The current combat system

Cobat at the moment is pretty simple. Better your equipment and attack with the weapon in your right hand or left hand. It's completely turn based. This system works ok for now, but it's not very good for the PvP elements we want to add to the game.

The new combat system

Part of what makes Initium great is the ability to come and play for as much time as you have and walk away at any time having made some progress. There is no minimum necessary time investment and no limit to how much you can play either. We want to continue with this concept into the new system as well.

The new system will certainly have more involved combat, there will be a lot more you can do. It will be a top-down 2D style (see the gif on the left) where movements and positioning are strategically important. However in keeping with the benefits of the old system, we plan on allowing players to automatically progress combat with a single click if they don't want to (or don't have time to) micro manage. This is meant to simulate the old "one-click-per-turn" combat system.

How invention works

As players go about regular activities in the game, their character will come up with an "idea" for a new skill or invention. This will happen at random along with a number of other influential factors such as:

• The character's intelligence
• A need that the character has been tagged with internally
• The availability of the materials required for the skill or invention, or the character's knowledge and experience with these materials
• Other skills or inventions that the character has available to him

However for the most part, the best ideas come from more focused research which the character can engage in wherever they are or using a specialized lab. Generalized experimentation with materials is the first step, and once the character has a certain level of understanding of various materials, he will start to get ideas for actual working inventions that use those materials. Once a character has an idea, he can use the lab to try to create a prototype.

The prototype stage is the stage in which the character is trying to turn an idea into a reproducible invention or skill. It may take many tries to get something working, and the difficulty of coming up with a working invention will depend on the following factors:

• the character's intelligence
• the knowledge level of the category the invention falls within
• the level of knowledge the character has of the materials being used
• the general complexity of the skill

Once the character has successfully produced a skill or invention, he will be able to create or perform it at will. The result of the skill or invention will vary somewhat, and the character will get better at producing better and more consistent results through practice. For example, if a character is blacksmithing a certain piece of equipment, he will get faster and the resulting equipment will have more consistent stats as he continues to perform that particular skill.

The player can then choose to create another prototype in order to get a better end product, by going through the very same process and hoping for a better result. For the most part, the resulting attributes of a skill or invention are random, but they will also be influenced by the 4 factors listed previously.

Ideas, skills, and inventions can all be shared freely or sold between characters.

World-wide PvP.. sorta

Many of our players would be pretty disappointed if the game changed so drastically that they could no longer play the way they used to. That's why we're planning on keeping much of the old content as PvP-free while releasing new expansions as PvP areas.

How it works

Territories will consist of pre-defined sets of locations in the game. A player group can own a territory and defend it against other groups. They'll even be able to open the territory up for public use if they desire. If an opposing group kills or forces out all of the characters that own a territory, the opposing group will gain control of the territory.

Any time a player is within a territory and tries to do something "illegal", any characters currently policing the area will suddenly be invoked to attack that player. This illegal activity is customized by the owning group. Some things that the group can make illegal in a given territory includes:

• Tresspassing - Only certain groups and/or people are allowed in
• Tresspassing on private property - If a player tries to enter a home owned by someone else
• Destroying private property - If a player tries to destroy a building owned by someone else
• Stealing an item - If a player tries to take an item that is on private property
• Attacking another character outside of a duel - If a player tries to kill another player without using the duel system

Any time a rule is broken, any character in the entire territory (not just the location in which the rule was broken) that is currently guarding/policing the territory will automatically enter combat with the player. The policing player does not have to be online for this to take place. This ensures a stable society and government can be setup with protections in place to keep things civil.