Reworking Regen to be more intuitive

[keith.lamothe]

In looking at this:

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=12606

I'm reminded that it's pretty opaque to the user how the Regen mechanic works.  Right now it can heal the last 5 hits you've taken, basically, unless you take more hits in the meantime or you took any actions in the meantime, etc.

Which is hard enough to understand, but if you wanted to compute how much hp that worked out to, with some of the hits sliding out of the window midway... well I'm not sure there's any sane UI design for telling you all that you'd want/need to know.

So what I'm thinking of doing is making regen work on the last hit that exo took, until either it's fully healed or another hit is taken.  Then the max you could regen is already present in the UI (in the log that lists who did what to whom) and generally stays relevant for less time anyway.

This nerfs regen by not letting it apply to multiple hits, but buffs regen by not putting a time limit on how long it has to heal that last hit (which is a bit of a concern in terms of people just standing there skipping turns to heal some huge hit with a level-1 regen effect, so maybe there does need to be some kind of max pulses that can apply to the same hit, like 10).  Still, I imagine it will need numeric adjustment for balance.

The upshot of it all is that:
+damage_reduction is good against multiple little hits, and running firefights
+regen is good against single big hits, as long as you can space them out enough
+shields works against everything, but probably gives less effective health overall (at least that's the target balance)

Anyway, my questions are:

1) If the above change were made, what would Regen's numbers need to be to be competitive with +shields and +damage_reduction?
- For reference, the min and max values you can find on a single part for these (in 0.920, whenever that comes out) :
-- +shields, min 25, max 500
-- +regen, min 5, max 110
-- +damage_reduction, min 3, max 50

2) Assuming question 1 is addressed properly, does this sound like a good change?

[Tridus]

Personally, I like that it's got a turn limit. If I happen to take 200 damage from a single nasty hit (say I hit myself with my own shotgun, which has absolutely never happened...), it's not fun to encourage me to spend 15 turns going in circles to regenerate it. So just to toss an idea out here, here's my re-imagining of how regen works:

The regen value of your exo is the maximum amount of damage you can successfully regenerate at once. The actual damage up to that limit is regenerated at 20% per turn, if you're not taking damage. What we do is track the damage remaining to be regenerated, and if that number goes over the limit, it's "gone" and can't be regenerated. Here's an example:

Exo A has a regen score of 100.
1. It gets shot for 10 damage, and is not shot again. It regenerates 2 per turn for the next 5 turns.
2. It gets shot for 10 damage, not shot on the next turn (regenerates 2), then shot for 50. The damage to regenerate is 58, lower then 100, so it'll still regenerate it all.
3. It gets shot for 50 in one round, then 75 in the next round. The total damage in the "could regen" pool is 125, which is over 100. So it becomes 100 and gets 20 back a turn, the other 25 is permanent.
4. If two turns into its regeneration from #3 it gets shot for another 100, the math is 60 remaining + 100 more = 140. So the regen pool goes back to 100, and 40 more damage is permanent. It gets 20 a turn for 5 turns again.


That doesn't seem too hard to put into the UI, as the regen number is just the maximum. I do realize that it's quite a bit different from the existing system, of course.

[keith.lamothe]

Personally, I like that it's got a turn limit. If I happen to take 200 damage from a single nasty hit (say I hit myself with my own shotgun, which has absolutely never happened...), it's not fun to encourage me to spend 15 turns going in circles to regenerate it.

Right, so I think keeping a 5-turn or 10-turn limit to the number of pulses it can throw at a single hit is a good idea

Or alternatively it could just be given a single pulse, and we could ratchet up the numbers accordingly.

Honestly that seems simplest to me   But simple may not always be the priority.  Thoughts?

[madcow]

I don't know. If you want to be simple. Could simply remove regen and make it all damage absorption. I think any variant of regen is going to be either a little bit complex (not necessarily bad) or encourage wasting turns for an overpowered healing (definitely bad)

[keith.lamothe]

I don't know. If you want to be simple. Could simply remove regen and make it all damage absorption.

I could, but then shields would be down to 2 stats, which is way simpler than I want.

Just having regen do one pulse of up to the last hit's damage honestly sounds simple enough to present, and interesting enough in terms of being different from the other two stats.  And, thankfully, does not encourage passing turns at all.

Any objections to that approach?

[Teal_Blue]

  Simple sounds good to me.  Easy to calculate, or adjust if needed.

[Teal_Blue]

I don't know. If you want to be simple. Could simply remove regen and make it all damage absorption. I think any variant of regen is going to be either a little bit complex (not necessarily bad) or encourage wasting turns for an overpowered healing (definitely bad)

This is just a thought, but if we get rid of the multiple turn aspect of the regen, and have it heal a flat 50% of the last damage taken, then its not going to go back up to 100%, its not going to scale over several hits, large or small, and it definitely won't be encouraging people to run around for several turns to heal up, because it will be a one shot deal.

But still 50% of the last hit is going to keep me in the game and fighting, not at my peak, but hey, its better than a poke in the eye, yes?

That is my opinion and simplification, any thoughts?

-Teal

p.s.  Ooops!  Didn't see your re-post Keith, your second suggestion of a single pulse is what i think is the best idea. Just my opinion though.

[Teal_Blue]

I don't know. If you want to be simple. Could simply remove regen and make it all damage absorption.

I could, but then shields would be down to 2 stats, which is way simpler than I want.

Just having regen do one pulse of up to the last hit's damage honestly sounds simple enough to present, and interesting enough in terms of being different from the other two stats.  And, thankfully, does not encourage passing turns at all.

Any objections to that approach?

Sounds perfect!! 

p.s.   Please disregard, they already got a good idea above and i already agreed. 

[madcow]

One turn pulses could work.

And (I know you aren't likely looking for new mechanics ) but if you wanted to add a bit more complexity... Could give shields an overcharge ability. Make it disable a weapon (permanently, alternatively use up ammo or causes a damage dealt reduction) and in exchange give a nice spike of health.  Could add that cool FTL-like mechanic of managing modules by super charging defense at the cost of offense.

[Misery]

Hmm, why not just put the regen amount in the Exo's tooltip next to their health?

Then when regen actually happens, you could put up a small popup message on the Exo that just says "Regen: 5 turns left" or something.   If the player takes another hit to cancel it or however that works, the message might be "Regen canceled" or something like that?


To be honest I think the current system is actually pretty simple, and quite functional.... it's just a matter of explaining it a bit better.

[Winge]

I don't know. If you want to be simple. Could simply remove regen and make it all damage absorption.

I could, but then shields would be down to 2 stats, which is way simpler than I want.

Just having regen do one pulse of up to the last hit's damage honestly sounds simple enough to present, and interesting enough in terms of being different from the other two stats.  And, thankfully, does not encourage passing turns at all.

Any objections to that approach?

It is definitely easier to understand; however I think that regen values will need to be slightly boosted to balance the window "closing down".  Otherwise, regen becomes much less useful than Damage Reduction.  It's unfortunate that regen is so hard to explain; mechanically, it works just fine. 

[Misery]

I don't know. If you want to be simple. Could simply remove regen and make it all damage absorption.

I could, but then shields would be down to 2 stats, which is way simpler than I want.

Just having regen do one pulse of up to the last hit's damage honestly sounds simple enough to present, and interesting enough in terms of being different from the other two stats.  And, thankfully, does not encourage passing turns at all.

Any objections to that approach?

It is definitely easier to understand; however I think that regen values will need to be slightly boosted to balance the window "closing down".  Otherwise, regen becomes much less useful than Damage Reduction.  It's unfortunate that regen is so hard to explain; mechanically, it works just fine. 

Aye, this.  I think they'd have to be boosted quite a bit though.

Currently, even a low regen value of, oh, 10-15 or so, can be useful so long as you give it the time to add up.   Wheras a higher value such as 60 or so means that it can be useful even during heated fights so long as you can avoid hits for at least 1 or 2 turns. 

If changed thoiugh, the regen value is going to need to be continuously huge in order to even provide an effect.  A value of 15 will be worthless if it only works on one turn.  But if the value for a single turn heal is too high, it'll become very easy to instantly undo even somewhat larger impacts from the enemy.  The current regen works BECAUSE it takes numerous turns, but a single turn is much easier to do during a heated fight.

[Pepisolo]

One turn pulses could work.

And (I know you aren't likely looking for new mechanics ) but if you wanted to add a bit more complexity... Could give shields an overcharge ability. Make it disable a weapon (permanently, alternatively use up ammo or causes a damage dealt reduction) and in exchange give a nice spike of health.  Could add that cool FTL-like mechanic of managing modules by super charging defense at the cost of offense.

Actually even though something like this is out of scope it would be great. In Eve Online you had something something similar called Overload although I'm a little foggy on the details. Basically you could switch overload on in a module which would give you a performance boost at the cost of potentially damaging your equipment.

Just having regen do one pulse of up to the last hit's damage honestly sounds simple enough to present

Regen generally in other games usually lasts for a number of turns. If it lasts for one turn then it's a bit of an unorthodox regen at least as far as other games are concerned. Seems more like an auto-repair if it works only for one turn. Edit: actually auto-repair sounds a bit like regen...basically a 1 turn regen doesn't seem like regen to me. 

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, to some extent a non-conventional regen is necessary here because convention is that regen keeps working until you're full, meaning that it's just a matter of waiting.  And since time has no inherent in-game cost here (if no bots are alerted, at least) that's bad news.

But I do see that a one turn pulse doesn't really fill the things on your feet of the name

Maybe replacing it with some kind of active ability would be better.  Maybe: limited number of charges (like stealth or whatever), but absorbs X damage from each hit taken.  Or maybe each hit taken that would otherwise destroy you (to avoid dumbot shots whittling it down in an annoying way.  I guess that wouldn't need to be actively used, just assumed to be used.  And maybe it's too much like stealth, though this would let you fire through it and wouldn't work nearly as well against 10 enemies as stealth used to (and still does for the ninja).

Hmm, not sure if those ideas work, really... but I am open to replacement mechanics if they're reasonable

Hmm, why not just put the regen amount in the Exo's tooltip next to their health?

Then when regen actually happens, you could put up a small popup message on the Exo that just says "Regen: 5 turns left" or something.   If the player takes another hit to cancel it or however that works, the message might be "Regen canceled" or something like that?


To be honest I think the current system is actually pretty simple, and quite functional.... it's just a matter of explaining it a bit better.

This may be true, that the math is fine.  My concern is that many players will want to know exactly what will regen, how long it will take, etc... and that doesn't even get into predicting how much regen _would_ help you if you did X and enemy A did Y and enemy B did Z, where even damage reduction isn't hard to compute there.  Basically: if the effect is not simple enough to alllow tactical predictions, does it belong?

Or is this not relly the kind of game where that matters as much?

[GrimerX]

You could make it take an action (like First Aid in ADOM).  This action could take effect completely within that one turn, or apply repair over time.  Maybe it doesn't take an action, and/or you can use it only once (no stacking).  Then you have these variables to play with:

o) How often can I repair?
o) How strong is my repair ability?
    a) Amount/turn
    b) # turns


You can add more complexity over time -- repairs that start out slow, but build; or the reverse (a long tail of low repair rate w/o stacking, hmm....).  But the basic equation starts out pretty simple.  Acts like a potion.

It also feels less gamey to me -- self-repairing exos with those variables fits well into the storyline.  I'm either using the same tech to "Warp in" fixed parts, or deploying repair-bots, or whatever.  The sliding window I understood from a math point of view, but I could never fit it well into the background.

-Ian