Mass Combat Ideas

[Halaster]

Morgenes and I were talking about mass combat and had some ideas.  Some of these came from that thread about large-scale combat, and some our own, and one I stole from Nechomacus.

Combat messages:

Expand the brief command to include a set of options, instead of just on and off.  Brief room, brief combat, brief whatever.  For the combat part, this would basically make you not see missed attacks by anyone.  It really wouldn't be limited to mass combat situations, as you could have it on anytime you want.  But the idea is that if you wanted, you could 'brief combat' and not see missed swings during big battles, but then you can turn it back on later so you'd see them when you're running around normally.

NPC's assisting

This is most of the changes/updates.  When an aggressive NPC sees a list of people to attack, they randomly choose someone, and don't necessarily start with the first.  The same is currently not true for when NPC's assist their clan-mates (which is how you get mauled in mass combat).

Make NPC's be more 'smart' with who they assist.  If they have multiple choices, have them pick the highest ranking clan member to assist.  If all their choices are the same rank, have them choose based on their clanmates' health, status, and other such factors.  If all is equal, have them randomly choose who to assist.

Units

Give "units" a special status as a unit.  What this means is that several conditions would apply to anything flagged as a unit
:arrow: Units can only engage directly in combat with other units.
:arrow: Units get special combat messages that properly describe what's happening as a unit fights another unit.
:arrow: Units have a certain number of individuals that make up the whole.
:arrow: Units can spawn individual NPC's.  Instead of having a unit be able to attack Joe, the unit spawns individual soldiers to attack Joe.
:arrow: Commanders can pull individuals out of a unit and add them to a unit.  For example, a templar could "order soldier join 3.unit", or "call soldier 4.unit".  This would only apply to generic style npc's, not unique-looking soldiers and definitely not PC's.
:arrow: When a unit falls below a certain point of health, it goes away and leaves behind a handful of 'individual' npc's.

So, tear the ideas apart and let us know what you think, and if you have other ideas for how to improve mass combat, say 'em.

[Quirk]

Bravo, particularly to the units suggestion. It's ingenious, and I like it. All sound good, but that one's the most useful way I've heard yet of putting mass combat on a fairer footing.

[Hymwen]

If you have brief combat messages on, and ignore others' misses, you should get a "The gith attacks the tall, muscular man!" message or something when one entity attacks another in the room you're in.. Otherwise you might not notice at all, if the two combatants miss eachother for the first few rounds.

[Tamarin]

I always thought that there should be a limit to how many people can actually be engaged in combat.  Does it really make sense that 10 pcs or npcs can attack one person simultaneously?  I'm not an expert on combat by any stretch, but it seems like it would get really crowded and prevent most of the combatants from using their skills in an efficient way.

What if when combat happens with more than two or three fighters, the people envolved are sort of wrapped in a 'cloak of ignorance'.  It would be almost like they're transported to a new room, something akin to an enterable/leaveable area.

This would allow for a new kind of combat interaction.  To see who is actually fighting, you would have to 'look combat'.  You would also have to 'enter combat', and if there are too many people going at it, the game would tell you "That's a stupid idea..there's already fifteen people in that fight".  You could also try to "pull <person> combat" to yank them out, or "rescue <person> combat" which would function much like how rescue already does, exchanging your target's place in the 'combat zone' with you.  You could also throw knives and shoot arrows into the area...basically anything you could normally do, except this would cut down on room spam, and more accurately represent the focus that is needed to engage in multi-person combat.

I'm sorry if this isn't super coherent.  I'm on a lot of percocet at the moment.

[Flashback]

It could say something like, "Combat ensues between x and y." on the start of a new attack.

[mansa]

I would suggest 'brief combat' to be split up between 'brief combat total' ( where, you only see hits on everybody)

and 'brief combat except self' where you only see hits on everybody else in the area, and you get to see YOUR OWN MISSES.

Or, perhaps, Forcing your prompt to change to display who you're attacking when you have 'brief combat' on.

[Kelen]

yeah, I like it. Props guys. It'll make things alot more interesting, and I know it's not easy to go in and put these into effect. Appreciations Galore. From everyone. Except Mansa. -------------------->Just kidding Mansa :twisted:

[Halaster]

yeah, I like it. Props guys. It'll make things alot more interesting, and I know it's not easy to go in and put these into effect. Appreciations Galore. From everyone. Except Mansa. -------------------->Just kidding Mansa :twisted:

We haven't even begun to think about starting to code anything like this, we're really just coming up with ideas at this point, thus this thread.

[Kelen]

Oh, well I'm just happy were thinking about it anyways. I've been wondering when there would be changes to certain combat aspects for awhile now. This looks like a good start.  

[Khorm]

I like the brief combat ideas that were mentioned.. but I'm wondering, could this also be applied to spells/abilities that tend to hit 20 people and create a ridiculous amount of spam?

If you were able to filter out spells/abilities which target more then one person, and truncate the 20 lines of effects down to one generalized 'so-and-so casts a spell, setting everyone on fire!'. Even if the spell/ability -did- miss one or two people, I don't think you'd have the presence of mind in a 'mass' battle to think to yourself, 'oh hey, Todd didn't get set on fire'.

Between a change like this and some of the things Halaster described above, it seems like larger scale combat situations would be much easier to navigate.

[picklehead]

Some unit ideas:

1. Allow commanders to issue a "maintain cohesiveness" order or something to that effect that would help keep the unit from spawning individual NPCs to attack other individual NPCs. I can envision scenarios where a commander is going into battle with multiple units and wants to ensure that a certain number of them stay in formation as much as possible. Maybe better would be the utilization of the change command.

Code Select Expand

change orders 3.unit chohesive
change orders 3.unit skirmish


Something along those lines, where skirmish allows soldiers to break away from formation to engage individual NPCs.

2. Allow for the assessing of units to see how many NPCs it is composed of, the type of NPCs, and the relative strength of the unit. This would be useful both for commanders to keep tabs on their units and also for scouts from enemy forces to guage the strength of the opposition.

3. Keep track of the morale of a unit. Let's say a unit was given the order to maintain formation, but during the course of battle they suffer huge losses over a short period of time. In most cases, I would think that a unit would not flee unless given the order to do so. However, if they're suffering huge losses, their morale is going to diminish quickly, decreasing their willingness to stay in formation. This would cause wounded soldiers to spawn from the unit and flee from the battle. Unless reinforcements are able to stem the tide or the battle in some way takes a turn for the better, this is quickly going to snowball as the unit's strength continues to dimish to the point where it's at the designated level that causes it to disband into the remaining individual NPCs. I think this would mimic real life battles/morale issues to some degree.

Edited to add: Also, the morale of a unit (both the starting level and rate of decline) could, and probably should, be determined to a certain extent, by the level of training/discipline of the NPCs that make it up. A unit of Tuluki Legionnaires, for example, is going to be far more disciplined and have a higher level of morale/be slower to lose morale than a motley unit of raiders.

4. Thinking more about commanders and orders.. maybe a way for a commander to order a unit to engage in a certain style of combat.

Code Select Expand

change orders 3.unit ranged
change orders 3.unit melee


This way you can send in a few units to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat and maybe keep one unit back to rain some arrows on them. Or maybe send in one unit to give another unit time to throw some spears before closing in to join the fight. You get the idea.

[Ktavialt]

I just messed my pants seeing all this. I'll take a stab at the unit stuff and
my thoughts on it... this'll be kind of long as I think it out.

-- 1 --
First off, the general look of things. I would make it so any four PC's or
soldier NPC's could form a unit, even amongst each other, so it looks
something like this:
A small, four-man unit of dun-clad soldiers is here.
- The tall, muscular man is here amongst the unit of dun-clad soldiers.

-- 2 --
Second, the way combat is handled between units fighting with no PCs. I
think it should be pretty simple looking, basically pitting a certain skill of
the unit against other skills of the unit, the skill of the unit being calculated
at the time of formation, then have combat look something like this:
A small, four-man unit of dun-clad soldiers is here.
A small, four-man unit of brown, militia-cloaked soldiers is here.
---
A small, four-man unit of dun-clad soldiers attacks a small, four-man unit
of brown, militia-cloaked soldiers!
In a clash of weapons and shields, the unit of dun-clad soldiers and unit of
brown, militia-cloaked soldiers collide, causing wounds on both sides of the
fray.

And, if you want to get fancy, which I think should happen once the basics
are done, add certain things that raises or lowers the combat skill of the
unit, something like this:
In a clash of weapons and shields, the unit of dun-clad soldiers and unit of
brown, militia-cloaked soldiers collide, causing wounds on both sides of the
fray.
During the melee, a weapon of a member of of the unit of dun-clad
soldiers goes flying!

-- 3 --
Third, combat between units that contain PCs.  It should probably be
handled like in the initial post where one or more actual NPCs are pulled
out of the unit, lowering the unit's fighting ability, so the two can fight
against one another. If the units match each other in number then only
one NPC is pulled out to fight the other, otherwise a random chance that
more than one NPC is pulled out based upon how many more the other
unit has. It may look something like this:
A small, four-man unit of sunburst-cloaked soldiers is here.
A small, four-man unit of black, military cloaked soldiers is here.
- The tall, muscular man is here amongst the unit of black, military
cloaked soldiers.
---
A small, four-man unit of sunburst-cloaked soldiers attacks a small,
four-man unit of black, military-cloaked soldiers!
As the units collide, a tall figure in a hooded, sunburst-designed greatcloak
engages the tall, muscular man!
A tall figure in a hooded, sunburst-designed greatcloak parries the tall,
muscular man's attack.
In a clash of weapons and shields, the unit of sunburst-cloaked soldiers
and unit of black, military-cloaked soldiers collide, causing wounds on both
sides of the fray.

Where PCs exist in both units they should have a random chance that the
PCs combat one another, though I wouldn't think they should -always- end
up going toe to toe with one another.

If you want to get fancy, and probably down the line once the basics of the
unit fighting code is established, with unit orders a leader could order his
unit to have more members strike a selected foe, with a chance that the
other side negates the order:
A medium, seven-man unit of sunburst-cloaked soldiers is here.
- The templar wearing a red silk hood is here amongst the unit.
A medium, seven-man unit of black, military cloaked soldiers is here.
- The hooded, blue-robed templar is here amongst the unit.
---
The hooded, blue-robed templar shouts out an order as she gestures
towards the templar wearing a red silk hood.
A medium, seven-man unit of black, military-cloaked attacks a medium,
seven-man unit of sunburst-cloaked soldiers soldiers!
As the units collide, a figure in a black, military dustcloak engages the
templar wearing a red silk hood!
As the units collide, a figure in a black, military dustcloak engages the
templar wearing a red silk hood!
A figure in a black, military dustcloak attempts to engage the templar
wearing a red silk hood, but is repelled and is forced to engage another
foe amongst his unit.

-- 4 --
Fourth, as to deaths in the unit, there should be a certain hit point level
for the unit where a death may and must occur, and the unit will slowly
dwindle in size based on that. Something like:
A medium, seven-man unit of sunburst-cloaked soldiers is here.
- The templar wearing a red silk hood is here amongst the unit.
A medium, seven-man unit of black, military cloaked soldiers is here.
- The hooded, blue-robed templar is here amongst the unit.
---
The hooded, blue-robed templar shouts out an order as she gestures
towards a medium, seven-man unit of sunburst-cloaked soldiers.
A medium, seven-man unit of black, military-cloaked attacks a medium,
seven-man unit of sunburst-cloaked soldiers soldiers!
In a clash of weapons and shields, the unit of sunburst-cloaked soldiers
and unit of black, military-cloaked soldiers collide, causing wounds on both
sides of the fray.

A few seconds pass...
In a clash of weapons and shields, the unit of sunburst-cloaked soldiers
and unit of black, military-cloaked soldiers collide, causing wounds on both
sides of the fray.
During the melee, the figure in a black, military dustcloak cries out in pain.
---
A medium, seven-man unit of sunburst-cloaked soldiers is here, fighting
a medium, six-man unit of black, military cloaked soldiers.
- The templar wearing a red silk hood is here amongst the unit.
A medium, six-man unit of black, military cloaked soldiers is here, fighting
a medium, seven-man unit of sunburst-cloaked soldiers.
- The hooded, blue-robed templar is here amongst the unit.


-- 5 --
Fifth, beneficial or harmful magicks.  Well, I'm sure at least one side
definitely will not use magick, and the others I doubt too, but as far as
harmful, if its some sort of area spell then the spell would have to be
specifically coded to harm the unit, if its not an area spell then drag out an
NPC of the unit to fight the magicker.  That could be tricky though.

Also, I didn't really mention this before, but I feel that a unit could attack
a lone person.  That lone person who gets attacked should have joined a
unit or had a better wilderness hide

Though, with the tiny about of coding knowledge I have I know this will
be one of those bug-ridden additions, but I think it will be worth its trouble
trying to tighten all the nuts and bolts after it is done.

- Ktavialt

[chang]

...[a whole bunch of great ideas]...

Beware

[Larrath]

I saw in an RPK MUD a few years ago, and the system they used there is called 'formation'.  It was a bit complex and would take work to add, but it looked like this:

Code Select Expand


     [Front]         [Front]          [Front]
[Left Wing]       [Center]      [Right Wing]
                        [Rear]


Characters in the front attack normally and have a 50% chance of being hit by stray attacks.
Characters at the Wings attack with a small penalty, but get a tiny bonus to defense plus a  30% chance of taking stray attacks.  Also, they cannot use super-short range weapons such as daggers (or, say, wrist-razors).
The Character at the Center get a greater defensive bonus with a 10% chance to take stray attacks.
The Character at the Rear can only attack with a very long weapon (a longspear) if at all, but they get a very large defensive bonus and also have a 10% chance of taking stray attacks.

How do stray attacks work?
A character (possibly part of another formation) is attacking a formation.  They have these options:
1. "kill form" - attack everyone in the form, meaning they move around and try to take any opening at any character they see.  They get an offense bonus but can't focus their attacks on one character and don't count for Pack bonus.  Every attack is 'stray'.
2. "kill form middle/front" - attack only people in the front or middle of the formation, which is the same as 1 only with fewer PCs in the target pool and a much smaller offensive bonus.  20% of the attacks are 'stray', the other 80% just picks a target at random each round.
3. "kill form <target>" - focus on a single character.  Standing front, 3 characters can directly attack one character.  Standing middle, 2 characters.  Standing rear, only 1 character.  10% of attacks are 'stray'.
A stray attack will be directed randomly at a character in the unit, with lesser damage and accuracy.

What we get is this - the leader of the group stands in the Center or Rear, the shield-holding grunts stand front, the mage stands Rear and the normal warriors fill the wings.
Each formation holds up to 7 characters, and the Rear is only a choosable location if there are 4 other characters in the form.

Code Select Expand


look formation
[the tall, muscular man]     [the stone-faced half-giant]   [the warty mul]
[the grizzled, dark man]     [the bulging-crotched templar] [the bug-eyed dwarf]
                                [the windblown leafblower]

Questions, ideas, comments?

[Ktavialt]

...[a whole bunch of great ideas]...

Beware

You think? A bit too complicated and spammy or somesuch? Darnit.

- Ktavialt

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I so very hardily endorse the creation of a formation section of battle. I dispise the absolute lack of ability to actually create one currently. FOrmation, please, please, plase. I have a number of ideas that need fleshing out, but I need to sleep. I'll work on them tonight or tomorrow.

[picklehead]

At work, so I didn't read all of Ktavialt's post, but one thing I'd like to comment on is the mentioning of the number of people within the unit. I don't think it should say it outright in the description, but rather refer to it in relative terms (small, medium, large, huge, etc.). As the size of the unit increases the relative term would encompass a broader range of actual size (ie. small = 5-10, medium = 11-25, large = 26-100, huge = 101-500, enormous = 501+, etc.). That way when you're scouting the enemy you might see a couple small units on the road and have a good idea of what you're up against without having to get too close, whereas if you see a couple huge or enormous units, you'd want your scout to get up close enough to assess to get a more accurate look at size of the army.

[Halaster]

Before you get too carried away, understand that "mass combat" is a rare thing on ArmageddonMUD.  Part of it of course is because mass combat is spammy, but there's more to it than that.  The point I'm making is that because mass combat isn't commonplace, I wouldn't want to spend inordinate amounts of time on massive code for these scenarios.  In other words, we're looking for solutions that don't mean extreme amounts of coding.

I could be wrong, but from what I know, adding formations and the ability for PC's to join units would be a fairly large undertaking.  I agree, it'd be way cool, but might not be worth the time and effort considering the use it'd get.

I'm not saying stop with the ideas about it, just something to keep in mind.  Your ideas about formations and PC's might be more pipe-dreams than simply adding 'units'.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

In the case that you don't want to do massive amounts of coding to solve the problem, the simple solution is to introduce max numbers for attackers. Only so many can fight one.

Units should only fight units unless attacked by a PC, in which case either that PC is a badass beyond belief, or mad and dead. In either case, units themselves stay where they belong. If a unit has no other foes than individual PCs and NPCs, then the unit should spawn a number of soldiers randomly between 2 and 6, while at the same time applying penalties to it's own stats for losing those soldiers.

Example: An NPC unit has 1000 hp and 100 slashing skill and 40 strength, to stand for it containing  10 human soldiers. This unit and two gith are in the same room. The unit can not attack, but the gith are foes, so it spawns 2 soldiers per gith, for a total of 4 soldiers. The unit  lowers its max HP by 400(100 per soldier lost), its slashing skill by 20 (5 per soldier lost), and its strength by 16 (4 per soldier lost). These soldiers engage the gith, killing them but losing all but 1. With no more foes in the area, it returns to its unit. This unit regains 100 HP, 5 slashing skill, and 4 strength, to represent the return of one of its own.

Making units out of PCs without advanced coding to introduce the ability to pick both a leader and bonuses and penalties for being in formation is, to me, not a great idea.

[Ktavialt]

(his response to posts)

My bad, I wrote my entire post without looking at this line in your original
post: "This would only apply to generic style npc's, not unique-looking
soldiers and definitely not PC's."

Hey, maybe if this units thing works out there'll be less all-PC casualties in
mass combat and then it'll happen often enough to warrant some more
extensive code.

- Ktavialt

[Flaming Ocotillo]

The game needs a cap on how many attackers can attack the same target at once. The whole "ten swords as one" thing is outdated, as seen in other RP MUDs that have begun to surface over the years.

It's a change to "mass combat" that would affect both big wars, and aspects of the game outside of wars.

[RunningMountain]

Perhaps implementing different [modes] for characters would be the easiest solution. I'll get to that later, first let's look at mass combat in the past and stuff.

First you have to define what constitutes mass battles. I've been in the tablelands and fought 6+ PC elves all who were one tribe. I think that's how mass combat should work basically, get rid of those old units that have 1000 hp and do insane damage and start using NPCs spread out over a lot of rooms. At least this way people have a chance to use 'strategy' in game before rushing in and just letting the NPCs trade blows.

Let's say for example you have 25 rooms total where a battlefield is going to be for an HRPT or something.

OOOO O OOOO
OOOO O OOOO
OOOO O OOOO
OOOO O OOOO
OOOO O OOOO
Now you have two armies, or forces, or whatever, I'll represent the first  
with S=South, N=North. Each S or N will represent a room full of 20-25 NPCs plus 1 PC that commands that whole room or unit or whatever, and any other PCs who are assigned to that unit.

OONNOSSOO         So what you can see is a pretty basic setup between
OONNOSSOO         the two armies, which can clash at anytime.
NNNNOSSSS          Now from this point what happens? Well negotiations or
OONNOSSOO         massive amounts of runners/scouts moving around
OONNOSSOO         trying to figure out positions of the other army, etc.

You can see the O's representing empty rooms, how one army forms up might change the others forming up. So it all depends on strategy.
Do you want to have your main force centered where it can spread out if it
needs to? Do you want to just keep every man up front and risk being slaughtered with no chance of retreat? What about flanking? All these things should be going through PC commanders minds in each room.

I think that would be way funnner then just setting up battles like they have always been in the past with everything relying on NPC-units and nothing else. This way each force can gauge exactly what type of power the other boasts, and all that jazz.

Now about [modes]. This would be pretty simple things that are coded to force players to adhere to certain coded rules during mass combat. The concept I was thinking was something like this:

Scout
Archer
Infantry
Commander
Etc.etc.

Now each mode would have different rules and commands that they could use in mass combat. For example, an archer would have to be in the "archers" unit-room, and he can't move up with the Infantry-room, or else he'd be out of position and no self-respecting archer would do that. The same applies to infantry modes which would force most infantry to stay in their rooms, but this would be a much broader spectrum of rules, whereas they can manuever around much more then arhcers (who just sit back and sling arrows overhead).

Scouts wouldn't have any rules and would be the most open mode for PCs who want to hang back from the main battles and do their thing with poisoned arrows, or thrown knives, etc. Being allowed to move around in any room would be nice, but also very dangerous, if you're caught by the other force, or mistaken for a spy by your own people, you can die very easily.

The commander mode would be much more fleshed out then any other, they would get a bunch of different commands they could order to all those in the room they are commanding in. You'd have a commander for each room, and then (1) who is leading the entire army which applies to every room.  Here are some examples of what commanders jobs would be.

Let's say we have the same armies as above.
OONNOSSOO        
OONNOSSOO        
NNNNOSSSS          
OONNOSSOO        
OONNOSSOO  

Each room has a commander, and there would be (1) Main commander or general or whatever who can issue commands to every single room of commanders, by sending out runners with messages, or whatever.

The commands would be things like this:
Flank, Retreat, Advance, etc.

Each commander can issue a command only to his units, but the main commander can send out runners from which he can tell the commanders what they need to be doing. The reason the main commander would know what he's talking about is because he would usually have a better vantage point of everything, and the other army. For example, depending on where the battle is at, let's say he is waiting on the walls of Allanak, or a massive mekillot dune where he can observe everything.
Or if he can't get a good vantage point, he would have to simply use his intuition on what to do. Since we have the watch command that would be his main purpose to watch each room and what happens and then issue orders from there.

All of these ideas could apply to either a huge battle, like what I was showing above, if you add the numbers, each room having around 20 or so NPCs would make each side have about 250 men armies, which isn't including PCs. If you want more then that, I think that huge huge battles should be spread out over more areas then just a few rooms to make it more interesting like above. I would much rather sit through an 8-hour HRPT that doesn't involve any combat until the last hour if all the rest was roleplaying on what the other force was doing, trying to send out scouts, spies, and other things. Much like a chess game.

Those are my ideas for this, pretty broad and in-depth but I think it's an easy fix, mainly my beef was with how mass combat was done, not necessarily how the code works.

[Flaming Ocotillo]

Those are my ideas for this, pretty broad and in-depth but I think it's an easy fix, mainly my beef was with how mass combat was done, not necessarily how the code works.

Those ideas are very detailed and would probably work well in a MUD devoted solely to tactical mass combat. However, I'd hardly call those ideas "an easy fix" from both a code perspective, and a player perspective. Armageddon isn't a tactical mass combat game, so the players involved may not be interested or very skilled at participating in war campaigns that play in a text-based, real-time strategy game.

I'd like this post to serve as a reminder to anyone that submits an idea to the mass combat thread (and we need ideas), that Halaster stated he was looking for relatively easy changes to the game code. Modifying existing code in a minor way (some examples were given in the first post of the thread), or adding very simple bits, are going to be the ideas that may actually make it into the game.

[RunningMountain]

Those are my ideas for this, pretty broad and in-depth but I think it's an easy fix, mainly my beef was with how mass combat was done, not necessarily how the code works.

Those ideas are very detailed and would probably work well in a MUD devoted solely to tactical mass combat. However, I'd hardly call those ideas "an easy fix" from both a code perspective, and a player perspective. Armageddon isn't a tactical mass combat game, so the players involved may not be interested or very skilled at participating in war campaigns that play in a text-based, real-time strategy game.

I'd like this post to serve as a reminder to anyone that submits an idea to the mass combat thread (and we need ideas), that Halaster stated he was looking for relatively easy changes to the game code. Modifying existing code in a minor way (some examples were given in the first post of the thread), or adding very simple bits, are going to be the ideas that may actually make it into the game.

You can claim its not a mass combat tactical mud, but everytime an HRPT come up there does seem to be a large battle that goes wrong. I'm implemeting some of these ideas already in C on a codebase, it's not that hard really.

[spawnloser]

There are sometimes mass combats, yes...but there is not often ARMIES facing each other, which your system more represents.  We're not looking for 'Italy vs Germany' here, we're looking for 'these 15 dudes are all fighting, make it sane!'  We're also looking for easy and simple, not something as in depth as your idea.  I'm not saying yours isn't bad, just not what Halaster is asking for.