I've kinda dug headlong into gamedev coding.
My original idea was to make both my game and my site compatible with the same map data. That way I could put assets and maps together in the game, then copy the data and assets into my site. But it's kinda become too much for me to try to design the code that way, so I gave up. My new goal is to get my game running on a server and then link it here. I'll use my site more as a pure space for me and devlogs and stuff.
Adding combat has kinda shaken my faith in the consistency of the game. I feels like a long detour, but at the same time, I'm realizing that this is what the game is now. Having turn-based combat makes this a turn-based game, NOT an idle game. It feels way more imcomplete as an experience now, but at the same time, having combat is at least one way to answer a bunch of open questions with the game thus far. For example, as the idle game, it wasn't clear who you were playing as or what your goals were or what purposes were served by idle farming. With character-based combat, now it's clear: you play as these characters, your level up the characters and progress thier stories, and you idle farm to level up and strengthen them with equipment and other craftables.
I'm learning a lot about how games like this are designed.
Instead of writing out the specific stats for each character, I subdivided the stat range into ranks (Beta, Alpha, Sigma) and set a base stat value for each rank. Then each character's base stats are determined using a % modifier for each of the 5 stats. The "Base stat modifier total" (BSMT) = 100 percentage points * 5 = 500. Since I don't want all characters to have similar power, comparing BSTs is almost impossible. But comparing BSMTs is way more sensible.
Screenshot of the game showing the active team menu