Progress Update -- Hit Calc Changes?

Online Status

Hey folks! Wanted to give you guys an update on the state of things. So first off, I have been scarce recently online so you probably haven't seen me in the discord for the last little while. Partially this is because my day job has ramped up in recent weeks so I haven't had as much time for social media but also partially this is my process. In order to focus on coding sometimes I really just have to unplug for a couple weeks and focus on the code. It can get really hard to focus on actually a programming a game if one focuses too much on social media (at least for me). So don't worry if you haven't seen me in a while. In fact, it might be a good thing long-term for seeing more progress in the game!

Changes in the Works

On to business. So I have made a few other minor changes to the engine these past few weeks (i.e., smooth scrolling WASD or arrow key map scrolling is one nice feature that will be incoming soon), and I have also been working on the base code needed for more substantial changes in the works (i.e., procedurally generated missions with actually interesting objectives and optional objectives!). However, as I've had time to reflect on the current gameplay loop I've started to think about some feedback I received this summer about the to-hit calculations being obscure and hard to predict. This has got me thinking that I might revise the to-hit calculations soon with something I'm calling the "pip" alternative. Here's a breakdown of what I'm thinking, feel free to chime in and let me know what you think.

To-Hit Calc Changes -- the Pip System

So currently mechs and weapons sometimes bestow dodge and to-hit bonuses (like +10% here or -10% there). This is fine and I do want to retain dodging and to-hit bonuses but keeping track of all these numbers in your head for your mechs is impossible and frankly, I don't know if even I know the to-hit chances of anything that's happening in the heat of battle. In come the pips. I'm thinking of scrapping the percentage approach and instead introducing a pip approach. The way it would work is piloting skills would give you a few dodge pips (like maybe a regular pilot gets 2 pips, veteran 3 pips, etc.) On top of that, if you are piloting a fast mech, when it is in motion you will get a few more pips. And if you are in cover (forest or smoke) you might get another pip. During combat then every mech would have a dodge-bar which shows how many pips worth of dodge you have. So that covers dodge pips, what about to-hit pips?

To-hit pips would be reflected by gunnery skills and weapon mods. So a regular gunnery skill might give you 2 to-hit pips, veteran would be 3 and so on. Lasers might have +1 pips whereas cannons -1 pips. And so it would still vary by weapon but generally mechs would have a base to-hit number of pips, plus any mods for a given weapon. OK dodge and base pips, now what?

When calculating a to-hit chance my thinking is we can just take the to-hit pips and subtract the dodge pips and go from there. So if the to-hit pips are equal to the dodge pips, then there's a 50% chance of the weapon in question hitting the target in question. If there are more to-hit pips than dodge, that percentage goes up and if there are fewer to-hit pips than dodge, the percentage goes down. I think this difference scale would range of +5 to -5, such that if you have 5 more to-hit pips than a targets dodge pips, you would have a 95% chance of hitting, and if you have -5 you would have a 20% chance of hitting (the scales are intentionally asymmetrical).

Switching to this pip system has a few obvious benefits I think. First it will allow me to show two pip bars in combat that should make it very visually clear to players which mechs are hard to hit and which mechs have good to-hit chances. Second, it rounds off percentages more cleanly than my current system, which uses some weird nonlinear math to scale things and so you can get super precise to-hit chances like 52%. I think the difference between 52% and 50% is negligible so rounding off all those decimals in a much more simplified but easier to read system is worth it. And third, I think it will make the impact of mods and dodging way more obvious and just easy to comprehend. Even if you don't know the precise percentage, if you see that you have 8 to-hit pips and the enemy has 4 dodge pips, you know your mech is going to have high odds of hitting.

Anywho that's my pitch, what do you think? As I say, the big things are still in the pipeline (adventure and expedition) and in the coming months I hope to have builds with those additions for you guy to try. In the meantime, you might see a pip test build come sooner rather than later as it's not as big change to make as it may sound but I hope, it might significantly enhance the gameplay and so I might bring it out soon for you guys to test.