Managing combat rounds: Ticks

[buddyCasino]

I hardly ever flew before I discovered that you can avoid nearly all the enemy attacks once your fight speed and evasion skills are strong enough. In combination with the quickstrike dagger that is a totally overpowered tactic.

My proposals would reduce the predictability of fights and increase complexity of build decisions.

Edit: I think Evasion should still increase your chances to flee. This may become even more important when a large mob attacks you regarding the upcoming changes in mob movement.

[Usirim]

+1

combine the tick idea (e.g. 30 ticks for attack, 10 ticks for fleeing, ...) with some random initiative number within combat (lets say -0.5×ap to +3×ap). Then combat gets some new tactical component and became more unpredictable.
Who ever starts the combat has to spend - lets say - 25 ticks until he/she/it can do the first strike. This would make quick enemies more dangerous than the slow ones (at beginning of combat). Varying this number changes combat start a bit.
Giving items different tick delays opens the possibility for a wider spectrum or quality of items (like different shades of lesser shadows - lol).
Same for inflicted conditions...
There is even more room for more ideas.
Imho this could add more diversity to the gameplay.

[Xero]

Yeah it has some great potential.. With weapons armors skills and stats effecting ticks.
I would be exited to see some actual combat moves

[Tomcat]

I can think of a much simpler way to mix attacks back and forth during a combat round.

Let's say you have 12AP, and an attack AP cost of 3. The mob has 10 AP and an attack AP cost of 4.

The combat round is divided accordingly into fractions, like this:

You get attacks at 1/4 (i.e. 3/12), 1/2, 3/4 and at the end of the turn.
The mob gets attacks at 4/10 and 8/10. Therefore the sequence of swings goes:

You (0.25)
Mob (0.40)
You (0.50)
You (0.75)
Mob (0.80)
You (1.00)

If there is a tie, the attacker goes first. To make attacking first more of an advantage, and therefore keep more of the advantage of Evasion, you could move the attacker's swings to the beginning of each fraction:

You (0.00)
You (0.25)
Mob (0.40)
You (0.50)
You (0.75)
Mob (0.80)

switching to fleeing attempts, equipment change, or potion use simply takes a different fraction of the round when checking if the mob gets in a swing or two before it's your shot again.

[SlipEternal]

The above suggestion is fine for a single round. Modular arithmetic is just as simple when you consider multiple rounds. And, modular arithmetic has the added advantage of only dealing with integers, which are a lot easier to work with (since there are no rounding errors).