This is phenomenal; do you have any plans for what multiple face buttons at the same time is going to look like? Is Alpine going to use elbow and hand to hit several at once?

Also if the model is fully pre-rendered, does that mean you're handing the face tracking statically as well!?
Or is it IK??

The distant lords in their gilded thrones drift amongst the stars, our home left a mined-out waste. They make pacts with things unseen, sacrificing in exchange for power and results.

The fruits of their rites are our problem now, and they have no idea, blissfully continuing their fell works.

Things like cover/LoS calculations fall under Mechanical, things like team coordination/choosing turn order (if important) is Strategic. Can't fit everything in here, but hopefully this thread helps people understand how I approach the complexity of combat from a design lens!

Finally, Strategic Complexity: How many options are available to a player on a turn-by-turn basis? How likely is it that you might forget an option that you have? /How long have you had to form a plan before your turn begins/? How many times do you need to reevaluate your plan if something fails?

Mechanical complexity: How many processes do you need to resolve an action? Every roll adds up. Shadowrun has you roll an attack, your opponent roll to evade, then rolls armor to lower damage. APOCALYPSE FRAME by @binarystar.games has a single attack roll that informs results and any retaliation.

Contextual Complexity: How much context for a game's mechanics and possibilities must you be aware of to formulate a plan? How many times will a player's lack of mechanical context cause them punishment? (LANCER: A Berserker's Aggression, Ronin's Rebound, Bastion Deathcounter, etc.)

This, as @artifacterneo.bsky.social has done a wonderful job describing, is a direct combination of Comprehension (I'll reframe it to 'Contextual'), Operational ('Mechanical'), & Strategical complexities found in your game design.

I'll describe my takes on them below:

Having something set in stone like that is what will inform every other decision you make in the game's design. "This power/system is really cool, but it's also very complex" might have to be axed because it makes one player's turn take five times as long as others'. (i.e. Hacking in Shadowrun)

Shadowrun 5th, my other most-played system, can be done in 30-90 minutes, mainly due to narrative things happening as a cost of that combat. Anything more and you're getting into battles of escalating attrition with cops and security getting involved.

Start with your ideal combat length, work back.

I believe that you can tell how complex a combat system is by how long it takes for you to get through a single platonic ideal 'combat'. LANCER for instance can take anywhere from 2-6 hours with a team who know what they're doing, just due to how choice paralysis vastly differs from PC to PC.
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