02 Logical Turn-Based Combat

An Introduction
Some of you may be familiar with the system of combat we use here, others of you may not. Therefore, I've decided to draft a relatively brief description of the system. Frankly, I could spend hours going on about the way TBL works in ideal situations; however, I'll avoid getting too complicated. For the most part, it's a fairly simple set of rules adaptable to the situation and setting you choose to play in. This specific guideline will be geared a bit toward our expectations on this forum within the Gundam Role-play setting.

The basic principle of TBL is in the name: logic. This is ultimately what makes the system adaptive. The idea behind combat is that your actions must be logical in the setting that you're playing in. You need to look at what people do and don't do in the series, and apply at least a little bit of real-life knowledge to it.

What's Important?
We're using mobile suits, which means a lot of things that would effect a human being are thrown out the window. However, a mobile suit isn't too far from a human in a lot of ways, and all of the situations you'll find your mech in can be attributed to a more realistic sense. Obviously things like momentum, power, timing, distance are still extremely important. This is particularly important to keep in mind. These details can make or break a battle.

Be reasonable. You run full speed at an opponent, you won't be able to just stop on a dime. You swing your sword, you likely create an opening somewhere. That place may be harder to defend than other places.

The more detailed you are, the less likely you are to end up in an argument. Keep in mind, it's possible that arguments will still happen. That's where moderators and admins will step in to help. Just keep things civil during the process.

Way too much going on in that post!
This has been something a little more visible lately here and it's extremely important that this be addressed in this write-up. Under a TBL system, you need to keep things simple. TBL functions slightly on the principle of post count (for example an attack might take two or three turns to prepare), but that can be thrown out the window if your character runs laps around the field, launches pillars of fire, has a sword fight with a random dude in the corner, and dances the night away all in the same post.

You need to cut down what you do. It's not that difficult. There's no simple "one action per post rule" because that isn't always a reasonable expectation. However, you need to minimize. For example, charging at your opponent, shooting your rifle to lead into a physical attack, and then doing the physical attack is fine. The important thing is that it's easy to understand— as much as possible anyway. Try to never drift far over three significant actions in a post, and only one of which should really be an attack. It doesn't hurt to wait until the next round to follow up! In fact, it'll usually work more in your favor.

Time does not simply run by the duration of posts (3 posts isn't necessarily always 3 minutes of action), it's all relative to what you do in each post. If you do a lot in one post, your opponent may be able to justify 5 minutes of action and interrupt you at any point over the course of what you do. This shouldn't be very difficult to understand, just use common sense in your posts. If your opponent is running ten miles to get to you, it's safe to say that you have a lot of room to work with and interrupt him\her.

Combat Rewinds
This issue is something that even incredibly competent players can run into problems with, so it's a pretty important detail to cover here. Anytime you take back an action in your post, you need to be extremely wary that in many situations, you can't.

Combat rewinds are not always against the rules. You just need to know when and where they're appropriate. To put extremely simply, is there something obvious your character sees that would tell him to change what he's doing? And is there enough time to change your action?

Just because you failed to account for something in your post doesn't mean you can backtrack. And you need to keep in mind that you can never ever take back certain things: most outstandingly, you can't take back hits you've taken. If you are punched in the face and you accept falling to the ground, you can't go back one round later and say "well, whoops, I didn't want to do that."

Hiding Things
Though it might be difficult, it is perfectly legitimate for you to try and sneak things in, to not make everything terribly obvious in your posts, but you need to keep in mind that this isn't a universally applicable card to play.

The rule of thumb is this: if you can justify your opponent not noticing it or seeing it, you can simply hint at what you did. YOU NEED SOME SORT OF WRITTEN HINT in your post for it to be taken seriously later. If the hint is really obvious, you'll have a greater degree of leisure in how easily it can be applied. If you're unsure, inform a moderator or judge via PM beforehand to tell them what you're doing. We don't want to see people pulling things out of their ass, but at the same time, we don't expect you to play with all cards out on the table all of the time.

That said, if the opponent can justify NOTICING something ahead of time (EVEN if the post comes after the fact, in a situation where they may have walked into the trap), they can backtrack out of the action. It may not be obvious to the player, but it would be obvious to the character. In situations like that, so long as it is done tactfully, rolling back a post or round may be permitted.

Assessing Damage Realistically
Because this is a universe where monstrous robots are the norm, we recognize that properly assessing damage done to the suit can become messy. That's why we developed a fairly simple health point system for the suits, but even then, some things might get misinterpreted. Despite the fact that mobile suits are massive machines, you have to realize that the weaponry you're dealing with is meant to take them out.

While a suit might be able to take a few stray bullets from a machine gun as it runs to cover, standing then and taking a full clip is going to do a considerable amount of damage. Even standard ammunition can deal a very serious amount of ammunition, regardless of their damage counter.

If a player empties an entire clip of 500 rounds into another mobile suit's arm, it's safe to say damaged suit won't be able to use its arm (regardless of their armor points). The damage was focused solely on a single appendage, and even though it was only 500, that's a considerable amount for most standard suits. While this will obviously differ with more powerful mechs, the principle is generally staple across the board.