Calling an Actor Twice in a Row

[Blackfoot]

So I've got this problem with my Champions ruleset combat tracker where sometimes a really fast PC will act twice in a row before another actor gets a turn. I could explain the whole sequence of things but that's what it boils down to. Now this DOES occur normally with other rulesets if only 1 person is on the tracker.. you can keep advancing and it will advance to the same actor over and over... but I'm having trouble sorting out how to emulate this activity.

Anyone have a suggestion on how to proceed?

[Zacchaeus]

Have the actor do all of their actions before moving on to the next one? This happens all the time in other rulesets where actors have multiple actions.They complete all actions before they click next actor.

[Blackfoot]

Have the actor do all of their actions before moving on to the next one? This happens all the time in other rulesets where actors have multiple actions.They complete all actions before they click next actor.That's really not an adequate solution as it doesn't identify that it is that actor's turn again as part of the tracker function.. which is the point.

[Blackfoot]

I guess that response forces me to explain how character phases work in Champions.. the character's phases is based on their 'Speed' which is a statistic. That determines how many times they get to act within a 'Turn' which is broken into 12 segments. They react within each of their 'Phases' based on their 'Dexterity'. So for example a character with a 6 Speed acts on segments 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 whereas a character with a 2 Speed only acts on segments 6 and 12. So.. character 1 would need to be notified that it's their Phase on segments 2, 4, and 6 (assuming that they have the higher Dexterity) before character 2 would get notified that it gets to act on segment 6.
In a simple situation with 2 characters this would be no big deal.. but with a full tracker.. the tracker has to manage it.

Ultimately, the best solution would be for me to determine that it is the same character's action 'next' and have the tracker NOT advance but merely send a notification to the chat.. the problem is.. that some of that processing is done deeper down into the Core handling stuff.

[Blackfoot]

So .. I am thinking that if I can hijack the 'NextActor' function build a check into CombatManager2.. then if a new actor is actually needed go ahead and let the Core CombatManager.NextActor do it's business.. then maybe that could fix the issue..

Is that going to mess me up with permissions or something?

[Blackfoot]

OK.. I guess I didn't need help with this after all. I seem to have finally solved this problem by moving the next actor functions to Combat2.

[Moon Wizard]

Yeah, systems that are based on a Speed attribute defining number of actions and action order per round are not really easy to lay out in a simple list; and the original combat tracker wasn't really built for that purpose. But, I'm glad you found a way to work around and get it to work. I think Star Fleet Battles (and some other systems) also use a similar initiative mechanism. I'll be interested to see what you ended up with when you're done.

Regards,
JPG

[Blackfoot]

My setup uses a lot of the existing tracker functionality.. it uses a double sort to handle the speed stat and the dex stat.. and reassigns the numbers at the end of each character's action.
The 'Phase' number represents the 'Segment' (1-12) when that character will act next... the 'Dex' value represents the order in which they will act on that 'Segment'. That part has been working for years at this point.. I was trying to avoid taking functions out of CombatManager... but moving nextActor to CombatManager2 seemed like the only way to resolve the 2 actions problem.

[Moon Wizard]

Yeah, the only way I can see to do something that would be more specific would be to build a separate initiative/action order display; and that would be vying for screen real estate with other combat tracker features that people use. I think the way you are doing it is going to be the easiest to get done.

Cheers,
JPG

[Blackfoot]

It works really well actually, it was just upsetting when we realized that that Speedster guy who gets to go twice in a row was losing some of his turns. .. BUT that is resolved now.. so YAY! On to the next thing.