Melee Combat Overhaul

[GlyphGryph]

This is essentially what we decided on in chat (me, kevin, and several others weighed in)

Combat will be the result of three disparate factors - Goal, Style, and Patterns.

Goals: (Parens indicate less important) Actions players take
Attack - Move into enemy. Attempt to deal as much damage as possible. Will automatically try to aim for weak points.
Push - Push command. Choose direction or no direction. Handles knocking down and moving enemy characters. Tactical manipulation of enemies.
Cripple - Cripple command. Handles dealing attacks with a primary purpose of weakening the enemy rather than damaging them.
Jump/Dive - Not normally attack, but will impact enemies or objects that get in the way, and influenced by styles like the other actions. Some styles turn this into a full a attack.
Defend - Happens automatically if no other action is taken.
(Grapple)

Style: Switched through style selection menu
Styles can be switched between at will, and influence what the above behaviours actually do. The player will attempt to execute the selected goal with the most effective technique from their currently selected style (or the generic fallback if their style does not cover this goal). For example a "push" to behind the player while using karate might result in a karate throw.

Patterns: Results of player actions that can be manipulated
Actions can influence the actions that follow. Defending (taking no action for a turn) gives a large defense bonus on that turn, but also a small one to the following turn, so alternating attacks and defending results in a defensive style of fighting - at the cost of allowing the enemy more chances to attack and taking more time to take them down. Enemies can critically fumble attacks or otherwise leave openings against defending players, allowing for an opportunistic attack pattern.

Certain actions with certain styles may provide lasting bonuses or penalties, bonuses that synergize well with other actions from other styles (or the same style) or which minimally influence some specific action. The player can discover effective "combos" in this way.

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[Stevensonz]

Combos eh? cccccccoooooommmbo breaker! on a serious note this is good as melee was dull and boring with the same pattern.

Regarding Styles... will they combine with all or just certain melee weapons? or work on martial art melee weapons is still on the way?

[Nickboom1]

Quick suggestion have a Goal that trades some damage for a little defense.

[GlyphGryph]

@Nickboom1 Nickboom, that makes no sense as a goal (because it isn't) and is already described here as a pattern.

@Stevensonz Styles will not be limited to unarmed styles, don't worry.

[KA101]

Can't say I fully understand the proposal. Feels like it'll require a lot more micromanagement for melee fighters.

[GlyphGryph]

It doesn't /require/ the player to do anything they aren't doing already, it just /allows/ them to do more.

Let me demonstrate the use case for a normal character, basic situation:
You approach a zombie wielding, say, a knife.
You attack the zombie by moving into it, and deal damage. OR You "push" the zombie, by pressing 'p', pushing him a space away and knocking him down OR you attempt to disable the zombie which probably won't work
Then:
The zombie attacks you and damages you!
Then:
You decide you can't afford to get hit again, so you pass your turn by pressing '5'. This gives you a decent boost to dodge/defense.
Then:
The zombie misses you!
Then:
You move into the zombie to attack it, dealing damage OR you push the zombie OR you attempt to disable the zombie. You still have a slight defense bonus from passing the previous turn.
Then:
The zombie misses you.
Then:
You attack the zombie, killing it.

A more advanced scenario would involve setting the character's style to "Karate" before entering the battle. Everything else works exactly the same.

[KA101]

Use case helps. Thanks.

[Stevensonz]

any update on this?

[GlyphGryph]

I'll be working on it soon.

[kevingranade]

Need a status indicator for defense level, so when you pass, your guard goes up, perhaps passing several turns makes it go up more (similar to recoil), the user needs feedback on this. Not sure how this indicator would work, I think recoil as a level of intensity is very intuitive (I got it without reading the help at least), not sure of the best way to make this stand out and be easily understandable.

The style, and perhaps skills, stats, and weapon would determine the parameters of this, such as how much defense goes up per pause, how much is lost per non-defensive action, maximum value for defense, and possibly how much is lost when you're attacked.

Practically speaking, an "aggressive" style might only let enough defense build up that defending every other turn might be all that's productive, whereas with a "defensive" style it might be worthwhile to defend several turns in a row, building up a high level of defense with only occasional attacks.

This allows large differentiation between styles, where one person would tend to use ranged weapons to soften up enemies as they close, then use a melee style that lets them finish off the opponent quickly, where someone else can use a style that allows them to build up a high defense level as the enemy approaches so they can better deal with them when they do close.

This does open up a can of worms in that a pause currently discards any remaining moves, so the duration of a pause changes based on your speed and what actions you've performed in the current turn. Do we want to change that such that a pause might not be turn-ending, so you can give up some of your move to regain some defense, but not necessarily all of it? In particular I'm thinking that with some combinations of speed, attack speed, max defense, and defense-per-pause, defense, this would make defensive actions unusable because you'd give up a large amount of moves for a very small benefit. In particular low speed or attack speed and low max defense combined with high defense regeneration rate should allow you to maintain a moderate level of defense without spending much in the way of moves to do it, say 1/4 of your turns or so at an optimum, but the current pass mechanic requires it to be closer to 1/2 your moves, "wasting" much of the moves spent to defend.

[KA101]

Uh, yeah, Kevin, that's a fairly significant issue.

Particularly because I've never intuitively grasped this "moves" as distinct from "turn" business. About as far as I got was the idea that certain things slow one down, and certain critters have more or less base speed.

Probably worth mentioning something in the tutorial about that, in any event.

[xLemor]

I think crippling a body part should be a % chance of doing so on every hit. If youre gonna cripple someone it will hurt anyway.
If you hack someone in the leg or arm with a axe theres a pretty good chance that it would cut some muscles and do a major wound. If you whack someone with a sledgehammer theres a good chance that the hit could break the bones even if its not what you intented to do. Instead of a cripple command, aimed shots at a specific body part like legs, arms, head would work better. Each crippled limb would give different penalties to the target.
I know this sounds like the combat system of DF adventure mode, but its probably the right way to do it.

[illi-kun]

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