War Comes to TFC

[Kazahied 42]

Combat in TFC, and vanilla minecraft for that matter, is very linear. Basically once a player has metal armor and a mace he is unbeatable. There is only two real forms of combat currently; Javelin spam or mace.

 

Adding in a few things would introduce strategy into combat. In larger servers the town that can put together a balanced army would fair better than one that just mass produces maces.

 

This is a long post so here we go

 

 

Variants in armor;

 

• Chain mail would be a lighter cheaper but more labor intensive armor, protections would be less than standard armor but would be better against piercing attacks.
• Lamellar armor would replace current armor so as to differentiate the types, it would be a balanced armor that is good all around and doesn't sacrifice too much mobility
• Plate mail would be a very expensive but very strong armor that makes the wearer neigh indestructible (within reason) however wearing full plate would make the user have a permanent slow 1 debuff effect on "not the actual debuff but you move the same speed"

 

New mechanics involving armor;

• Wearing armor higher than leather will cause the player to move slower based on the type of armor
• Wearing metal armor will accelerate the effects of ambient temperature on the player
• Wearing armor will increase the rate at which thirst and hunger deplete

 

Horses;

 

Horses are to be added soon with many of the variables that TFC has for mobs. Three new variables and an easy way to view them for more efficient breeding would be as follows;

 

• Strength- denotes the animal's strength, its capacity to carry an armored rider, equipment, and pulling power
• Agility- denotes the animal's top speed, agility, and acceleration
• Endurance- denotes the animals ruggedness, stamina, and hardiness

These traits would be balanced in such a way that you cannot have a horse that has more than one trait maxed. You would have to sacrifice somewhere to improve elsewhere. These new variables would also make implementing carts, machines, and other mechanical/transportation uses for horses easier. To view the traits a simple modification of the vanilla horse GUI would be able to read out gender, fertility status (how far pregnant, ready to breed, etc) stats and modify the gear

 

While on horse back players wearing armor would not have the movement penalties associated with the armor so long as the horse can carry the weight. As the weight on the horse increases it's top speed will decrease, once its weight threshold is reached it will move as fast as the player can walk but lose hunger/stamina at 3x the normal rate.

 

From horse back most melee weapons would have a small bonus to armor pen, negating a percentage of the weapons damage in flat reduction to the armors resistance (another way would be to simply make the armor take more damage, if reduction calculations are too complex)

 

 

Weapons;

To deal with the new kinds of armor the bow and arrow needs a redo. To make it believable, no archery from horseback if wearing metal armor (not quite realistic but try drawing a bow with full plate on) simply to balance the combat a bit. arrow heads would now be knapped for stone heads, and cast for minor metals, for the higher tier metals like steel there would be other kinds of arrows meant to deal with knights in plate, and other specialized targets

 

• Bodkin- meant to penetrate plate armor the bodkin does less damage than a standard arrow head of the same material but ignores half of the armor
• Broad head- meant to cause massive wounds to animals and unarmed soldiers the broad head does more damage than a standard arrow of same material but has 50% weakness to targets wearing the same tier of armor or higher (ie stone-leather, t1metals to t1+ and so on) and 25% to targets wearing armor at all 
• Field- meant for target practice these arrows don'd despawn nearly as fast so that you can collect them from a target, they do next to no damage

 

The Lance;

The lance would be a weapon for mounted use and gets massive penalties when used when dismounted, damage would get a boost from the weight of the horse factored by its final speed after all the gear is added. 

 

Siege Crossbow;

A heavy crossbow with very high damage but short range, low accuracy and low rate of fire. The siege crossbow would be used to lob high damage heavy bolts similar to the new arrow heads over walls and into towns. The range and accuracy compared to a vanilla bow would be quite low but the damage from getting hit would be very high ( near instant kill at lvl 0/1). The point of this is that javelins cost a lot to build decent ones but a bow has too flat a trajectory to be used to siege properly. There are only too ways to fix this, siege engines  or a high angle of attack capable bow that doesn't take 15 seconds for the arrow  to come down

 

Place-able Shields;

To help protect infantry from the new bow and cross bow, place-able shields made from wood and thatch would be deployed to allow infantry some cover in the open, of course the shields would be easily destroyed by fire, and melee.

 

 

[AllenWL 186]

Go to the combat revamp discussion post, a lot of ideas you have where posted there as well

[Kazahied 42]

The difference between what i have posted and the combat revamp thread is that this is not a complete overhaul of combat with things like angles and what not. It simply a way to diversify combat based on the already existing minecraft principles of combat using the methods available to the devs. If we want a combat revamp it would need to be short, to the point, and not a nightmare to code.

[Omicron 62]

• Wearing armor will increase the rate at which thirst and hunger deplete

 

I wouldn't want to move slower with armor - it would only motivate me to never wear armor at all, even in combat, because the amount of hate I have for movement slowintg effects borders on the irrational ;P But this here, this is a good idea. Food is much too plentiful in the mid- and lategame in TFC, so extra food sinks that do no affect earlygame players are very much needed.

[Kazahied 42]

Even trained knights who sole purpose in society was to wear plate on the battlefield, couldn't move unhindered. with chain and lamellar you wouldn't really notice much difference as walking speed would be the same but it would cap your sprinting speed

[Omicron 62]

Just because you can see it happen IRL does not make it good and fun gameplay. I tried MineFantasy, which features movement speed and swimming disadvantages to armors of all kind. I tossed the mod out after two days because I couldn't stand it. It was not fun to play.

 

You spend over 95% of your time playing out of combat - you might even say over 99%. So all this time, you are getting a movement speed debuff that makes the game feel tedious, inefficient and time-consuming, like you're moving through liquid honey. Nobody wants that. You end up making your player keep the armor unequipped almost the entire time, resulting in the player being unarmored for all random encounters despite having put in the effort and resources to craft the armor.

 

When you design games, you need to contrast the disadvantages of a proposed game system - especially disadvantages in client/server performance and in usability - against the intended advantage conferred by implementing the game system. The advantage you propose is... *looks at your post* ...actually none is given. Let's go out on a limb then and say that there's a potential advantage to be gained in "making combat more varied and interesting", which is a nebulous and subjective concept at best, but let's work with it. Contrasting a serious reduction in usability with this proposed advantage, you must ask: is it worth it? Does it make sense to reduce the gameplay comfort experienced in 95% or more of all situations, against something that may or may not be appreciated in 5% of all cases?

 

And then, in the unlikely event that you answer this question with "yes", you then must proceed and ask yourself: does it actually work that way? In other words: if you pitch this new game system to your players, are your players going to use it as you intended? Or will you find out that players would now rather fight unarmored, leading to an increase of complaints on the forums about the game being too difficult? Will your system designed to make armors more varied and interesting suddenly turn out to relegate the entire armor system, and the smithing system to craft them, to a niche gimmick that most consider a waste of resources? Which then snowballs into complaints about too little to do with all that ore in the ground, because you inadvertedly lost half the meaningful content of the metal age? Your design goal was promoting meaningful decisions, but the implementation result was the complete removal of all decisions and a compounding negative effect on other game systems.

 

 

"Because it's realistic" is never a good game design axiom, nor is it a valid advantage worth sacrificing gameplay flow for. In fact, "because it's realistic" is probably one of the worst game design axioms, because it completely forgets the fact that you are designing a game. In those cases where realistic elements are built into the gameplay, it is never, ever done merely for the sake of realism. This is why TFC is explicitly not aiming for realism - the devs want to deliver a believable experience while at the same time maintaining the artistic license to be unrealistic on purpose, if it enhances the gameplay value. Games need to be fun for the player, first and foremost. And you don't make gameplay fun by slowing down the player.

[Rhapsodyman2000 22]

Just because you can see it happen IRL does not make it good and fun gameplay. I tried MineFantasy, which features movement speed and swimming disadvantages to armors of all kind. I tossed the mod out after two days because I couldn't stand it. It was not fun to play.

 

You spend over 95% of your time playing out of combat - you might even say over 99%. So all this time, you are getting a movement speed debuff that makes the game feel tedious, inefficient and time-consuming, like you're moving through liquid honey. Nobody wants that. You end up making your player keep the armor unequipped almost the entire time, resulting in the player being unarmored for all random encounters despite having put in the effort and resources to craft the armor.

 

When you design games, you need to contrast the disadvantages of a proposed game system - especially disadvantages in client/server performance and in usability - against the intended advantage conferred by implementing the game system. The advantage you propose is... *looks at your post* ...actually none is given. Let's go out on a limb then and say that there's a potential advantage to be gained in "making combat more varied and interesting", which is a nebulous and subjective concept at best, but let's work with it. Contrasting a serious reduction in usability with this proposed advantage, you must ask: is it worth it? Does it make sense to reduce the gameplay comfort experienced in 95% or more of all situations, against something that may or may not be appreciated in 5% of all cases?

 

And then, in the unlikely event that you answer this question with "yes", you then must proceed and ask yourself: does it actually work that way? In other words: if you pitch this new game system to your players, are your players going to use it as you intended? Or will you find out that players would now rather fight unarmored, leading to an increase of complaints on the forums about the game being too difficult? Will your system designed to make armors more varied and interesting suddenly turn out to relegate the entire armor system, and the smithing system to craft them, to a niche gimmick that most consider a waste of resources? Which then snowballs into complaints about too little to do with all that ore in the ground, because you inadvertedly lost half the meaningful content of the metal age? Your design goal was promoting meaningful decisions, but the implementation result was the complete removal of all decisions and a compounding negative effect on other game systems.

 

 

"Because it's realistic" is never a good game design axiom, nor is it a valid advantage worth sacrificing gameplay flow for. In fact, "because it's realistic" is probably one of the worst game design axioms, because it completely forgets the fact that you are designing a game. In those cases where realistic elements are built into the gameplay, it is never, ever done merely for the sake of realism. This is why TFC is explicitly not aiming for realism - the devs want to deliver a believable experience while at the same time maintaining the artistic license to be unrealistic on purpose, if it enhances the gameplay value. Games need to be fun for the player, first and foremost. And you don't make gameplay fun by slowing down the player.

 

I disagree slightly with you. Armor having a disadvantage in movement is not only meant to make armor a challenge in combat, but also to encourage the use of lighter armor (especially Leather) as civilian wares. As of right now, Player roam about wearing their Bronze or Steel armor (which ever metal they have most of) all the time. Of course, this is because it allow the player to be always ready for combat, and never be too surprised. I would love to see that changed in TFC because our combat, like Vanilla combat, has (like you said before) mainly been a battle superior wares over that of skill. Wearing you best armor everywhere only encourages that behavior.

 

On the other hand, I do not believe that Armor should fully prevent players from being able to run (maybe a speed faster than normal walking, but slower than normal running), but as a natural consequence, I agree with the op that armor clad players would have increased hunger and thirst.

[Kazahied 42]

The intent is not to make armor unwearable due to penalties, even the casual renny fan can move fairly well in a 20 kilo suit of chain (only the capability to jump is significantly reduced).

 

It is the heavy 50 kilo suits of plate that would make noticeable changes. wearing chain or even chain with a lamellar chest would not hinder the player noticeably unless you sprint everywhere and race unarmored players.

 

 

The advantage is that there are several ways to deal with current problems and soon to be problems. With the devs moving mobs underground it is likely that they will be more dangerous.( And note since tfc is scaled for multiplayer this would allow a more intricate soldier class). Having a dedicated guard in full plate would be a good idea, he could deal with mobs while being relatively impervious, as a trade off he has high thirst/food requirements, expensive gear, and moves slower than a standard player.

 

Other advantages would be the cheaper armors are usefull in situations where you (1 don't want to waste resources on heavy armor, (2 dont have the resources for heavier armor, (3 dont want or need the benefits of heavy armor due to cost, (4 want to wear something cheap so you don't waste durability on the heavy armor.

 

The weapons are usefull to those who can find ways to use them, regardless of armor issues.

 

 

And you say that players would rather fight unarmored than take a slight movement penalty?, i propose skyrim which has the same thing but players love heavy armor

 

 

Rhapsodyman2000 said "On the other hand, I do not believe that Armor should fully prevent players from being able to run (maybe a speed faster than normal walking, but slower than normal running)"

 

 

What i meant by movement penalties except for plate armor plate would have a flat 10% reduction in speed

[corki99 23]

That place-able shield thing is called a pavis

[Omicron 62]

I suppose it depends on how you balance it. I certainly do want to wear armor at all times. I consider it my "reward" for making it there, as I have every TFC world set to Hardcore difficulty by default. Being armored for me is like saying: I just spent many hours surviving on the permadeath-enabeld highest difficulty setting without any defenses to help me. I have beaten the challenge, and now I can wear armor to become strong myself, so that I can stop fearing for my life (and my savegame) all the time.

 

Admittedly, I don't need to have the best or heaviest of armors. If your system confines the speed debuff to platemail, for example, and I could use the proposed chain and lamellar variants without a speed debuff (but maybe with other downsides such as food drain), then I don't mind. Just don't make any (metal) armor slow the player down, like MineFantasy does.

[Kazahied 42]

The intent is not to make wearing armor an impossibility, just to make the armor that makes you neigh invincible have some cost to use.

 

An addendum  to the OP about the armor and movement speed--- 

 

ONLY plate mail will slow the player down- and if ANY plate is worn the effect is in full( to reduce coding nightmares about mix and match penalties are based on the heaviest worn piece, wearing chain but a plate helm means you get the penalties of full plate)

 

Chain mail would provide a minor increase in food/thirst consumption

 

Lamellar would provide an average increase in thirst/hunger

 

Plate would provide a major increase in thirst/hunger

 

 

In addition wearing any metal armor will increase ambient temperature effects by its cost factor (1 chain ,2 lamellar, 3 plate) 

 

Plate mail would apply a slowing effect that takes away 5% of all movement speed. let me elaborate-

 

You can still sprint, jump, do what ever. However the speed at which you move across x and z will be reduced by 5%. You walk at 95% movement speed, you sprint at 95% sprinting speed. This isn't a lot and is barely notice able.

 

Since many don't believe me that a slight penalty to movement speed isnt a bad thing here is some math;

 

Standard minecraft movement speed is 4.3 m/s

the movement penalty is .05

4.3*.05= .215

4.3-.215= 4.085

so movement speed is reduced by less than a third of a block per second (not much to cry about) in fact you probably wouldn't notice it unless chasing someone

 

Sprinting speed is 5.6 m/s

same penalty .05

5.6*.05= .28

5.6-.28= 5.32

Not much more of a penalty, even if the penalty was doubled we are talking .4 and .5 blocks per second

 

 

At speed differences like this we are talking a one block distance over roughly 3 seconds. The real killer is the thirst/hunger drain, while sprinting to try and keep up with the lighter armored enemies your food and water are plummeting (visibly while sprinting) 

[Rhapsodyman2000 22]

I don't know, I still think that a higher penalty for armor should exist, maybe the 10% you mentioned before or a 15%.

[Kazahied 42]

The real difficulty of wearing plate armor is not moving fast, it is stamina. The reason i came up with a small flat percentage ms penalty is to compound the fact that hunger/thirst drain faster. If you have to sprint longer then you are losing more food and water. A 10% penalty means where you would normaly sprint for 10 seconds you now have to do in 11, which adds another 20 ticks of increased drainage.

 

The speed penalty is just a means to an end, and that end is the reduction of stamina in battle/mob farming

[Bioxx 796]

Most of the ideas here are very doable and I'll be mulling over some of these things. The horse stuff is all dunk, but the armor changes seem balanced enough. I was very meh about speed penalties, but a slight penalty as you describe wouldn't be a major headache to play with while at the same time providing a decent penalty when compounded with the drain in other areas. :I need a smiley for thumbs up:

[Rhapsodyman2000 22]

The real difficulty of wearing plate armor is not moving fast, it is stamina. The reason i came up with a small flat percentage ms penalty is to compound the fact that hunger/thirst drain faster. If you have to sprint longer then you are losing more food and water. A 10% penalty means where you would normaly sprint for 10 seconds you now have to do in 11, which adds another 20 ticks of increased drainage.

 

The speed penalty is just a means to an end, and that end is the reduction of stamina in battle/mob farming

 

I agree and I also have realized something that was hidden right under my nose!  With thirst controlling the players movement, I believe it should be the fastest to deplete (should be by default anyways). In this way, your ideas will have the delightful effect of turning the Thirst meter into a makeshift Stamina meter, which can be increased by gathering EXP from killing mobs (or players). Player would not only benefit from the increased health, but also be able to last longer In a prolonged battle.

 

My only fear is that players would end up using jugs of water like stamina potions. But that could also be said of food too.

[Kazahied 42]

You figured out my secret.. shhhhhh.... but good luck drinking or eating while someone is attacking you. Besides the movement penalties only apply when on foot, your gear weights would determine your horses penalties if any

[Rhapsodyman2000 22]

*Snickers as he changes the texture of Water Jugs to Gatorade*

[AllenWL 186]

*Snickers as he changes the texture of Water Jugs to Gatorade*

 

by adding water to this clay jug, I can make energy drinks!

The modern version of Jesus Christ.

[Kazahied 42]

While on the subject of armors and effects. I was thinking about maybe crafting leather armor with an insulation material ....wool maybe....

 

The result would allow you resist effects of extreme cold

 

 

Another thing since lances and such would be unwieldy for a novice user.

 

Jousting Gear-

 

Specially modified suits of armor and lances that allow players to hit each other without injury

 

The only tricky part of coding jousting would be to determine who won with out resorting to who has the better horse calculations

Possibly a points system that could calculate the following and dismount the player with a lower score. 

 

Points for first hit

 

Points for strength of hit - where strength of hit is mass of horse + rider--- horse = 500 kilo* scale factor (scale factor is the size of the animal due to TFC coding) + rider armor +horse armor + rider (75 kilo is average so use that for constant) multiplied by speed of horse at impact  ---- its but fairly balanced

 

penalty for not hitting within 10 ticks

 

To keep players from dismounting each other in standard pvp jousting would only work if both parties are wearing joust armor variants

[Rhapsodyman2000 22]

I think they already plan to have woolen cloths in later additions.