Requested Feature : Combat Targeting

[Potocobe]

I don't like the idea of micromanaging every character in your group but if main guy is fighting someone with 10hp on their head then it would be nice to have him focus on that one spot for the takedown. Requiring micro management would be bullshit. Allowing it though is something I dont see a problem with.

[txfirefighter]

I don't like the idea of micromanaging every character in your group but if main guy is fighting someone with 10hp on their head then it would be nice to have him focus on that one spot for the takedown. Requiring micro management would be bullshit. Allowing it though is something I dont see a problem with.

surely that can be coded into it much like the function where your guy automatically uses the highest damaging weapon first. or uses the weapon with the highest skill. (if two are equipped)

so at first it is random attacking but when an enemy drops to say X amount of points in an area thats where he aims next.

im not a programmer so i have no idea if this is possible....

[Blxz]

I don't like the idea of micromanaging every character in your group but if main guy is fighting someone with 10hp on their head then it would be nice to have him focus on that one spot for the takedown. Requiring micro management would be bullshit. Allowing it though is something I dont see a problem with.

surely that can be coded into it much like the function where your guy automatically uses the highest damaging weapon first. or uses the weapon with the highest skill. (if two are equipped)

so at first it is random attacking but when an enemy drops to say X amount of points in an area thats where he aims next.

im not a programmer so i have no idea if this is possible....

Yeah, it just comes into good ai development. But the thing is that it can be hard to see how this is realistic. It just feels a little too gamey and not so realistic. I can't just look at someone with a head wound and think ahh, he has really low head hp. its lower than his body maybe I should target there.

In the middle of a fight you would take whatever hits present themselves; at least between warriors of comparable skill. A mighty swordsman vs me in real life could probably aim his cuts easily.

Basically, I am not saying that I disagree but that I don't know if I feel it adds much to the game. I quite like these nice slightly random battles. I can have a guy dominating a fight against a weaker fighter but sometimes the other guy will get a few lucky hits off in succession and take my guy down despite having heaps of critical spots vs my guys good health. Its less about number crunching that way and more interesting.

[txfirefighter]

sure its realistic. but yeah, more so with one on one maybe...

in an all out braveheart style battle, im sure it was a bit more chaotic. but i would think someone with decent skill could see his opponant badly injured in one spot, and knowing that one more hit there and this guy is a goner, would aim for that spot.

i dont know, im not a sword fighter.

[Captain Deathbeard]

They already do that, thats why the total damage does not end up evenly distributed across every bodypart.

[memnoch]

So if your combatant is then aiming for a particular body part that it perceives is more damaged than the rest, is there a percentage chance that he will miss and strike some other body part? The reason I ask is that watching an enemy get hit I can see random strikes appearing elsewhere on his body. Perhaps that was from another fighter and I didn't notice?

Last night I noticed the last person left of a group my group were fighting. Both his legs and arms had got reduced to 0 and he was still standing. It wasn't until his chest finally gave way that he went down!

What is the implication of a limb or body part hitting 0? Does it mean that it is broken or damaged to the point of being unusable? That encounter seemed a lot like the black knight from "Monty Python's The Holy Grail" movie.

[Captain Deathbeard]

yes, there is increased chance of hitting a bodypart you hit recently. If legs go below 0 nothing happens for now but eventually, when i add it, both legs below 0 will make them collapse and drag themselves along the floor.

[txfirefighter]

yes, there is increased chance of hitting a bodypart you hit recently. If legs go below 0 nothing happens for now but eventually, when i add it, both legs below 0 will make them collapse and drag themselves along the floor.

It's just a flesh wound!

[dmatter]

im not a coder, so i have no idea if this would be tough to implement or not, but what if its just options for attacking like:

attack normal (what we have now)
kill (goes for vital body parts (chest and head)
wound (arms and legs) so you can capture them later in development

and the more you choose each one it raises a different skill such as kill makes you more ruthless and fearful to enemies while wound makes you more merciful or based on whatever you decide to do (capture or possibly heal them to invite them to your squad.)

something like that...

I love the whole "Be good and good spreads about ye" but what bothers me is that suppose I'm near Brink and slaughter 9 bandits while keeping 1 alive.

He is bound, gagged and hidden in a camel skin sack to keep him from being seen and prevent his dehydration.

My squad goes as far as the sea and makes that seafaring town a temporary hideout.

• 1. No one of that group survived except the bandit being carried/dragged across the desert.
  
  2.1 The people of this town don't know the bandit and anyone that spotted my squad and parted way or ran off instead of getting killed sees some bulging sack of items not a spared slave or bandit
  
  2.2 Suppose I murdered every one that crossed my path even the Peaceful monks of Peacetopia, who knows? Is my sword unique and leaves a mark or can the citizens speak with the sands and the vultures?
  
  3. How will word spread about my good deed? I can keep the bandit gagged or torture him enough for Stockholm Syndrome to go away and Extreme fear sets in making sure he doesn't talk.
  
  4. The world is colored many shades of gray not a white and black labeling my act as good, when you take into account all of the above and the computer citizens(Or all-knowing-A.I syndrome is stopped) have no clue about the bandit, will my standing in the world still change?

PS: I can expect a reply or answer in the form of: "It's just a game" or "You're no fun" but that is what I hate about strategy games and city or world builders, the computer you're playing against knows so much that it doesn't make sense to keep playing against the worst cheater in the world(And some degree of realism is needed to make games fair).

(And if the standing or reputation only changed when that bandit was let go unharmed or healed and he repented[Would you believe a dirty smelly bandit that Sword for Hire the magnificent is not a head chopper if last night that same bandit was stealing from your house?] that would be awesome)

It should be possible. You simply make notoriety on a per person basis rather than a global value. You then make it so that each AI can communicate this individual knowledge to those around him. IE: Rumors. So, if a peasant reports you doing bad things you'll get investigated, threatened, and worse deals in the towns that that peasant resides in/visits, however if the military/local police report you then you'll be arrested/severely beaten.

We can even have false reports so that we can have a real sense of 'rumors.' Some good, some bad. So, getting a really strong rep in a place will make rumors more consistent but having no rep won't negate the rumors. As well, the AIs can rumor about each other.

This can be used to do quests since if a bandit group steals from a pig farmer and doesn't kill him (or his murder gets reported) then a quest will be generated for the arrest/slaying of the bandit group and/or their leader.

It should be possible to make it so that you can do horrible horrible acts as long as no one sees you and still appear as an honorable guy. In turn, we can also make it so that some rumors are more likely to spread while others are less likely to spread. IE: killing some bandits in self-defense isn't going to be talked about as much as you selflessly defending a caravan from some bandits.

We can continue from there to make this whole complex system of how well people know of you, fear, respect, love, and how much total time they've spent around you. From this we can derive notoriety (rumors), loyalty, affection, etc. To top it off, different towns might have different evaluations of behavior. Such that, someone from one town might talk more about how you took out 20 guys and someone else might talk more about how you're now wanted for murder and theft.

Anywho, doing it as a per person (AI) rather than global evaluation should make it possible, however the problem is that it would be harder to do and probably a bit more buggy initially. The bonus would be that the game would be organic rather than static with a ton of replay value.

[txfirefighter]

id like to hear what chris says about this

[Blxz]

id like to hear what chris says about this

He doesn't comment much in here. Does chris even read the forums that much?

[killerx243]

That's actually the best workaround I've heard to the all knowing AI problem.... Blizzard couldn't figure it out, sneaking ghosts into the ai's base is futile while the Eye of Sauron is still live and well

[txfirefighter]

id like to hear what chris says about this

He doesn't comment much in here. Does chris even read the forums that much?

maybe in an update note on the main page?

[Blxz]

id like to hear what chris says about this

He doesn't comment much in here. Does chris even read the forums that much?

maybe in an update note on the main page?

No idea what you mean.

[txfirefighter]

he doesnt comment because it would consume alot of time, but maybe take our suggestions and give us an updated FAQ or features section on the main page.

[Blxz]

Maybe the forums are just somewhere he can stick people to stop them from emailing him. I know I would do the same to stop people sending me inane suggestions. Forum goers never stop amazing me with how stupid they can be. I even surprise myself sometimes

[txfirefighter]

like cows in a pasture. when the man shows up with food, we all surround him. otherwise we just graze and graze, safely away from others.

[Captain Deathbeard]

Per-person reputation would work well. But it would have to be for the player only, otherwise the data storage would be massive (population x population). I'd also need some method of propagation to spread things around.

[Mattk50]

the data storage would be massive (population x population).

Couldnt only the important bits be stored, and only stored when the person meets the other person? A person who has 10 encounters and then finds a guy who killed his best friend will probably remember him over the guy who he bought some bread from, and therefore can probably just forget everything past a certain point and priority.

This would also create a very interesting "forget" system where a players crimes may be forgotten after some time if unimportant enough or an NPC who murders often forgot that he killed your wife or something and so doesnt recognize you when you go after him for vengeance

[Mask]

With targeting body parts... I have never seen it pulled off properly, so far. Out of all the games with body-part targeting I have played, you just aim at the head (if your skill is too low, you aim at the body, then build it up so you can hit the head).


Not saying you shouldn't try it... but you'll need to work out what other games do wrong when they try this, and avoid that pitfall.