SImultaneous planned movement sounds basically like what I’m trying to say.
The acting and moving being done simultaneously but seperately might work if the interface were set up right. Personally I’m trying to avoid in-combat movement altogether. The issue is that I’ve never encountered an artist willing to draw a character facing every different direction for movement, attacking, etc. I don’t blame them - that would be alot of work. I’m going to have some kind of combat screen instead.
“Turn-based + overwatch” gets my vote.
It used to work well in Warhammer 40k (2nd edition), and a large number of turn based strategy games have adopted it in various guises. (X-com series for instance)
Yesterday I found out that the source code of Jagged Alliance 2 has been released publicly a couple of years ago. So now I’m looking at almost 450k SLOC :o of C code. JA2 was not created with multiplayer in mind, so modding it is going to be hard. I haven’t done any real C projects in the past, so at least I’ll have an opportunity to hone up my C skills, if I only find enough time to dig into it (more discussion at The Bear’s Pit JA Community).
I still stick to turnbased, but on unit level. So not “yellow teams turn” move ALL your units, but just “yellow team tank 12 turn”. Most turnbased games let one side do all moves and then the other side makes all moves. I prefer that one unit takes its move and then the next unit of any side can make a move, whichever is next in the timeline.
In Final Fantasy X there is a simple timeline, you can see the next 10 or so units which will make their move. Where the current unit is placed on the timeline depends on how long its action takes. You can always see, which enemy moves next and when your next character will have the turn, but its far more interesting than giving orders to all chars and then watch how all enemy do their move.
Other Final Fantasy Titles use a time bar. This basically does the same. When the bar is full, the unit has the turn. You could make a system like this: each unit has a timebar with 100 time units. Whenever a unit makes an action, it costs time units. After the unit has made its action it has to wait until the timebar is full again. Lets say a simple attack costs 20 time units, while a powerful magic costs 50 time units. So after casting the magic the unit will have to wait some time until its next turn while another unit can make 2 simple attacks in that time befor the magic caster can act again.
Maybe you allow the player to take multiple actions, like attack enemy 1, attack enemy 2, cast healing spell. The unit would pay 2 * 20 for attack and maybe 30 for healing and will be 70 time units down. It does a lot of stuff but it will be actionless for quite a while after that. The player can always decide just to take few actions and the unit can act again soon or you do a lot of stuff but the unit wont be active for some time after that.
Hmm, I like this 
Either you can react often but only do few moves. And when you do only one action, you dont know what might change until the unit acts again. If you take many actions, all are executed in that moment and nothing will change, but the unit will not be able to react on the next moves of the enemy.
-JAW
I think for RPGs it’s more standard to have the individual turns than the team turns in turn-based games. Phase-based games use teams instead.
Spending time units sounds like it would be good for a game that’s primarily about strategy. It would work best with a small team though. With a large team you would have a bunch of soldiers standing there doing nothing with full action bars because you can’t click on them all in time (unless the game is paused between time units - which would be good for a really hardcore strategy game). If it were real-time, it would be different, but then the time units wouldn’t be apparent to the player anyways.
This topic has caused me to think more about the subject.
I think that the Septerra Core system would be good for games with small teams. With large teams, you would have the same problem as with the time unit system. You would have to keep clicking on the characters to start there turns. In Septerra Core, the game is paused while you’re choosing an action, but it would still be a nuisance to click on the characters all the time.
In the game I plan to make, there will be 6 characters under the player’s control. I think this is too many for the Septerra Core system. Instead, I think I should use a more traditional turn-based system where the units are put in order based upon their “sequence” ability (based on speed) and then given turns. Units with high sequence would be able to act more often than units with low sequence. There could be a bar at the bottom indicating the next characters that will move like in Heroes of Might and Magic 5 (and Final Fantasy X, as mentioned by JAW).
Instead of having some kind of action points to expend, actions can take a specific amount of time. Some actions, such as attacking or using an item would be instantaneous. Casting a spell would take some amount of time, depending upon how powerful the spell is. If an enemy moves before the spell is cast, the enemy could attack the caster and possibly disrupt the spell. This happens in Neverwinter Nights. The completion of the spell could be included in the bar at the bottom along with which characters will move next.
This would bring about the problem of having the spell get cast on a dead target, but this can be mitigated by having the caster choose the target when the spell is cast, not when the spell is chosen.
I had a discussion in another forum which brings me to the topic of AI. The larger the number of units to control, the less control we can have over a single unit. It would just take too long to give detailed orders to 50 or more units. Especially when it comes to realtime execution. More units lead to a more strategic approach, commands are rather abstract, the individual unit must implement details itself.
Anyone knows Company of Heroes? You control squads of up to 6 soldiers. You only give orders to squads. Each soldier in a squad acts on its own, each soldier goes for cover, choses targets, etc. You can pause the game and give orders, but it basically is a realtime, action based combat. Strategy or tactic is reduced to find best cover, flanking maneuvers and using different units.
So with many units you can either have senseless mass battles where the mere number decides or you need some decent AI to control each unit in detail. I could really enjoy controlling groups of units, when they have intelligence of their own. As an example for a WW2 game: Infantry should stay with tanks, tanks should retreat when facing enemy tanks that they cannot beat (some tanks cannot penetrate the front armor of others), tanks or infantry could try to get on the side or rear of enemy tanks, infantry should avoid the field of fire of enemy mgs, etc.
I think many controllable units and round based dont go together well. Even with increasing complexity of the game, the individual unit requires more time and attention. Round based with many units is Battle Isle or Panzer General. Controlling options are pretty limited, basically move and attack. Terrain does matter but comes in only a few different categories.
The more detail you have, like in XCOM or Jagged Allience, the less units you can efficently control.
The point with realtime anywhere is the lack of control you have. The player can only perform limited action in a certain time, and you only have limited time to analyse the situation and react. So tactic either requires round based action to give you enough time, or good AI in the units to perform good on their own.
On the other hand, round based execution seems unrealistic and abstract, because actions happen in an artificial sequence, what actually would happen all at once. Games take different approaches to find a balance between this. Personally I would really enjoy a good AI to support a fast paced but still tactical game.
-JAW
Real-time games are certainly more realistic, but there’s less strategy involved. There’s no way you can make strategic decisions in real time - as soon as you stop to think, half your units are dead.
But large numbers of units are more conducive to real time than turn-based combat because it would take forever to tell each unit what to do.
Commanding entire squads is a possibility. Rules like those you mentioned for a WW2 game would be required, but it’s hard to put together rules that would seem smart in all cases.