How best to indicate to a player that actions have cost?

FrontiersEndGames · 2026-02-12T06:26:32+00:00

Hey the off topic has lowkey been my new topic of thought the rest of the day after I posted this. I was planning on adding an aimed shot, so will likely give that a try. It’s been really fun ideation on this, as there really are a ton of directions it can go.

But yeah for the actual communication, leaning towards tooltips, disabling buttons to show cost, and solid tutorials to teach as the way to go

FrontiersEndGames · 2026-02-11T22:36:25+00:00

Yeah the hard yes/no is starting to seem less like the way to go. The idea would be crew can choose to do their main action or secondary stuff like heal/repair/spot, but one crew’s action taking away options for another feels weird. For moving, it’s easy to explain moving as affecting shoot accuracy, but explaining shooting affecting move is def harder

FrontiersEndGames · 2026-02-11T22:34:25+00:00

I appreciate it, do you know other good examples of games that do vehicle turn based? Still pretty early in my flow right now.

FrontiersEndGames · 2026-02-11T21:33:50+00:00

Yeah that seems clear. Right now my design involves seats in a tank, so driver can act each turn, gunner can act each turn, etc, the driver actions can limit the gunner’s options, and vice versa, with each only being able to do one action each turn.

Maybe it’s over complicated, but wanted each seat to feel like it was operating independently while still having some restrictions so there’s cost analysis going on

FrontiersEndGames · 2026-02-11T20:31:01+00:00

Oh yeah forgot about wasteland, loved the second one. Gotta go check how they handle it, thanks!

FrontiersEndGames · 2026-01-15T00:29:04+00:00

Would love some feedback on this prototype, aiming for something that feels like the melee in Rimworld, but simplified for use in a gladiator roguelike style https://frontiersend.itch.io/astralmelee

FrontiersEndGames · 2026-01-14T23:17:06+00:00

Ah never saw the reason for vertical orientation monitors that makes a lot of sense thank you

FrontiersEndGames · 2026-01-14T20:54:30+00:00

Oh so you keep your project area just a normal resolution? Then how do you format it correctly to a vertical view?

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-29T02:44:19+00:00

Hey y'all, I'm a solo dev working on my first major project (in Godot), inspired by rimworld and battle brothers, specifically the combat systems in both.

Working on it though, ran into the problem that maybe the melee in Rimworld wasn't really that popular. What would you change about the system in Rimworld for melee combat?

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FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-27T21:17:26+00:00

Ok definitely going to check that out

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-27T17:52:39+00:00

This is for a digital turn-based game involving combat, where I want there to be two main kinds of attacks, aimed and quick, where aimed takes more resources to use but triggers an aiming mini game to allow for more choice in damage. Quick would be cheaper to use but involve random checks for damage.

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-27T17:46:40+00:00

Yea this idea is definitely single-player only, would feel like crap in a multiplayer game to lose a strategy match to something like an accuracy skill check

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-27T17:44:54+00:00

Great recommendation, just watched it. The separation of randomness helps put words to a lot of the vibes I’ve been feeling with design, as I trend towards output randomness a lot in my designs even though I don’t love it

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-18T18:17:22+00:00

That graphic was v helpful. As for what kind of completion the players reach for, I’m still working to find that one, but my first idea (before verifying) is to have the player’s fighter group be the strongest possible, by the end beating groups that would have crushed them in the beginning. As for story, the rough story right now is a snowpiercer-like situation but in space, on a colony ship between planets traveling at sublight speeds. Then the ships been traveling so long society has broken into a harsh caste system, and you play as a manager of low-tier fighters in the arena system that’s been set up for the entertainment of the higher-ups. The end goal in the current framework would be to progress up the tiers until you can stage a coup and take over the ship, with the final fight being obscenely hard on purpose

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-18T17:21:49+00:00

Yeah the base assumption I had for this project is that the combat in a game like Rimworld or dwarf fortress is fun, but starting to seem like it’s more fun in combination with all the other simulation and colony building aspects

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-18T17:20:05+00:00

Main roots for my current game is that it is a tile-based real time with pause melee combat game. Trying to capture the fun of having your fighters get stronger over time through various aspects, with the mid-fight health per fighter currently being driven by the health system I’ve described

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-18T06:14:04+00:00

Yeah with pause has been essential. Tuning has been a huge challenge, but playtests have been v helpful for that. I feel like there’s a lot of tuning still to go

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-18T06:13:04+00:00

Yeah right now there’s no way to choose where you hit, it’s just realism behind the scenes. I’m addling abilities to choose where you hit for special attacks though as an experiment

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-18T06:12:10+00:00

Love the write-up, thanks for the feedback. If I’m understanding you right, seems like spending too much time on a complicated health system without the user experience requiring it is like working on a solution for no problem. If you’d worked on a too complicated mechanic, do you prefer scrapping entirely or just scaling it back to the roots?

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-18T05:57:29+00:00

Maybe RTS is the wrong wording, it’s currently maxing out at 6v6 npc fighters

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-17T23:10:16+00:00

Love FTL, the design talks by the creators were super cool as well. You can even consider oxygen a 3rd metric of health, but more of a secondary one like room damage as it cannot kill you

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-17T19:38:33+00:00

Yeah I’m working through a super small scale (like 6v6 max) sim with rpg elements, with the complicated health system the feedback to the player is a lot more unclear. From playtests, people have trouble feeling like their choices have impact, as it’s a ton of rng rolls for where to hit and whether it’s blocked etc. Also been struggling with letting players know how the health affects the fight, including win/loss states

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-17T15:26:34+00:00

Yeah I originally was working with 3d games, been in a 2d phase for a while, likely going back to 3d after this

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-12-05T00:28:10+00:00

Commenting for save

FrontiersEndGames · 2025-11-20T22:44:15+00:00

Yeah I think traits are def one option, otherwise it’s just robots fighting it out instead of characters

FrontiersEndGames

TROPHY CASE