This is the second post regarding the overhaul of how battles in Innocence Seekers work. My first post elaborated on the stats, as well as equipment, and this post will focus on the very things needed to actually deal damage.
Originally, I had all spells and techniques given a numerical value, typically in multiples of 50, representing the skill’s “power”. For example, the lowest tier elemental spells had a power of 200, the weakest weapon techniques had a power of 150, and the Attack command had a power of 100. I’ve decided to overhaul this system, as I never used anything other than a multiple of 50, and instead give power as a letter rank, beginning all the way from G-. With this new system, first tier spells have a power of F-, the weakest weapon techniques G+, and the Attack command G. Each increase in power rank represents an increase in 50 in the old system. Hence:
- G: 100
- F: 250
- E: 400
- D: 550
- C: 700
- B: 850
- A: 1000
- AA: 1150
- AAA: 1300
- S: 1450
- SS: 1600
- SSS: 1750
Secret Skills and Full Burst Skills use a different rank system, to reflect their higher power:
- F: 2500
- E: 3000
- D: 3500
- C: 4000
- B: 4500
- A: 5000
- AA: 5500
- AAA: 6000
- S: 6500
- SS: 7000
- SSS: 7500
These ranks do not have plus and minus modifiers.
With this change, I’ve had to make changes to the damage formula. I hadn’t fully defined the damage formula before, but here is the new damage formula:
- BaseDamage = 2 × ATK × (1 – ElemResist) × CritFactor × GeoEffect × ATKMult × ATKVar – DEF × DEFMult × DEFVar
- FinalDamage = BaseDamage × Power × SkillBonus × Variance × CritBonus × DamageBonus ÷ 2
- ATK refers to the raw attack stat of the attacker. If there are two attack stats, then ATK is simply the arithmetic mean of the two stats.
- ElemResist is the elemental resistance of the target. It can never exceed 1, but it can be negative. If ElemResist is 1, then all calculations are skipped and the final damage is zero.
- CritFactor is 1.5 if the attack is a critical hit, 0.75 if the attack is a nick, and 1 otherwise.
- GeoEffect is the cumulative panel effect on both the attacker and the target. This can be as high as 2.15, or as low as zero.
- ATKMult is the cumulative effect of all ATK multipliers.
- DEF is the raw defence stat of the target, which is DEF for physical attacks and RES for magic. Holy-elemental spells set this variable to zero.
- DEFMult is the cumulative effect of all DEF multipliers.
- ATKVar and DEFVar are random factors that each range from 1 to 1.05.
- Note that BaseDamage is calculated twice. In the first calculation ElemResist is forced to zero and GeoEffect to 1, while the second calculatiom uses the normal values for these variables. If the second calculation gives a result of zero or negative all further calculations are skipped and the final damage is either zero or one depending on the result of the first calculation (a positive value makes the final damage one).
- Power refers to the power of the spell or technique (G- = 1, G = 2, F = 5).
- SkillBonus is the effect of upgrades to a skill’s power This ranges from 1 to 5.5.
- Variance is a random factor that ranges from 0.95 to 1.15.
- CritBonus is 0.5 for a nick, 1.5 for a critical hit, and 1 otherwise.
- DamageBonus is the cumulative effect of all damage bonuses. Note that damage bonuses are additive (i.e. +20% and +20% make +40%, not +44%).
To elaborate on the formula itself, the attacking stats have twice the weight of the defending stats, as I expect them to have similar values. Elemental resistances and panel effects are taken into account before defence, while the power of a skill is taken into account after defence. This version of the formula makes the Attack command deal around twice the attacker’s ATK in damage, not including the target’s DEF.
Holy-elemental spells are not light-elemental attacks. Instead, they are the gameplay implementation of abilities that utilise Innocence, and as such only affect specific enemies. Only witches, demons and undead are affected by holy-elemental spells, with ordinary witches having no resistance or weakness, witches by blood having 50 per cent resistance, and demons and undead having 100 per cent weakness. Also, unlike most spells, they use RES as their attacking stat.
The damage cap will be 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (just one shy of 264). Any hit that deals this much damage will show as “18446P” (or 1844京 in the Japanese version). Calculating such high values will require higher-precision data types than the ones typically available in C++ compilers, specifically, a quadruple-precision floating-point type. While some compilers (such as GCC) do support such types, others (such as Microsoft Visual C++) do not. Fortunately, there are libraries I can use that implement such a type.
Of course, I don’t expect anyone to reach the cap. From my calculations, one may be able to deal as much as 340 quadrillion damage with one attack, given max ATK, one DEF, 100 per cent elemental weakness, a critical hit, completely favourable Rainbow Grid panel effects (both colour and element synergise such that the attacker’s ATK is increased to 215 per cent), an additional +500% ATK effect (either from abilities or panel effects), a SSS-rank Full Burst Skill upgraded to the tenth power level, and an additional +500% damage effect (either from abilities or panel effects). And even then, I’m unsure if these will be the absolute highest values each variable can be. With all that, the damage range is 272,980,124,999,723,316 to 346,972,106,249,648,758. This does not even include combo bonuses, which cap at x3.0 and boost the damage right up to between 818,940,374,999,169,949 to 1,040,916,318,748,946,275 (that’s right, that is one quintillion damage).
The above damage range far exceeds the highest damage I would expect in normal gameplay. There will be three trophies for dealing a certain amount of damage. The “Damage Student” trophy will be awarded for forcing the game to use shorthand (i.e. deal at least 100,000 damage), and I expect this trophy to be earned late in the main story. The “Mega Damage” trophy will be awarded for dealing 100 million damage, while the “None of Us Could Survive That!” trophy will be awarded for dealing 100 trillion damage (i.e. one above the player’s HP cap). I may have superbosses with quintillions of HP.
I’ve also overhauled the spell system itself. While the original spells such as Flame Bullet and Ice Needle will remain in the setting, they will be exclusive to cutscenes and non-video game settings. Instead, in gameplay, the spells will have more generic names, with the exception of the ultimate elemental spells (which will retain their unique names, being Secret Skills themselves). In the traditional Rainbow Grid battle system, I’ll keep Healing Circle and Healing Field separate (but rename them), but in the tactical version, I’ll collapse both spells into a single “Heal” spell. While the original spell system included four tiers, the new spell system will include six tiers and name each spell differently.
The six elemental spells will be named identically to their corresponding elements, as follows:
- Fire
- Water
- Ice
- Earth
- Wind
- Thunder
There is also the ether-elemental Burst spell, which has higher MP cost.
The six tiers prefix the spell name with a specific word, depending on the tier. The first tier does not have a prefix.
- Tier 1: no prefix (Power: F-, “Heal”: G)
- Tier 2: “High” (Power: E, “High Heal”: F-)
- Tier 3: “Mega” (Power: D+, “Mega Heal”: F+)
- Tier 4: “Giga” (Power: B+, “Giga Heal”: E+)
- Tier 5: “Tera” (Power: AA+, “Tera Heal”: D+)
- Tier 6: “Omega” (Power: SS, “Omega Heal”: B-)
The healing spells have half the power of the attacking spells, as they are not affected by the target’s RES unlike the attacking spells. I’ve also abandoned the idea that the healing spells heal an additional fixed amount of HP. The Revive spell works similarly, but only revives a single target, and has higher MP cost than Heal (despite this, I’ve retained Revive EX, which fully restores HP and is capable of curing mana starvation, but it will be implemented as a Secret Skill).
Finally, there is the “Omni-” prefix in the traditional battle system, used to indicate that the spell targets all allies or all enemies. The tactical battle system instead ties area of effect with skill level (note that this is separate from any upgrades in power; skill level only increases the range and possible area of effect for magic, and decreases MP cost for all skills).
Weapon techniques are something I’ve yet to give much thought. While above I mentioned that the weakest weapon techniques will have a power rank of G+, I haven’t really thought about much beyond that. While each weapon type (except staves) will have seven normal techniques and two Secret Skills (one being a single-target attack, the other being a multi-target/3×3 attack), I haven’t determined most of the details concerning these techniques.
Lastly, individual characters and classes will have their own unique spells and/or techniques, including Secret Skills and Full Burst Skills. The attacking stats of character/class-specific techniques actually depend on the weapon equipped, and default to ATK if no weapon is equipped (spells, on the other hand, always run off INT). I won’t elaborate any further here.
While I was looking at things to consider overhauling, the effects of Full Burst mode came to mind. The original concept multiplied damage by four and reduced damage to 40 per cent. Admittedly, this was conceived during a time when I envisioned an asymmetry between the HP and damage output of players and enemies. The overhaul will, instead of increasing damage, increase the chance of a critical hit to 100 per cent of clean hits (nicks and misses will not, under any circumstances, result in a critical hit), provided that the target is not defending and does not have an ability that nullifies critical hits, and damage taken will be reduced to 75 per cent instead of 40 per cent. While enemies do not normally critical (otherwise the games will be too hard and frustrating), if you see an enemy enter Full Burst mode, my suggestion is to run away and defend (and I can assure you, the Defend command is useful; not only does it halve all incoming damage, it also protects from status effects and critical hits, and nullifies elemental weaknesses).
With the overhaul in MP, I needed to make some changes here. Instead of losing one MP every turn in Full Burst mode, the amount lost is 20 per cent. The cost of normal skills is capped at ten percent of the unit’s maximum MP, while Secret Skills and Full Burst Skills may use more MP. The Full Burst Gauge will completely empty upon entering Full Burst mode, but it will still fill up while in Full Burst mode. This is important as once Full Burst mode ends (when MP reaches zero; note that in Full Burst mode, MP has a minimum cap of zero, hence even if a skill requires more MP than what is available, the skill can still be used without risk of mana starvation), the gauge itself restores MP before itself emptying again. As such, filling the Full Burst Gauge while in Full Burst mode is an important way of avoiding mana starvation from the use of Full Burst mode. I should warn you, though, that bosses that use Full Burst mode often have MP regeneration abilities and/or effects, which normally do not have any effect while the boss is in Full Burst mode (only an Elixir can restore MP in Full Burst mode), but prevent the boss from being left with zero MP when Full Burst mode ends.
Anyway, that will be it for now. My next post will focus on character classes and weapon proficiencies.