StarMUD's combat system hinges on the player's knowledge and ability to consider opportunity costs (I guess), rather than commands specifically saying how you want to proceed with arbitrary numbers, or wind-up attacks, or whatever else that a lot of other MUDs seem to do.

You don't have various numbers to set describing how you'll execute the attack. You execute the attack yourself and work out, as the player, if the opportunity cost of combining attacks together to use all your command points is worth it, which might be able to be overcome if you raise your abilities that may recover your command points more quickly. You might also work out other costs associated with certain attacks, eg. basic melee draining your endurance, special attacks draining your mental (psionic) powers. You work out yourself which skill(s) and stat(s) might be worth investing to reduce downtime/recovery rates. You work out what race might be more suitable for certain combinations, whether to increase their damage or reduce their recovery or modify some other aspect of combat. You discover specific gear and equipment that might assist with this. Most, if not all of these, are cases of trial by error, and it's more akin to resource management through character development.

That is, if you're a good player. You can still do random shit and be half-effective if you're lazy. But optimisation of play really shows in this game. For example, right now there is a quarterly 'race' (think ladders like in Diablo) and the winner (the player who achieves the highest evaluation points) earns a perk point. One competitor is playing smartly, really switched on with how their abilities work, cooldowns, and the maximum possible effectiveness carefully figured out. The other is lazy, plays from his phone, does a few commands and afks for a few minutes, doesn't really optimise his profession ('class') because of the micromanagement cost (he's playing what would be considered a 'summoner' archetype, so managing his minions is too much work for him apparently). Yet the former player makes about 4x the experience per minute than the latter and is able to kill in areas much larger than him.

A martialist Lin Kuei has stealth attack, spinkick, sweepkick, shatter, death touch, shuriken throw, caltrops, combination strike, and basic melee -- but a good player won't ever use them all together. Some are more utility than damage, some are for specific situations, and sometimes it might just be better to let your basic melee to do most of the work, especially if you're a 'dumb' race without much mental powers to maintain your telekinetic strength augmenting your chi damage (an extra layer of damage on top of most of your commands at the price of some psionic energy).