Idea: give long weapons reach aka spears are cool [$5]

[NaturesWitness]

It's always struck me as odd that we don't have melee weapons that can hit more than one square away. In a lot of other roguelikes, weapons like spears and polearms give you the ability to hit enemies from a few squares away. Is there any chance we could add this kind of function to Cata?

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[dwarfkoala]

Well, the issue with that I would guess is that cata doesn't have a dedicated "attack" button. As such you basically have to be adjacent to a monster to fight it or you have to have a gun.

I guess we could repurpose the "s" mash key for that feature if need be, but i'm not sure if that's either feasible or logical.

[NaturesWitness]

I was thinking we could just make an iuse function to give to spears that would let you select a square up to two squares away, and would then call the attack code on whatever was in that square. The iuse would also need a check to make sure the weapon calling it is currently being held.

[swwu]

I like the idea.

I think the plan is to have a dedicated attack button at some point in the nearish future, and then this will be fairly easy to implement. But I certainly wouldn't be opposed to a workaround with iuse.

[RadaRadaRada]

Perhaps, (f)ire key could be used?

[phaethonfire]

I was thinking the same thing @RadaRadaRada. (t) currently throws the spear, right? I haven't messed with ranged weapons too much, but is it possible to make spears a ranged weapon with range 2 such that we could just use the fire key? Other guns use NONE for ammo, so it seems like it could work without an underlying code change.

[NaturesWitness]

The idea isn't so much a ranged weapon per-se, but to accurately portray spears and pole arms as what they are: a melee weapon designed to be used to keep an opponent at a distance. I was actually picturing something like in nethack, where pole-arms and lances can be applied to attack an enemy up to two squares away, like this http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Pounding. This feels like a perfect fit for the iuse system, just have the weapon equipped and hit "A".

[ianestrachan]

Dungeon Crawl has this too, though you have to e'v'oke the weapon (due to a hold-over from earlier versions where 'reaching' was an enchantment). Essentially it's Crawl's version of Cataclysm's 'a'ctivate, so there's precedent for it.

[kevingranade]

I think we'd go with 'f'ire if we did do this, the hold up is actually that
GlyphGryph is very against it. I'm on the fence as to whether it's a good
idea.

[NaturesWitness]

Wow I didn't know this concept had been brought up before. By any chance are there any old topics I could look at to see what the for/against arguments look like? If not, should we just discuss the opinions on this concept here or move it to the forums?

[shazow]

One reason why f might not be the best option is if there may be weapons like a rifle bayonet in the game someday, which could both be fired or used for stabbing at a distance.

[happypandaface]

if you have a rifle with a bayonet, and you press 'f' and select a monster you could both shoot or stab, it could just ask you which one you wanted to do in a window like when you activate a knife or when it asks you if you really want to sleep.