HRPT Combat

[Cenghiz]

The sergeant shouts angrily in sirihish:
   "C'mon attack magicker! Help us!"
>think OK.. I know a good spell...
>nod
>cast '*firaball, or anything area affecting..*'
The sergeant turns to you, all his hair burned, face red.
The sergeant shouts in sirihish:
   "You're dead!"

Really, do wars all happen in one room? Boring..

[Tmp]

The main mass of fighting should be the npc's.  Pc's should be the skirmishers...groups of two to three fighting other groups in -separate rooms-.  Within shouting distance, for orders to be carried out.  Small fights happening through the streets/buildings/dunes...a little more spread out.

Everything happening in one room is way to spammy.

This is what the immortals tried to do, at least at where I was during the last HRPT. There was a distinct attempt to get us to break and stay in smaller groups in different rooms rather than having all of us spam kill meks together in one room.

[Dan]

From what I have seen, the -major- battles happen between unit NPCs in other rooms while smaller scale fights happen with small groups of pcs in different rooms.

[Trenidor]

Here's My idea for clearing up spam in rooms Correct me if I Say anything too IC and I'll delete it:


First off, you've got to understand that training is key to winning a battle in a war strategy. Not skill with attacking, but skill with marching and other things. Generals can use weak people, that are trained well in marching, to succeed in a battle. Not just marching is involved in war, but the skill of staying put when a commanding officer tells them too.
This is generally called formation.

When an army achieves a perfect formation, it becomes easier to win battles.

Seeing as how Zalanthas has barely any formation (I think, all the houses I've been in didn't teach that stuff, but I've never been in a organization such as the militia or the legions so I may be wrong) I think it's safe to say that formation isn't a well known discovery (cuz who in the world would use it? There haven't been any major battle occurances that I could see it even being developed)

Here's my idea:

Squads and platoons:

A squad could be a group under a seargent of under 5 PCs or NPCs, plus several vnpcs. Squads take up 1 room and fight whatever attacks in that room.

Then, three squads line up side by side, and in the middle is a lieutenant. The lieutenant leads the three squads by shouting orders. which can be heard in the adjacent rooms where the squads are posted. When the lieutenant says to march south, the squads march south. When they say to march west, the squads march west. When the lieutenant says fall back, the squads start running backwards away from the fight. Etc.

This will elliminate spam other than orders, and orders are often lost in the confusion of battle. The only thing players will get to see is: such and such hits such and such. So and so inflicts a grievous wound on such and such. From the east, a man shouts: "Fall back to the hill!" Seargent says: "Let's go guys, disengage and fall back." so and so hits such and such. such and such falls to the ground unconcious. So and so exclaims: "We're hopelessly outnumberd!"

If you know anything about roman composition, you'd know that when a squad falls back, the squad behind takes it's place.


Although, the only problem is that I don't belive this is understood IG. I was hoping to save this info till I became a head person in a group where I could teach people IG, but looks like it's needed right now when people don't like spam.


Also, you've gotta RP wisely with this info, if you play a dip shit char that doesn't listen to commands, do stupid shit till the seargent gets pissed.
And those that are still raw recruits, wouldn't know much about this stuff, so RP wisely and this info won't be used incorrectly.

[Agent_137]

fantastic idea, drilling would be needed, just as in real life. Maybe the byn can replace cleaning the latrine day with Marching in formation day.


hahaha yea right.

[Trenidor]

Oh well, I didn't realize it was said already....

In any case, It's gotta be discoved IG to have anything done about it.

It's too bad there isn't another attack from allanak and tuluk that would be only PCs, then we'd learn a thing or two about this room fighting.
Kill the ppl in your room and run off to the next room. to help dead comrades

Anyway...

The Greek Hoplites did a plan that consisted of several rows of people. The back would push at the front to move forward (In arm these back rows would be each seperate rooms) The front would stab with their spears at the enemy while they advanced. Their shields would be used to deflect enemy stabs, and they would just keep moving forward till the enemy line is broke.  I belive that they had a specific position they put more skilled people due to their sword arm being the right hand, and the left for shield.

I also want to add that in most battles (with some exceptions) the leaders of groups would be placed in back where they could be defended while they called orders, instead of the soldiers following the leader into battle.
What I'm trying to say is that the follow command shouldn't really be used IMHO in battle, it gives more RP when someone lags behind the group and the seargent (who -could- use follow cuz she's in back calling orders out to the squad; this would allow them to not lag behind while calling orders) has to yell at the person that falls behind the squad line.

[da mitey warrior]

I don't like the emote idea.  It's too MUSHy.  Wars should be decided by coded actions, not emotes.  

The problem is that the whole army has to be in one room for it to be controled.  NPCs in won't follow commands unless they are in the same room as the guy giving orders, so you have 80 npcs in one room attacking 80 npcs in another room.  

The solution is to spread the army out over a large area, but make some way to control this large army.   There needs to be a long-distance order command, a command that lets you control npcs in other rooms.  If this is implimented you could have npcs spread over a large number of rooms all fighting it out.  And they won't just overwhelm the small number of PCs in the battle.

[Bogre]

What if we had a /briefcombat command that allowed us to only see the combat scroll for ourselves and anyone that we are following (or is following us)?

Then you won't be able to see if any enemy is weakening, and you can attack them easily, or if you want to save an ally that your not following but is there, or if you see that the large half-giant is really uber because he just beheaded that templar, so your gonna get the krath outta there. I'm for the reduction of spam from other people's misses and parry's and dodges, though, because that would kind of fade into the chaos of the battle, and reduce spam immeasurably.

[Oxidised Lizard]

I agree that the war code isn't great but I don't think relying on echoes is any good.  The imms can just decide what will happen then, giving the individual PC leader who's been training and recruiting his warriors for years no coded say in the matter.  Wars should definitely be coded, though the code could be improved.