Combat Rewrite II

[Doug R.]

Victor, it's because you don't understand how dragging works. Dragging takes into account both strength and fighting skill. Since fighting skill has nothing to do with physique, you have nothing to be concerned about.

[Mr. Bones]

well, it would be a bit more closer to a real siege if there would be an attacker and a defender competing by the rules of the different versions
so why dont the pirates start with dragging the town leader on board?

You assume they know who the leader is.

you can always go for the oldest people carrying a lot of stuff he or she obviously not using

One town that Im in is the oldest char the leader. That wont work. Most leaders carry very little you can see because they have someplace to put it and are holding keys and healing food.

leaders have to move and distribute stuff often and are too tired to drop everything off all the time. Keys are not heavy, and why would they hold healing food? So they have to drop it before moving stuff and pick it up again? Actually its enough for pirates to capture these people in charge of hauling resources and administration, which usually is the same person.

i checked my charries 5 towns it was obvious who to kidnap - oldest person carrying a lot of different crafts tools (of all the people holding different tools the oldest), 1 town had two visiting oldies, kidnapping them would only claim land vehicles (so its a 1 to 2 chance to pick the right one) and moderate spoils, and 1 town had noone in the center who has access to town storage.

anyway my point was that we could try the three systems without actual coding of any, which could bring out some issues with it. you can also RP it to make it more pun

tried to start with a pirate first move ...

I have eight characters and only in two are the oldest characters the leaders of the town. If you want to carry out an attack period, do some recon first. Send in a spy and get some intelligence on who's in charge, and who has keys to what. It doesn't take long if done right, and it's hard to go wrong when you have facts and not guesses.

[Drael]

Having some weapons be better than others against certain types of shields or armour is a good thing.

Potentially, but then adding divesity to weapons does not require the addition of armours. Still I agree, if it can add to weapon diversity thats okay - however to me, defense values, weapon speed, tiredness values for each weapon could add more than armours would. Not to mention counterstrikes, as I said in my post..

Suggestion 1 is not turn based. There is no turn based suggestion; it was considered and then denied. The closest thing to that is suggestion 2, which would cause all attacks except for slaps (and maybe characters on an accepted list) to take one day, no matter what.

I consider both 1 and 2 turn based suggestions, I disagree. Maybe not strictly, but in form and function. They both allow potentially for defender options, which allow counterstrikes, dodges or other defender options - the whole point of me raising this.....

If the defender gets a choice as to response, and you throw in the likes of counterstrike, you get more freedoms rather than less, more tactics rather than less - and deal with what is the essential problem - the first attacker gets almost automatic advantage in the current system. None of these systems deal with the cause of the problem, the advantage of first attack, or first drag. Only way to deal with this is introduce risk, via the defender counterstrike, dragger pokes, etc...

This as far as I can tell, could be added to 1 and 2, potentially 3, if it can actually be formalised as a non-automatic system..

Again, the problems WILL REMAIN, unless the swing, block, d&d like mentality of the system isnt dropped and replaced by something that introduces new risks for that first drag, or attack...

Suggestion three would still be much better than the current system even without the auto counter attack. I do think that there is a good way to add it.

I would like to _hear it_, re-formed, without the auto, before I even considered voting on it............(changing the basic mechanic of any such system, from my experience with RPGs, is usually far less than simple)

As I said above, there are problems with the design of hit, block, hit block, - where that first hit can and does definatively sway the combat. These problems, aren't fully resolved in ANY of these systems....which are all still more or less, hit, block systems.....

(For clarity, re-read my last post if thats confusing) - I mean, if it doesnt deal with surprise tactics, and hit and run, drag and slay, FULLY, whats the point?

[CrashBlizz]

Suggestion 3 is the best one although it still has some things that needs to be changed. Its the best simply because I dont see why I should have to follow someone around for a day just to hit them - as the other two seem to suggest.


I dont like the fact they immediatlty attack back - thus making them tired through no fault of the player. Get a group with decent shields and they can make your character 100% tired in seconds and sustain very little negative effects themselves. Bad idea.

Limited healing - ok, as long as this is a sensible amount, as in at least 10%. Dont go telling me I have to wait a year to recover from a scarab attack just because I can only heal 2% a day. Also you know doing this will damage the healing food trade. If people cant use as much then they dont need as much.

See yourself being dragged - Why? Its pretty much a useless implemtation. At the moment people whisper to each other to help them. Its obvious what they're going to do! And dragging takes place very quickly because they need the person to stay in the area (unless its dragging a sleeper which seems to take a lot longer for some reason...). All changing this will do will mean whispering then starting to drag rather than dragging and then whispering. A waste of programming time.

Apart from that 3 is a good idea.

[Joshuamonkey]

As I said above, there are problems with the design of hit, block, hit block, - where that first hit can and does definatively sway the combat.

I dont like the fact they immediatlty attack back - thus making them tired through no fault of the player. Get a group with decent shields and they can make your character 100% tired in seconds and sustain very little negative effects themselves. Bad idea.

We can make it so that damage doesn't affect how much damage you do, how well you defend, or how easily you're dragged or can drag.

people who are "trusted" and will succeed in dragging you on first attempt without help UNLESS severely damaged

I don't think severely damaged would make a difference in this case. "Trusted" basically means that the dragged character is walking to wherever the trusted character tells them to go.

See yourself being dragged - Why? Its pretty much a useless implemtation. At the moment people whisper to each other to help them. Its obvious what they're going to do! And dragging takes place very quickly because they need the person to stay in the area (unless its dragging a sleeper which seems to take a lot longer for some reason...). All changing this will do will mean whispering then starting to drag rather than dragging and then whispering. A waste of programming time.

Sometimes they don't even need to whisper, they can plan it elsewhere. And you really can't always guess what someone is whispering. I've had two town leaders dragged to their death by a partner or second in command. Who are we to decide that it's obvious when you're going to be dragged? You should be able to notice when someone starts pulling on you.

[CrashBlizz]

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See yourself being dragged - Why? Its pretty much a useless implemtation. At the moment people whisper to each other to help them. Its obvious what they're going to do! And dragging takes place very quickly because they need the person to stay in the area (unless its dragging a sleeper which seems to take a lot longer for some reason...). All changing this will do will mean whispering then starting to drag rather than dragging and then whispering. A waste of programming time.

Sometimes they don't even need to whisper, they can plan it elsewhere. And you really can't always guess what someone is whispering. I've had two town leaders dragged to their death by a partner or second in command. Who are we to decide that it's obvious when you're going to be dragged? You should be able to notice when someone starts pulling on you.

Disagree. We want to improve the combat system. Yes, ok, that means making it harder to kill ( and 'perhaps' drag) people but lets still make it possible to do things. I can see this going from one extreme to the other. The tree huggers are completely going to take over cantr because nobody can do anything deemed 'bad'. I'm tired of suggestions that want big flashing lights telling the player everything in pink neon just so they dont have to pay attention and think about whats going on around them.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

A couple of thoughts as I scan through the new pages...

I don't like auto-retaliation. There really hasn't been a suggestion for it that makes me feel comfortable with it. I did notice that it was said that there should be some way you could turn it off if you wanted... that's all well and good, but I don't think I like it even then. I don't feel like it has a place in Cantr.

If there's a limit on healing food, there should be some natural healing OT added in to help offset things like animal attacks in the wilder areas of the world. Something like 0.5-1% a Cantr hour and then a max of 10% by healing foods. Then maybe have resting on furniture set to either increase the natural healing slightly to a certain point... or have tiredness factor into how much natural healing you get, so that furniture would help indirectly by reducing tiredness as it does now.

[gejyspa]

I really don't have strong opinions on the combat system one way or the other, but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to agree with Joshuamonkey against you CrashBlizz, by plyaing the reality card. You don't necessarily feel someone pickpocketing you. that's the nature of the act. But it's kinda hard to ignore some goon with his arm around your neck trying to hustle you off into a car, and I don't care how heavy a sleeper you are.

[SekoETC]

The way I see it, the dragging only starts after there are enough people ready to join. Before that it's just a matter of a gang of people looming suspiciously close to you, looking tense and alert. If you were preoccupied, you wouldn't notice them gathering around you until it was too late. If it was active dragging, there would be some grappling involved and a person shouldn't be able to instantly break free with just a click of a button. It would make sense that given enough time, a sufficiently stronger dragger could overpower their victim and manage to drag them even if they didn't have enough strength to do it instantly, but the victim could make attempts to break free, affected by strength and fighting skill, and they could cause tiredness to the dragger even if they were otherwise unsuccessful. It would bring a random element into play.

[Doug R.]

The way I see it, the dragging only starts after there are enough people ready to join...If it was active dragging, there would be some grappling involved and a person shouldn't be able to instantly break free with just a click of a button.

Except that tiredness is applied instantly to the dragger, so for the dragger the drag is happening then, for the victim, it's happening later. I agree that it either needs to be sooner or later for both, not split either way.

[Joshuamonkey]

Except that tiredness is applied instantly to the dragger, so for the dragger the drag is happening then, for the victim, it's happening later. I agree that it either needs to be sooner or later for both, not split either way.

Would it be okay to have the dragger only tire when the dragging actually happens?
I'm in between on whether or not the person being dragged should get an event or would have to check their character description page. Having the dragger not become tired just for initiating a drag could at least be a fair tradeoff.

[Doug R.]

Would it be okay to have the dragger only tire when the dragging actually happens?

Seems fair.

[Mykey]

The tree huggers are completely going to take over cantr because nobody can do anything deemed 'bad'. I'm tired of suggestions that want big flashing lights telling the player everything in pink neon just so they dont have to pay attention and think about whats going on around them.

Dude, the "tree huggers" took over about 8 years ago. It was called, tiredness and dragging. Other than that, I agree with you completely.

[Mr. Bones]

The tree huggers are completely going to take over cantr because nobody can do anything deemed 'bad'. I'm tired of suggestions that want big flashing lights telling the player everything in pink neon just so they dont have to pay attention and think about whats going on around them.

Dude, the "tree huggers" took over about 8 years ago. It was called, tiredness and dragging. Other than that, I agree with you completely.

Yep. That's why there's so many people complaining about the current combat system, it's not tree-hugger friendly. I guess we're all doomed to a never ending episode of Cantr Leave it to Beaver.

[Chris]

Dude, the "tree huggers" took over about 8 years ago. It was called, tiredness and dragging. Other than that, I agree with you completely.

Yep. That's why there's so many people complaining about the current combat system, it's not tree-hugger friendly. I guess we're all doomed to a never ending episode of Cantr Leave it to Beaver.

I don't know what environmentalism has to do with Cantr combat. Perhaps you mean "care bears"?

There are hundreds of games that have non-stop combat. You can kill to your heart's content. If you don't like Cantr, play something else.