command: rescue

[theebie]

hi,

lets assume there are three guys out hunting, and they
meet six scrabs.

these six scrabs now would be no problem, if either hunter would
take two, but lets assume all six scrab start to fuck with one of
the hunters.

now i'd like something like:

rescue hunter 2.scrab -> will result in me fighting scrab-2 and hunter#3
fighting scrab 1,3,4,5,6

and

rescue hunter 1.scrab 2.scrab -> will result in me fighting scrab 1+2 and
hunter#3 fighting scrab 3,4,5,6


regards, ---theebie---

[Incognito]

I didnt even *imagine* such a scenario could exist on Arm, but now that you mention it....I gotta take my hat off to ya - especially coz you feel that you're gonna go through this kinda scenario often enough to actually request for the rescue command to be modified accordingly :)

[Gaare]

There is no command like "taunt" which you may get attention of angry NPCs since many of them have intelligence above animals.

With rescue, well it sounds fine and useful. On the other hand, does not command "assist" divides responsibility of the victim?

....I gotta take my hat off to ya - especially coz you feel that you're gonna go through this kinda scenario often enough to actually request for the rescue command to be modified accordingly

:twisted:  Seconded.  I only had a couple of chances to be in this kind of situation.. As it may be guessed, both of them ended with Mantis Head.. Heh.

[RunningMountain]

Battle is chaotic and confusing. The reason that training with PCs in your clan over and over and learning certain things is good. If three idiots come upon six scrabs and get ripped to shreds, it's because they're just hunters and don't spend dawn to dusk training with the same people over and over in situations like that. So when you go out and all die to scrabs, don't blame it on the rescue skill, blame it on your preparation.

-RM

[Cuusardo]

I'm inclined to agree with RM here.  Preparation can make a HUGE difference in battle.

[Agent_137]

couldn't you just rescue the attacked hunter twice and pull off two of the scrabs on him?

Or when you rescue some one do you pull off all attackers?

[Maybe42or54]

When you rescue someone from more than 4 people, you see mantis real quick.

You take off all attackers from your target. It doesn't matter if there is 1 or 90.



Rescue emote?

rescue target trying to get between ~target and ~attacker.

Trying to get between the pansy man and the gory man, you suceed!

[waroth]

Although I get what you are saying, if you are approached by six aggro NPC's I would suggest fleeing to safe distance and attacking with ranged weaponry.  Even if there is three of you.  Realistically I don't imagine any of us would face overwhelming odds if there was a way out.

[Delirium]

When you rescue someone from more than 4 people, you see mantis real quick.

You take off all attackers from your target. It doesn't matter if there is 1 or 90.

That is incorrect.

If you rescue someone being attacked by three gith, you will knock them away from one gith.  You will have to repeat your rescue if you want to get them completely out of harm's way without them fleeing.

[LoD]

When you rescue someone from more than 4 people, you see mantis real quick.

You take off all attackers from your target. It doesn't matter if there is 1 or 90.

Unless this has changed recently, this is not accurate.

Rescue has always pulled one attacker away from the target per command.

4 gith vs. Joe
0 gith vs. Bob

>rescue Joe
Bonzai! You charge in and rescue Joe.

3 gith vs. Joe
1 gith vs. Bob

>rescue Joe
Bonzai!  You charge in and rescue Joe.

2 gith vs. Joe
2 gith vs. Bob

That's how every exchange with multiple numbers has worked for me in the past, so unless something changed the way the code worked - you don't assume all attackers with one single rescue command.

As for the OP's question, as someone who has designed multiple drills for handling these situations, the best I can say is to prepare and come up with signals for the person who finds themselves overwhelmed.  There are things you can do to slow down incoming damage with training, and if your comrades are well trained, you should be able to thin 6 scrabs without the lead dying.  However; this game is pretty merciless when you start talking about high numbers of combatants, so they'd better be skilled, trained and fast typers.

-LoD

[Irulan]

If you rescue someone being attacked by three gith, you will knock them away from one gith.  You will have to repeat your rescue if you want to get them completely out of harm's way without them fleeing.

Yah, that was always my understanding of how rescue worked as well. I've pulled people out when they were fighting against three, and they still continued to fight against two, and I was fighting against one. I always kinda thought of it as grabbing one of the attackers, and pulling them away.

So...not to derail completely, I think that rescue works pretty well the way it is, I don't really see a need to make a complicated new system.

[Maybe42or54]

Then it has changed recently. I've died a few time from pulling the main combatant out of battle and 6 gith trying to rip my head off.

[Delirium]

It may have been that they attacked you as well and you pulled on one too many for your character to handle.  It's very important to "look" during combat so you can see exactly who is fighting who.

(So as not to completely derail, I think the rescue command works fine as is)

[Maybe42or54]

I figured it out, I think.


When you have 9 people assissting a main killer in your buddies death, and you rescue your buddy, you take all 10 people off and your buddy is safe.

When those same 10 people each type in "kill buddy," your buddy is the main combatant in each of those 10 matches and you must save him from each little combat group.

[Irulan]

I've read other threads about this whole rescue thing, and I was trying to do a search to see if there was any conclusion drawn in the past...
http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6939&highlight=rescue was what I found, and it isn't conclusive by a long shot. In my experience, rescue works like LOD and Delirium stated, but it is possible that I wasn't interpreting the situation correctly. I would be interested in someone with authority saying how it works....[/derail]

[Agent_137]

The assist command is a blood bloody command when used in PvP.

I find it consistently and easily abused.

[Forest Junkie]

I don't see how it can be abused really, unless someone is using it in mass combat in hopes that the spam will drown out the echo that they've joined a fight. Is that what you mean?

[EvilRoeSlade]

I'm pretty sure that what he means is during mass combat when one jerk-off attacks a templar and all ten of his buddies and all forty of the accompanying NPCs assist him, causing instant death.

[Forest Junkie]

Them's the breaks? *shrug*

[Xygax]

Regardless of the assist command, if your character assaults a templar in the middle of a crowd of several soldier NPCs, you fully deserve to die...




... your character, too.


The assist command has nothing to do with being overwhelmingly outmatched, except that it spares teams of PCs from accidentally injuring one another in combat.

-- X

[Agent_137]

It can be abused by stacking assists to an unreal level.

As far as I've seen, there's no maximum combatant level in this game. (meaning, you can be attacked by an unlimited number of foes)

you can easily have a point man tell everyone to spam assist all the time, and then have the point man just go around whacking enemies in no time flat. Since this game has a huge pentalty to taking on multiple combatants, no one can stand up to a decent sized group effectively using assist.

Realistically, if you're surrounded, you won't last very long, but also realistically is that you can only be surrounded by so many people.

Assist is like having all your little Firebats selected and just double clicking on each little zergling, blasting it to oblivion without a chance.


Seriously, how can more than three or four people surround the average human at melee with sharp weapons not end up slicing up each other, too?

mass pvp combat in this game is less along the lines of braveheart-esque clashes of lines of men, and more RTS style group targeting.

I'm not saying we should break assist, just that there's an issue when used in PvP, and I'm not sure how to fix it.

I think most people's usage of assist is small scale, two hunters fighting a scrab or such. Or perhaps even on some military mission, assisting their leader against NPCs. in those cases, it's very handy and awesome.

I've just seen a big PvP fight before, and it was just messy. Horrible messy. one of the reasons is spam, of course. The other reason was the assist issue.

Oh, just thought of some solutions:

*Create a max opponent code. It's good to have this size based, since more people can surround a half-giant or a Gaj than could surround a halfling.

*Create a maximum number of assists a given person can take on. This seems simpler to code, but doesn't work as well. It might hinder a perfectly reasonable situation, like charging a mek. (maybe not reasonable, but physically possible, you see.)

[amoeba]

*Create a maximum number of assists a given person can take on. This seems simpler to code, but doesn't work as well. It might hinder a perfectly reasonable situation, like charging a mek. (maybe not reasonable, but physically possible, you see.)

I disagree.  It is very possible in RL to get a hell of a lot of people whacking on one guy.  Mass combat is not hollywood style, it is chaotic, "messy" and confusing.  We have have people constantly dying to friendly fire incidents.

I have been through quite a few "mass combat scenes" , it is confusing and scary as hell. I wouldn't want it any other way. In those situation assist is vital to survival. I mean who wants to get a message, "Sorry, bad guy #1 has too many people attacking him right now."

[Rindan]

I think the issue isn't so much that there should be a limit on how many people can attack the same person, it is more that the guard command is only mildly useful.  IMO, once you hit guard, your guard should stay on even when in combat.  So, if a templar has 10 guys guarding him, you need to get through all 10 guys each time you try and strike the templar.  Now, if some of those guys are fighting, they might take a penalty guarding, but they should still be relatively effective.  If a templar walks in with 10 people around him all actively trying to defend him, you should have to kill most of those people before you can get to the templar.  Maybe one or two awesome fighters can break through the guard to directly engage the templar, but your average n00b byner shouldn't stand a chance getting past 10 men.

The other piece to it is that I think mass combat could done better.  If you need to guard a gate in an HRPT, the gate should be made 8 rooms wide for the HRPT and everyone should have to spread out make sure no one gets through.  Think of it like shrinking down the scale so that each player sees the immediate fight around himself.  This way, you would get much smaller groups clashing and combat would be far more coherent.  Instead of dropping a Byn company, a militia company, and the piles of random citizens at a single room gate, you would drop a single Byn squad in each room, a militia squad in another room, a Tor squad in another room, and a squad of rabble led by whoever in another room.  Then slap a limit to the number of people in a single room so that not everyone can dive into the same room and fight.  This would make the combat much more personal and exciting IMO.

[Agent_137]

i'd like to see more than 5 poeple on one person at melee with melee weapons in real life. Personally, I don't think it's possible to actually fight like that. Of course, by melee weapons I don't mean spears. Which just introduces another failing of hte combat system, no such thing as coded weapon length. (btw, I've never been in real life multi-person melee combat before, nor have I witnessed it. So i am talking out my ass. Some one who's actually seen it or practiced it want to chime in?)

But yea, assist only really becomes bloody and unrealistic during mass combat situations against other players, it's great all the rest of the time.

And it's well known that our mass combats are horrifying experiences for the player and character alike. There've been countless solutions offered for this, none simple because it's a complicated issue, and none implemented.

Personally, I'm going to color my critical messages and when expecting a mass battle, i might go so far as to input some basic triggers. My character sees what's happening, it's just me who can't!

On another note, I hadn't seen rindan's idea for dealing with mass combat before, and I wanted to say I like it. It's the simplest solution i've seen.

[SewerRat_inTheOpen]

It's totally possible to have 1 v 10 with the 1 surrounded by the 10 and fanned out. It's hard to imagine all of them striking at the same time. Unless you are fighing a bahamet.

And in mass combats, enemies are usually drawn on two sides. It's hard for 10 to be fighting just 1 when there are others on his side to reckon with. They may fan out, but targetting just one is ..hard to imagine.

I don't have much contact with rescue or guard in combat situations, I can't say for sure.

[moab]

you can easily have a point man tell everyone to spam assist all the time, and then have the point man just go around whacking enemies in no time flat.

The real problem here is the point man telling everyone (oocly, apparently) to spam assist.  If they aren't telling people to do this, then likely everyone will not be mind-melded together, right?

Further, if you play a combat leader role appropriately, you won't be telling everyone "everyone, attack the dude i attack."   Rather you'll say something like "you take up flank, you guard the merchant, you, watch our ass, you and you, follow me."

Edit to Add:
Mass combat - in the case where you have three equally skilled warriors, the guy getting double-teamed is going to die _very_ quickly unless he manages to kill someone else first.  Even then, while he's  sinking his blade into someone's chest, he's likely getting it in the @ss by the other guy.  All it takes is one of the double-teamers to decide to take the blow on his shield or trust his own skill to open the opponent up for the other guy.  It's almost always a given.

[Sokotra]

Unless I missed something, we are not just talking about the command "assist" but just mass combat in general.  As far as I know, assist only helps against confusion when you don't want to accidentally attack a comrade.  Since you can effectively do the same thing that "assist" does by having everyone simply attack the same person - "kill zerg".  

If this is the case, then I can sort of see where it might be realistic to have some sort of limitation or something on the amount of people that can attack one person at a time.  As someone said, only so many big brutes can surround a skinny little thief without whacking each other in the back of the head.  

If possible, I think it might make sense to have size affect combat in this way:  The bigger the target, the more people that you can have surround it.  For example, you got a huge silt-horror... a crowd of Byn will have enough room to surround the thing or its various huge parts would make lots of big targets for lots of smaller attackers.  On the other hand, if the attackers are bigger than the target then things would work in the opposite manner.  Only so many half-giants are going to be able to surround a tiny little pickpocket.  And then there's the running between the legs and ducking under the swings of tall-attackers and stuff.  Hehe.. but that's another story...

[moab]

Mass combat is confusing.  It's confusing in RL and confusing on the Mud.

That said - of course mass combat is pretty unplayable in game - but this is a short coming of the whole combat thing:

Individual combat is broken as well.

1. Mounted Combat - broken
2. Consideration for weapon length
     a. first strike with long weapons, setting spears
     b. close in combat renders long weapons useless
3. takes too long for two matched warriors to kill each other
4. combat doesn't take stamina into consideration

I say we fix individual combat before we add to the problem by having a bunch of broken individual combats in one big broken mass combat.

ps:
All my love to the Imms.  Combat may be broken - but it only speaks to the greatness of the game that the game itself rises above these problems!

[Sokotra]

I personally wouldn't really use the word 'broken' toward the combat in Armageddon as a whole.  I do understand where you are coming from though, and know what you mean.

Combat in Armageddon is just much better than any other mud, as far as I'm concerned.. so I think it's great.  Despite, perhaps, not being completely realistic as far as having matched warriors fight for days.. I think that is just Armageddon and should be left as one of its trademarks.  Zalanthans are tough.  

I could definitely live with a little tweaking here and there, though, wherever plausible or feasible or edible or whatever...  :wink:  just to improve on an already awesome combat system.  But, like I said, it is distinctively Armageddon... Zalanthan... and it is good beyond its faults.  I admit I am looking forward to seeing a few things 'fixed'/improved, though.. that have been left the same for years, it seems.

[Maybe42or54]

Like some degree of fighting styles.

No monks, ninjas, Samur guys. Just Red Storm Fighter, Mounted fighter, Allanaki, Tuluki, tribal. (I left luir's out because I don't remember if they had a style beside smoking spice.)

Combat isn't broken, it is very hack and slash. It just hasn't been improved much since way back when.

[Delirium]

Combat isn't broken.  It's just simplistic.  

Surviving mass combat is all about three things: Luck, experience, and fast typing.

With a few color-highlighting triggers and some training, you can teach yourself to skim the spam pretty effectively and keep a fair handle on what's going on.  When it gets truly unplayable is when there's so many combatants in the room that it's impossible to read the scroll, but that can be avoided by splitting the battle up into separate rooms.

[Agent_137]

Combat in Armageddon is just much better than any other mud, as far as I'm concerned.. so I think it's great. D

WRONG.

Maybe much better than most other free muds, but the mud I played for 7 years had a intricate, beautiful, and realistic combat system.

So i'm spoiled. Of course, the rest of the game was crap. CRAP CRAP CRAP. and that's why i'm here, in spite of the ultra-simplistic-to-a-fault combat system.