[Starlight] Passive Skills (Patreon)

this wasn't actually as bad as i thought it would be
like really it's been what, five days since the unit summary?
-checks-
oh, that was eight days ago.
...right because i got sick again. ugh.
ok, well, if we don't count the days when i was sick, it's been like five days. and in reality, only the last two and a half days have been me actually doing anything, the other three days were basically me sitting there thinking about what to do. or how to do it. whatever, details.

anyway, we're in good shape. honestly? not as much of a disaster as fixing the structural mistake i mentioned before.

so if you've ever cracked open reborn or essentials and taken a look at the code, you may have noticed that the checks for ability usage are kind of all over the place. this was, as one of our former scripters remarked upon first joining the team, approximately the worst possible way to handle these.

not that i was responsible for making it, but i have learned from that mistake. 

that means that wherever they need to be used in the code, all of our skills are handled in exactly one section. and if we're ever having trouble pin pointing the cause of a bug, we can just tell them all to take a nap and leave the code to the real experts until we want them in again.

i know that probably doesn't mean much to most of you but i'm happy about this new thing where code is actually organized, ok? i'm happy.

now let's talk about things that actually matter. i had intended to just implement one or two abilities to make sure the framework was set, but i accidentally implemented six instead. we can talk about them.

first we'll start with the archetype skills. when i'm talking about archetypes, these are groups that the classes in starlight are divided into. that means that every unit in the game should have one of these four skills. the in-game terminology for them varies based on whether the unit is from heaven or hell so let's go over them case by case.

as ever, anything here is subject to change.

Impulse is the first ability on our list. This one belongs to the archetype of Dancers from Heaven, and Vagabonds from Hell, both of which roughly correlate to the generic physical fighter role. 

As for the ability itself, you already know counter attacks from Fire Emblem. But here, under normal circumstances, we're limiting that to only being able to counter attack when the attacked unit is facing forward-- or has this ability. Back-attacking will pretty much always be safe. 

Next up, Authority is the staple of Clergy and Military archetypes. Those two together are basically the tank classes. Ideal for punishing attackers, parries are the things I've demonstrated as snapping back for a single counter hit when you hit the dark red zone in combat. Don't hit the dark red zone in combat. 

For Adepts and Consorts, collectively making up the mage archetypes, Exaltation is the basic source of MP regen they have to work with. The value of 3 there is super arbitrary and place-holdy; it'll be changed as appropriate and once I have a better sense of the scale of stats.

Finally, Audacity is the rogue-equivalent archetype skill, being for the groups Anathema in Heaven, and Scavengers in Hell. Star falls under the Anathema group, so she'll have this one, at least to start.

One of the side effects of randomly deciding to implement these abilities is that they forced me to finally make the facings do what they were meant to. You can see that a bit here. 

Attacking from the side, she's got two stars on hit rate and 5 to damage. If the damage looks higher than usual, that's because Cores actually work as equippable weapons now. She'll also get countered  because that enemy has Impulse.

But from the back,

No counter, Audacity boosts the damage, and the inherent evasion modifier from back-attacking ups her hit-rate too. Attacking the front instead results in a hit rate penalty, naturally.

Then there are the personal skills.

This one belongs to Star. Critical HP results in a huge dodge boost. Numbers again subject to tweak. This is really simple, but I'm hoping that having this on one of the main characters allows her to pull off some bold, dumbass plays. If it doesn't feel great to use when you're in the danger zone, I'm not afraid to buff this considerably.

Karus is here to back her up.

With Karus' help, you, too, can slap back like a tank even if you aren't one. For players, parries basically look like crits, but during the defensive phase. Hit the shiny blocks! Then shoot the asshole.

As far as I can tell, this is all working pretty squarely.
But then, how far can we really ever tell...

That's it for Skills! Considering I did five of these today alone, granted most of them aren't too complex, I think these will be fairly practical to keep implementing. And given that they are good for making me clean up the parts of the code that they affect, I might give implementing the rest of them a higher priority soon.

For now, there is one (1!!!) more major implementation left on our roadmap. The last man standing is handling win conditions and objectives. That's also gonna entail making an in-battle menu, but... whatever. We can deal with that. 

Until next time!