So I've been poking at my turn system after capturing a ton of footage over the last month. There are a few stalls in the game (by design) when you play, specifically as the game resolves projectiles and such.  That sort of turn resolution is pretty common in tactics games, it lets you see the results of your attack (or attacks against you) and process the result before moving on.  I originally set the system up that way because "that's what these games do".

However, the frequent halting during my drivin' and skiddin' started to bug the crap out of me during my heavy play as I was assembling footage and trailer material, especially when there are a lot of enemies nearby. I don't pause the player's movement when action occurs offscreen, but if it's happening onscreen the game would halt a lot to resolve attacks, especially in the arena where enemies were attacking each other.

So, to the experiments!  I decided to try:

• Removing the stall entirely and let attacks just resolve as the participants lerped to their new positions. 
• Also, I adjusted the realtime turn duration based on the player speed, so turns (including those of opponents) just play out faster when the player vehicle is moving at higher speed.

Keep in mind that this is still 100% turn-based.  The only thing that has changed is how turn results are represented.

You can specifically see the lack of a delay when the player fires machineguns and rockets.

The result needs some work:

• Bullets don't yet "lead" their targets so they are striking behind the vehicle.
• Some slow weapons like rockets that take longer than a typical move duration (generally between a quarter and a half second) will need to be converted to take multiple turns to reach their destination.
  • ...but hey cool gameplay bro
• I need to make sure combat resolution is as readable as possible
  • Armor impacts and damage numbers are still getting obscured.
  • The armor side that gets hit should be dead obvious
• Special moves (which don't trigger often) will still need to stall

However, in all it did improve the overall feel of driving and smoothness. This was a worthwhile experiment and I'm all in on making sure the game feels great and yet still has a clear turn-based combat resolution. Not sure where this will lead, and I know that a certain segment of the audience will want to be crystal clear on what's going on in combat, in the same way that another segment will want to cut loose and skid around fluidly.  Possibly I'll leave a toggle for the roguelike turn resolution if the player wants that (should be possible).  

More to come as the game continues to evolve.