Bug Tracking for Auto Battler Games

Auto battlers hand combat to the computer: players build a board of units with positions, synergies, and items, then watch the battle resolve automatically. This means the player does not control the fight, so when something goes wrong, a unit that targets the wrong enemy, a synergy that does not apply, a combat that resolves in an impossible way, the player can only describe the outcome they watched, not the simulation that produced it. The bug lives in how the auto-resolution processed the board, which is what you must capture. Tracking auto battler bugs means capturing the board composition and combat resolution behind an automatic fight.

The computer resolves the combat

The defining feature of an auto battler is that combat resolves automatically: the player builds a board, units, positions, synergies, items, and then the battle plays out without player input, driven by the simulation. This means the player is a spectator to the combat, building the inputs but not controlling the fight, so when a bug occurs in the fight, the player sees the outcome but has no insight into the simulation that produced it.

This makes auto battler bugs distinctly about the resolution. A bug, a wrong target, a missing synergy effect, an impossible outcome, is a flaw in how the auto-resolution processed the board, and the player can only report the symptom they watched. Capturing the board inputs and the combat resolution is what gives you insight into the simulation the player cannot see, turning a vague the fight went wrong into a diagnosable question about how the auto-resolution handled the specific board.

Capture the board composition

The core input to an auto battler fight is the board: the units, their positions, their levels and stats, the active synergies or traits, and the items equipped. Capture this full board composition when a combat bug is reported, since the auto-resolution is a function of the board, and a bug in the fight depends on the specific composition that was fighting.

Positioning is especially important in many auto battlers, since unit positions affect targeting and combat flow, and a positioning-dependent bug, a unit targeting wrong because of where it stood, requires the position data to reproduce. Capture the positions along with the unit roster, synergies, and items, so you have the complete board the simulation resolved. The board composition is the input from which the buggy combat emerged, and capturing it fully is what lets you recreate the fight.

Capture the synergies and items

Auto battlers are built on synergies, traits or bonuses that activate when you field certain combinations of units, and items that modify units, and bugs frequently hide in these: a synergy that does not apply its effect, a synergy that applies wrong, an item that breaks a unit behavior, an interaction between a synergy and an item. Capture the active synergies and their levels, and the items, when a combat bug is reported.

A report that a synergy did not work or a unit behaved wrong becomes diagnosable when you can see the active synergies and items and how they should have affected the combat. Synergy and item bugs are about whether the bonuses and modifications applied correctly during the auto-resolution, and capturing them lets you check the resolution against the intended effects. The synergy and item context, alongside the board, captures the modifiers that shape the fight and where many auto battler bugs live.

Capture the combat resolution

Beyond the inputs, capturing the combat resolution itself, how the fight actually played out, is what reveals where the simulation went wrong. If you can capture a log or trace of the combat resolution, the targeting decisions, the damage dealt, the effects applied, the sequence of events, you can see exactly how the auto-resolution processed the board and where it deviated from intended behavior.

Many auto battlers are deterministic, resolving the same board the same way, which means capturing the board lets you replay the exact combat, and capturing the resolution log lets you see what happened without replaying. A targeting bug becomes visible in the resolution trace showing the wrong target chosen, a synergy bug in the trace showing the effect not applied. The combat resolution, captured or replayed from the board, is the window into the auto-resolution simulation that the player, watching from outside, never has.

Setting it up with Bugnet

Add an in-game report option and attach the board composition, unit positions, active synergies, items, and combat resolution log as a serialized snapshot and custom fields. Bugnet stores them so an auto battler bug arrives with the board-and-synergy context and resolution data needed to reproduce a fight that resolved wrong, rather than the player description of an outcome they could only watch.

Enable automatic crash capture and group identical issues into occurrence counts, watching whether combat bugs cluster around particular synergies, items, or compositions. Because auto battlers resolve combat automatically and players cannot see the simulation, this board-and-resolution capture is what gives you the insight to find targeting, synergy, and item bugs in the auto-resolution, and because many auto battlers are deterministic, the captured board lets you replay the exact fight to reproduce and verify the fix.

Build a board-replay regression suite

Because auto battlers are typically deterministic and resolve from a board, they are ideal for board-replay regression testing. Each captured buggy board becomes a test: load the board and resolve the combat, asserting the correct targeting, synergy application, and outcome. A fix can be verified against the exact board that produced the wrong resolution, with deterministic repeatability.

This suite is valuable because auto battler systems, units, synergies, items, are interconnected, and a change to one, a unit ability, a synergy effect, an item, can break the resolution of boards elsewhere in the combinatorial space of compositions. Running your library of captured boards after every balance change or new unit catches these regressions before they ship. Over time the library becomes a collection of the compositions and interactions your players have actually built and found bugs in, providing combat-resolution coverage that a balance-driven auto battler needs to keep its automatic fights resolving correctly as the roster and items evolve.

In an auto battler the player watches but cannot see the sim. Capture the board and the resolution.