Hello, Pilots!

Thank you to everyone who gave me feedback last week, seems like the majority of people were for longer explanations.

I'd also like to thank everyone who re-blogged and participated in the giveaway! We had a record turnout of 17 people this time.

📰News:

1. Character personalities have been split into six types, those being red, green, and blue. This value is automatically assigned when your character is created. These will be used in social events. "Red profiles are more direct, open and coarse, and dislike Blue style. Green profiles can tolerate both a bit better, without enjoying any, or being enjoyed by any. Blue profiles sound more elaborate and especially dislike Red style."

2. There have been a lot of backend bugfixes related to rulesets, language files, and the debriefing room.

3. You will be able to cancel actions during the Away Teams Challenge in order to save food, tickets, or whatever else.

4. The gameplay update is scheduled to release today for Away Teams testers, and we have gotten an in-depth explanation of how combat works.

5. (This section is very long.) We have a very thorough explanation of combat and how it will work:

"They...

● combine the use of the proficiency system (combined skills giving a proficiency) and RPG combat rules (such as miniature combat system ie W40K).
● avoid to use a direct 1d100 system (testing skills chances vs a difficulty) like we have in any event and task, as we believe this would not be meaningful enough for combat
● instead they favor more controlled rolls, with measurable points (1 to 10), save rolls, etc.
● they are used entirely automatically, so players don't "have" to understand any of it.
● but are understandable, meaningful, impactful, and comparable to RPG combat people know. (well, at least that will be the objective of this)
● they also allow for a lot of additional depth in Combat Perks (to be used in leveling for instance)
● and for a lot of depth and details in Combat Wounds, ammo, actions, wildlife stats, etc.
● and should be fully scalable in number and types of units
● still make use of the 'computer' to make rolls, so this means the computer simulates it anyway so players are not slowed in their experience because of more complexity

Of course, that does not mean the refined system will "hit all marks" on its first release.
But we would also like to explain how this is "expanding" on something we already control.

We have the skill layer, the proficiency layer (combining skills) and the difficulty test (having a % of success chances vs a difficulty).
the difficulty system involves having a % of chances depending on either: a single skill, or a proficiency in a role ; and rolling a 1d100 vs this %.
this is interesting but needs players to always guess the difficulty of a roll (easy, normal, hard, elite, or custom), which is something they have no control on, and also leaves a lot of variety being unaddressed properly in starter cards vs epic cards for instance.

Extrapolating combat attributes from combat proficiencies make values more understandable, and we believe it is a requirement at the moment.
It should also give a more comparable ground between starter/common cards and epics/legendaries.

The event and task system will still use the existing proficiencies and roles to determine combat stats, then uses these combat stats in combat.

This means adding +10 or +X Violence, like with a Criminal background, should still have the targeted impact in combat.

17 new combat attributes will be added to every wildlife. @elindos is making sure that the combat system works, and if it does, characters will receive new combat stats.

LATER...

We mentioned Combat Perks to be added in Character Leveling.

You will also have access to:

● A display of combat stats on your character sheets,

● We will add tooltips to skills, explaining if they have an impact on combat (and also will mention when they have an impact in colony and away team roles, we think that's very useful). This is because combat stats are extrapolated from a Proficiency value (meaning combined skills), so we'll be able to explain if a skill has an impact on a combat value.

● New combat roles will be displayed and available for Training.
Meaning you could at last train a character in Combat Initiative, Melee, etc.

This is because they are based on proficiencies, and you do remember where Proficiency are used? in colony and away team roles! which are already compatible with Training.

Expanded wildlife attributes with the following:

• "Combat class" which takes the wildlife class. (a separate attribute from the wildlife template as some may have a different class)
• "Combat size" which takes the wildlife size. (same)
• Depending on their combat class, wildlife receives bonuses in several attributes, with favored skills and bonuses in a few stats. For instance:
  'Rogue' class receives a bonus in action points, initiative and cover, but also in several skills. (stealth, speed, awareness)
  'Barbarian' (aggressive) class receives a bonus in toughness, courage and strength, but also in several skills.

"Combat armor" is a random factor limited by creature size (a size 2 creature may have an armor value of 2 max), however please note "health" is also random and determined by combat class; this means some small creatures can still be "resilient" especially in health, and bigger creatures can actually be resilient in everything you can think of.

there are "Skills" with:
Awareness, Discipline, Speed, Stealth, Toughness, Tactical Cover, Shooting, Orders, Warfare and Planetary. They are only used to calculate combat stats.

Wildlife profile influences their skills:
for instance Wildlife aggressiveness (which is a score from 1 to 10) is factored into stronger Violence.
Violence is important: it is factored into damage.

• Combat stats are:
  Initiative (I) - mostly based on Awareness/Planetary and class bonuses.
  Toughness (T) - based on the Toughness skill and class bonuses.
  Strength (S) - based on Size.
  Armor (A)
  Combat Decision (CD) - mostly based on Warfare/Discipline.
  and : Melee, Shooting, Cover and Courage.

The values usually range from 1 to 10, with some exceptions.
Wildlife also receives a score in "Action Points" (AP), as a bonus in number of actions for some.

Wildlife has a slightly different ways to calculate their combat stats than characters, but it's mostly the same formula.
Characters seem to have less values overall, with scores around 1-3, 2-4, or 3-5 depending on the stat for starter characters, and 2-8 for epics.
it's really ok; we don't have to be better melee-ers than wildlife, for instance. Because we can have guns.

Encounters:
When encountering a wildlife, we determine a number of creatures you will meet.

'Wildlife tribalness' score (likelyhood to move in larger numbers; don't look at me for that term ;) ) is heavily factored into the number of wildlife you will encounter. with low tribal values, you will usually encounter one creature, or two in some cases. With average values it can get into 1-6. With high values it can get into a lot more.

Wildlife combat class also influences the number of creatures:
the Commander class will always bring 1-6 additional henchmen.

Every wildlife is created as an individual creature from the base template.
It has some minor chances for possible variation in each combat attribute (like -2/-1/+0/+1/+2) and health (like -20% to +20%).

Combat:
There are rolls to determine if one side has the opportunity to ambush the other.
GUARDS will also act as "interceptors" and receive a proper Cover, and "aggro" a number of wildlife to them.

Then:

1. Every character receives a number of actions, starting with 1.
   Additional actions are created from Speed tests of increasing difficulty until you fail the test. Usually you will get 1-3 actions.
   I will work on favoring other stats than Speed later. Wildlife can also receive bonus actions from their combat class.

2. Special circumstances apply.
   Superior Initiative also has chances to give you additional actions every round, compared to the average Initiative of the opposing side.
   These are called "bonus Actions". Some circumstances can also give you bonus actions: for instance, if a character has triggered an "Adrenaline Rush", he gets +1 action.

3. Characters will act according to their Initiative order, doing every action one by one.

4. Every time a character performs an action, he will first make a Combat Decision (CD) test.

If it fails, the character has:

• 50% chances to take a minor useless action (hesitating, looking at what is happening, etc) with usually minor consequence
• 50% chances to take a defensive action instead. Defense actions are: hiding, taking cover, preparing to dodge, or preparing to parry (ie. block an attack with his arms).

If it succeeds, the character will instead:

• check if he has a weapon in hand or available.
  If he has, he will attack.
  If he does not and is already engaged, he will fight with his body (kick, punch, push, charge, strangle or bite).
  If he does not have a weapon and is not engaged, he will try to recover an improvised weapon, usually ending with a rock or an item, classified as either an improvised item to throw (such as a rock or anything), or an improvised weapon to use in melee (such as a branch, a rock or anything).

1. Wildlife attacks only last a number of rounds, which usually adequates to their Combat Decision (CD) score and is higher with Commanders.
   This is because wildlife are usually here to defend themselves or attack a prey, once the point is made that it's not easy, the wildlife will retreat.

As you can understand:
if one character is isolated and attacked by 6 creatures while other characters are looking and hesitating, it can be deadly.

Fortunately, during investigations, you are not looking to capture a live specimen, so this does not trigger lasting attacks from wildlife.
This may happen more with larger Away Teams doing capture missions.

For that reason, proper Guides and Scouts should help in avoiding disfavorable combat in a capture mission.
If you don't have guns, you should use some player skill in that area to select the proper scouts and avoid being surprised.

Some separate effects:
LOW HEALTH can affect all stats. You have -1 once you are below 60% health, and another -1 once you are below 20% health.
LOW MORALE does the same, in the exact same way (-1 once you are below 60%, etc)
LOW STAMINA does the same, in the exact same way.

You always keep a minimum of 1 score in all stats.
This can still cripple a wounded, exhausted character.

This is however mitigated by other positive effects, such as team boosts, or an ADRENALINE RUSH.
Adrenaline Rush is an event which can be triggered once. It is tested every round with a Violence test, with a bonus if you are wounded (+20), if someone died (+20), etc. It lasts until you fail that test, with a malus for every round it lasted.

Adrenaline Rush gives you +1 action and +1 in all stats, and also temporarily negates effects from low health, low morale and low stamina. It also consumes stamina, so you are likely to be exhausted after a long violent fight.

There are other useful skills here. Violence is very useful for melee damage, but some other skills will be tested.
We'll look at Heroism for instance.
And people can inspire characters.

Toughness (Resistance) is also useful here, not only for your Toughness score, or your health value (and the less likelyhood for it to fall at 60% or under, if you have a larger health pool) but also because at some level (60) toughness gives you a size 5 instead of a size 4, for combat purposes, giving you a Strength (S) of 5 instead of 4." -@elindos

🎁Giveaway:

This week, you have a chance of winning:

1x Syndicate Hacker
This card is the best fuel-loader currently in EXODE, especially if you can get an Elite copy. An Elite version of this card takes 19 seconds to load fuel instead of 100+. It is insanely powerful. Not to mention that if you decide you want to design software then his Programming skill will be extremely useful. His Cybernetics skill also makes him a good researcher. Definitely would recommend grabbing one of these cards before people wake up to how powerful he is.

🎉Previous Winner:

Congratulations @jin-out, Black Lotus # b8ba6e670232cbb6603708121fcd6c88 has been sent to you.

➡️How To Enter:

1. Upvote this post
2. Reblog this post
3. Comment what you think of the combat system so far.

The winner will be chosen by random on Monday, February 28th.

As usual, I will be tipping comments with #hivepizza!

EXODE is a real-time strategy space colonization game here on the Hive Blockchain. If you still have not bought your starter pack and signed up, use this Referral Code(c956af8) and you'll also receive 2 free Alpha Booster Packs with 5 NFT cards each and a free Epic Alpha Character. For more information and links, check out the developer's page, @elindos and/or this post.