A lot of games use 1DN rolls, they are quick, easy to implement, and WRONG.Anybody played . . . any tabletop game, or sit down D&D ever, how many dice did you bring to the table . . . I'm going to guess more then 1. (like a small bag of them). Just one action on a tabletop game will take upwards of 5 dice easy. Why? Because multiple dice = somewhat predictable behavior.
You're standard 1DN takes 2 operations, + Random # generation or lookup. The generation of Gaussian Random numbers adds an extra 5 or 10 operations, more if you use a low efficiency algorithm, and then takes get this 2 operations. If you do your RNG in advance or during slow cycles with not much on the CPU. it's the same!!!So you've got a epic dude of Epic-ness kickass sword, expert training, Years experience. This guy is made of win.
This guy encounters a spider in the woods. Attacks, Rolls for 0 - 85 attack. gets a 3. doesn't kill the spider. Wait, What??
I understand there maybe should be some chance to miss. but then just say miss, don't embarrass . . . everybody . . . with a hit of 3.
If your TOP hit is 85. you aught be doing 60 - 65, reliably.
that's 20 + 17D5. which is a lot of operations, or Gaussian(62.5, 5) which is 2, and a Gaussian look-up.
Same goes for Armour, You're amour that gives 8 protection should almost never roll 0, unless the attacker has some special for a chance to ignore Armour.
1DN should be used exclusively when it is logically defensible that all possible outcomes aught be equally probable . . . which is in thermodynamics, or nearly never.
If anybody thinks 1DN rolls are a good idea, Speak now, or rally behind me in this crusade against the misuse of random damage, and all other occurrences of 1DN.
Robbie Price
I'd honestly like to FIRST separate attack/defense from damage/absorb
SECOND, I'd like Attack and Defense to be WIDE Gaussian ... and Damage and Absorb to be narrow Gaussian.
THIRD, I'd like for any given unit to have lower Absorb than Damage (and probably lower Defense than Attack).
I'd also like to be able to skew the Bell Curve towards higher values for Heroes with nicer stats (accuracy/precision stat?)
and allow critical hits for Heroes (luck stat?)
An implementation of Critical Hits are in the game. Just pick the right trait to get 3% chance to IGNORE defense!!!
I dunno ... ignoring armor isn't exactly the same (especially with equal distribution), and with the speed with which battles are over, 3% seems quite the small amount. I've seen games give some characters a 15% crit chance (or so) ... but only if it hits of course.
Ok, the anti bellcurve/guassian crowd has won me over. After running some numbers and looking over the results, I am forced retract my proposal to average multiple rolls together. The entire slider idea is bad.
I am fine if they leave the system as is. I will just be putting more effort into getting HP.
If they wanted to tweak it slightly so damage has less volatility...they could do something like this:
Average the damage with 1/2 the attack value.
AR: Attack Result (How much the attack beat the defense)
AV: Total attack value
Damage: (AR + (AV/2)) / 2
For example, if you have an attack of 40, and they happen to roll a 0 for defense, then you would do (40 + 40/2)/2 = 30 points of damage. Likewise, if you beat them by 1, you would do (1 + 40/2) = 11 points of damage (rounding up)
What about this?
Personnally I have no problem with huge attack going poorly.
It's just that the giant maul did really hit me. But maybe not in an heroic way."Ouch, my poor little toe", I exclaimed...
Everything is not heroic...
Still, that could work. On the other hand, this leads to more volatilty in combat (read larger standard deviation, or more randomness). Not sure you'll be happy to lose that carefully nursered hero on a one die failure. Consider This:
attack 20, defense 20, hp 15 for hero and opponent. Attack rolls 15. Defense rolls 10. Dead... Attack rolls 6, Defense rolls 1. Dead.Counting precisely, that would happen exactly 30% of the time (using these figures).Currently, the likehood of such a fate is exactly 8 times less (3.75%).Are you ready for such volatility in combat ?Personnally, I'm not.
It would be OK if one of my numerous proposals were adopted by the programmers : make weapons less lethal and lower the various figures (hp, attack, defense) spread. MoM's figure spread is much less than elemental's, and the system is much better.
Yves
Well, that certainly seems like a possible alternative.
Personally I'd like to see a wide range of values (think Standard deviation = half the mean) for Attack and Defense (with defense possibly having a tighter Guassian) ... and then a low range of values for actual damage (with a small chance for critical hits- possibly Champion only).
One thing to think of when talking about lowering the numbers is that we also have combat speed to play with. It's fine making a Dragon and a guy with a lord hammer have the same attack; you just let the dragon attack three times for every one swing the lord hammer gets and it's still a nasty critter.
To get around the heroic problem you can make defence fixed. If you've got six defence then the enemy needs to roll at least a seven to do damage. The only issue you get then is that if you only have an attack of six, anything with six or more defence is immune to you. Although there's ways of dealing with that - maybe have group units add 1 point to the attack roll per model, so a four man unit of six attack peasants is going to be rolling D6 + 4.
The other alternative is to fix the average combat N at half the average hero hitpoints. So most units will take at least two attacks to drop a hero.
and yea, figure spread isn't necessarily a good thing ... at least for weapons/armor of the Red-Shirt army.
I kinda think its hard to both symbolize the importance of Iron weaponry (which seems to be lost anyways, since Iron is available at start), AND separate the Red shirts from the Champions.
I mean, you should still be able to have stronger red shirts than the next guy, but Champions should kind of be ... yea.
I'd rather like Champions to be stronger, perhaps with higher wages, and Squads consist of more soldiers (weaker than champs) with relatively lower wages.
Maybe I wasn't clear, the attack value is halved regarding rounding:
Attack rolls 15. Defense rolls 10. Damage = (15-10 + 20/2) / 2 = 7.5 rounded up to 8. Not dead.
Attack rolls 20. Defense rolls 0. Damage = (20-0 + 20/2) / 2 = 15. Dead, but barely.
Attack rolls 10. Defense rolls 10. (This now hits) Damage = (10-10 + 20/2) / 2 = 5. Not Dead, but nobody is embarrassed
In this scenario, the damage should be between 5 and 15
Just take a leaf form MoM's tactical combat system book. It is not like you have to copy the MoM system 1-to-1 but it had quite a lot of concepts that are - and I am very sad to say that - more realistic, intuitive and fun than Elemental's current tactical combat systen.
Right now the world is rules by glass cannons. Either you manage to 1-hit-kill the opponent or your unit will die. Tactical combat? Not found!I dread the moment multiplayer will enabled - both sides trying to stay just out of the opponents range, waiting for the opponent to come closer, so they can get the first hit in (remember - no retaliation if you 1-hit-kill the enemy). Unfortunately both have a combat speed of 2 so they will both keep 2 tiles distance. And wait. And wait. And wait. Yuurrrgh...
The Sovereign generation, the magic system and the unit design system feel vanilla-kind bland. There are a couple of innovative things like having the cities actually grow on the map, but they cannot make up for the rest of the game. I can still see the gem hidden inside the game, the potential that may still be realized, but I'm growing more and more unsatisfied with the game...
Goodmorning all
You mean ignore 'Absorb' or 'armour' depending what word you're using, 'defense' everybody seams to agree means you ability not to be hit.
That being said,
In my view nobody should be one hitting anybody, (full unit vrs full unit so Killing 12 in one attack for squads) unless they are wildly more powerful. Any close to fair fight should take at least three rounds, and the auto calculator needs to be good enough that you never feel you need to do a battle manually, unless the fights going to be more then 6 - 10 rounds long.
I am curious, what part or what evidence won you over? I am just curious what part of the standard method is better in your eyes then the proposed.
I'm all for something with a little less stark randomness in battle.
For now, I'm rather in favor of (An-Dn + A/2)/2 = damage
with A being max attack and with An and Dn being the actual rolls.
/signs original petition.
The only real problem with this that i have is it WILDLY favours stacks of 12 units. If a units attack value exceeds 4, then each attack will always do at least one damage, regardless of how much armour the defendant is wearing. Think plebs vs nights, no amount of kicking and punching is going to do damage under plate mail. Certainly not 1 per hit. With 12 units that's 12 damage / turn. (unless my 'targets' are implemented than it's a more reasonable 3, still high but not stupid). And then there is the whole problem with a data sheet solution. the current regime is far too wild, far too variable, and completely unpredictable. not to mention overly prone to one hit kills.
The method you propose protects against one hit kills, but at the cost of all variability. Quenching a thirst by putting on concrete shoes and taking a swim in in the middle of lake superior, at least you'll no-longer be thirsty.
Robbie.Price
I think the assumption is still An > Dn before you do any damage. It only modifies the damage done when a hit occurs.
So:
if (An > Dn) then
Damage = (An-Dn + A/2)/2
else
Damage = 0
(An >= Dn) might be better. I like the idea of hitting more often, especially when the armor and attack values are the same.
I used in some of my design a 3 variable system called
X ( dY + Z )
The advantage of such system is that there are 3 different ways to influence the die roll. So you can isolate the bonus source. For example, you could say that
X= the strength of the unit according to it's equipment
Y= The experience level of the unit
Z= Magical bonus the unit can get.
This way you also do not have conflict between bonuses and the same bonus to the same variable does not stack with each other, you just take the highest bonus. This way it prevent abuse of combining 2 effects together.
So in your X (dY + Z) ... are you adding a D100?
so like X (dY + Z) + D100 ?
Fun way to support the tactical combat overhaul - add this to the bottom of each your posts:
Ceterum autem censeo, 1DN esse delendam
One possibility I haven't seen here that might be worth thinking about is the Binomial Distribution. If you make your random roll on the binomial distribution with p = 0.5 and n = attack / defence then instead of rolling 1dn you're effectively flipping n coins and counting the number of heads (or you could think of it as nd2 - n). This will ensure your output is bounded between 0 and n, but the result will start to look a lot like a blocky bell curve once n gets above about 5. It's also pretty easy to understand, an attack of n gives you n chances to inflict 1 damage, each chance has a 50% probability of working.
The binomial distribution is a bear to roll a random number on, and becomes computationally overbearing when N> 8 or so, or n> 20.otherwise yes, but probably not worth the cpu cycles
You can create a roll that "mimic" the binomial distribution : roll 3 (ot 5) dice and keep the middle one. You still use the same system, but just you change the distribution.
But it wouldn't get rid of "all attackers attack then defenders" and the "attack = to hit AND damage"
I've always preferred the "simulate the tabletop RPG" style of variance. Right now, the variance on 0-85 is retarded. Add dice to the mix, don't just raise the upper bound.
If I have a strength of 18, that should be STR bonus+Damage
Let's say you get a +1 damage for every 3 in your STR score. And let's say the guys hammer hits for 2D6. Each D6 has an average of about 3.5. So that means if you roll two, you are going to average out around 7. Add six to that, and you are hitting for probably 6+7 for 13 damage. The problem is, you have to scale the game. Make weapons more powerful by adding more dice that are larger.
Mace of Awesome does 4D8 or whatever.
One of the biggest problems with the game is late game imbalance, it seems to skew either way towards total annihilation.
Also, I would like to add +1 to getting the TO HIT and DAMAGE rolls be different things.
Could not agree more, especially with stretching the distribution by modifying the SD. If I could give karma to every single person on this post, I would. We want Gauss! We want Gauss!
Simple option
Keep the current system for each swing, but roll 3 swings for every attack - of course you triple the hitpoints as well. You could show the 3 separate numbers or the total, but it would tend towards the gausian (google weak law of large numbers)
slightly more complex option
weapon speed modifiers affect the number of strikes (e.g. dagger has low damage but 5 stikes, poleaxe has high damage but 2 or even 1 strikes - of course a baseball bat always has 3)
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