Tick combat

I've been trying to find a good starting point to getting tick based combat into my game. Just to make sure people are interpreting tick based combat the same as me it is usually used in rpg/mmorpg games. So although the combat seems to be in real time (when done right) the game runs on ticks where it determines what the next outcome is. So if one player attacks during a tick it detrmines if the other player blocks/gets hit and if he does get hit where does he get hit and if he gets a counter attack option now etc.

Been digging through this site and just can't find much talk of it or good examples of how to start putting it in game.