RPG Theory: Item Behavior

[DigiTan]

My present RPG project is nearing the beta stage. Before I can proceed any further, I need to decide on how the item system will affect the players' stats. This problem's been bugging me for a while, so I want to get everyone's advice before I go any further. But before I get started, let me describe how the current battle system in this RPG works:

- The battlefield has 8 spaces
- Each player starts with maximum of 4 robots
- Normal items affect one space
- Combo items can enhance an item's effect in one of three ways:
- +Multiply: Doubles the strenght of an item
- +Divide: Lowers the effect of the item, but spreads it across 3 spaces
- +Negate: Reverses the effect of an item, and targets the enemy
- Combo items can't be used alone
- Items are also usable outside of battle


PERCENTAGE BASED SYSTEM

This is what the present system is using. Under this scheme, the Solder Kit item --for example-- raises your HP by 25% while the Weld Kit item raises it by 50%. Additionally, you can use the item, +Multiply to boost these percentages to 50% and 100% respectively.

Advantages:
Obviously, the major advantage here is ability to have items behave the same way all throughout the game--regaurdless of your robot's level of HP.

Disadvantage:
In order to use this system I'll have to write longer code routines. There's no "divide" or "multiply" instruction in Z80-type ASM, so working with percentages is typically avoided. Personally, I think this method is too oversized for what it does right now. Percentage-based items will require an extra ~150-200 bytes of code. Minimum.


CONSTANT BASED SYSTEM

To use the flat rate system, I could set item 'strengths' to fixed values of +/- 32,000; so Solder Kit would give you +50 HP while Weld Kit would give you +100. Naturally, the +Multiply item would double the points.

Advantages:
The big advantage here is efficiency. Doubling or dividing the item's effect is very easy because of the shift instructions. Negate is just as easy, thanks to the "neg" and "cpl" commands.

Disadvantage:
The disadvantage here is what I call "Item Fatigue", where items become less and less significant as your robot/character gains levels of HP. In this game, most robots will have 400+ HP near the end, so my little "+50 HP" items would be near useless by then. The only solution would be to include "+200", "+300", "+400" items and so on...which wastes memory. The Combo items help diminish this problem, but not completely.


So what should it be?

[Jedd]

By constants. But I have some other suggestions. Here's why I think you should:

-Less programming for you
-Smaller program (not much, but still)
-Easier for the user to figure out how the use of an item will effect his robot
-The game becomes more difficult as the robot's HP rises further in the game. Not just because it does less, but because you have to take more turns to get your robot to full health.

My suggestions:
-Make it easier to gain more money as the game goes on, so you can buy enough health items as you need for your robot, but they are too expensive in the beginning
-Make really cheap HP items that do less so the player can use them in the beginning of the game, but also have more expensive HP items for use toward the end of the game.