Comprehensive Combat Re-Write

[wadko]

To be honest, I don't really see how just injuring a newspawn when he's running away if you're not planning on chasing them is an important consideration, since it serves virtually no purpose.

It's a common thing to do in polish zone. You don't kill the note thieft, you can't put him in jail, you can't stop him so you mark him with a wound. In other towns the wound is suspishes so the townsfolk is more caution on him. If he runs to an nonurban place his life is more difficult with the wound, becouse the animals can kill him quicker.
It's like a punishment.

[Keegan Ingrassia]

-D. Ship Docking

That's an interesting scenario, but considering the fact that they could always just gather the friends before attacking, and in the current system they could kill the two sailors instantly, this isn't really helping your argument.
In the new system, those being attacked will be able to attack back, as opposed to just being killed with no real combat.

They could kill them instantly, sure. But that means they all must be awake, and all must manage to attack in that instant. In this new scenario, they now have an entire day to wake up, wander outside, attack Sailor A a few times, etc. Sailor A is stuck there all day, since the attack on Sailor B cannot be finished until either Sailor B wakes up, or Townie 1 cancels it.

Now, instead of requiring a precision ambush of seconds to secure the ship, the entire town has 24 hours to kill off Sailor A, and initiate an attack on Sailor B (which will go through in a day). At that point, it wouldn't matter if Sailor B woke up to, as you say, attack back. He would have an entire town to contend with. It makes it -easier- for sailors to be killed, and -harder- for players to escape. Does it keep insta-death from happening? Yes. Is the character going to be more likely to die now? Also yes. It merely delayed the death. In fact, it only made it more certain that death would occur, instead of a grievous wound.

[Marian]

This is going to take some getting used to, and I'm sure there are some issues that'll take actual playtesting before they can be ironed out, but on the whole I really like this idea and think it'll resolve most of the issues with the current system.

I really don't understand the people claiming it won't help RP though. What is the reasoning for that? How can something that lets the defender be in the same room as the attacker and have a chance to respond not be an enormous improvement? This is probably the thing I'm most excited about, hit and run tactics always felt so out of place with everything else in Cantr, and actually encourage people to metagame and [i]not[/i] to RP, since they're usually in such a hurry to get out of their before any other players have a chance to log in.

The other big complaint seems to be about newspawns, which again, I think is more of a mindset thing that will take some getting used to, but not actually harmful to the game or RP in anyway. It sounds like it would actually be easier to kill them or force a surrender now since they're stopped on the road right outside of town, but if I'm reading that wrong, is a handful of notes and maybe some food and a few bone tools really [i]that[/i] vital? I'm always amazed at how long a guard is willing to waste abandoning their post to chase down and hack apart a petty thief.

As sort of a compromise though, for this and other situations, how about this idea? Let's say the automatic response time for an offline player depends on the kind of shield they have. An attack on someone with no shield processes quickly, with a bone shield taking a little longer and so on.

I also agree with whoever had the idea that there should be a way to allow easy dragging from 'friendlies', though dragging is almost a whole nother topic. However the combat system is worked out, that's still going to be one of the most important issues.

[viktor]

some people have complained about a tactic where a bad person uses the packed full building tactic t run out, attack and hide again without a lock because the building is full.
this is not an actual problem that needs to be adressed, because it has been dealt with in game time and time again, causing teamwork, i for one have been involved with different chars in removing these problem induviduals in game the good old fasioned and realistic way.

here's antoher scenarion which shows freezing travel is no good.
traveller comes through a town to do some trading, the people are not interested, instead they wish to forcefully take the vehicle and goods. the traveller gets hit accepts and goes down a road, within a few minutes another person comes out to attack, the traveller if still online wakes and accepts and cotinues, the traveller is asleep (player goes to bed), another townsfolk comes and hits, they are frozen on the road, the rest of the town trickles on the road after the travel tick over the course of 8 hours each paying an attack to the traveller (all these townsfolk on foot lets say). the player comes online after thier proper night's sleep or even hasta wait till after work, doesnt matter cuz thier char is dead only because the new combat system freezes them in place as a free target because they got hit after they logged off.
now the player could try to stay up all night but they could pass out and end up late for work because they were just trying to survive the new combat system.




as a veteran player that has played since april 2004 i did see the old old combat system, unlimited hits on any target and no tiredness, i seen populated towns get wiped out by lone maniacs in moments,
the combat system was changed for the better, but only very little was changed, the attacks per target per day were dropped to 1, and some tiredness was added, this was very very good. even though some of my chars gained power and a city because of a town being wiped out by some maniac, i honestly didn't like how it happened and was glad about the change then.
this system has been in play for the better part of 6 years and has been a great system, it has influenced in game cultures, methods of play, military strategy guides in game and the list goes on.
the proposed overhaul as it is stated will not be good for the game, there may be something within it that could be beneficial but some of the biggest parts of it are the worst parts and will be detrimental to the game. this is cantr, not gaia online, if we want a cushy cush game that makes fighting near impossible and not worth considering, we'd be playing that, instead of cantr

if these changes got the push because of the occurance of a few tea loaded bloodlusting buggers who took out people along the western coast of treefeather, then don't! the issue with them is resolved by removing energy foods. MY ONLY complaint about loosing energy foods was that i had a few chars invest heavily in producing and even had to conquer a town because the change made my honest char a lyer after selling tea based on it's energy recovering properties which were taken away shortly after. that aside, we don;t need energy recovery under our curent system. the new system, if we limit stomach capacity too much, reimplimenting them may not even be worthwhile.
you want to have more fighting with multiple attacks per target in a day but then decide to compensate we would increase tiredness? one hit with 15% tiredness is great as is! unlimited hits with 25-30% tiredness each will virtually phase out combat all together.

we want to reduce and avoid 'boredom' but mark my words, implimenting this new system will in many ways make it boring or cause loss of interest by many and the player base will lose even more numbers...

[Joshuamonkey]

we want to reduce and avoid 'boredom' but mark my words, implimenting this new system will in many ways make it boring or cause loss of interest by many and the player base will lose even more numbers

More boring then being instantly killed or attacked from run and hide tactics? We lose players from the current combat system. One where the attack has to be involved/logged in in order for an attack to be completed should definitely cause less people to quit. And if there's anything I have a say on, it's marketing. What do you think will cause more of a problem, allowing a few active characters to wipe out a town, or causing them to risk their life when doing so and making them stay and fight it out?
I don't think that most people's decision on whether or not to quit Cantr is based on how hard it is for them to wipe out a town. But being killed quickly without their input..that's a problem.

[SekoETC]

If the trader woke up and saw say 4 or 6 attacks queued up on him, he could tell the people he'll give up his stuff in order to keep his life. People could still cancel their attacks. But I don't think freezing travel until everything is resolved is a good thing. More like the people who initiate combat before the first travel tick would have their hits resolved and then the defender could choose to either keep driving or stop there and fight back. If someone arrived on the road on foot an hour late and the target is in a car then they should not get a chance to hit just because someone else was stalling.

But if someone retaliates to violence, do they also have to wait for the original attacker to log in and acknowledge the hit or will it take place instantly?

[Piscator]

But if someone retaliates to violence, do they also have to wait for the original attacker to log in and acknowledge the hit or will it take place instantly?

The rules would apply to both sides. Otherwise it might suddenly be the attacker who's killed while being offline.

[cooldevo]

As a member since May of this year, I have played around with the current combat system, although am by far not an expert. There are some things that it did do well. And there are some things that are done well with the new system.

The biggest being that not everyone playing lives in the same time zone. I play with people from around the world, some are awake when I'm asleep and vice versa. It could make the "freezing" of travel very difficult and painful. Having a couple of characters that are traders, this could have a huge impact on business in cities or people encountered on the road during travel. For example, if I am driving in a van at full speed on a paved road there is no way that anyone on foot should be able to get even close enough to attack me. They are walking at up to 10 pixels per day and I'm in a van going 65-129 pixels per day (according to the Wiki). If they could freeze my vehicle by attacking my partner (who is asleep in his part of the world) and coordinate an attack, I have to just sit there or try and attack back although with 4,5,6,... attacks on me for every one I do it'll still be "insta-death for me and my partner."

Do I like waking up hurt because someone attacked me? Not at all, but again, if we are going for realism there isn't much that can be done. And if I am worried about that, I'll sleep inside a locked door where I can't easily be accessed by strangers. If I sleep in the open of the town center, it's by my own choice so I have to live with the repercussions that anyone can and may get to me. Pirates, thieves, soldiers, mercenaries, etc depend on fast, quick movements and attacks. And merchants/traders/sailors/explorers depend on being able to get out of a situation quickly should things fall apart. I can handle getting whacked a couple of times making an escape, but under the new system I'd just be pinned down and attacks queued in essence still insta-killing me, just delaying it until I log in or process them.

As to being able to perform actions before processing an attack that is flat out unrealistic. If someone attacks me, it is in essence a free time-out to say "hey wait on your attack while I sip at this healing liquid or food. Ok I'm healed up now, let's get it on." If someone is thrusting a weapon at me, it's going to hit me, I shouldn't get a free move before it hits. Instead it would make more sense, and be a lot more realistic if instead of counter-attacking or defending we also get an option to eat/drink. That will use your retaliation move to heal you, but you cannot do anything else. And would also add a strategic element because if you are in a big or prolonged fight (i.e. soldiers/mercenaries) you'd have to balance your attacks and defense with healing yourself. This would add a lot more realism strategy to big conflicts.

[Joshuamonkey]

If someone arrived on the road on foot an hour late and the target is in a car then they should not get a chance to hit just because someone else was stalling.

I agree. I think that whether or not others can attack someone should depend on where the character they want to attack would be if they were not in combat.
The problem I see here is, how to implement this? We would still need to allow the new attackers to find the person in combat by catching up to where they would be on the road normally.

As a note, the attacked could choose to counter attack upon resolving the combat, so that they'd have a chance to attack the attacker before they disappear on their vehicle, etc.

The biggest being that not everyone playing lives in the same time zone. I play with people from around the world, some are awake when I'm asleep and vice versa.

This is an example of why it's important for people to be given the chance to log on first.

Instead it would make more sense, and be a lot more realistic if instead of counter-attacking or defending we also get an option to eat/drink.

Likely they will not be allowed to eat before the first attack, but should be for subsequent attacks that are initiated before you log on. It doesn't have so much to do with eating before they hit, but with eating after the last person is done. The reason I think this is important is because otherwise it would depend almost entirely on whether or not you were logged on and eating healing food between the attacks. With your suggestion happening to log on in time would still be a significant factor.

[Snake]

Are you gonna put it under voting?

[SekoETC]

The whole thing or some part of it? It sounds like they've made up their mind already.

It's pretty complicated but I think it might be necessary to duplicate entries in the traveling table and create alternative timelines that way. Let's imagine someone starts traveling at 100% speed and someone hits them, it doesn't matter how many traveling ticks have occurred after leaving, only that the person is within range when the combat is initiated. There would be a new table for attacks, and the attack could be marked as occurring on a road so the game would know it needs special handling. When the next traveling tick occurs, it would check if people in this vehicle have pending rounds of combat (and it might handle it differently if the fighters are in the same vehicle because potentially it could keep moving, but let's ignore that for now). It would increment a field that stands for travel ticks occurred since attack was initiated. It would also duplicate the entry in the traveling table and the one with speed 0 would represent the frozen situation, and the one with the old speed would represent the timeline where the person kept moving. If other people entered combat later on, I think it would need to create yet another duplicate entry for the scenario where movement had occurred after the first attack but not after the second, in case the attackers in the second stage still happened to be within range after the traveling tick(s) had been processed for the target. But the target could choose to keep driving and then attack the first attacker in return if they're still within range. The first attacker would also have two timelines, one where they keep moving at their set speed and one where they're frozen in place. I think they could choose likewise if their character kept moving or stopped before accepting the attack, because the original target had moved. If the person chooses to stop and that would make them out of range for the person retaliating, the retaliation will be cancelled but the character who got attacked first would get away. This would give them a chance to retaliate if the first enemy insists on continuing the chase but also gives an option to drop the retaliation if doing so makes the difference between getting away. And also it's possible that the first attacker will be still out of range even if they chose to keep traveling, if the first target is moving much faster. That way the result will be the same but the character will be further down the road. Alternative timelines that can no longer occur can be deleted.

Retaliation is a bit complicated. If a person gets attacked by one person on one hour and two people on another hour, then they initiate retaliation on the first person but are allowed to progress pending travel ticks in the middle, the attacks by the other two need to be resolved before the retaliation can occur. Yet it needs to calculate if the people involved are within range at a certain moment in time. And what if the first attacker missed and decided they would rather turn back than continue the chase, would they be allowed to assume that travel occurred in the opposite direction on the travel ticks between the first attack and the retaliation attack?

[Drael]

-A. Sparring

Good riddance. Sparring and blocking attacks from people who arent able to speak is kinda lame. Pick someone who is awake, and spar ur heart out.

In addition ur mention of skill deficits is the opposite of what this system proposes - eventual changes to the combat skill arrangement so such skills are more widespread and variable. This will give combat life it doesnt have now. More RP, more combat variability, in person combat, like combat is supposed to be.

-B. Dragging

Draggin is totally nerfed. ATM its the core mechanic of warfare, along with hit and run. Super lame. Good riddance.

-C. Hit-and-Run, or, Guerrilla Warfare

Good riddance.

All your complaints are things everyone wants to get rid of from the old combat system. The only semi valid point was about travel/boat warfare, which should possibly be refined eventually so weird stuff doesnt happen.

[Drael]

For travel combat and boats, or even in general you could have a "flee" option that automatically takes the hit and doesnt strike back, to enable movement and escape....

[SekoETC]

I'm seeing a bit of a problem, if someone is attacked by a person with much better equipment while traveling and they're both online, you must acknowledge the attack, and you get a chance to retaliate but if you choose not to retaliate, would the first attacker still be allowed to hit you again and again? And you would have to accept each hit if you view the character or log in, while if you didn't view the character or log in, you could stall for a day, and possibly get out of range with damage from only one hit. It would be a viable option if you knew there was only one attacker. It wouldn't make any sense to fight back if you had say, a bone knife, and they had an iron shield. The game should not make not logging in a viable defense mechanism. There should be another way. Currently one hit a day rule is that mechanism, but it's artificial.

[Keegan Ingrassia]

-A. Sparring

Good riddance. Sparring and blocking attacks from people who arent able to speak is kinda lame. Pick someone who is awake, and spar ur heart out.

In addition ur mention of skill deficits is the opposite of what this system proposes - eventual changes to the combat skill arrangement so such skills are more widespread and variable. This will give combat life it doesnt have now. More RP, more combat variability, in person combat, like combat is supposed to be.

-B. Dragging

Draggin is totally nerfed. ATM its the core mechanic of warfare, along with hit and run. Super lame. Good riddance.

-C. Hit-and-Run, or, Guerrilla Warfare

Good riddance.

All your complaints are things everyone wants to get rid of from the old combat system. The only semi valid point was about travel/boat warfare, which should possibly be refined eventually so weird stuff doesnt happen.

Seeing as how I'm not the only one raising these points, Drael, its obvious that -no-, "everyone" does not want to get rid of them. You personally may want to get rid of them. Whether that is because you are nursing hurt feelings from dead characters, or because you find yourself unable to adequately prepare and respond to these tactics, is irrelevant.

-A. My point is about sparring with people in different timezones, not smacking sleepers. Subsequently, I made the point that the new queued combat system will lead to an avoidance of interaction with players not currently awake. You yourself supported this point, by stating I should "pick someone who is awake, and spar ur heart out". Again, this will lead to a division of global communities, who before coexisted quite comfortably in a sparring culture.

-B. Dragging is still a useful tool to move friends and innocents, not just ambush enemies. Personally, some of my characters have been able to move sleepers off of vehicles so they might be locked, move criminals into jails, and drag injured people to safety so that they actually survived the recent massacre. What, pray tell, is "super lame" about putting yourself in the line of fire to be attacked, by staying outside to pull injured people to safety? By that corollary, all firemen and soldiers should forget about trying to save lives. Have some of my characters been kidnapped before? Definitely. It can happen, if you're not careful. Have I been able to prevent other characters of mine from getting dragged? Certainly. Dragging is not the end-all, be-all that you are making it out to be.

-C. So you are stating that rather than using tactics and stealth, you would prefer the -only- combat option is to tank up as much as possible, load up with 10 kilos of healing food, and stand out in the open, duking it out? What happened to RP there? That would only lead to more battle-axe fests, not less. There would be no variety, aside from a player getting to badly-rp getting gashed across the leg. Great, so you ruin the possibility of newer players surviving an encounter with a band of thugs, by using the guerrilla tactics you despise, but at least they can gasp out their dying breath. Your idea of a fair fight may very well be to stand toe-to-toe like Rock'em Sock'em Robots, and that's cool. But what about the character that is roleplaying an archer? Suddenly they have to act ooc and forego their natural inclination to attack from a distance, moving to find cover after their shot.


-D. We are capable of fleeing combat already. And, as an added bonus, we aren't frozen in one spot while we are doing it. Freezing travel for combat is a horrible idea, for the scenario I already listed, as it gives attackers an exploit to kill an entire vehicle full of people, instead of just injuring one or two of them. I had a character survive the Dory massacre. He was able to move injured people to safety, and escape on the road. Had this travel-freezing been implemented, he would have been cut down. Travel-freezing only makes it -easier- for multiple attackers to queue extra attacks on a character, where he might have only had to face one blow, otherwise. I would prefer for this part of the new system to scrapped altogether, as it is way too easy to exploit.