How shields SHOULD work

[Lumin]

Who said anything about allowing dangerous animals into the town square? In most places where the animals are a concern people are desperately trying to kill them off, but it's a little difficult when it can take several days to get rid of one moose, and in the meantime three more have wandered in..

[Nick]

Ya well, life is tough. Some towns don't make it. Some species don't make it.

I'm quite tired of every IC problem leading to people looking for solutions in the forum. If you have animal, criminal, pirate, political, economical, or pretty much any kind of problems... deal with them in your town.

That's kind of just a side rant, although I do agree with Seko that the way shields should work should be changed. I also like creepy's suggestion.

[Lumin]

I'm quite tired of every IC problem leading to people looking for solutions in the forum. If you have animal, criminal, pirate, political, economical, or pretty much any kind of problems... deal with them in your town.

Oh, I agree. And I never said anything should be changed - just the opposite, actually. People only started complaining about animals when the OOC shield change came along and made trying to deal with them in an IC way completely futile. But now that that's been mostly fixed I don't think it's really necessary to lower the damage they do. Animals should be a challenge in frontier towns, just not an impossible one.

[Solfius]

*Bump*

I quite like the sound of this idea

[fishfin]

I don't like the idea. It should be possible for like a war hammer to hit your shield and still hurt you... and is Cantr even meant to be realistic?

[Solfius]

It is meant to be realistic, but compromises are made so that the game remains playable and codeable

[SekoETC]

I'm beginning to think this was too hard. But still, sometimes even primitive shields should be able to block an attack fully or mostly. Currently the only way to get lucky is for the attacker to miss completely.

[Solfius]

When you think about it, all shields in RL block the same, if it hits the shield you sustain some impact, but far less than without.

What changes is the damage to the shield, weaker materials would render the shields too damaged to be of use quicker than better materials.

The chances of blocking should be linked to weight and size.

the first check against weight sees if you can bring the sheild round to block the blow.

The second check against size would see whether it was a partial or full block.

Full block absorbs all damage.

Partial block absorbs half damage.

Note I said *absorbs* damage. When a sheild blocks a blow, the damage is multiplied by the daily deterioration rate and substracted from its structure points, causing the shield to become more worn than if it hadn't been used.

[Marian]

This might be too complicated, and I'm basically okay with the way it is now, but I think it would make sense for shields to be damaged if hit 100% by steel weapons. (a bone cub obviously wouldnt' be able to do anything to an iron shield, and nothing would happen if the person missed or the shield was ineffective against the blow, of course)

Bone shields would be the most fragile, but that's okay because they're easy to replace and there needs to be more uses for large bones anyway.

[Solfius]

I think it's quite straightforward, my guess is it would take around 20 lines of code, depending on how the tables are referenced

[N-Aldwitch]

40.

And I prefer the current, more unrealistic, version.

[Solfius]

40.

And I prefer the current, more unrealistic, version.

I doubt I'll ever understand why

and I reckon it can be done in 20 if the database interaction is put through an abstraction layer

[Marian]

I'm still not really sure...on one hand it would might make people even less likely to want to fight, but then again this could tie in nice with use-based damaged for tools and Sociologist's suggestions about repairs taking resources instead of so much time.

(But also, it gets into questions like, if a sword hits an iron shield hard enough to damage it, wouldn't that hurt the sword too?)

[Solfius]

(But also, it gets into questions like, if a sword hits an iron shield hard enough to damage it, wouldn't that hurt the sword too?)

That would use based deterioration, wouldn't it? You use a sword, the sword takes damage.

I think the weapon should take damage as well, although missle weapons should take less as they don't actually make contact with the shield.

The amount of damage is debatable, the suggestion is that they'd take some damage, without specifying.

As you said, it is like use based deterioration, and that's part of the reason why I like it.