First results

I had decided to start with a few very basic moves:

• A basic hit
  
• A combo hit, that is better fired when the player has a "forward" position, to reflect the "one-two" combination.
  
• Guard and evade moves, which fire instantly and go on until another move is selected
  
• A "counter", which has a lower rate of success but can negate the opponent attacking move and retaliate immediately
  

I also decided that for moves that were not fired from the "ideal" position, a precision penalty would apply. All being set, I started to play out a few encounters on a sheet of paper. I quickly found strategies that would ensure a systematic win, and recalibrated the various parameters of my moves. I made sure that, statistically, no one (simple) strategy was overpowered. However, it now appears that chaining hit / combo hit, while not overpowered, wins most of the time. And most of all, that the opponent does not have any good way to retaliate. This initially was the goal of the Counter move. However, the move was too strong, and an opponent always playing Counter would statistically win most of the games. I saw two options:

• Increase the cooldown of the counter to prevent a full-counter strategy. The issue I saw with this is that players would still counter whenever possible.
  
• Decrease the strength of the counter, which is what I did, and what led to the current situation.
  

I am now trying to find a way to solve this. Why don't repeated and relentless attacks work in real life? Why do professional boxers vary their attack pattern, guard and launch a real hit only when they think they have a chance to connect? First, attacking continuously is tiring. And since the opponent would be constently guarding, the ratio damage done vs. energy spent is high. Then, if a martial artist repeats again and again the same move, she becomes too predictable. The opponent can then anticipate and land a succesful counter hit. If the attack pattern is varied or unpredictable, it becomes much more difficult. I will now look at these two directions:

• Introduce (or not) a kind of "fatigue" attribute
  
• Make the counter specific to some moves, like "hit", and introduce a new category of moves (e.g. "kick"), against which the counter will be useless / weak. And of course restore a bit of power to the counter move.