll, but no coins are lost on either side. This may be easier to understand with an example.

Let's say we have a move with initial value 4, 2 coin slots, and each coin gives +2 to the final value of the move (let's call this "strike"). Clashing against it, we have a move with initial value 5, 1 coin slot, and the coin gives +4 to the final value of the move (let's call this "whack").

1st clash: Both moves have all of their coins in tact. Let's just say that "strike" rolls 1 head of its two coins and "whack" rolls a head. "strike" with initial value of 4 has +2 added to its final value for a total of 6. "whack" with a heads has initial value of 5 +4 from the heads. In this case (strike) 6 < 9 (whack) so whack wins the clash. In this case, one of strike's coins is "exhausted" and a second clash occurs (since both moves still have a coin), in which strike will only have 1 coin.

2nd clash: strike has 1 coin and whack has 1 coin. Let's say that strike hits heads (on its now only coin) and whack hits tails. strike with an initial value of 4 and an additional 2 from the coin has a total value of 6. whack with an initial value of 5 and no heads will have a final value of 5. (strike) 6 > 5 (whack), so strike will win this clash. Because whack only has one coin left, it is burned after losing the clash, and the character using strike proceeds to damage calculation.

Damage calculation: This part is pretty straightforward, save for a few things that gave me some confusion due to how obscure the tutorials are. On moves with a coin symbol and a number in the middle, this means that the effect next to it will only trigger on the nth coin slot of the move. However, one thing of note is that moves are not restored to their full versions after winning a clash--moves will only have as many coins as they had kept after a clash during damage calculation. So in our above example, strike would only have 1 coin to attack with on damage calculation.

Multi-coin moves: Once damage calculation is reached, if an attack has multiple coins, they are NOT all rolled at the same time as they are in clashes. Coins are rolled 1-by-1 and will change the attack value based on the coin modifier (add/subtract/multiply). Let's say we have a move called "whirlwind". It has an initial value of 4, 4 coins slots, and each coin adds 1 to the final value of the move. whirlwind wins a clash, keeping all of its coins (Note that unopposed attacks always keep all of their coins). We start at the first coin slot. Attack damage is calculated by multiplying the move's value by the attack damage multiplier against the enemy it is being used on (e.g. by sin weakness/res or slash/pierce/strike damage weakness/res). Let's list how the attack's value would change flip-by-flip:

Flip 1: H (+1) or T (+0)
Flip 2: 2 H (+2), 1 H and 1 T (+1), or 2 T (+0) (these are all the possible permutations of 2 coin flips, disregarding order)
Flip 3: 3 H (+3), 2 H and 1 T (+2), 1 H and 2 T (+1), or 3 T (+0)
Flip 4: 4 H (+4), 3 H and 1 T (+3), 2 H and 2 T (+2), 1 H and 3 T (+1), or 4 T (+0)

After each coin flip is made, the character will attack with the moves value based on its initial value + the coin modifier. Let's say we were attacking with whirlwind with all 4 coins available and got H T T H.

Flip 1: 1 H + I (initial value) = 5 atk
Flip 2: (1 T +) 1 H + I = 5 atk
Flip 3: (2 T +) 1 H + I = 5 atk
Flip 4: (2 T +) 2 H + I = 6 atk
(Total of 21 atk, multiplied by damage multiplier gives final damage)
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That being said, now that you should fully understand how exactly the combat system works, I think it will be much easier to come up with ways to make the regular encounters more interesting. As many have pointed out, regular encounters leave a lot to be desired in terms of player autonomy. Oftentimes it feels like "Big number better, me take bigger number" due to the fact that there is no way to redirect attacks at will. One of the things that made LoR (Library of Ruina) such a tactically deep and satisfying game is that all of the systems were made such that the player could use them to their advantage, if they knew how to. The problem with normal encounters is that possibly the most quintessential part of the game, combat manipulation based on speed, has been practically gutted entirely, aside from abnormality battles. Not only can you not direct where your units attack, the worst part is that your fastest character will ALWAYS attack the slowest enemy, which usually turns your biggest offensive/defensive asset into an unavoidable misuse of the game's mechanics.

Defensive Abilities: I've seen many players talk about the defensive option and how to use it, but I feel that once you have all of your identities' uptie levels to III, there is almost never a scenario where defensive moves make sense. The defensive tokens don't change or get stronger based on identity (as far as I can tell), and usually you can just win clashes with fully upgraded moves anyways. In the very niche case that you have to use a defensive move, it will probably have little impact on the way the battle turns out. Defensive moves were an integral part of LoR that added even more depth to the combat through the stagger system, but in this game, it feels pointless. I think one interesting way to fix this would be by giving every identity an uptie-scaling, identity-specific defensive move. Not only would this make defensive moves more viable, it would make each identity more unique, possibly giving players more incentive to get an identity they want.

I'm not so sure how to fix some of the uninteractive points of the regular encounter combat system right now honestly (without just changing it to the abnormality style combat). One initial thought I had was to make the chain area 3 lanes wide and only allow connections to adjacent nodes, but that still wouldn't fix the core of the issue, even if it would make the player feel like they have to make more meaningful decisions.

What are your thoughts? How would you like to see the combat system modified?

As an aside, I would like to say that I trust Project Moon will make this game something great in the long run. As a huge fan of Lobotomy Corp and Library of Ruina, I can tell they're really passionate about what they do, and, in spite of what I've said in this post, I am quite happy with the game as is, and enthusiastic to see its future. Thank you Project Moon for the amazing universe you've brought to us all!

[LCG]

I fully agree with you regarding the defensive moves. Those simply sucks once uptie III is reached. For me the biggest disappointment considering how important they were in LoR.

Beside that the inability to redirect attacks in regular encounters is the other thing that is pretty annoying since it introduces a rng element that i dont understand why they think it is a good idea.

[shoopy]

The only complaint I have is enemies winning too many coin flips in a row some times. It's ridiculous when an enemy ties with you 10 times in a row - yes this actually happened - and then smacks you in the face with a devastating attack.

Also I'm probably in the very small minority because I really don't like manual targeting at all. You can't do anything clever with it because the choices are almost always obvious or absolutely necessary, so it feels like a compulsory slog of making painfully obvious moves.

[Alrom]

I say they should just scrap the auto targeting.

I have no idea why they thought it was a good idea. Maybe they think gacha players enjoy autocombat over a tactical one? Maybe they expected it to be simpler and less confusing than normal targeting?

Either way its a downgrade to abno fights in every single way.

[Traveller of The Galaxy]

In theory, enemy tossing heads is supposed to work the same way as with player tossing heads, so getting bonus from sanity level. However 1. I do not know anymore how the sanity boost is applied since i thought that it applies to every coin flip, then i hear people say that you only get boost for your first coin, and then in game i feel like sanity boost to heads chance doesnt work when you toss coin when attacking after winnin clash / one side attack.

Personally, I would like to see 2 things :

1) Just make regular encounters work same way as with abnos like it was in lor, giving more reason for haste characters etc. (Tho im not sure how PM will do it, since from one side they listen to fans, from other i feel like not being able to choose target in reg combat PM wants to stay.)

2) Some of status effects could be reworked, or more skills should inflict some of statuses starting next turn rather than current one.

3)A good way to make defensive moves actually worth it instead of just using them to skip turn, would be to allow for clashing with them during abno fights, since frequently i had it that if i were to use def move on nugget that cant win / something else, the attack instead goes onto next person, so def move is frequently ultra hard to execute.

On top of that ofc have def move scale off with def power instead of being a one sided clash thing, and scale with uptying same as basic moves get +1 to min roll.

[shoopy]

Irony is in dungeons I always move to abno fights because they are easier. I think they should have just picked one or the other.

[Fluff]

I would like to see affinity part modified.

As an option by adding a universal affinity which every sinner can generate with attacks, but at a much slower rate that class affinities. That universal affinity could be used instead of class affinities to fill a missing point or couple for EGO skills, but at a higher cost than class affinities.

Would make team compositions a bit more flexible and interesting options viable, not just those that circle around EGO spam (where the future game direction seem to be aimed atm) typos

[Traveller of The Galaxy]

Honestly, i was thinking if it would be viable to change passive system to that instead of having to use x affinity skills in current turn, the passives would stay active as long as you have enough affinity collected. This way you would need to consider if you want to use ego or keep that passive active.

I mostly thought about this because my brain is making me think that i heard something like this when watchin PM videos about game before it came out d:

Tho then it might be too easy to stack up on activated passives.

[Demonking]

To add to your explanation of combat coin system, and I could be wrong about this, but I swear the game weighs the coins based on what attacks are being used. I've outright lost engagements where I had 4 coins and a higher base value than my opponent by literally never flipping tails once. One thing I noticed is that it feels tied to the offense value, or something intrinsic to multi-hit attacks. Since it's most often that I run into these impossible losses when it comes to enemies with higher attack values and single coin attacks. Similarly I've regularly won fights with 3 star bug man's rupture attack that statically shouldn't be winning because he just keeps flipping heads. Often enough that I just accept it if the game tells me I'm dominating with it because I've been burned too many times by switching to his other attack which should have a massively increased odds of working if these coins actually obeyed 50/50 logic.

As for defensive coins, aside from dodge in niche scenarios I mostly use them prevent clashes I can't win. Because of the way the auto targeting in the game works and the fact enemies almost never have a speed higher than 4 where as I regularly have 5 to 7 if I hit the defense in the middle of a chain it automatically re-targets the next attack towards the previous one. So to give an example:

If I have a chain of attacks with the following odds: Domination (A fights A)> domination (B fights B) > struggling (C fights C) > favored (D fights D) > unopposed (F attacks A) then I'm looking like I might take some damage. So what I do in that situation is have the middle character guard, causing everyone after that in the chain to re-target. As a result the chain looks like this instead: Domination (A fights A) > Domination (B fights B) > Guard (C fights no one) > domination (D fights C) > favored (F fights D).

Guard in normal fights as a result is basically your only way to pick targets and I hope we get more in future. Otherwise they're just niche things you can do with your slowest speed units or in aberration fights if you really low balled it with available attacks. Since sometimes a solid dodge or block can be the difference between being staggered or not if you have no good clashing options, and counter is just for when you want to get damage done and don't think you can win the clash. Really bad option though, enemies will always use their hardest hitting move if available rather than it being even slightly randomized. I think they need to buffed in general with a little bit of damage reduction on top of their counter attack as you tier 2 and 3 the unit. Similar to how Block and Dodge should probably gain multi-block and stronger minimum value at tier 2 and something character specific at 3. Only good thing going for counter is that you can at least use it for absolute resonance and building up affinities for E.G.O if you have no other options.

[A Wispy Willy]

Publicado originalmente por Traveller of The Galaxy:

Honestly, i was thinking if it would be viable to change passive system to that instead of having to use x affinity skills in current turn, the passives would stay active as long as you have enough affinity collected. This way you would need to consider if you want to use ego or keep that passive active.

I mostly thought about this because my brain is making me think that i heard something like this when watchin PM videos about game before it came out d:

Tho then it might be too easy to stack up on activated passives.

It's because originally they were going to use your sin stock in one of the combat showcase videos, they just changed it later.

[Bishop]

Publicado originalmente por LCG:

I fully agree with you regarding the defensive moves. Those simply sucks once uptie III is reached.

The point of defensing moves is that they redirect attacks to the next character in chain against human enemies, which is sometimes better than just eating damage against impossible clash. And winning clashes from high uptie only work when you have superiority toward their damage and defense types. Trying to clear ch 3 with slash/pierce team requires very accurate usage of attacks and defense makes a lot more sense there.

Hopefully next characters will introduce mixed damage types with all sorts of gimmicks to disable this brain dead "use single damage to win" approach.

[Reptiloid]

Agreed on the 1st part. The target selection and speed needs some work. Especially that lower speed thing, so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying when my 000 hearclif draws his 3rd skill only to waste it on some whimpy staggered dude with 10hp left. Would be realy nice if you could at least give general direction to sinners on what to do in turn, like focus on clashing strongest attacks if you have the speed, or finish a staggered enemy.

[Reptiloid]

Publicado originalmente por Bishop:

Publicado originalmente por LCG:

I fully agree with you regarding the defensive moves. Those simply sucks once uptie III is reached.

The point of defensing moves is that they redirect attacks to the next character in chain against human enemies, which is sometimes better than just eating damage against impossible clash. And winning clashes from high uptie only work when you have superiority toward their damage and defense types. Trying to clear ch 3 with slash/pierce team requires very accurate usage of attacks and defense makes a lot more sense there.

Hopefully next characters will introduce mixed damage types with all sorts of gimmicks to disable this brain dead "use single damage to win" approach.

The damage resistance thing came back from Lor, I personally don't see a problem with that. Or you're talking collors of sin affinity? The damage does not multiply after 3 in a row for adding a 4th one, so if you run into enemies with some resistance you won't gain much. Though, right now sin resistances on enemies are non-existant, at least in my experience they didn't play significant role.

[Bishop]

Publicado originalmente por Reptiloid:

Publicado originalmente por Bishop:

The point of defensing moves is that they redirect attacks to the next character in chain against human enemies, which is sometimes better than just eating damage against impossible clash. And winning clashes from high uptie only work when you have superiority toward their damage and defense types. Trying to clear ch 3 with slash/pierce team requires very accurate usage of attacks and defense makes a lot more sense there.

Hopefully next characters will introduce mixed damage types with all sorts of gimmicks to disable this brain dead "use single damage to win" approach.

The damage resistance thing came back from Lor, I personally don't see a problem with that. Or you're talking collors of sin affinity? The damage does not multiply after 3 in a row for adding a 4th one, so if you run into enemies with some resistance you won't gain much. Though, right now sin resistances on enemies are non-existant, at least in my experience they didn't play significant role.

Well maybe I forgot something but I never bothered with going mono damage type in lor and most encounters never required to do that in the first place. All my parties always consisted of mixed identities and cards that I found cool and it worked just fine.

Here doing 21! mono blunt encounter in a row is just boring and uninspired copy/paste design and I don't think it's fine at all. I still cleared it with slash/pierce team but it was frustrating and not very fun (well except Kromer fight).

[Reptiloid]

Publicado originalmente por Bishop:

Publicado originalmente por Reptiloid:

The damage resistance thing came back from Lor, I personally don't see a problem with that. Or you're talking collors of sin affinity? The damage does not multiply after 3 in a row for adding a 4th one, so if you run into enemies with some resistance you won't gain much. Though, right now sin resistances on enemies are non-existant, at least in my experience they didn't play significant role.

Well maybe I forgot something but I never bothered with going mono damage type in lor and most encounters never required to do that in the first place. All my parties always consisted of mixed identities and cards that I found cool and it worked just fine.

Here doing 21! mono blunt encounter in a row is just boring and uninspired copy/paste design and I don't think it's fine at all. I still cleared it with slash/pierce team but it was frustrating and not very fun (well except Kromer fight).

Well that's a downside of chapter 3 I guess, but not the combat system imo, not this aspect at least. I think they wanted to make users learn damage type importance, like an extended tutorial, though they kind of got overboard with it.

Lor is a whole different story in these terms, I'd not compare these two.

[Demonking]

Publicado originalmente por Reptiloid:

Publicado originalmente por Bishop:

Well maybe I forgot something but I never bothered with going mono damage type in lor and most encounters never required to do that in the first place. All my parties always consisted of mixed identities and cards that I found cool and it worked just fine.

Here doing 21! mono blunt encounter in a row is just boring and uninspired copy/paste design and I don't think it's fine at all. I still cleared it with slash/pierce team but it was frustrating and not very fun (well except Kromer fight).

Well that's a downside of chapter 3 I guess, but not the combat system imo, not this aspect at least. I think they wanted to make users learn damage type importance, like an extended tutorial, though they kind of got overboard with it.

Lor is a whole different story in these terms, I'd not compare these two.

Well they failed, I passed it with slashing team just to spite them. (I'm kidding I had AOE and single target blunt damage egos I could spam relatively easily and a really solid clash winners to charge them up.) I will admit I completely avoided the hammer and nail encounters in the following chapter three dungeon where possible. Even with a blunt damage team those people are just too tanky and have too many attacks for me to brain off fight them. Even their 'stronger' abnormality feel easier to beat than they do.