Assist me in assisting you as an assistant assist artist

[Callisto]

I've been thinking about mass combat a lot in the last couple weeks, since I've seen a fair number of PCs cut down in combat - one of whom was a combat death machine, easily one of the most powerful warriors the game has produced within the last year or so.

The problem with large-scale conflict is that time and time again skill and experience is thrown to the wind in favor of who can rack up the most people assisting on one target. Even a squad of top tier warriors backed by experienced players well-versed in the how-to of playing a warrior down to a fine art.

Now I understand that there is going to be a price to pay if you're taking on more then two people at once - two is pressing it as it is, and three will leave you too spread out to maintain a solid defense. I know that there IS a place for pack bonus (IE: The coded bonus of three or more PCs/NPCs attacking a single target), and I'm not here to argue that, I here to suggest a way to make that advantage more realistic and less critical in large scale conflict.

Here is how it would work with current code:

You have three Byn squared off against three Gith. The gith all attack the same target, bringing pack bonus into effect on the side of the gith. The rest of the Byn then assist their fellow and bring pack bonus into effect on the side of the Byn, leaving both sides ganged up 3v1 against each other, and this continues until one side is left.

Using the same example as above, what I suggest is this:

When the Bynners come in to assist - rather then them piling onto the same target for some pack bonus gang-banging, each person assisting draws one of the gith away and squares off against them 1v1, the end result being a battle that consists of three 1v1 fights, rather then a single  3v1v1v3 fight.

When the teams are uneven from the start and everyone squares off until there are several 1v1 fights going on, the team with the advantage would then have a couple 2v1 fights going on to allow for a numbers advantage without it turning into insane pack bonus spam.

You could even get fancy and allow an extra parameter when assisting, such as "assist templar rebel", so you assist the templar by drawing off a that filthy northern rebel and not a filthy northern templar who would magick you back to the stone age.

Reading over this before posting, I realize it might be a bit of a sloppy presentation for an idea, but I think it is clear enough everyone should know what I'm suggesting. If there is enough support for it, I'll write it up in more detail and submit it to the mud account. Discuss, flesh out the idea or suggest whole new ones, but I think it is a subject that is in dire need of discussion and, ultimately, improvement.

[mansa]

1)   There is a rescue skill.

First thing you should do, is 'assist' your friend who's getting ganged.  Then, rescue one gith from him.  You've just pulled off the gang bonus.  Presto.

[Angela Christine]

It isn't a bad idea, but there are some things you can do other than assisting.

Like trying to rescue the guy getting ganged up on.  You probably won't knock him out of the fight alltogther, but there is a chance one of the gith targeting him will be switched to you.

You can also have your rear fighters target the "left over" gith that no one is targeting by starting combat with a charge, a bash, a backstab, or what have you.   This won't stop that gith from attacking your buddy, but it will distract him.  It also lets your men that have a special attack manuver, like backstab, use it.

I think the main problem with group combat is that after the first few seconds the big stratagy is completely lost.  The screen scroll is going too fast for the leaders to really know what is going on, and even if they give an order half the men probably won't even notice it because it gets lost in their scroll.  Fog of war, I guess.  Scroll of war?  Anyway, without a coherent stratagy it just comes down to wild swings at whoever is closest to you.  If you saw Gadiator you know that a stratagy is important.


AC

[Lazloth]

I've played many muds, (I think mmorgs) and certainly strategic games that have incorporated formations in combat.  I don't know if you're indirectly alluding to such - (and I think arm would benefit from even a primitive front/back mechanism) - though we're pretty much melee-centric place.  As such, if you're bringing the combat to someone, your 'unit' is screwed because your pointman will eat the brunt of the initial burst from a more 'readied' faction, though I seem to remember recent code that had altered the above with a more random mob initiating approach.  Who knows!  ..but I'll dig around in the weekly archives.

[Rindan]

I think you have the problem right, but doing it as you suggest would make it so that you could never gang up, and you should be able to gang up.  I have had warriors who were nearly unstoppable by PCs unless they had at four decently skilled people on them.  If an assist can quickly pull someone away, then characters like these would be absurdly hard to kill.

What I do agree with though is that there should be a coded way to draw away people before they are over come.  Rescue is nice, but rescue fails often.  More then that, if you get into a fight and everyone types kill, then rescue someone is going to be dead before you get to hit rescue.   Guard also works, but guard stop working the second you decide to actually attack.  So, if you want to effectively use guard you need to stand there and wait for the enemy to charge.

Perhaps a way to do it is to make a quasi-formation.  The idea behind a formation is that you are grouped with or around people in an attempt to offer mutual defense.  If a pack of Byners are in formation around their sergeant, then chances are that sergeant is under good cover.  He can still eventually be separated out and killed, but it will take more work if all of his men are around him.  Even during the heat of battle one would imagine the men stay close to their sergeant and can always offer some level of cover.

A way I could see simulating this is by letting guard continue to work even in combat and letting the guard command target two or three people.  The effect could be that you could set up defensive 'formations' such that certain people in the group would have more protection then others.  Obviously, guarding during combat is much harder, and the more people you are trying to look after the less effective you are going to be.

For example, let's say that a squad of 10 byn and a templar are going to enter a major battle.  Everyone in the group guards the templar.  This simulates the group being centered around the templar.  Now, just because the templar is guarded does not make him unable to be touched.  Once combat starts the templar is going to be guarded with lowered guard skills.  It is just going to mean that if a horde of people attack him, only a few are going to get through.  The ones that do get through can be reasonable removed through either killing or rescuing.  It will prevent the poor templar form bring instantly killed despite having a pack of Byn around him.

To make things even fancier, the byn sergeant in charge could order men to buddy up.  Each man guards the templar and another man.  The result is that if four enemies try and gang up on a single person, that person's buddy is going  get a chance to stop each attacker.  If he manages to pull off just one, then he has made a difference.  The end result, is that this formation would look like a horde of Byn around a Templar, and once combat broke out everyone would fight in pairs and stay near the templar.  It isn't a terribly fancy formation system, but it would result in combat being more spread out and give leaders some extra tactics to play with.  A leader might have five of the Byners guard the templar exclusively, while the five remaining guard the templar and one of the full time guards.  The sergeant might have his two best men form a triangle of guarding  with himself so that the strongest fighters cover each other.  So and of so forth.  I think it would open up a lot of options and have the potential to really spread a fight out.

[Mr.Camel]

Maybe if there was some way to block all the other fights' spam and only get the scroll of fights you are part of?

[X-D]

Actually, blocking fights you are not in would suck since you would not know who needs help unless they said something, but, maybe having the option to block everything but hits would work, one that could be toggled, I know of a few muds that have that and it works rather well for group combat.

[Lazloth]

You can also use your client to gag or highlight certain strings.  I assume if you think arm is laggy, you've never logged into a godwars mud, eh?

--

Rindan, to revisit your multi-guard idea, if you had the ability (again, a primitive example) to move front or back in a "formation" (see my 120 second earlier post), you will inherit the behavior you're looking for, I think.  You have 5 Bynners on a forced march with 2 people escorted.  All five mercenaries are in the front-rank, both of the charge are back-ranked.  This means that regular melee would have to go through the Bynners to reach escort.

A different example might utilize a small unit of archers, or witches, or whatever.  Obviously you would need a greater number of front-ranked folks to provide the back 'cover', from which they can enact anything in combat that is not melee.

*Shrug.* I've seen it work and work well.  I've seen it poorly implemented.  Certainly worthy of discussion.

[Rindan]

A nice and fancy formation system would be best for sure, but I think the problem is that a fancy formation system is also fancy to code.  The guard skill is already in there.  Some changes would have to be made such that it would still work during combat, but that seems like something that is doable and doesn't involve massive recoding and breaking every NPC in the game.  Don't get me wrong, I would love a true formation system.  I would love an upgrade to the combat system in general, but I think if you want to more then day dream you have to look at what is likely to be reasonable.  Altering the guard skill to just change when it works sounds like something that might be work.  Formations calls for something completely new and probably some hardcore recoding.

[creeper386]

It could use alittle bit of work... But I think Rindan has a great idea. We had a long discussion on how to work a formation ability and just making guard be more of a toggle on/off thing instead of guard dying when you attack/fail or succeed to defend the person ... Things would work WAY better.

One guard, one charge. The guard is guarding his charge. Someone attacks his charge, he fails and the person gets through. Someone else attacks but he blocks this persons advance and enters into melee with him. Then the person would be less likely to block any NEW incoming attacks, but he succeeds in rescuing his charge from the first attacker so is fighting two people. A third attacker goes for the charge, the guard is skilled but isn't of heroic proportions so the attack not only goes unhindered but the charge dies and then the three attackers take down the guard.

Okay well most that story isn't necessary, but I think this right here would be a VERY simple way to solve some problems without having to code any group formations or anything like that.

I think someone should right this idea and send it to the MUD account, or idea it in game or something.

Creeper

[John]

I like Rindan's idea, but as he said it's fancy to code.

I think a simpler way to fix the problem with NPCs all targetting the same person, is to have a random function. I'm assuming (I don't have any experience in this so let me know if I'm wrong) that when 3 agro NPCs going into a room and there are 3 people they are agro against, they attack the first on the list. This results in them always attacking the same person. However a simple random function would make them randomly target the possible people they could attack.

With mass combat against PCs with everyone assisting this wouldn't fix the problem though. A simple solution to that would be to have the assist code work differently to the kill code. AFAIK when you type "assist <friend>" it looks to see who that person is fighting, gives you a lag and then acts as if you had typed "hit <enemy>". The reason I think the code works that way is because when I assist a Templar who is attacking the militia, I become wanted (according to reports from the HRPT anyway).

By changing the assist code a little so it remembers that your assisting during combat would allow for changes to happen. One of these changes could be that when the person your assisting dies, you stop fighting (it's logical for this to happen some of the time and if you want to continue fighting you can just "kill <enemy>"). Another change (that addresses this problem) would be when someone types "kill <you>" while your assisting someone, you would stop assisting them and then start fighting the perosn who just tried to kill you.

That way if 10 people are gang banging someone through the "assist" command. I can draw some of them off by typing "kill <target>".

Just an idea that isn't as fancy as some of the other's suggested here

[Callisto]

The reason I suggest the assist/draw-off change is because no one is going to tag-team one person because they're a heroic and well-known warrior, and let someone else attack them from behind. That whole ball of yarn is an OOC driven thing, a "He's a nakki hero and kicks mucho da asso, so everyone jump him first!" style of thinking I would like to see the game move away from if at all possible, since it makes no sense on a tactical or realistic level.

When even numbers square off you aren't going to have a whole team attack one person, since that persons team is going to break in and draw them off - there isn't a field commander worth his or her salt who would ever order a unit to run through another unit of hostile forces in an attempt to kill one person first, since they would be cut to ribbons before breaking the front lines.

Should you be able to gang up on a heroic warrior? Yes! But not when that heroic warrior has just as many men as you engaged in the battle, it is utterly absurd to think otherwise. If you want to gain that advantage of 3v1 to take down the legandary northern rebel, then your team of nakki soldiers should have to earn it by fighting tooth and nail in order to gain the numbers to mount such an offensive.

A legandary commander with a unit of loyal soldiers should be difficult to take down in the field, near-impossible without a numbers advantage. That numbers advantage should stem from a greater number of soldiers from the start, from skilled tactical planning or from hard fighting - not just making sure everyone attacks the same person as soon as they're in the same room.

[Quirk]

I think you have the problem right, but doing it as you suggest would make it so that you could never gang up, and you should be able to gang up.  I have had warriors who were nearly unstoppable by PCs unless they had at four decently skilled people on them.  If an assist can quickly pull someone away, then characters like these would be absurdly hard to kill.

If an unbelievably tough warrior has a group of buddies watching his back and preventing him being flanked, shouldn't he be absurdly hard to kill?

Quirk

[Cowboy]

Quirk said

If an unbelievably tough warrior has a group of buddies watching his back and preventing him being flanked, shouldn't he be absurdly hard to kill?

Yes, sounds like it might be true but what if the other side has unbelievably tough warrior (s)?  Any doubts that two or three half-giants might be able to get a bang in on anyone's head?  Regradless of backups?
Regarless of how tough they are? Once the large battle is joined, anything can, will and has happened.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

The problem was already talked about and a very simple numerical solution was, I believe, proposed. Quirk, Creeper, and I had come up with a grouping system. It was very logical and pleased all of our various tastes.

Perhaps we could delve into that once more?

[wizturbo]

The solution is pretty simple, its not realistic that more then 3-4 people would be able to go into melee combat against a single target.  So just make a limit, no more then 3/4 people can be attacking a single humanoid target.  Giant beasts and what not, can have a higher cap depending on their size.  

Scouting out the enemy before hand, and creating a strategy of who takes what targets when the battle starts would be a great tactical advantage under this situation, which seems realistic.

[Stroker]

its not realistic that more then 3-4 people would be able to go into melee combat against a single target

That is true, if they are retarded and morbidly obese.

This is a roleplaying game, not a strategy game, so who the fuck cares? Besides, it's not like anyone of you would be able to use it properly anyways. I mean, capitalists forming war and battle strategies? Pfft, the idea itself is offending to my communist nature.

[creeper386]

I think Rindan's idea of adjusting the guard command, would work just as well, and personally matches my feelings on the subject then any sort of group formation code would.

Allow one person to guard one-three people depending on skill, and allow that guard to carry on through attacks. Perhaps depending on skill, make it so you won't be able to keep the guard up during melee, especially if you are fighting more then one opponent. Again have it dependant on skill. An awesome guard could probably fend of two-three attacks and still have a chance to protect someone else, but by then he might want to stop guarding people as if he keeps taking people on himself, well he'll be screwed.

It'd help put some 'distance' that doesn't really exist in the game right now besides through RP.

Overall it wouldn't be too powerful. People can still withdraw and try again and such.  People can switch targets. Although it wouldn't solve everything. Especially PCvPC ALL attacking one person which isn't a good idea ... But honestly there isn't anything thats going to work perfectly.

As for putting a max limit on how many people can attack someone. I've seen PCs take on 3-5 other PCs without barely getting hit. Doing something like this would take advantage through huge numbers and make it worthless. As there would be massive heros that would still cut everyone down.

Creeper

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Dammit all to hell. Don't you people understand? It is valid for a person to be able to take on four or five guys and not get murdered. It is. I do not care what you think, it is. This is fucking Armageddon, and dammit, there should be heros! All this mess about attacks and so forth, it's just like the subdue and kill convo everyone was having a while back.

I say this. Don't limit the amount of PCs. Limit the eefectiveness of the each attacker over 3-4. The problem is solved. Gangbang if you like, but someone dies. I will throw something sharp at Dirr if I ever see the hero role destroyed because you people were too jealous of those with skill and a shitload of PT.

[Stroker]

Why? I am AGAINST the limit of the number pcs on any given character. In fact, I am all for having the code unchanged as it is. I like it fine. I've had characters that could take on 3 or 4 npcs or trained pcs alike and come out barely wounded. In fact, as previously stated, I am against all kinds of whining about the game. I see it as a perfect balance between skills and rp right now, just let the damn thing be.

Heroes? Stalin is my hero, due to his insatiable paranoia and the slaughter of many innocents in the gulags strewn about in the cold recesses of siberia.

Now if you still disagree with me, I will retaliate against that sharp projectile with a nuclear missile that will achieve full penatration.

Ha ha.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Sorry, Dirr. I wasn't saying that I disagreed with you. In fact, many of your game views are ... well, nevermind. That's just too much...

Now if you still disagree with me, I will retaliate against that sharp projectile with a nuclear missile that will achieve full penatration.

I see you your cheesy fucking nuke and raise you a damned envelope full of anthrax adressed to you from the Estate of Stalin. Punk.

:lol:

[Stroker]

The nuke and the penatration was actually a metaphor for sex.

Besides, there is no need to kill me, because I am already dead inside.

[Mr.Camel]

*chanting*
What is dead can never die, but raises again, stronger!

[gfair]

I haven't seen, or may have glanced over, anyone stating the obvious - the more numbers you add to combat, the riskier it gets.  In these Hollywood movies we have with large battle scenes: Braveheart, Spartacus, Lord of the Rings, Gladiator and the like, being in close quarters combat with dozens of fighters is incredibly perilous.  The trouble with everyone going one to one is that someone inevitably dies or is wounded out of the fight, in which case the guy who won now creates an advantage, or "overlap" in the fight - he can then spring on an enemy currently occupied by a friend, stab him in the ribs, back, etc.

And that is the vulnerability of all people in large combat.  I don't see any reason why seasoned fighters should have it any easier than anyone else, other than a slightly greater ability to stay calm, keep his eye on his surroundings, and more quickly dispatch, but you give someone with any exposure to his flanks, or back, and he will die or be severely wounded just as easily as anyone, in my opinion.

The thing I don't like about the present combat situation is that with everyone assisting the lead fighter, the spatial logistics are extremely unrealistic - let's say there are eight and six fighters.  If they each assist the lead fighter, it' turns into an eight-on-one and six-on-one fight, so they're essentially swarming just two fighters.  Not only is that extremely dangerous, but it is highly unrealistic.  It could only happen in a computer-based simulation, and I think it needs to be changed.

Also, the present system has no break in combat - it's either on FULL or OFF.  You don't pause in the middle with the agro, but intelligent creatures like Gith, Halflings, D-elves and raiders.   You just walk in, and slug it out, and flee or stand depending on how you see it going. Nobody steps back or breaks combat for a few moments to circle, taunt, parley, nothing like that - what happens in combat is limited by the combat code.

So while Arm can get out maybe up to fifty or a hundred PC fighters, and up to one hundred times that amount as virtual fighters, the combat itself is unsophisticated.

Could that limit the RP in large group combat? I think so.  Should it be any different from what we experience in the real world? I don't think so, not too much.  Even small enhancements would be welcome, like have archers come in and try to do their thing before the infantry hit the field.  I think one-versus-one combat is more preferable to X-on-one combat, but then you have the possibility of huge disparities in combat skill and large risk.


That said, the present system works, if it can be changed I'd encourage that, but if we keep setting new casualty records for every HRPT then that would be bad as well.