Cantr life is not too easy

[Piscator]

How about white flags

[Elros]

If auto attack was made possible then people should also be given a chance to be extra careful when they know they're on a dangerous region, since for example if you got a non-cooperative prisoner locked up, you can be damn sure they're gonna charge at you the moment you step through the door. In real life you might be able to push someone in front of you, thus making them take the first blow, and if this happened to be the friend of the prisoner, the following shock would be enough in order to disarm the prisoner, or at least to grab the notes and go out unharmed. Yay for human shields!

Also, what if someone was coming in to surrender?

An awareness trait would be a must, since computer programs are unforgiving in their cold logic. A player may be idle or sleeping, but a computer program given instructions to kill on sight is gonna do that exactly on the millisecond they spot the target. A factor of human errors needs to be included.

We were not talking about Auto Attacks, we were talking about Auto Counter-Attacks. Your character only attacks someone if they attak him first. Secondly, the whole body shield thing is kind of pointless.

[SekoETC]

What would be useful would be an auto-attack whenever you see a certain person. Then generals could order their men to automatically attack enemies as they pass through, thus allowing ambushes.

You should pay some attention, Elros.

[Phalynx]

So... how would that work?

You send your loyal soldiers to attack.. ' a man in his thirties '?

Even if they have met them and named characters, they may have dynamically named them differently... This is pure fantasy!

[Nalaris]

Yes, I did suggest auto-attacks on sight. But what exactly are you suggesting, Seko? That there be someway to bypass the auto attack, thus rendering it null and void? What might work is something that puts you 'on-guard', nullifying auto attacks, but which makes you do everything much, much slower (so being constantly on-guard is going to render you incapable of sustaining yourself through farming).

[Elros]

What would be useful would be an auto-attack whenever you see a certain person. Then generals could order their men to automatically attack enemies as they pass through, thus allowing ambushes.

This is a pointless idea that won't even work properly as some people above have pointed out.

[wichita]

It isn't a pointless one, just a flawed one. It would actually be nice for those people who do not have every waking moment to sit by the game waiting for the precise moment to attack, which has always irked me.

"Slow-paced game ,my ass!" is what you usually hear from me during any real combat situations because I leave for a lab meeting and return to find my character hacked into tiny bits. Forgive my characters because I have real life responsibilities.

[formerly known as hf]

Yes, the split-second dragging and docking tactics required for combat pissed me off no end too.

[SekoETC]

It is not a pointless suggestion at all! In fact, it might turn out to be rather fun. Imagine if we added personalized features, then the commander could tell the troops "this person has black hair and blue or gray eyes, he's about 40 years old and wields a longsword" then the people could record this somehow and if someone whom they don't recognize but fits the description marks walks in, they would charge at him. If the commander was present, he might halt the attack if it was the wrong person, but it's possible that it took too long for the others to realize what he was saying.

What I was suggesting is that when you have the awareness option turned on, you'd have less of a chance being surprised. Others could still charge at you but you'd have your sword ready at hand, maybe even dealing the first strike. But that sounds a bit too much like ordinary computer games... And yes, you would move slower, or if you were working on a project, you would advance in half speed there as well.

[SekoETC]

And it's not impossible either. A formula like that is already used on dating sites. You could define some things such as beard or hair style secondary, since those can be altered, as well as clothing and weaponry. If the match percentage is high enough, you attack. Maybe you could define the required match percentage yourself, thus very careful characters would only attack if they're 99% certain, while a trigger happy person would charge on anyone who comes from the direction pointed at and isn't known from the past.