Summoned Air Elemental gets three turns in a row

from Elemental Forums

I'm sure this relates to Initiative being calculated from the beginning of the battle...

I've been playing a summoner sov and very regularly summon Lightbringer first (MAN I love that blinding ability, and he can take a pounding!), often Wisp next, then Air Elemental to finish them off. Several times when I have done this, the Air Elemental, with a fairly high initiative (not sure of the value) immediately got three turns. Based on initiative calculations, this may be because it would have already had three turns by that time. It's great for me, since the AE packs a wallop, but I feel like I'm cheating...

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Same thing happens if you cast haste late in a battle.  Multiple turns in a row because the calculation is horked.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Yep, I just came back to add that, noticed it while playing tonight! That effect makes haste one of my best spells...

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I've seen this as well.

The way initiative is calculated is messed up.  Often times one of my units with high initiative will go twice in a row, even though there are 7+ units on the field.  It should be fairly evenly spaced out.

The way it should work is that every unit in the battle should have a temporary turn order value (I'll call it TOV for lack of a better name).  Each turn, every unit's TOV increases by its initiative.  The unit with the highest TOV goes (ties are determined... somehow, I don't know; it doesn't matter), and when it does, its TOV is reset to 0, and the turn ends.  The next turn then begins, and every unit's TOV increases by its initiative again, so, every unit will have a TOV equal to double its initiative, except for the unit that just went which will have a TOV equal to its initiative.  Again, the unit with the highest TOV goes, and then its TOV is reset to 0.  Rinse, repeat.

The system is obviously managing it a different way which doesn't space out the extra turns gained from having a high initiative.  I'm not really sure how it's calculating.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

The problem (and this is a problem since WoM) is that the initiative calculation assumes your unit has had the same initiative since the start of the battle and calculates turns based on that.

Basically it's doing

(<Turn Number> - <Number of Moves So Far>) * <Initiative>

and the unit with the highest number moves.

Obviously that doesn't work in the case where the unit hasn't been present since the beginning of the battle.  It also gets screwed up if the unit's initiative changes (via Haste or Slow).

The game should be using an initiative bucket system.  That is: each unit has an initiative bucket that it fills up incrementally and when it's full, the unit moves.