All those games had wait, because they were one side moves - the other side moves.

With a continous ini system one needs to decide, what the effect on ini would be.

E.g. unit order unit 1 - enemy 1 - enemy 2 - unit 2 - enemy 3 - unit 3 - unit 1 - enemy 1 - enemy 2 - unit 2 - enemy 3 - unit 3

What should the effect of wait be?

How should the list look afterwards?

You remember which game it was?

HOMM V maybe. If it is coded such way, then the change in initiative order would have to show prior selecting it, otherwise it would be too much guessing, as the actual ini values are not shown.

Actually the Dungeons and Dragons RPG has always had such a combat system.

All Players and NPC roll for initiative. A "Round" proceeds through the initiative list form highest to lowest (dex, feats and spells can boost your initiative).

If you're a Rogue and gain a flanking bonus, it's often best for the high initiative Rogue to delay his action unit after the slow Fighter has taken his turn and hit a target. The rogue then moves behind the same NPC and gains flanking bonus and sneak attack.

This DnD system has been around for almost 40 years and is well play-tested. I'm amazed how so many gaming companies keep screwing up simple things.

As an aside if you like tactical turn based combat, the game Temple of Elemental Evil (based on DnD 3.5) is very good as long as you apply the Circle of 8 Mod pack.

lol yeah I see that ^ one a lot on my archery champion in the back. Is kind of weird and wasteful when I have two roaring cave bears bearing down on the webbing unit.

Yeah I wish the game had that as well instead of the archer unit standing outside of the gate to get pulverized.

How exactly would you implement this in FE's initiative-based system?

Either you take your turn when it comes up or you lose it.

Hmmm

FE has an interesting system. I believe all units gain initiative at the rate listed into a pool, and the first unit that is >= 100 takes its turn. Upon taking the turn, 100 initiative is subtracted from that units initiative pool. This seems to eb the way things work after I looked at the Flurry ability from the Master's Affliction mod. The MA Flurry ability gives a +100 initiative self buff that lasts for 4 turns, causing the unit to fill its initiative pool instantly after acting three times in a row.

This creates a system similar to one you might see in an active time battle system rpg, such as Chrono Trigger, but with a tactical grid. Using Chrono Trigger as an example, one could wait in real time until every member was ready to perform dual/triple techs, or just use abilities in a different order than the characters' speeds.

So what we need is a command that lets the unit wait a certain amount of initiative, since initiative is basically time for all intents and purposes. The real question here is, should the waiting unit still gain initiative while waiting? If it were to continue gaining initiative, you could let a unit store up turns by waiting until the unit gained 200, 300, 400 initiative, then unleash those actions all at once. This would invalidate casting times. On the other hand you could just let the unit sit at 100 initiative while another unit accumulates initiative to 100. After the second unit takes its turn, have the waiting unit's turn come up again. I'm in favor of that more since letting a unit wait incurs a time cost, and prevents the loophole explained above.

To be honest, I would really love for another expansion to FE that adds a height factor to tactical maps, as well as some more mechanics like FF Tactics, where init facing matters. Basically just pull ideas from FF Tactics, since that game's tactical combat is superior to this one. Not that that's a bad thing since some people like it that way. I'd just like my games of FE to have a deeper tactical game, and I think making it deeper will allow the rpg side of things to become deeper, and by extension, the empire building and rest of the game.

Also, initiative should really be renamed to speed, to avoid the D&D confusion some players have brought up.