This hasn't been discussed in awhile but I figured I'd let you know how things are being implemented:
All weapons have four values:
1. Attack Rating
2. Damage Type
3. Range Value
4. Combat Speed Modifier
Examples:
Ya know, waaaaay back in the day when the suggestion forum only had like... 3 pages. I was worried we would end up with something overly simplified.
https://forums.elementalgame.com/329603
Sounds like things will be taken care of . Even if it doesn't ship with one, having the door open for such things will allow for some cool stuff. If Modders can turn Mount and Blade into Battlestar Galactica. Imagine what we could do with Elemental.
I've been in the beta but away for a long time. Any idea when the combat system testing will begin?
Awesome
Any chance of an addtional slot for special effects on enchanted weapons that arnt damage types?
For weapons things like.
And for equipments things like
Or would this be completley seperate?
Edit: Nvm the haste one, didnt see the Combat speed slot.
I think the important thing to consider here that each value for a weapon has to lead to interesting trade-offs. Each value should be particularly useful for some reason, and should carry accompanying limitations.
Your club/iron helm combo there is an interesting example. By those rights, I would be better off using the dagger against that helm, but a mace is actually a much better weapon against most types of armor than a blade - softer armors moreso than rigid ones, but still.
In order to get the right mix of "Easy to use, difficult to master", you also have to ensure that there are tactical combat situations where a high rating in any of the values is particularly useful.
So, assuming weapons have those 4 values:
1. Attack Rating - universally good, but adds to overall cost of weapon, and requires higher technology level to create. So low attack rating items are more common at lower levels and cheaper, allowing for more people to be equipped with them.
2. Damage Type - most basic ones should be available from the get-go - piercing, slashing, blunt. Do damage types stack, or does only the highest apply? Could I do a "Club w/spiky bitz on" (3 attack, blunt damage, melee) (1 attack, piercing damage, melee). If you can do stacking damage types, how many can you add?
Again here, we're looking at a cost and possibly a resource requirement - blunt stuff is pretty easy, but a good slashing weapon takes some metal, unless you want to be replacing your obsidian a LOT - yeah, I'm looking at you, macuahuitl.
3. Range Value - would this be a value of tactical map squares? Would it be possible to assign a range (2-10 for javelin) and have penalties for being under it? I'd like to see some sort of system here that rewards short swords in tight melee combat rather than just "bigger is better". I know in tight formation the gladius kicked the crap out of the gallic longsword or a spear. Or will this be where combat speed modifier comes in?
I'd love to see the range value also have some effect when units close on each other, and a starting 0 number, which indicates shield-to-shield. That way, you could have a pike unit being attacked by a shortsword unit. Pikes have combat range of 1-3. So they attack the shortsword unit at 3,2,1, the shortswords have range 0 - all of a sudden the pikes have a -3 (or whatever) penalty and the shortswords are cutting them up.
4. Combat Speed modifier - ascending or descending scale (is 1 good or bad?). Combined with Range value, this could be really interesting. A speed 5 range 0 weapon like a shortsword vs a Speed 3 range 0-1 weapon like a longsword would be interesting.
That's my thoughts, just as a start.
I've always been a fan of having a chance to hit / dodge, hope those two make the cut. I am also intrested in how exactly defense will work. Is defense going to be the enemies ability to hit a unit or a reduction to incoming damage. I'd personally like to see Defense = enemies ability to hit a unit and Armor = reduce incoming melee damage. With high armor meaning a unit has lower defense and high defense meaning a unit has less armor.
What is the difference between combat speed and movement speed?
I like this! Keep the damage and resistance types!..as for dodge, chance to hit etc...I would like to see modifiers like these as well. This would make the combat system very interesting & fun, tactical oriented and very diverse.
Add defense to weapons. Add combat speed to armor, add abilities to everything.
I'd love it if I can go batshit insane with things and pump out real monsters with restoring armor, swords that fling meteors, all kinds of goodies. Like a necromancer staff that turns victims into a zombie after draining their life. So much can be designed if weapons and armor surpass the physical.
Not fond of "combat speed modifier" if that means we'll have to calculate DPS rates (correct me if I misunderstand). I'd much rather have the flexibility of a weapons be simulated through abilities. Otherwise we'll have daggermen doing more damage than sledgehammermen on the basis that daggermen stab faster, which might be true against a dummy but I don't think is realistic in an actual fight.
Here are some other ideas to replace Combat Speed Modifier:
"First Strike" ability: Good for spears and such.
"Counterstriking" ability: Counterstrikes against certain strikes.
"Dodge Bonus": Grants a bonus to dodging/speed/parry/whatever.
I'm also fond of the idea that close combat weapons like daggers (but not swords) can be more readily used in a real grapple...
Since it's all data driven, we can stack up as many different types of attack and defense to any type of equipment.
For example, taking cities where the city has city walls requires siege equipment. A bunch of sword guys can't just conquer a city in that case.
But SAURON could. (A lot of our internal debates come down to "what would sauron do?") which means having a staff that is a weapon but also counts as siege equipment too.
Now, I don't know what will make it into the final game yet in terms of what OUR equipment will do. That said, when the game is done, as some know, I plan to take a sabatical and get back into modding and make my own mods.
Many years ago at a trade convention someone had created a game that handled combat after the following formula:
Every Attack had a specific type. It was either slashing or piercing or smashing, and every character had different values for their Defense against each specific attack. Attack Value + Random Value vs Defense.
The interesting thing about this system was that the armour the unit wore had differing values for defense against slashing and piercing and smashing. The intent was that the player (or GM) could select different combinations of armour pieces (breast plate + chainmail + iron greaves) to either create a balanced unit capable of handling defense against all three types of attack equally well, or make a risky specialization and make that all-platemail warrior who was very weak against piercing weapons.
The argument went that it was a much more realistic representation of armour historically and in real life that was still relatively simple to handle and understand. Body armours effective against bullets are terrible against knives, so they actually manufacture them in two different kinds. Plate armour was horrid against longbows, but rather effective against swords. Chainmail did okay against slashing and etc.
Combined with DR, it created a really interesting system where as weapon strength evolved, the use of particular armour styles followed a historical pattern. At first bows would do (for ex) 4 damage against 3 Damage Reduction for full plate, and warhammers would do 12 damage against 3 damage reduction. Meaning bows would lose 75% efficiency and warhammers only lost 25%. But as longbows became better, they displaced warhammers as the dominant way to combat plate, and lighter materials meant the warhammers became even better at their primary function: crushing lightly armoured foes.
I like the combat speed modifier concept! Makes it so that there is a hierarchy of weapons: daggers attack faster than axes; axes attack faster than bastard swords; bastard swords attack faster than great swords, etc.
That is a very good idea, and I think it would balance out weapons in terms of damage vs speed. Like, a melee unit gets a 2handed spear with a -5 speed modifier and a 2 tile range. He faces a dagger wielding melee unit who has a speed modifier of 5. The tile range benefit allows the spear holder a first strike on the dagger enemy. However, once the dagger enemy closes the distance, he attacks first!
Here are just some suggestions to consider in the process:
Weapon Modifiers:
I do believe that weapon modifiers (with easily "moused-over" tooltips) would be a great addition to the weapons lineup. Additions of poison, spells and other such things should be an "add-on" to the base properties of a weapon. Contingent on spells or training.
Archery/Throwing/Ballistics:
Depending on the damage type and the way that archery is eventually balanced, a distance "to-hit" penalty might need to be considered. Also, shields and other equipment could then have a dual-purpose in reducing archery "hit" chance.
Unit activatable abilities:
One of the things that Dragon Age Origins has taught me is how boring a point-and-click melee fighter truly is. Even one or two active abilities added on to a unit (maybe based on training?) would go a long way to making melee combat even more interesting. Make those abilities limited by weapon type/armor type and it would be even more tactical!
That would depend on how armor is handled. You've actually picked a damn good comparison there.
Slinging a sledge hammer at someone is easy, but if you don't connect that knife can get stuck in you several times before you even get your inertia stopped. If I have the choice between a ten inch stilletto and a ten pound sledge, I'm taking the knife. If we're both going to be wearing full plate mail, I'd rather have the hammer. That knife goes from stick it anywhere, to stick it between the armor plates. A monumentally more difficult task against a moving target that's trying to prevent it. The use of the hammer gets easier though, you're trying to hit a walking tin can. He can't really dodge. Although a spiked mace would be a lot better than a sledge.
*sigh* why is it the first post you type always disapears into the ether.
Oh well, round two.
While I am definitely liking the idea of a more robust combat system. I would tend to shy away from having to do DPS calculations in a TBS. It's not that I can't do them (5 years in a top raiding WoW guild) but I prefer a more linear approach to my armaments in a TBS. And while all those fun things listed for making a sword more than just Damage 4 and would really like to see that kind of stuff implemented.
I won't lie. I would get vexxed if my calvary got destroyed by a bunch of agile dagger weilding fanatics just because someone spent hours on end mathing up the most ideal weapon and armor package.
And just as a side note.
HURRY UP AND OPEN BETA AGAIN SO I CAN PREORDER THIS GAME!!!!!
would be alot easier to give my input into the creation
What is preventing you from preordering now?
Abilities shouldn't be tied to weapons ! But to units.
For instance a unit could learn the feat "sweeping". And when that unit use a weapon flagged as a "staff" then he can try to make an all-around attack.
A unit could learn the feat "Counter-charge" : if that unit use a "staff" weapon he will do extra damage for each square the opponent has travelled for attacking him.
About damage : there should be at least two kind of damage lethal/non-lethal, so we can capture other units.
For instance in a quest you must capture a wild horse : you get in a battle and you must use effectively your weapon to NOT kill it.
About wounds : permanent wounds, temporary wounds, bleeding wounds, incapaciting wounds (you lose few hit points but get also a malus in stats).
What would be good is that EVERY weapon (not blunt) would do bleeding damage and incapaciting damage, in varying degree. So the first strike would be really important. A feat like "iron skin" would reduce the bleeding damage you take (sometimes negating it). Veteran fighter wouldn't be ahard to fight because they have lots of HP, but because they are able to prevent bleeding/incapaciting damage.
A mouse-over tooltips are just a must something like that 6 damage (4 blunt + 2 piercing, 20% to bleed 1point/turn)
Oh I wouldn't say that. You can do some surprising things with a rope ladder and the cover of night. They could also dig a tunnel. Or swim up a river that bisects the city (and creates a gap in the wall). If they really really wanted to they could tunnel under the walls with thier bare hands. Or simply climb the wall in the first place.
Its not so much about ability, but more about creativity on the part of thier leader.
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One concept I really hope you guys can hammer out is who acts first. Call it speed, agility, initiative, whatever. Youll notice I said ACT first, not attack first. The action you take on your turn can be an attack, but it can also be something else. Why is this so important? Well think of it this way. If the element of surprise can end fights before they begin. Superior initiative can decide the outcome of a fight before the first hit lands.
Think of a situation like this. You have a guy with a sledgehammer standing within arms reach of a guy with a knife. If they attack at the same time, the knife is going to hit first right? If attacking was the only action available and the battle ends at the first strike. Knife dude will probably win each time, with a bit of margin for error to account for random chance.
So what would happen if hammer dude got to act first? And what if he could do anything? Not just attack? If he takes a step back, the knife swing will miss because he is no longer in range. The time it takes for knife dude to step forward is enough for him to wind up a strike. So he wouldn't be able to approach without hammer dude hitting first. Advantage: Hammer dude.
Further example. What if hammer dude was wearing full plate armour, and knife dude got nothing? Even if he could hit first, he would be unlikely to do anything. Or at least enough damage to prevent hammer dude from hitting back. So instead of attacking, what if he tackled hammer dude to the ground, before he could swing his hammer? Well now we have a grappling match where the hammer is useless and the knife excels. The guy in plate armour is at a big disadvantage because of how encumbering it is. Advantage = knife dude.
Just a bit of food for thought.
Any reasonably decent UI can calculate and display the DPS rate for you (or more likely damage per turn in this case).
Combat speed is a nice stat because it can simulate things that just straight attack/defense don't cover, like a cannon. Cannonfire does HUGE damage to whatever it hits, and would kill your average soldier outright. But it takes time to reload a cannon, during which it can't attack. Axes don't tend to suffer from that problem.
From what a beta tester told me, combat speed is how many times you swing every time you order an attack. A troll had 1 CS, a pimped out warrior sovereign had 7 CS. The sovereign got 7 hits for each one the troll got.
What are the actual algoriths planned to be like? That's an important bit of info to include in the game's documentation which many strategy games miss. It's nice to know what exactly 6 blunt defense does to 4 blunt damage.
Frogboy, you said that you want to allow as many damage types/resistances as available to be stacked on an item but I don't care for that and hopefully I can explain my case a bit. Some will likely disagree with me there but I don't want to have to sort through 7 different modifiers when I'm being attacked to figure out what this new weapon that the enemy is fielding will do, and then again to figure out if I can hurt them. I prefer a cleaner system where a weapon can have at most a (+ to physical damage) (1 elemental damage type) (1 special ability (ie life drain, first strike). Otherwise I think we can expect a total mess of modifiers especially when you take into account that this business would need to be calculated for every piece of equipment on the soldier. This will also make it possible to develop specific counters to troop types that your enemy is producing and require you to adapt to what the enemy is throwing at you as there will be a limit to the number of modifiers involved in the process.
Here you go:
This is correct. Basically you gotta learn the counters, that is all. It takes like 80 IQ. If the UI + information system will be decent enough, you don't have to calculate anything basically, since everything -what is important- should be displayed.
Weapon types should have innate abilities and/or a wide and varied range of damage types and ranges (even for melee). Look at a matchup of a dagger versus a sword ...Why would a player want a dagger over a sword and vice versa? If they both have the same damage type, is it simply which one has the best dps (damage x combat speed)? If so, then the choice is just a matter of which weapon cost more or less. Not very interesting.
For example, an innate ability for daggers could be higher damage when flanking another unit. Like a backstab ability. It’s easier to run your blade in between the seams of armor if you have a light maneuverable weapon. Maybe simply make this another damage type. A dagger would have two types of damage types..piercing and 'backstab' (or something like that). When a player mouses over 'backstab' it simply says "deals 50% more damage to flanked units". An example of an innate ability for swords could be parry more easily, which would mean swords give some defensive value to the unit. Another for swords (or smaller one handed swords) is that they can both "chop and thrust", which equates to multiple damage types in game. I'd like to see a large pool of damage types that go beyond the standard crush, blunt, piercing, slash, fire, shadow, ect...
Melee range/reach. In real life a sword has the reach advantage over a dagger. Each melee weapon could have a simply melee reach value ("Melee - 5" for example. A dagger would have a value of 1, and 10 for a long pike. Whichever weapon has the bigger value does its combat damage first each round..guaranteed. If the melee range difference is large enough, the unit with the longer weapon could deal unanswered damage for a couple rounds.
Flanking would negate the melee range, so a dagger wielding unit flanking swordsmen, would not only do backstab damage, but also wouldn't worry about the swords range advantage.
A pikemen could have low damage, a negative combat speed modifier, but a huge melee reach value. The pikemen could do several rounds of damage before a swordsman does anything. Of course if a swordsman withstands the battering, or better yet flanks, the pikemen is toast with its slow combat speed and low damage.
Something else I'd like to see is weapon encumbrance and how it relates to a units movement speed on the battlefield. Heavier weapons make units move slower on the battlefield, which would give another reason to take a dagger over a sword...or a short spear over a long phalanx spear. This might go into the realm of needing a PhD, but the total war games have even more complexity under the hood then this.
However, I do agree that whatever is implemented, it should all be found on the unit card.
Like I said I expected people to disagree with me. Even if you were to be able to select a unit, mouse over your target and see the expected damage that doesn't help you understand why that number is, say, much worse than it is against unit A than unit B unless all the attributes of that unit and the affect on your own unit's attributes are also displayed. To me This just seems adding complexity without really adding depth. It also eliminates the potential for each item to have some unique flavor. Given the possibility that at end game I am uber-powerful I would be best off stacking every modifier available to me onto everything. I want to be required to make decisions right up to the end as to whether my powerful life drain ability is actually more important to me than the counterstrike ability, given the fact that the enemy likes fast troops with first strike ability (I'm partially just making up terms here.) Without some kind of limitation I'd just stack both on and call it a day. To me that is less fun than having to make the aforementioned decision. This type of limitation also gives a weaker foe a shot at hitting the enemy's weak point for "massive damage" based on the troop type they favor. If I as the stronger party can create uber armor that is resistant to everything that potential for a comeback becomes more limited.
Things can get really complicated but it's not necessary complicated for th euser. In elven legacy you can have a lot of modifiers for combat. But a mouseover tooltip just says what are the odds. You still have to know what a "bleeding" weapon does, but a tactical battle need options like this to be interesting.
I know I would kill for a combat system as evolved as Combat mission, or the close combat series, or the steel panther series. I also know that too few people would like that. But good and simple syystems exists.
Devs should play elven legacy to get some great ideas in combat system. (perks for instance)
I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it would be at all feasable to stack that many effects on a weapon. A +14 First Strike, Life Drain, Haste, Fire, Lightning, Ice, Earth, Holy, Dragonslaying, Armor Penetratng sword would be insanely expensive to produce. You might have five guys with swords like that. Meanwhile I used the same resources to make 50 +2 Extra Range Longbowmen that are now going to shoot them. In that fight, I like my chances.
Everything costs resources. The more effects you stack on a single item, the less of them you're going to have. Most of the time I don't really see it as practical to stack every effect in the game on weapons. Maybe if you're trying to make a single Lord Captain who will lead your armies into battle, it makes sense. But you're never going to be able to hold terrain if you try to do that with your entire army, you just won't have the numbers to deal with all the raids that my cheaply equipped hordes are going to launch.
I'm not a fan of arbitrary limits. If someone really wants to make a unit with some insanely uber god like item (lets call him "S. from Mordor") that should be allowed. As long as the cost is appropriate to the power of the item, I can fight it by making similar items OR by making a lot more weaker items and swarming the guy (or simply going around him and taking all his territory).
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