''Action Points'' Battle System - is it a good idea?

Hi everyone,

My game is going to be mainly a single player party game and I was thinking of ways to make combat more interesting, as having only one option every turn is pretty boring.

 I've come up with this idea of ''action points'' and I was hoping for some feedback.

The player will have an action points pool (I will use MP for that) and every turn will gain some action points, it will be based on the player's rank (no levels either - I know, this game's going to be pretty weird). All skills will cost X action points with some skills cheap enough to cast every turn and some skills so expensive that it will take multiple turns to get enough points to use it.

The twist is that almost every skill will be instant (http://yanflychannel.wordpress.com/rmvxa/battle-scripts/instant-cast/ ) meaning that using it will not cost a turn. This means that you can use skills + attack/guard/use item every turn. Enemies will outnumber you, but rarely any of them will have any instant skills.

Theoretically it sounds pretty good to me, as it lets you develop different strategies on one character - a character that continuously guards until he has enough points for a combo, a character that spams tons of skills every turn before the enemies can gain the upper hand or a character that uses ''generator'' skills which provide you with extra energy and then unleashes amazing skills.

I guess that I should also tell you how the main character will work to give you some more background. You will be ''classless'' meaning that you can use every item and every skill as long as you meet the requirements - have enough points in a stat.There are no levels / random enemies so there is no grind or experience. Instead you gain items known as ''Gatestones'' and one Gatestone = 1 pernament point in whichever stat you prefer - defense, willpower (MAT), charm (LUK) etc. Those stats will also be useful outside combat, depending on how useful they are during combat. Charm will not affect many things in combat, but will be necessary to solve conflicts peacefully and make other characters do what you want, etc. 

What do you think? 

Hmmm.  Yanfly supports an "FTB" battle type which sounds like basically what you describe.  Would I like it as a player?  Personally, no, but I am rather traditional when it comes to RPG combat. 

If I wanted to mix combat up, I might use the ATB battle type instead (too bad Yanfly doesn't have one), since they tend to make AGI far more important, and emphasize quick decision making in combat. 

From how I understand it, ATB has each player and enemy with an "Action Bar."  When the Bar fills up, they can queue up an action.  Then, the action itself may take some amount of time to execute (spells usually) as shown by the bar.  When the bar fills up a second time, the action executes.  This was used in FFIV.  An early boss battle required strategic waiting before attacking, basically waiting for a special defense state on the boss to drop.

Umm, I'm not sure if you misunderstood me, but FTB is nothing like that  :unsure:

In Yanfly's system it basically means that every actor performs one action, but the action is instant so the next actor can see the results straight away. 

In my system the one actor that the player controls will have multiple actions every turn, depending on how many action points the player decides to use.

Ive considered ATB, but I'm mainly a strategy player and I find the timer somewhat stressful, always trying to finish my turn as fast as possible to max the next timer was quite annoying for me. That said, I think that it would be great for a more action based game - this is more of strategy one though when it comes to combat, as the enemies are pretty tough and without planning the player will probably die. I hope I won't make it too hard... I have a tentency of making my games just that  >_>

Aaah.  That makes more sense.  It definitely wouldn't be my thing, but I wouldn't be your intended audience anyways, since I've never really wanted to play RPGs which had strategy-based combat.  My mind doesn't really work well at strategy, whether it's chess or RPG combat, so I don't enjoy playing games like that.

(As an excuse to promote my scripts)It seems to me that Yanfly's Skill Cost Manager along with Yami's CATB and my fixes and addons to the CATB can do what you want. If so, you may want to use them to test your idea and/or use them as a reference of your idea:

Ace Battle Engine

http://yanflychannel.wordpress.com/rmvxa/battle-scripts/ace-battle-engine/

Skill Cost Manager

http://yanflychannel.wordpress.com/rmvxa/gameplay-scripts/skill-cost-manager/

YSA Battle System - Classical ATB

http://www.rpgmakervxace.net/topic/865-ysa-battle-system-classical-atb/

DoubleX RMVXA Bug Fixes to YSA Battle System: Classical ATB

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/22142-doublex-rmvxa-bug-fixes-to-ysa-battle-system-classical-atb/

DoubleX RMVXA Action Addon to YSA Battle System: Classical ATB

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/29285-doublex-rmvxa-action-addon-to-ysa-battle-system-classical-atb/

DoubleX RMVXA ATB Addon to YSA Battle System: Classical ATB

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/29505-doublex-rmvxa-atb-addon-to-ysa-battle-system-classical-atb/

DoubleX RMVXA Percentage Addon to YSA Battle System: Classical ATB

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/29253-doublex-rmvxa-percentage-addon-to-ysa-battle-system-classical-atb/