Wasteland 2 - Perma-death & TB Combat

In an interview with VG24/7 Brian Fargo talks about the Wasteland 2 companion system, perma-death and turn-based combat.

Fargo continued, “We love the strategy of turn-based games but sometimes, they can be monotonous in combat. We’ve played and studied many of the popular turn-based games from the last 20 years including Fallout Tactics, Temple of Elemental Evil, X-com, Final Fantasy Tactics, Jagged Alliance, and many others. ”
“One example of some “fat” we’re attempting to trim is the wait time you have during the enemy turn. If multiple enemies are in the rotation to act before a players character is, they will all move and attack together. We also hate being forced into a fight with enemies that you can mop the floor with.”

More information.

Fargo talks about quickly resolving combat encounters where the player grossly outmatches the opponent. That's better than having them drag out, I guess, but I'd rather see opponents who run away or surrender or try to talk their way out of danger than having every single opponent react exactly the same way (fight to the death) every time.

Originally Posted by screeg
Fargo talks about quickly resolving combat encounters where the player grossly outmatches the opponent. That's better than having them drag out, I guess, but I'd rather see opponents who run away or surrender or try to talk their way out of danger than having every single opponent react exactly the same way (fight to the death) every time.

He didn't say those encounters wouldn't be in there, just that they're trying to speed up TB combat and giving the player options to skip trivial encounters. Those elements seem more story or specially crafted driven than something like random encounters on the world map. Example, in Wasteland 1 I hated fighting bums on random world map encounters because I didn't want to waste my laser rifle ammo, I would have been ok with a mechanic to optionally skip those fights once they no longer held a threat.

That said I like the idea of those encounters but enemies that just run away but never "leave" suck too. I can recall picking fights in Fallout 2 and having the enemies run away and you just end up chasing them all over town trying to get in effective range. That wasn't fun either.

As far as talking their way out of a fight, I bet those encounters will be in there as well. In the original Wasteland, there were enemy guards in the first town (in the town hall?) that would let you walk past them because they didn't want to fight you.

Also, not everything would run away or talk. Rabid mutant rats or robots or whatever wouldn't make sense to run away or talk to you.

Originally Posted by screeg
I'd rather see opponents who run away or surrender or try to talk their way out of danger than having every single opponent react exactly the same way (fight to the death) every time.

Great idea! Can have a morale effect for the party that incites bickering from good natured NPC's or at least as good as they get in the dark apocalypse.