Discussion thread for the Combat Revamp

[killster550 401]

am i the only one around here who misses the change in reach as your weapon size changes? a lance would have much further reach than a dagger, for instance, although lances are slower and less accurate

Edit: Bioxx, perhaps you want to take a look at srgnoodles elemental affinity and ancients threads for your magic solutions? i really like area based, passive-aggresive magicka that interacts with you, instead of reverse

[Gwtheyrn 70]

Skills, I think, are fine, but I'd like them to be less along the lines of arbitrary numbers or merely making the veteran player do more damage. The effects of training should be a bit more subtle.

First, adding a stamina bar is a great idea.

Second, combat should be slowed down instead of the mouse-mash it is now. Swings of a weapon should take a little bit of time to recover from to get back into a ready position. Heavier weapons, such as maces or hammers would take longer, but ofcourse, their impact is also significant.

Skills should then, in turn, thus equal experience and training. What is the real difference between a veteran footsoldier and a peasant conscript? The veteran has learned how to move and position his body, he's learned how to break an opponent's defense. So it should be with skills, allowing the veteran to return to a ready state quicker than a rookie, and the vet, better able to recognize weaknesses in armor, has a slightly better chance of their attacks ignoring some of the protection in the area they hit.

Such affects are more subtle and makes it so that the one with the higher skill rating isn't just able to wade into a group and send people flying with every swing of their weapon and not have to worry for their own safety. Brains and brawn. A smart rookie will still be able to stand up and pose a threat.

[ultimaheart4 2]

why not add guns? some old flintlock style to go with the new gunpowder recipe? and add in bleeding or instant kills if a stab went through your heart. you would die. if a knife goes into your skull you would probably die. if a major artery was cut you would bleed to death. but what if you got shot? a blunderbuss would shatter your bones and turn your guts to ground chuck. maybe you want to be acrobatic and jump off a roof onto someone and do a stab in the head like assassins creed? maybe you just want to take on a bear and not die? since a sword to bear.... umm why dont you go try it? even i full steel armor? doesnt make sense.... long rang... sure javelin to the heart of a bear... i dont think a thrown javelin would make it through its fur and hide... so why not add in things like toughness. or in most common ways strength. if your so strong you may have a chance to shove a sword through the bears hide and kill it before being mauled to death. or even crushed. only bringing up the point of different areas being vital like a hunting game. so if you stab into heart die. cut zombie head off die.... simple and makes sense... armor preventing a zombie from biting you? sure. creeper.... ummm doesnt make sense at all.... random exploding creature you can shoot from long rang since going near one would not make sense! the system would take a while to conjure up and make work... but at least if you stood in front of a zombie and cut its head off it would die fast instead of waking it 20 times because damage is being distributed to the creature all over.

[Gekkey Mathews 33]

There are three aspects of weapons that affect how they interact with armor: their sharpness, their hardness, and their weight.

Armor has only two: hardness and thickness.

Weapons pierce armor in only two ways. By directly piercing it (chopping, slashing, an piercing), and by using the armor as a medium to transfer the force (blunt).

Firstly, if a weapon's hardness is less than than the armor's, there is absolutely no way it is getting through. Except not really. Bullet are lead, but can pierce steel. Blunt weapons deal damage based on its mass multiplied by how much harder the armor is (so a weapon half as hard would only do half damage, with half the energy going into bending the weapon).

If the weapon is harder and sharp, it should pierce the armor, losing energy based on the its sharpness (the sharper it is, the less energy is lost to the armor) multiplied by the thickness of the armor. It then deals damage based on how much energy it has left, multiplied by it's sharpness, with some upper limit (you can only stab someone so far).

Though bluntness isn't something that is or isn's. A warhammer is blunt, but can fully pierce armor because of how massive it is. You can either use those above rules to make a general system or you can boil this down to a single formula.

Ah, Am, As, Wh, Wm, Ws = [armor hardness], [armor mass], [armor surface area], [weapon hardness], [weapon mass], [weapon surface area];

E = [force character can exert]

E = Wm * (E/Wm)^2 // initial energy of the weapon

E = E*(Wh/Ah) // percent of energy reflected back into the weapon

Damage = E/As // all the energy "lost" is passed into the target

E = E/(Am*(Ws/As)) // distribute the energy across the armor that contacts the weapon

Damage += E*(Ws/As) // apply damage based on how much energy it has left multiplied by how sharp the weapon is

All together now:

( (Wm * E * (Wh/Ah) ) + ( (Wm * E * (Wh/Ah) )/(Am*(Ws/As) ) ) ) * [energy to damage conversion constant]

I've tested this out a bit, and it seems to work well. The mass of the weapon becomes much more important when dealing with thicker armors. High velocity destroys everything.

EDIT:

Forget it. This formula's rubbish. Lighter weapons are way too powerful. It needs to account for the bending of them due to their lightness.

[lorbog 52]

What about sound?

I would think that the heavier and clunkier your armour is the louder your footsteps would be.

Ex. A knight in full plate armour would make an aweful racket attempting to sneak trough a house, while someone in cloth (wilth a little practice at stealth maybe) would be practicully silent.

[BigTurtles 7]

From all these great Ideas spawned another from reading. while heavy armor is good for higher tier players. I'd like to see a way to protect a new guy from getting ganked. on as already said, shields would be nice. So maybe a easily crafted soild oak shield for the mace wielding heavy armored high leveled players. you can block with the shield and take no damage and take very little damage even form the highest tier weapon. you can run with it with the same speed as you normally do without wearing armor, but you cannot wield a weapon with it.

as its been spoken, bears, and boar combat. I'm an avid hunter outside of the interwebz While I don't normally deal with big grizzles around here we do have blackbear. AND LOTS OF BOAR. a few things.. with bears a few elders from Siberia said if you stand your ground with a bear, and once they get close [up to one meter! :0] yell as loud as you can, it actually can scare the bear off. I've luckily never got the chance to get face to face with a bear, I don't hunt bear either. But maybe when a bear gets close to you, it swipes at you once [without hitting you] then roars, but you can have some sort of way to stand there and maybe hit a button to "yell" and that would scare the bear off. or have like 75% chance of it working. but 1 blow from a bear would be a 1 hit KO. I know grizzles can rip cars open with their four inch claws! AND powerful feet.

Now boar.. Oh yes boar, I've had my run in's with these guys. NASTY!! not as powerful as a bear. but they can break leg bones/rib cages. Someone said "oh I'd just run away from the boar" I think the objective in the first place is to stay away FROM the boar, not needing to run, because in reality [lets keep a little reality with fun in TFCraft] you cannot out run a boar, or bear. But boar are stupid, so maybe have their player tracking ability dumbed down. so if you see a boar, and it sees you. starts to run, you can run and hide behind a tree, and wait for the boar to walk off again. [lets just say 5 seconds] if you try to run, and it hits you. have a 18% chance of a broken leg. and have a 10% chance of a broken rib. once it hits you though. it will run off.

[Enzer 60]

Well, with an updated combat system, you might expect arrows of differing tiers. A stone arrow head will be practically useless against plate armour. At that point, having iron or perhaps bronze arrows greatly limits the arrows you can carry. You can't make them with resources collected in the wilderness and metal is usually in short supply, so the archer will eventually run out of arrows. Perhaps aiming should be more difficult than it currently is?

One way to go about this is limiting how long you can fully draw your bow. I'm not suggesting adding a stamina gauge (though that could do the work. I am a fan of archery changes made by the Skyrim Redone mod for, well, Skyrim), but having an archer fully draw his bow and then just hold it like that until he has perfect aim doesn't seem to be very balanced. The arm would get fatigued and thus the aim would wavier more, you'd think.

So instead of making aiming more difficult, you could limit the how long one is able to draw the bow. Which means you need to learn to be a quick aim. Another thing to consider is different types of bows and how long they take to draw. While I am not suggesting flint arrows be able to pierce plate armor, I would think that to penetrate plate you'd need at least a basic metal head and a bow that has a lot of strength behind it. Of course such a bow takes more physical strength to draw, longer to draw and more straining to keep fully drawn.

So to pierce plate it could be that you'd need a strong bow and to hit at full draw to pierce armor to a useful degree. Drawing the bow should drastically limit the players movement speed, making the player make sure they have a good aim before they reach full draw or else lose strength in the shot. This will slow them down a bit, giving a potentially slower full plate player time to close in with his sword or big ass hammer.

You could also throw in a slight wavering to the aiming reticule depending on how various factors in the current bow and how long you have been holding the shot.

This kind of scenario means that to fight against fully armored enemies while being light on your feet and keeping your distance will be more on player skill then penalty mechanics. Like the smithing system, players who are interested in being an archer will learn the system and find the right timings on when they can move and when they should fire. In fact, I think that if done right archery could very well be one of the most in-depth fighting mechanics TFC could improve on. To balance this all out is the fact that archery is pretty shit in closed confines such as narrow hallways or caves and arrows with strong, piercing, heads is very expensive material wise. While it might take a ton of materials to make great plate armor, it will take a ton of material for an archer using cheaper leather armor to make enough arrows to comfortable take on a well armored opponent. And while the armor the enemy is wearing might get damaged, it will still be functional unlike the arrows that may break and shatter, thus lost forever.

Of course this is all talking about fighting a slower heavier armed enemy. There should be lighter bows for dealing with those using lighter armors or wild life that are faster to fire since you are more worried about penetrating flesh and keeping aim on a faster target.

Combat in games like this fascinates me and I am really wondering what the dev team will come up with since it has been a hot topic among our server community.

[shot23 0]

It would be cool to have ingame skills but also representations of player skill that are formed from the players themselves. For example with the bow example, you would have to draw it back to a particular place and hold it there if you wanted maximum accuracy and potential damage. With this, a person would be able to learn and adapt to draw it back to this particular place as they played, and so as they used it more they would become better at it, just like in real life. You could then introduce ownership values by having each bow slightly different, which is realistic, which would then make it so that players would become profiecient with their own personal bow.

[GeoffNukem 0]

Some nice ideas with the Combat System Revamp and stuff. Here are some of my questions, suggestions and comments.

(Grab a drink, this is a long'n)

I like the idea of a skill system. Especially that it isn't going to be used as a requirement for certain things. Like 20 blacksmith skill is require to make iron armour. I'm thinking maybe implement the system, where you do not see, or choose not to see, the numbers of skills. Like eliminate the skill GUI with lists of skills and levels. Perhaps add something which is noticeable by the eye. For example, you begin Archery and your accuracy is low. Keep practising, perhaps get a few hits/kills with it and you notice your accuracy is getting better. Maybe as some feedback, a message could appear saying something like "You feel as though you're getting better at <Skill>". Just an idea.

Now, the combat system revamp... thing. I like the idea of a random chance locational damage. Looks interesting. Pity there is probably no chance for a special detection for a arrow head shot (or in the knee), but never mind. Does this mean different types of weapon and armour? If so, what sort of (dis)advantages would these have? Like, would Heavy Armour have more HP but less Speed, whereas Light armour is the opposite (Higher speed, Lower HP)? Or would the material of the armour have an effect on it's stats?

Lastly, the magic that I read. Would this magic be pure magic or science-magic? Like, the science-magic would be the different things that would be available to do, but the science of it is there, but is considered as magic.

Sorry for the amount of questions. If I asked anything you haven't decided yet or want to keep secret then that's okay . Looking forward to see more future development of this mod/total conversion.

[zlim3z 8]

Having read the update on skills:

Skills should be split into 2 sections:

Attributes:

These are things like, strength, dex, agility etc... they increase as you work on anything related to them, eg, smithing and wearing heavy armor both contribute to your overall strength, heavy armor might also force you to gain agility the longer you wear and use it for. They then have slight but increasing effects on things such as the speed at which you can move in heavy armor (Strength and Agility), or how fast you can draw a bow (Although personally a bow is easy to draw fast, so how accurately you fire is much better) (Dexterity, and possibly Strength for more powerful bows.)

Knowledge:

These you obtain from doing something directly, farming, smithing, mining, (Bow shooting maby, although the idea is you cant directly improve skills in combat, instead you increase Attributes that benefit combat effectiveness) these skills are the same as Attributes with the exception that they only increase player effectiveness in the field that the knowledge is gained in, smithing, faming etc... These again are minor improvements that increase overtime, no "You cant use this yet because your a dumbo"

This leads to a far greater dynamic as players play the game, and gain skills by doing everyday stuff, there isn't any grinding, because the only way you can grind to be better at PvP is by doing something like smithing to increase strength, which you'd have to do anyway.

[Ardent 21]

One of the things that Bioxx brought up in the latest post is the idea that:

...it is impossible to provide all of the feedback to a player that you can experiance in real life as you get better at something.

Honestly, I'm ok with that. I don't think that TFC should be the Greatest Smithing Simulator Ever, or that MC is a good platform for such a thing. Grinding for skills isn't fun, and having skills that improve the outcome of your smithing will incentivise players to neglect practicing their actual skill in favor of leveling up. Why bother being an expert at something if you can just commit the minimum effort over time to get the same effect?

Bioxx, if you made the GSSE, hell yeah would I play it. I just think that MC is not a good platform for it, and adding a skills system may not be the best way to add depth to TFC.

[Mephistos_chan 26]

Yeah... you might want to think a bit longer about that suggestion, Mephistos_chan...

How do you suggest implementing picking a dirt block up and placing it somewhere else in ARMA? Just because the engine does one out of 20 core features better doesn't mean it's a good choice, because it might not be able to do 8-10 other core features at all.

That fact that you can move dirt blocks around at all is a little weird, one cubic metre of dirt would weigh well over a tonne, but it's part of minecraft and therefore its OK within the game. So rather than moving a block, how about you use a shovel which lowers a vertex whilst raising a designated area nearby. You could make ditch and dyke defences, level farm land or build dirt foundations, this kind of persistent world shaping has been done in other games (one set on Mars but the name escapes me). The mining aspects would be hard to model and maybe ARMA wasn't the best example, but I'm pretty sure it could be done in Unity.

[killster550 401]

mephistos, you'd like blockscape then, the HQ diagonal version of minecraft made in XMA, with a properly working lighting engine O.O

[diamondfarmer55 1]

So I saw the punishment for death thing. I think you should add: fever (can’t be exposed to the outside world and have to stay by a heat source), injuries (Can make you slow bleed, or fall (just dropping on the ground and jump to get up)) and bleeding (leave a trail of blood that fades in 2 days and monsters can follow it to get to you or can be cleaned by putting water on it).

The weapons that will make you bleed should be: Swords, knives and spears. Maces will slow you down.

Coming back to the punishment for death, they should wake up bleeding, have a slight fever and be have any 2 random injuries. Then need band aids and stuff the stop it.

Anyway, I hope someone reads this. (it would make me feel special) And I hope even more that a developer takes these suggestions seriously. (it would make me feel like a god ../../../wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif )

[cwsager 1]

I would love to see skills added, as for guns I would prefer to stay kind of with a medieval feel to the game, but I would LOVE to see some sort of magic system added, my life would be complete.

[bsb23 303]

I'm sorry I'm far too lazy to read this entire thread but have any ideas addressed the main combat problem yet? Aka spam clicking? My finger is getting tired and was hoping a solution was in the pipeline. Seriously where is the combat strategy? "Run forward, spam click, tea bag, run" just a little variety would be nice.

[prof 1]

I know this is sloppy, and probably hard to read, but I'm not very good at this kind of thing. It's just an idea I have that I figure at least some of you might be interested in.

My idea: Introduce defenses against specific types of attacks, and armour that specalizes in defending against different types of damage(Heavy, Medium, Light, Robe). I'm just going to make up a defense system here to portay how this could be done.

All defenses range from 0-100% damage reduction, preferably with "diminishing returns", making the higher amounts harder to reach. This type of system would give an eventual endgame cap for armour, but it may also add support for hybrid-type armours. To display what I mean by having different armours protect against different types of damage, let's assume the following examples are of the current end-game(or, best) equipment.

Heavy armour: -50% Stab, -40% Slash, -30% Crush, -50% Arrow. Set Effect: = Ability to wield a shield(?)

Medium armour: -30% Stab, -40% Slash, -50% Crush, -30% Arrow. Set Effect: = +10% HP.

Light armour: -40% Stab, -50% Slash, -30% Crush, -30% Arrow. Set Effect: +10% Critical Hit Chance.

Clothes/Robes: -10% Stab, -10% Slash, -10% Crush, -00% Arrow. Set Effect: +10% Attack Speed.

Shield: +10% all defenses, -5% Attack Speed, possibly only protect against arrows damage if it hits the shield.

I added a set effect to each type because I think the player should be rewarded for wearing a full set of that specific type. This would encourage people to wear a full set of one type, rather than miss-matching just to get the best of everything.

To prevent the game from turning into: "everyone wear heavy, it's best", I think it would be wise to add small negatives/bonuses to each piece. Heavy armour could give negative speed and increased hunger usage, medium could do the same at lower values, light could offer unmodified speed and extra attack rate, and robes could offer extra speed and reduced hunger loss.

But that only covers the defense aspect of such a rework, you also have to consider the attack. Obviously, this would make different weapons more useful than the other for different things, encouraging people to make more than just the best sword they can get. But to keep it from simply being click-until-enemy-dies, and relying on the absurd knockback of every attack already ingame, either skills or directional damage and knockbacks based on the weapon and attack should be introduced.

For example: Idealy, directional damage would be used. By directional, I mean moving in different ways causes you to use your weapon differently. Strifing left would cause a slashing animation to the left, and vice-versa if you strife to the right. Moving forward would cause either a jabbing attack, or a crushing attack. Moving backwards would probably do small, weak attacks that do decreased damage. Standing completely still would do little more than get you killed, and lesser the momentum behind your attacks; whilst sprinting would cause you to do increased damage.

With the introduction of shields, and general use of the left hand, it also adds the possibility of two-handed weapons that are more powerful than their one-handed counterparts while lacking the ability to block.

I wouldn't be sure how to properly balance skills, or even make them work in Minecraft, unless you made directional attacks trigger a specific skill.

[Krski 36]

*Note

Why can only the heavy dudes use shields ? I mean every kind of person is able to wear a shield . The shields are primarily used for cavalry and light/heavy troops.

[killster550 401]

it depends on the type of shield

the buckler/cavalry shields are indeed the lighter version, wieldable by anyone, the kite shields require strength and put a limitation on your weapon's size, and the tower shields are usable only for archery cover, slow movement, and are incredibly bad in close combat.

[stringburka 72]

don't know if this is of any use, but can't the enchantment abilities of vanilla minecraft be used for different armor rating between sharp/blunt damage? Putting Projectile Resistance as Prot. vs Sharp and Explosion Resistance as Prot. vs Blunt, and then of course have varying underlying protection based on how good the armor is?

Like, leather armor giving nothing but the basic armor protection, mail giving Prot vs Sharp II and plate armor giving Prot vs Sharp III and Prot vs Blunt II.

[Gwtheyrn 70]

We don' need no steenkin' magic!

[stringburka 72]

We don' need no steenkin' magic!

I didn't mean they should be magic - I meant using the code/system for that purpose, but leave it invisible (if possible). Since enchantment protection is added after regular protection rather than stacking with it, it seemed like a good fit.

[Krski 36]

I'm sorry I'm far too lazy to read this entire thread but have any ideas addressed the main combat problem yet? Aka spam clicking? My finger is getting tired and was hoping a solution was in the pipeline. Seriously where is the combat strategy? "Run forward, spam click, tea bag, run" just a little variety would be nice.

Minecraft realms , a normal minecraft server has found the simple way to stop spam clicking , it uses the xp bar as the hp , and the green thing as the durration of sprint or bow tencety , or swing that you can make , you can spam click still but it has no efect , and it doesn't alow running forever on the plains

[junweizhu 12]

I'm still in favour of making the combat system work like the longer you hold the mouse button, the stronger the blows(using more durability of course) , with spam clicking doing damage equal to poking someone with a stick, which is not much.

Being attacked will cancel the charge and you can't sprint while charging.

Edit: Actually, prof's combat system sounds more interesting.

[Krski 36]

That would be anoying you charge up someone pokes you , yea like someone would't be able to hit you whit a mace if you poked him.....