@xyzygy: Basically what @epidehl said earlier but here is a little more specificity (you don't need to know most of this - I'll mention what you do at the end in a TL,DR).
The next time a person will take a turn uses the following things:
- The character's Agility
- Buffs or Debuffs on the character (e.g. if Delay Buster is used or if they have Haste/Slow status)
- The Speed Rank of the last move that character used
- Ordering in relation to all other characters.
Here's how it works (not being technical or explaining the formula):
Basically there is a clock ticking down until zero when that character will take a turn. So let's say a character completes a turn. Immediately, they will be given a starting number to count down from which will count down until zero when they can act again. We can think of the time it takes for this to occur in two parts:
- How big is the starting number
- How fast will the ticking occur
The size of the number is most significantly affected by the Rank of the ability used. Each ability has a rank from 1 to 8. Rank 1 abilities are the fastest. Rank 8 abilities are the slowest. In fact because of the way it is calculated (as a multiplier) Rank 8 abilities will increase the counter by 8 times what would occur with a Rank 1 ability. The size of the counter is also determined by buffs and debuffs - it will be halved with Haste status and doubled with Slow status (you can think of it as Haste doubling the speed of the counter, but in practice it is calculated at this point affecting the size of the number instead of the speed of the ticking)
The speed of the ticking, on the other hand, is affected mostly by your character's agility. You can think of the game as occurring as lots of frames where each frame all characters decrease there counter by a value determined by their Agility. The higher the character's agility, the more it will decrease each frame. In-game however, you only see character's act after all these frames are calculated and a character has ticked down to zero.
In relation to the order displayed on the top-right within a battle:
This area of the screen shows you a couple things.Firstly the most obvious part is it shows you the order in which each character will hit zero on their counter and take a turn.
But that's not all, it also shows a prediction of the turns after that but much more - it gives you an idea of how big their counter is.Let's break it up:The first move of each unique character (not including the one who's turn it is) is per-determined in that they have already produced their counter number and the ticking has started. This means you can think with almost complete certainty that these characters will have their turns in that order (it is slightly more complicated due to the possibility of someone getting a sped-buff not on their turn changing the size of the counter, but for the sake of this ignore that). The next move of the character who is currently on their turn is then variable (As you said, different moves will move it in the cue). The screen at the top right then shows (assuming a speed-buff doesn't occur) where that character's next turn will land if they use the current move highlighted. (i.e. how the rank of the listed move highlighted by the player will affect the order of that character's next move in relation to the others)
The final part is the extra turns listed. I.e. the move after each unique character's next turn. (E.g. it might say that Character X will have a turn next as well as the one after it). This is a prediction based on the assumption that the move they will use on their next turn is a Rank 3 (or default rank) move - such as Attack. This is to give a general idea of when that character will act again after their next turn but it is only a prediction.
TL,DR
Finally here's how it is represented visually in the order screen:
The further to the left the character's emblem is, the closer that turn is to zero right now. The colour gives an indication in the size of the counter as well:
- Pink = a counter below 20 - or a turn very soon.
- Blue = a counter above 60 - or a turn further away.
- The lighter the colour - the closer they are of reaching zero on their counter and acting
I hope this helps. And I hope the length wasn't a turn-off. I wanted to explain the variables without going specifically into exactly how it is calculated. But if you are interested further, here's a fantastic FAQ on it as well as all the other Systems in FFX.
P.S. I was tempted to just reply to this with "Thread Complete" but I couldn't help actually answering the question.
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