First of all many thanks for everyone who has already posted their feedback for the playtests! If you haven't playtested the first alpha yet, go to the game's Steam page - everyone's invited!
This devlog entry will be about the Resolve gameplay mechanics.
In first Shardpunk, characters had HPs and Stress Points. When the stress reached maximum, the character was panicking - meaning that the player would lose control over them for a couple of turns.
One of playable characters was able to gain some benefits (free Action Points) by increasing their Stress Points, making Stress an interesting combat resource. I wanted to reiterate on this idea in the sequel - and that's when Resolve appeared.
Every character has a number or Resolve Points (RPs) at their disposal. There are actions that cost RP - like the "Rush It!" action, available in the playtest.
("Rush it" action was present in the first Shardpunk, but it had a cooldown instead)
When character's RPs drop to zero and the player does nothing about it, a character will panic at the end of the turn:
There are multiple ways to restore RPs. For example, hunkering down:
Scoring critical hits (or multi-kills) can also restore RPs:
Resolve-based skills, combined with the possibility to restore RPs through various actions might be a nice alternative to cooldown-based skills. I'm having a blast with them, that's for sure. I'm not saying that skill cooldown must go away completely though - but a nice combination of both mechanics might work pretty nice.
And just imagine having an enemy that can clear/reduce your WPs in combat! A mass panic generator (or just an interrupter for your WP-based attacks)!
Take care everyone!