Thanks for the replies everyone, I'm really glad to hear all of your thoughts! Before seeing any replies I was assuming that everyone would be asking for more action oriented combat, and I'm pleasantly surprised by the responses. I prototyped the Notrium combat style, and the melee really is the part where it fails. It should be slow enough for me to understand what's happening, but if I make it slow enough, the rest of the game starts feeling too slow. And I couldn't get over the fact that the keyboard movement controls are not suited to indoors, especially if any corridors are not perfectly angled.

I really did think a lot about having a good old turn based Fallout 1/2 combat system, but it's probably not the kind of gameplay I'm looking for. I'm hoping for a more fluid gameplay where the combats are something that don't stop you unless you want it to. I remember disliking easier opponents in Fallout precisely because it would take that halfa minute to move your character and get that single shot.

I'm inclined to move from the current system to strategic level fighting. I liked your thoughts ZeXLR8er, so I started off from there. My current thinking is something like this:

• During the game you could learn many combat skills. These would be different kinds of attacks, stat boosts, stuns, maybe defence skills, you name it.
• In combat you could choose to use any of these skills with your current weapon. Your weapon stats would be used as the base for damage, boosted by the skill.
• Using the skills would have some sort of a cost. ZeXLR8er proposed the attack points system whereby using a skill would cost you some attack points which would slowly replenish.
• The problem with this is now, why wouldn't I always use the most powerful skill at my disposal? It could be balanced out by making it cost more, but it would still be the best skill and you'd always use it if you had the points. The best solution would be to make the skills equal in power, but each would bring new strategies to combat. And this is what I'm thinking now, what kinds of skills could there be, what skills would allow different strategies to be used?

By the way, CTRL+F12 takes a screenshot into the game save folder, which is under My Documents/Driftmoon.

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