UGAS Genre Pack: Combat

Real fighting games are governed by frame data: after a move connects, the loser spends a fixed number of frames unable to act. UGAS models those windows as effect-granted states:

Both states appear in every action ability’s ActivationBlockedTags, so a stunned fighter simply cannot act until the timed effect expires — no explicit timer lives in the ability. Whether the defender’s blockstun expires before the attacker’s own recovery is what makes a blocked string safe or punishable.

Combat.Move.Startup → Combat.Move.Active → Combat.Move.Recovery is the illustrative phase vocabulary the engine sets on a fighter as a move plays out; individual abilities own only the phase windows they actually need through ActivationOwnedTags. The combo system is then pure tag logic:

GA_Block (entities/ability_block.yaml) holds GE_Blocking (entities/effect_blocking.yaml) while the block input is down — the same hold-then-WaitInputRelease shape as the shooter’s aim-down-sights. GE_Blocking is the genre’s signature effect. Modifiers stack through named channels — additive within a channel, multiplicative across channels (§5.3) — so GE_Blocking puts a single Multiply in a Block channel:

Because the reduction lives in its own named channel, additional defensive layers (a parry, a guard upgrade) authored in a different channel multiply across it cleanly — exactly how the shooter’s Aim and Attachments channels compose on Spread.

Poise is a depletable stat: every hit (blocked or not) deals poise damage. When Poise reaches 0, the engine’s OnAttributeChanged threshold (§5.6) applies GE_Stagger (entities/effect_stagger.yaml), which grants Combat.State.Staggered for a long window — a guaranteed punish. The threshold keeps the rule that states are granted by Effects, never written directly.

A fighter mid-block eats one heavy hit. The attacker’s AttackPower (\(20\)) scaled by the heavy move multiplier (\(2.5\)) is the raw hit, handed to the calc as IncomingDamage. The defender owns Combat.State.Blocking, so the Block channel and Defense both apply:

The same blocked hit drains the two meters and feeds the gauge, and holding guard slows the fighter through the Block channel:

These are exactly the CurrentValue entries recorded for the example fighter. Had the hit landed unblocked, the Block channel would be absent (factor \(1.0\)), the calc would apply GE_Hitstun instead of GE_Blockstun, and poise damage would be far higher — the difference between a chipped guard and a broken one.

Melee damage is not a single subtraction: it couples the source’s AttackPower (× the move multiplier), the target’s flat Defense, the Block channel reduction, poise damage, guard damage, and the super gain for both fighters. That is inherently multi-attribute and cross-actor, so GE_MeleeDamage (entities/effect_melee_damage.yaml) delegates to a custom Execution (§9.5), ExecCalc_MeleeResolution, which honors Team.Friendly targets (skips friendly fire) and writes EffectiveDamage (a Meta attribute) for telemetry and UI. This is the combat analogue of the shooter’s hit-resolution calc and the racing traction calc — the seam where the genre’s signature math plugs into UGAS. An adopter who prefers a declarative poise-damage rule can express it as an AttributeBased magnitude (§9.4.2) keyed on the source’s AttackPower (\((\text{AttackPower} + \text{PreAdd}) \times \text{Coefficient} + \text{PostAdd}\)); the worked numbers above keep poise damage inside the calc for a single source of truth.