Castle Paradox

[TwinHamster]

There's always been an appeal for me to include a Bow-User into the party of my games, but I could never really make sense of it, gameplay-wise.
How would such a unit be any different from a fast-swordsman or a rogue with nice skills?

Even in FFV, the bows that Rangers used weren't too different from the game's melee weapons besides their back-row benefits(?) and moderately high attack powers.

However, thanks to the recent favored target choice in the attack menu, I suppose it's possible to set attack-target preferences, but it's limited to "closest" and "farthest".

With this method, you play around so that the default attacks are forced to automatically target a foe, so that Melee attacks would go for the "closest" enemy, Ranged attacks could go for the "farthest" enemy, and then skills would have the ability to target any of the foes.
This would also benefit a game so that it could prevent space-bar mashing (to some extent).

This ends up being pretty tedious and, personally, I wouldn't really want my default attacks to have auto-target attached to them.

So, any thoughts on improvising or creating the illusion of range in the default OHRRPGCE battle system?

[Meatballsub]

You could make Close and Melee Ranged enemy types.

Melee hero attacks would be weaker to ranged enemies, and vice versa with Ranged heros (or maybe ranged cannot attack close up at all? Maybe there "isn't enough time to get a shot off", or perhaps their accuracy or attack power is reduced against close ranged enemies.

That is kind of how I see it anyways. Don't know if this will help or not.
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MOCBJ Software - My Games
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[TwinHamster]

[Newbie_Power]

I was about to suggest the same (I already attempted to do so in a very early game of mine).

I know FFX made Wakka better equipped to fight flying enemies, while other characters (besides magic) had lower accuracy against flying creatures. I'm not sure if this was due to Wakka having good Acc, or because of the weapon type, though, but it worked very well and made sense. Unfortunately, you can't adjust accuracy based on type, so it'll probably have to be damage based or tricky calculations of accuracy and evasion.
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

[Moogle1]

It was because of Accuracy. I liked FFX's early-game balance a lot. There was a good amount of emphasis on character specialization.

You can sort of adjust accuracy based on type:
A. Melee attacks use Acc~Dog and ranged attacks use Mag~Will
B. Ranged attacks use Acc~Dog and melee has 100% hit but fails against ranged.

If you were to do it like FFX, then:
C. Both use Acc~Dog, but either...
C1. ...ranged attackers have much higher Acc...
C2. ...or melee attacks use Aim:Poor.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Shadowiii]

This is barely a contribution, but didn't Time Flies use something like this?
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But enough talk, have at you!

[TwinHamster]

Oh wow, I completely forgot that there are "Cannot target enemy slot" bitsets.
This will make things so much easier.

[J.A.R.S.]

I have asserted this issue in the past on a creative basis and I realized that the only logical aspect of a ranged unit that could be retain to strategically enhance a rpg fight was to give the ranged unit initiative as the fight starts out. Basically, you just know you get to fire an arrow before the swordman comes on you, and if the arrow is not enough, you can expect a lot of suffering to be involved as the badass comes out on you, so, indeed, my ranged unit had dramatically low defenses. There was also this other side of the system which implied that ranged units on your end could not be attacked for as long as they had a melee unit to cover them (whose initiative was very low to start with, hence used as tankers against enemy melee).

[Newbie_Power]

I have a sort of concept of ranged attacks in one of my games, but I don't actually have ranged weapons, but it works all the same if you pretend the weapons that do use it are ranged.

Melee attacks can only attack the closest enemies, ranged attacks can target whatever they please, and Magic the same way, except that Magic also has the ability to do other things such as multi-target, etc, making some Magic have an advantage over both.

This works by using the "preferred target" settings and setting the "automatically choose target" bitset on. Of course, in a custom engine, you could pull this off a lot better and with more flexibility, such as allowing choice between any of the closet enemies, but not the enemies in the back, while ranged weapons have more freedom, but have a higher chance of missing against closer enemies, etc...
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

[Robot]

Something else to consider, what if wielding a bow or gun gave your character a +defense as well, to symbolize the ranged attacker being in the "back row"

Or, have "ranged" be an element type and have some enemies weak to it (like birds), as was previously stated. The downside here is that you loose an element, which is a shame.
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8bitcity.blogspot.com

[Rya.Reisender]

Most ideas I had already got mentioned here.

I wanna point out how differently games approach the 'bow' characteristics. In half of the RPGs with Bows, they are like "Really good accuracy, but less damage" and in the other half of the RPGs with Bows it's the complete opposite "Rarely hit, but if they do they deal a lot damage". It's interesting how these approaches are so totally different.

I also want to point out games like Romancing Sa-Ga. There the different weapon types get their own elements "Slash", "Pierce" and "Hit" which are useful against certain races and bad against other races (for example "Slash" is good vs. slimes, "Pierce" is average and "Hit" fails on slimes). Swords and Axes are "Slash". Bows, Spears and Rapiers are "Pierce" and the rest is "Hit".
In fact you don't even need to waste an element here, you just need to make the attack strong / fail against certain races.

You could just make a race "flying" and then give bonus damage to "flying" for the bow attack.

I also want to mention Shining Force. It uses spears, bows and guns in an interesting way. With normale melee weapon you can always only attack an enemy right next to you. With normal bows you can only attack enemies that are two tiles away from you. With spears however, you can attack both enemies next to you and enemies two tiles away from you. Then there are more upper-class buys and artillery weapon that either can attack 2-3 tiles away or only 3 tiles away. This could be realized with using battle slots as mentioned before.

A bit off topic, but I strongly suggest people to sort their monster in the battle formation from front to back. I always hate it when they are all randomly placed...
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

[TwinHamster]

[Rya.Reisender]

The problem I have with a random slot order is that the first target will not always be front. If I keep confirming I expect my people to attack the monster that is most to the front like in any Final Fantasy game and not some monster at the back or in the middle.
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

[Newbie_Power]

[Bob the Hamster]

See 'Plan for battle formation improvements'

I hope to add some properties to formation slots which are independent of the enemy in that slot, so that you will be able to do things like making a front row which gets attack bonuses and defense nerfs, or a back row that can only be targeted by certain attacks.