BALANCING LIMITED RESOURCES, HEALING AND COMBAT...

Ok, so I'll break this down.

I'm making a dystopian present/near-future game.

I'm trying to make the player want to try to avoid combat with regular enemies, but not make them feel like they need to reset if they get caught. Further, resources found in this game will be limited.

The combat system is ATB.

Here's how my system works so far:
Each hero has a set of combat skills that they can use once per battle, but they can spend an action (and reduce their speed significantly for that turn) to refresh them all.

The heroes can equip weapons or accessories (I haven't fully decided) to get new skills that either have limited uses, or use up items to cast (ie, equipping a gun lets you use a "shoot" skill, but uses up bullets).

There will be loot (like Circuits, bullets, etc) scattered around the game world for the player to find, and I'll probably make it so that players can get these things from enemies as well. Some of these resources are used to craft useful items (like molotovs or EMP bombs) or they are used up for Equipment-based-skills (ie, using up batteries for the Tesla Coil's stronger moves)

Now, the big problem is that I'm not sure how to balance these resources, out of combat healing, and also making sure that the player doesn't want to fight every enemy they see, while also making them consider combat useful sometimes.

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Possible solutions:
There will be no level ups in the game, so the player won't feel the need to grind.

There will be a limit for how many items a player can carry of a certain type (if I can find a good "Earthbound style" inventory script I might use that instead).

In safe areas, I think I'll put a resupply cabinet that will fill up some essential items if the player is lacking in them (preventing them from screwing themselves over completely)

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Remaining major hurdles:

Considering that the combat is ATB style, and it'll probably be pretty hard, the player will probably take a decent amount of damage in any given fight. I don't know how I will balance out of combat healing. There's no MP, so I can't just make a skill that only heals out of combat that's limited by MP. I don't want to flood the player with healing items. I don't want to heal the player fully after every battle or it'll make everything super easy (players might get into easier fights just to heal themselves)... I'm really not sure how to handle that...

Preventing players from seeing any non-boss combat as a reason to reset. I want the player to avoid combat, but not entirely. The only solution I can see (aside from making enemies guaranteed to drop something useful), is to make some loot only obtainable if you fight your way past some enemies.

And that's all I've got for now. If I forgot anything I'll post it.

Does anyone have any ideas they want to share for dealing with this?

That left me with a lot of food for thought Slashphoenix. :P Thank you very much for that breakdown of my mechanics. It got me thinking.

author=slashphoenix
You can still have the characters get stronger - give them level-ups, weapons, new abilities at appropriate times - but that keeps it under your control and allows you to balance difficulty knowing what they'll have during any given dungeon.

The plan is that over the course of the game you'll be able to find (or buy if you missed them) new skill-granting equipment, or upgrade old ones with the resources you've gathered to give them new skills.

As far as out-of-combat healing goes, you could remove it entirely (aside from resupply cabinets) and give players just enough HP to make it - this also gives you the options of treating the rare healing consumable as a huge gift.

This gives me an idea. Resupply cabinets will give the player a tiny amount of very good healing items that only work out of combat (example: resupplies will always leave them with 2 medkits that heal the whole party by 50%, only out of combat). These items would be exclusive to resupply points.

This game sounds like a great case for visual encounters instead of random, invisible ones. Make the players fight at least a couple monsters in every given dungeon (they're blocking the door, etc.) and then hide good rewards behind extra monster battles. That gives the player a choice - do they risk their long-term resources against an extra monster battle in order to get to the item?

On field enemies is a given. I HATE HATE HATE HATE random encounters. Whenever possible I rip them out of the game and feed them to the monster under my bed, and replace them with field encounters.

As for the loot hidden past enemies you need to defeat to get past? Already planned. :P It's a good way to force players to heavily consider if it's worth fighting their way through. Especially if it's a really powerful enemy in their way.