Healing food being awkward.

[Chris]

What about a project called "guard" where you automatically strike back and/or eat healing food?.

Or my idea/suggestion in the suggestion forum: Something like; A parry project, where you actively block blows better than a sheild would, and by doing so cant attack others for a day after stopping. IE, some form of an all-out defense mode.....

I like the defensive project ideas. People wouldn't do them all the time, or else they couldn't do productive projects. But if you expect an attack, then it makes sense that you would be better prepared (and not just in an OOC way by staying up late and refreshing every 5 seconds). It would be similar to dragging yourself.

[Piscator]

What about a project called "guard" where you automatically strike back and/or eat healing food?.

I would very much like to see a auto-retaliation feature. Currently all combat in Cantr relies on hit and run techniques, including hiding in a building and coming out once a day to hit everybody or doing the equivalent thing with a boat. If characters would strike back automatically, the outcome of a fight would much more depend on actual combat strength and not just on who clicks first.
I know people have objected to such a feature in the past, saying that this kind of automation would hurt the game, but that is frankly nonsense in my opinion. You don't have to log in every hour to see if you're still working on a project and you don't have to eat manually every day, so I don't see why you should be forced to log in every few minutes to check if a van full of battle axe swinging vikings just came into town.

[*Wiro]

What about a project called "guard" where you automatically strike back and/or eat healing food?.

I would very much like to see a auto-retaliation feature. Currently all combat in Cantr relies on hit and run techniques, including hiding in a building and coming out once a day to hit everybody or doing the equivalent thing with a boat. If characters would strike back automatically, the outcome of a fight would much more depend on actual combat strength and not just on who clicks first.
I know people have objected to such a feature in the past, saying that this kind of automation would hurt the game, but that is frankly nonsense in my opinion. You don't have to log in every hour to see if you're still working on a project and you don't have to eat manually every day, so I don't see why you should be forced to log in every few minutes to check if a van full of battle axe swinging vikings just came into town.

A computer cannot decide whether a player would attack one character, but leave the other character unharmed. Surely you wouldn't attack a long lost friend who doesn't recognize your character, and thus attacks you because he's afraid. While if it was a complete stranger, or you too would also not recognize him, you'd probably attack. So many different situations. *shrugs* And then you could say, "Then turn it off.", but that gives others so much of an unfair advantange only because your character doesn't hurt the game as much by killing tons of people.

[Piscator]

I thought about being able to set a damage threshold. So you wouldn't strike someone whith your battle axe who just smacked you in the face and you could easily turn it off by setting the value to 100.

As for the situation with the long lost friend you described... how probable is that? I'm pretty positive there are at least ten time as much instances where you wish you would have answered an attack than occasions on which you wish you hadn't. And even then, you could easily explain your counterattack by saying "you startled me" or "my hand slipped in the melee". It's easy to hurt your opponent while taking defensive actions.
In short, not being able to return an attack, because an enemy retreated, or because of being dead already, is a dozen times worse than hurting someone you like by accident.

[Cogliostro]

Hey, what a great idea about the defensive project! It would mean that you could still be sometimes "caught off guard" while working on other stuff, and be killed. Yet, if you're in the middle of a fight, you don't need to babysit your character 24/7 - just set the "guard" mode, and prepare with all the healing food you have.

I also don't quite buy the argument about the long lost friend. You even said that without being "on the defense project", the character would be at a disadvantage. Hold on a second, that means all characters are currently at such a disadvantage? It's unfair and clickfesty, but we're surviving okay, I think.

You're "on guard". So you eat healing foods when hit and return fire. Makes perfect sense!

The only questionable bit is what this very reasonable idea would do to the "balance" between good and evil. And yeah, evil gets shafted again. What else is new in Cantr. Maybe someone clever will have a counter-idea that could be useful for attacking, evil characters. Something to go with this "on guard" project, so attacks aren't made even more impossible.

[Joshuamonkey]

I like the guard project idea, because it wouldn't be made too easy. Although I don't like the idea of discouraging working on projects, being able to have bodyguards who are constantly protecting you makes sense.

Plus, having the action not take place until someone wakes up sounds nice.

[edited by PD for in-game content, sorry!]