So, I was thinking about the craziness of 20 people all attacking 1 person.
Clearly size has to factor in on both sides. So for simplicity I will use Small, Medium, Large.
Small creature can be attacked by 4 small creatuers, 2 medium creatures, 1 large creature.
Medium creatures can be attacked by 8 small creatures, 4 medium creatures, 2 large creatures.
Large creatures can be attacked by 10 small creatures (I chose ten cause 16 sounded a bit much and made me vizualize squirrels attacking a half giant), 8 medium creatures, 4 large creatures.
Now, the size does not have to be assigned persay based on weight and height. In general, most humanoids would just be medium. Half Giants of course clearly large. And the various creatres across the game could be assisgned their own size aswell.
This way during, say an HRPT, 16 characters cannot dogpile onto one. They have to wait their turn.
The general idea that a limit is set, is great. I endorse it entirely.
A way to make it less specific - which I think would be useful..is that every PC and NPC gets a numeric value, based on overall size and weight - and natural defense skill could be a variable to add or subtract from that value.
If I'm a well-trained HG, at the top end of height and weight, maybe I'd have a value of 20.
So the max value of the combined efforts of my enemies - could not exceed 20. If another half-giant, less trained, has a value of 18, and a tregil has a value of 2, then you could have that HG and his pet tregil attack me - but no one else would be able to find purchase in the fight.
If a fat human has a value of 8, and a tall lanky elf has a value of 9, and a stumpy well-trained uber warrior dwarf has a value of 10, then whichever two of the three gets to me first, are the ones who can fight. The third one has to sit back, or attempt to rescue one of the others in order to get involved.
Solution: Master Parry, Master Shield Use.
Quote from: Lizzie on July 29, 2013, 07:35:13 AM
The general idea that a limit is set, is great. I endorse it entirely.
A way to make it less specific - which I think would be useful..is that every PC and NPC gets a numeric value, based on overall size and weight - and natural defense skill could be a variable to add or subtract from that value.
If I'm a well-trained HG, at the top end of height and weight, maybe I'd have a value of 20.
So the max value of the combined efforts of my enemies - could not exceed 20. If another half-giant, less trained, has a value of 18, and a tregil has a value of 2, then you could have that HG and his pet tregil attack me - but no one else would be able to find purchase in the fight.
If a fat human has a value of 8, and a tall lanky elf has a value of 9, and a stumpy well-trained uber warrior dwarf has a value of 10, then whichever two of the three gets to me first, are the ones who can fight. The third one has to sit back, or attempt to rescue one of the others in order to get involved.
I don't think that actually works, due to your example. Why wouldn't another half giant be able to walk up from behind and attack?
What I am offering to solve, is the simple fact, that 20 people cannot physically have enough room to swing at 1 person with their fists, let alone with weapons that take 3-5 feet of area to swing.
Quote from: Scarecrow on July 29, 2013, 07:52:17 AM
Solution: Master Parry, Master Shield Use.
Go ahead, master parry and shield use and go let twenty people swing at you. It's not as impossible to get passed as you think.
As I posted in RAT.
I am fine with 10, 20, 50 PCs being able to ride/run over a single PC...ignore the code saying Billy got his head slashed 25 times and imagine it saying "Billy was trampled by the mob of soldiers."
It is war, some people will die, Some highly skilled people will be trampled by twenty newbs....
Yeh, X is right. I don't like the insta gank much, but he's definitely right. You can literally be trampled to death in real life, and although the code doesn't give you that message, that is basically what's happening when you get ganked by 20 pcs at one.
Probably could do with a delay on their attacks, though, to give you a split second to run.
Well, to be fair, I would not mind a graduated delay to that first round attack depending on where you come in.
Say, attackers 1-4 no delay, 5 is 2 seconds and everybody after that add 1 second.
Course, leave fleeing as it is...after all, you are trying to remove yourself from that trampling mob without getting hit.
In the battle, I was actually amused by the number of high skilled PCs with low flee skill and low skilled PCs who had not neglected that skill.
Honestly, I did not like the flee change before that battle. but watching it work large scale let it make more sense.
I think a delay would be great to at least let people feel like the battle is more epic. If you die in two combat rounds after all this buildup then it really just isn't as glorious as it could of been.
If we had time to flourish with emotes, yell, taunt, scream, emote blood flowing from the wound we took I think it would add an overall experience to the whole thing.
Explaining it away by trampling implies that the people trampling you have some place to move forward. In the case of a massive HRPT battle there is no such space - the soldiers would have to walk through other enemy soldiers to dogpile on one person. So the combat actually is combat, not people stepping on you, IMO. I approve of having some kind of limit.
We are simply not going to agree on that. That dogpiled PC was out front or otherwise away from the group, got flanked, fell down and trampled...etc etc etc.
Guard is a great skill to prevent that BTW...and only one of the ways I can think of.
(edit) I do not agree with limit...I can get behind increasing delay. At least that way, if you are PC #12 to be attacking dude, you have a 10 second delay till your first attack goes in, you can disengage or type stop and choose a new target...or just wait till your rush to the first target gets you there....course then smart people will wait and target people who are #10 or #15, knowing they are in a massive delay....increases battle tactics.
I think simply having small groups of people, about 7 vs 7, per room and the fill in the rest with "virtual soldeirs" would be fine. Have a battle spread out over multiple rooms. Left flank, Right flank, Middle. Far left flank, Far right flank.
Something like that. This doesn't take any code, just coordination from staff and cooperation from the players.
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on July 29, 2013, 10:56:58 AM
I think simply having small groups of people, about 7 vs 7, per room and the fill in the rest with "virtual soldeirs" would be fine. Have a battle spread out over multiple rooms. Left flank, Right flank, Middle. Far left flank, Far right flank.
Something like that. This doesn't take any code, just coordination from staff and cooperation from the players.
This. 20 pcs max to a room or it gets too impossible, IMO.
I agree entirely with putting a limit on the number of attackers that can attack a single target at the same time. This is something that has already been done in a number of other roleplay MUDs, with the idea that these games are about roleplay and story, not about insta-gibbing targets in the span of one second with dogpiled "kill" commands.
For everyone who is arguing that targets killed in this way are "trampled by an army", please consider that this same tactic is possible even with just a 10 vs 10 battle. If everyone on one side attacks the same target on the other side, that target will die immediately due to the cumulative combat penalty from multiple attackers. The actual player in front of the keyboard will also have no time to respond to ten simultaneous attacks. Remember, this instagib death happens within one second, so let's try to imagine how this looks in the IC game universe:
Ten people in a line vs ten people in a line. People are banging their shields and swinging their swords, they are about 20 feet away from each other, ready to charge. Someone yells, "CHARGE!!" and suddenly, in that very same second, ten sword swings have already cut multiple times through one target in the time span of a single stroke, rendering that person into multiple sliced pieces before anyone can blink. Likewise, the other team in battle uses the same tactic, and someone from the opposing side suddenly bursts into bloody pieces as ten sword strokes simultaneously strike as one.
There are plenty of tactics you can use in large battles to accomplish all sorts of things, and plenty of targets will die rather quickly. This is not an argument that players should not die quickly in battle. It's an argument against assured instant death when faced with dogpiled kill commands, no matter the skill level of the target, where a) this is not feasible due to space constraints in combat and b) this does not promote roleplay in combat, for a game designed around roleplay.
This dogpile tactic has been around forever (I call it the musket line tactic), and I've seen it used in all of Armageddon's mass warfare scenarios, going all the way back to 1991. In the famous original battle of Thrain Ironsword and his Tuluk crew vs Liben the red robe and his Allanak crew, Thrain was such a high profile character that you can be sure every single player (and the templar ordering his soldiers) was spamming KILL THRAIN on the front line. And while Thrain got dogpiled like mad from soldier NPCs and player PCs alike when stepping into battle, you need to keep in mind that the code did not give a penalty for multiple attackers back in those days, and the defense/parrying code was much more forgiving than it is today. If you fought against 20 guys, you didn't get ANY penalty for it, other than having to defend against that many hits (which is still quite a danger).
So what happened to Thrain? He valiantly fought in the battle like the badass that he was (and he wasn't even a warrior). The logs (LoD may still have them) showed him fighting off hit after hit because his coded defense and skill was able to handle it, and the lack of negative penalties from multiple attackers let him stand his ground. Soldier after soldier and player after player struck at Thrain and he put up a hell of a fight. He was eventually downed by Liben the red robe, who was throwing fireballs at him again and again until Thrain finally fell. And Thrain may have only fell in that encounter because all the players were using 1200 to 2400 baud modems back then, and LoD couldn't even react to what was going on with the spam. By the time he saw anything suggesting he was in danger, he was already dead on the server side from the queued player commands. If you think the spam is bad today, you would be shocked to see it at 2400 baud speed.
I bring up the Thrain battle because even though it had its spam issues (LoD never had a chance to react in combat due to modem speed limits of the time), the log does at least show him fighting valiantly and having a chance to stand his ground before the end. This was only possible because negative penalties did not exist for multiple attackers, but I really don't agree with that old code and I think the new code is much better. I am mentioning it because it's an example of how giving characters a chance to play out their story is always more interesting than dying to oversights with the code. The MUD from 1991 is not the same as it is today - multiple attackers are lethal and defense/parry in general is far less reliable than it used to be. To evolve with the times, I think the next step is to limit attackers on a single target, to allow characters to still having a fighting chance (or at least a few seconds more of roleplay) when faced against larger groups of enemies. How many attackers that is, is open for debate and discussion and balance testing. It will be different for every combat engine.
As a side note I'd like to add that the HRPT battle did a FANTASTIC job at not involving "unit" NPCs and piles of NPC soldiers. I think that is a great step forward for Armageddon MUD with mass warfare. It's such a waste to see PCs slaughtered by nameless "unit" NPCs and city guards. Good job to all those responsible for making that happen and allowing players to fight with players on the micro battlefield.
I agree with the above but I would like to add that more indication of actual army sizes (beyond pcs) whether via units which only battle each other, or staff echoes, or some other solution, would be nice. As I understood it, one of the armies vastly outnumbered the other (I'll avoid saying which) but many seemed to think it was the other way around due to PC presence.
I have some ideas about mass warfare that I'll wait until I'm on a computer to post about. A phone is somewhat annoying to post on. I would indeed love to see a more elegant solution to battle in RPTs.
Quote", please consider that this same tactic is possible even with just a 10 vs 10 battle. If everyone on one side attacks the same target on the other side, that target will die
Untrue, I have had and known several warriors and other guilds that could not only stand up to that, but win.
With current code.
I do not like limits, and they suck in other muds as well, because it turns it into some kind of silly scripted event. Not the chaos and confusion of battle.
Even more annoying, Ok, we 5 will take onthose five, this other 6 will take on that six...Now we have 3 and they have 15 more, those 3 will take on that 6, and the rest have to wait...Alright, first 6 have won... on larger side, Can we join other battles...Nope, size limit...Now we wait with the other 12 that have been waiting since the beginning.
In those cases, I have even seen the smaller side come down to a single PC and win, simply because of combat limits to how many can attack 1.....silly, No matter how good your warrior or whatever is, when you are being faced with 35 soldiers...you will lose...even if it is only because they get to jump on top you and bite you while you are down.
Just an assumption on my part but I tend to think most players don't care if the side they are fighting for wins or loses in a particular battle, provided they have the opportunity to:
affect their own survival
affect the survival of the PCs they are assigned with
affect the overall battle to some degree
use combat skills, tactics, and low-level strategy to try to do well
and all of that without worrying about massive amounts of combat spam.
One of the things we were trying out this HRPT was an objective option. It...sorta worked. Not the way we envisioned it, though, so we had to make do with what happened and change plans. I think battles with specific objectives apart from "kill other team" would be more fun for the players. Could be wrong about that but that's just what I was figuring.
Or maybe a "squad" command, like follow but it designates people into distinct tactical units.
>squad amos
The tall, muscular man is now your squad leader.
Brief combat would then only show you combat messages related to your squad.
You could also have certain coded benefits, such as swarms of attackers being more evenly distributed among the squad members and bonuses to certain combat skills. These bonuses could be calculated off the average squad skill or even, dare I suggest, off a sort of squad leadership skill.
One could even go as far as to have the squad leader able to dictate special squad tactics modes.
Phalanx: defense bonus to each squad member using a shield
Overwatch: bonus to guard skill
Volley: bonus to archery
Cavalry charge: bonus to mounted combat for the first X rounds of combat
etc.
</crazyideas>
Quote from: X-D on July 29, 2013, 11:58:08 AM
Can we join other battles...Nope, size limit...Now we wait with the other 12 that have been waiting since the beginning.
So, yeah, X-D, there would be waiting. And orders to withdraw and attack. Troop "movements" etc. Officers might actually have to lead. It'd be fun.
Thirty-five guys don't fight one person all at once. It's not physically possible.
I'd like to see this implemented, and then have code-twink problems addressed when they arise.
The first one to address: the "hit and run mob."
>OOC Okay, guys. Here's what we're gonna do. Everyone "Kill Bob" and then "disengage" after three seconds after you get through.
>OOC We'll try to keep six people on him at once. He can't parry all of us forever.
>OOC And anyone who takes damage, do the FLEE and RETURN dance.
Quote from: X-D on July 29, 2013, 11:58:08 AM
Quote", please consider that this same tactic is possible even with just a 10 vs 10 battle. If everyone on one side attacks the same target on the other side, that target will die
Untrue, I have had and known several warriors and other guilds that could not only stand up to that, but win.
With current code.
I've played a character that knocked out a bahamet in a single hit to the head, and knocked out a silt horror in two hits. I've had a character who kept taking no damage while subdued during an execution scene, because the character kept using shield block to stop the executioner's hits.
Both of those characters would have rather faced a bahamet or silt horror before facing ten simultaneous PC attacks in a war scene. I take it the skilled warriors you've played and the skilled warriors you knew were much more powerful than the ones I've played or seen, and in that case I can't speak for that level of ultimate power. I must concede that I am inexperienced at combat in comparison to your experience.
With that said, I imagine the battle mastery of being able to reliably conquer ten opponents at once and emerge victorious is something most players will never see. Keeping that in mind, I am inclined to maintain that the "dogpile" code is an instant kill scenario in almost all cases.
A maxed-out, straight-up warrior might be able to take on multiple PCs but after more than 3-4, maybe 5, will get fucked up and/or die without certain buffs, which your PCs had, XD. Lets not go too far down this road. ;)
Hey, long as you say "almost" I will agree.
But I still maintain that...first, this is easily mitigated by current code. Second, It is not nearly as bad as people tend to claim on the GDB...even in the last battle, Nobody ever had more then 9 attacking 1 anyway, which is well within realism AND that PC survived. (any others did not because of other coded reasons).
In fact, the only times I have ever seen things like even 10 PC or NPC on 1 is when that 1 is all alone...and well, if you are alone and run into the enemy, SOrry, I don't really have a problem with the entire army jumping on your head.
NOW
Thinking over past RPTS/HRPTS I have been in and other events. If there was anything that needed fixing, it is the NPC auto assist. It causes the most in accidental or unbalanced deaths...it happened several times recently and has happened to me and many others in the past. Autoassisting NPCs really should have a limit. I think every time I have seen one pc taking on even 10, it is because of 6 instant autoassist npcs. And that is lame...least Players can have some kind of lag to assist, even if it is just typing speed..
Actually Delirium....many did not. Oh sure, some did. But maybe ask about a certain Byn sarge of mine and a gith tribe...no buffs at all and 3 waves of 8+ gith on him at once.
I am not saying some things do not need work, in fact I have offered up things that surely do. I just am dead set on hard limits of any kind. Or really anything that lowers that battle chaos and confusion. I am all for things that balance out NPC involvement, and giving soft limits to how many can attack one, I am all for almost anything to help the player control combat spam as well as work with others. But I do not want to see silly coded unit combat manuvers and crap.
THOUGH...in this writing, I have been thinking. I have no problem with staff being able to set room combat limits for big battles...say 20 total PCs, and even making sure both sides know the rules. 10 from each side...charge! meanwhile everybody else can shoot at that next room over or archers and reserves 2 rooms over, spells, whatever. But such things should be on a case by case basis, setable by staff.
I like hatchets idea. More roleplay, less DIKU. This is not a hack and slash game.
In what way does it make sense for a 10 vs. 10 fight to center and hinge entirely on the person that typed "kill amos" and his victim first?
I think a limit on how many attackers on one guy would be a good thing, provided that a few other things are taken into account.
For instance, how many people are following him? One guy with nine guys following him vs another guy with nine more guys following him isn't likely going to end with a funnel towards the two in the middle. That just doesn't make sense.
That just doesn't fall in line with typical "wall of people" behavior.
Science would refute it.
But ten guys picking on one lone ranger guy? Yeah. He'd be dogpiled and stabbed to death pretty quickly.
Maybe even taking into account weapon type could be a thing.
What's easier to crowd around a motherfucker and kill him with?
A wide-arc-swinging-two-handed-battleaxe-of-fuck?
Or a simple thrusty-stab-pokey-stick spear?
POTENTIAL FOR SO MANY VARIABLES, SHOULD THEY BE WANTED!
You know...here is an option.
What if there was no limit...BUT, working on the Qmans thoughts, ...if you could not 100% target a certain person when starting an attack on another group?
Say, Byn sarge Malik and his 6 troopers come across Raider Bill and his 9 thugs.. Now, Raider bill tells his crew to take out Sarge Malik first, So, everybody either types KILL MALIK or Assist Bill. But the code then flips a coin Virtual of course. And each person has a 50% chance to be on Malik, if they fail then the code simply picks one of the PCs following Malik....Of course you can try to maneuver once combat is engaged, through rescue, change opponent etc...or even flee, return and try for Malik again.
I would think that would be rather simple to code and not set hard limits of any kind.
Also, if Sarge Malik and crew runs in on Raider bill alone...well, raider Bill is rightfully Toast.
Now that I can dig.
There'd be no guarantee that you'd be fighting who you're trying to instagank, reflecting the reality of two body masses colliding.
So long as there's no real chance you'd wind up with ten guys wailing on one guy when said one guy has ten buddies of his own to contend with.
Because I mean really, there should be a point where there's just not enough room to get a swing in.
Which, I guess I'm saying I still support a soft limit, but whatever.
I'd make love to either idea.
What if they stop following?
Why would they do that? It'd be in their benefit to keep following to evenly distribute foes rather than letting Sgt Malik get insta-ganked.
If Raider bill and crew stopped following each other but Sarge malik and his highly trained Troopers stayed together, It would work the same, If Malik had a group of untrained runners and they all did follow self...Well...consider that they scattered and everybody can be targeted with 100% certainty.
Simple enough.
Keep in mind, Odds wise, Malik would still have around 4 people on him...from the start, but that can be dealt with using rescue etc....And of course it is possible he could get specially lucky and only get one or specially unlucky and 8.
Personally I think it would cause people to think more and not even try a real dogpile. Because the first attacker always gets 100% target. It is everybody else that is 50%. So, You are Raider Bills thug. Raider Bill and Malik are engaged. Now if you target Malik, You might get him...Or, you will randomly end up with somebody else in the goup. There in is the fun. Because You being only a lowly thug, Would you want to risk the random tossing you in front of Grog the lifetime Half-giant trooper OR would you rather pick Skinny the new breed runner?
Adding to possible tactics FTW.
As someone who literally has years of experience with group-based COMBAT in other muds, specifically combat-oriented muds, ones that involve large groups and parties going at it, I sincerely believe the best way for arm to handle situations like these, is to heavily discourage it and avoid it.
All the little fixes in the world will not solve some of the basic problems presented.
Armageddon is a roleplay mud first and foremost.
Be that as it may, in a realistic, roleplay-driven world, large groups and parties fighting eachother in a war shouldn't be discouraged in the least.
IMHO
I mean, the ideas we've kicked around here so far would enhance the RP atmosphere a bit, methinks.
Give people a reason to hire Byn guards for trips through the wastes else face the harsh deserty reality alone.
There are ways to keep it realistic without including 20 people in a room. /derail
By spreading PCs out in several of the widely expansive outdoors rooms and leaving things as they are?
^ gets my vote. In fact that's how I expected things to go during the HRPT.
I think that diminishing returns should be applied to the penalty you take for defending against multiple attackers so that they cap out at some moderate number of attackers.
unnerf parry
luirs apartments
Quote from: Case on July 29, 2013, 04:37:16 PM
unnerf parry
luirs apartments
Case's comment comes flying in from the south!
You slap aside the comment with witty repartee!
j/k We love you, Case.
I've seen a similar system work pretty well on Atonement, which is basically that only 4 people can engage any 1 target at any 1 time. It makes battles more tactical. Also you can do 'set melee' to make it so that you only see death messages, says, and combat messages from whatever you are currently engaging. It makes it easy to keep track of things, and also to notice callouts.
X stole my idea. It's not exact and I'll expand on that but his idea is the gist of mine. Creating group combat and multi attacker delays while keeping our current combat code should create a much better combative environment all the way around.
Firstly XD, unless they are using thrusting weapnos such as spear, no it is not realistic for 9 people to all swing a 5 foot sword at one person with still having room to dodge, and without hitting each other.
Secondly, having limits set for such does not mean you cannot jump a pc with 9 people still, what it means is that other skills become more important. One such skill, RESCUE, for example. Awe feck Amos is fairing well against those other four, and put a beating on Bob! Someone step in and take bobs spot! Now, bob gets to be tended to. And others take up guard positions to stop Amos from escaping. As it is right now, guarding the exits, psh thats silly, if we all just 'kill amos' then he dies. Rescue as it stands has lmiited use, particularly with dog piling.
Flee has a chance to work, MAYBE on small scale battles as it is, but you don't even get a chance to try to excape in a dog pile. Atleast if they were guarding the exits, there becomes the CHANCE that the skill can be used.
This also makes room to allow medics to tend to someone on a team that is clearly dominating the other which should be able to happen rather then being a "heal up after battle" position.
You say guard command is one way to stop a PC from being dogpiled, which to an extent works, IF you know whom they are all about to jump.
Aswell, now Amos can sort of feel out the four attacking him, and even change opponents to focus on a stronger or weaker, whichever he governs will be the best course of action (facing the stronger one giving you more defense against them, facing the weaker, putting yourself at a weaker position but maybe eliminating someone attacking you)
The number of attackers still gives them the advantage, how well trained they are all around gives them even more advantage. And setting a limit allows for tactics and skills to be used on both sides, which will make for far more interesting encounters.
Now you have to use more then 'kill amos' to get in the fight, but that doesn't mean you can't get in it. And it clearly becomes much more interesting when strategies and tactics and 'mostly useless skills' get to be used.
I think it's fine and can easily enough be explained away as others have said.
I am really trying to figure out if you have a point to that last post.
Weapons, I assume you have never been involved in even mock battles with such weapons IRL. Look some up on youtube then and see how those swords and axes get swung. Unless you are inside something with a very low ceiling, all the swung weapons are usually done so over head and bringing down...you only need open space above to swing and twenty swords can hit a single man at one time I assure you. Maybe not easily of course...and in such battles usually it is a quickly shifting melee...which is why I made the suggestion I did to more closely match realism along with improved playability and not losing that chaos, confusion fog of war.
Now as to the rest, Medics are already useful, if you think they are not then maybe you and they are not doing things right.
The other skills being not useful? Hah. I could take any two players in this game and train them ICly to make the three of us a brutal and efficient combat force, proper tactics and uses of said useless skills, to the point that with under 20 days played on each PC to the point I would be confident that the three of us could take on any PC force of up to ten and have time to laugh, joke and emote during the killing. I have done so many times before and with unbuffed PCs.
Maybe the problem is not with the current code but the way you and people around you play?
Now as I said before, I am all for things to increase tactics, but not hard caps or slowing things down, That just puts you into the boredom of certain other mentioned muds with combat that have no real tactics, are so slow that one to one combat can take RL hours and group combats even longer...meanwhile having no real chance to die...in fact, MOST the fights, large scale or small end in no fatalities and if they do, it is because the player wanted a new PC anyway.
"Mostly useless skills" LOL, you are surely doing things wrong.
I remember two certain Malarn Dwarves (I was one of them) that through use of bash/disarm/rescue held off at least 15-20 mantis at a time when they were invaded. I agree with X-D. It requires skill and know-how to use those skills.
I've often thought about how to fix this and have come up with several ideas I don't really like completely.
I guess I wouldn't mind using 'grioup' command despite how much that may make some RP people cringe.
So You have Amos's group (A,B,C) and NPC tries to attack C. I'd make it that he'd have to beat everyone in the list who has less people they are fighting or is ahead of them in the list fighting an equal number of people.Since A and B ar not fighting anyone he'd have to beat them first. Assume he fails and A stops them. Another NPC attacks C but fails to beat B's guard skill. Third NPC attacks C would get through without having to do a check. Another NPC attacks A, gets through because A is at the head of the group. A now has 2, B 1, and C 1. If another NPC tries to attack A then he'd have to get by B and C because A has more attackers now.
Sort of spreads out the dogpile, and also sort of a little simple bit of unit formation with people you want attacked least in the back end of the list. Perhaps you can do a nosave defend to not try and protect others. A noble for example wouldn't try and protect a front line soldier. Guard skill or somenewgroupcombatskill.
command:
Shield wall
calculates those grouped, (follow or assisting) one Pc (leader of unit) with shields
to
redistribute attackers along those in the shield wall unit.
(attacker lead +those assisting)
Realistically displacing an attacking force on a defending force where shields and tactical position are thus then set up in a formation that would redirect and protect against the idea of being summarily surrounded.
nm
Max combat vs one target at 8 characters/npcs.
You cannot fight the tall muscular man, he's fighting too many right now!
Quote from: mansa on July 29, 2013, 08:18:27 PM
Max combat vs one target at 8 characters/npcs.
You cannot fight the tall muscular man, he's fighting too many right now!
I think that's the best idea.
Quote from: mansa on July 29, 2013, 08:18:27 PM
You cannot fight the tall muscular man, he's already surrounded!
Quote from: Barsook on July 29, 2013, 08:22:11 PM
Quote from: mansa on July 29, 2013, 08:18:27 PM
Max combat vs one target at 8 characters/npcs.
You cannot fight the tall muscular man, he's fighting too many right now!
I think that's the best idea.
I think this is a good idea.
I'd like to add another idea to it: that PCs "guard"ing the target should count in the number. Which would require "you can't guard in loops!" because SOMEONE has to be on the outside and available for smashing.
[Trying to avoid versions of A guards B guards C guards A.]
EDIT to add:
I also think that when a PC is guarding another PC who is present, it should show up to the "look" command (possibly only showing up based on either your own "guard" skill or "watch."
The pug-nosed templar is here.
The militia-hooded soldier is here.
--He is guarding the pug-nosed templar.
Quote from: Morrolan on July 29, 2013, 08:47:21 PM
EDIT to add:
I also think that when a PC is guarding another PC who is present, it should show up to the "look" command (possibly only showing up based on either your own "guard" skill or "watch."
The pug-nosed templar is here.
The militia-hooded soldier is here.
--He is guarding the pug-nosed templar.
I dig this too, very realistic if the guard is close to the person being guarded.
Quote from: X-D on July 29, 2013, 06:45:56 PM
"Mostly useless skills" LOL, you are surely doing things wrong.
No I make fair of use of them although I am not blind to believe that 20 attacking 1 person in a group, still allows those skills to be useful but some people prefer tunnel vision I suppose.
I also am not trying to purposefully ignore the fact that guarding exits to kill someone is less effective then simply dog piling the target with 10 pcs even though there really is no physical room around the individual to do such.
Any videos you watch of swordplay, will not have 10 people all swinging at 1 person at one time, the reason they will not have this is because it is not only stupid to attempt (in the best efforts of a direct up and down swing, still consuming 2-3 feet shoulder span in spice, and looking to take up 20-30 feet then being shoulder to shoulder, allowing for nor room between each other) but when done by someone whom knows how to use a weapon consumes much more space, as they are not simply running up to pummel them, they are seeking to give themselves the best offense while keeping a good defense which inolves moving around, which takes up more space. Which if you can do math, which I am assuming you can, makes it physically impossible to have that many pc's attacking.
As well, it is good to note, that these people are also not using shields and the style of shield fighting. Or giant mounts trying to wedge them all together to get clear, multiple strikes at 1 target. The more details you add, instead of purposely seem to ignore, the more space you are requiring.
Go outside, find 10 people, and have them stand around you, and see how well that looks. Now try it with 20. Now put them on horses.
Any videos of swordplay with more then 4-5 people on 1, have them standing farther back, AND the combat sequence has 1 or 2 approach at a time, giving the defender a chance to defend and attack those that come at them while the others WAIT for an opening to jump in.
Quote from: Barsook on July 29, 2013, 08:59:44 PM
Quote from: Morrolan on July 29, 2013, 08:47:21 PM
The pug-nosed templar is here.
The militia-hooded soldier is here.
--He is guarding the pug-nosed templar.
I dig this too, very realistic if the guard is close to the person being guarded.
This is really awesome, though personally I'd rather see the subtitle on the person being guarded, like this:
The militia-hooded soldier is here.
The pug-nosed templar is here.
--The militia-hooded soldier is guarding him.
Makes the guard-ee more prominent and it's more relevant to see who is being guarded, rather than who is guarding. And it scales up better too.
Consider:
The Allanaki soldier is here.
The other Allanaki soldier is here.
The Tuluki soldier is here.
The other Tuluki soldier is here.
The third Tuluki soldier is here.
The Jihaen templar is here.
--The Tuluki soldier is guarding him.
--The other Tuluki soldier is guarding him.
--The third Tuluki soldier is guarding him.
The blue-robe templar is here.
--The Allanaki soldier is guarding him.
--The other Allanaki soldier is guarding him.
vs.
The Allanaki soldier is here.
--He is guarding the blue robe templar
The other Allanaki soldier is here.
--He is guarding the blue robe templar
The Tuluki soldier is here.
--He is guarding the Jihaen templar
The other Tuluki soldier is here.
--He is guarding the Jihaen templar
The third Tuluki soldier is here.
--He is guarding the Jihaen templar
The Jihaen templar is here.
The blue-robe templar is here.
.. where it is not nearly as obvious what is going on.
Quote from: catchall on July 29, 2013, 09:29:45 PM
Quote from: Barsook on July 29, 2013, 08:59:44 PM
Quote from: Morrolan on July 29, 2013, 08:47:21 PM
The pug-nosed templar is here.
The militia-hooded soldier is here.
--He is guarding the pug-nosed templar.
I dig this too, very realistic if the guard is close to the person being guarded.
This is really awesome, though personally I'd rather see the subtitle on the person being guarded, like this:
The militia-hooded soldier is here.
The pug-nosed templar is here.
--The militia-hooded soldier is guarding him.
Makes the guard-ee more prominent and it's more relevant to see who is being guarded, rather than who is guarding. And it scales up better too.
Consider:
The Allanaki soldier is here.
The other Allanaki soldier is here.
The Tuluki soldier is here.
The other Tuluki soldier is here.
The third Tuluki soldier is here.
The Jihaen templar is here.
--The Tuluki soldier is guarding him.
--The other Tuluki soldier is guarding him.
--The third Tuluki soldier is guarding him.
The blue-robe templar is here.
--The Allanaki soldier is guarding him.
--The other Allanaki soldier is guarding him.
vs.
The Allanaki soldier is here.
--He is guarding the blue robe templar
The other Allanaki soldier is here.
--He is guarding the blue robe templar
The Tuluki soldier is here.
--He is guarding the Jihaen templar
The other Tuluki soldier is here.
--He is guarding the Jihaen templar
The third Tuluki soldier is here.
--He is guarding the Jihaen templar
The Jihaen templar is here.
The blue-robe templar is here.
.. where it is not nearly as obvious what is going on.
You can streamline this even further:
The Jihaen templar is here.
--The Tuluki soldier is here, guarding him.
--The other Tuluki soldier is here, guarding him.
--The third Tuluki soldier is here, guarding him.
The blue-robe templar is here.
--The Allanaki soldier is here, guarding him.
--The other Allanaki soldier is here, guarding him.
In other words, we don't need to see The Tuluki soldier twice. We only need to see him once. If he's guarding someone, make his existence known in the line of him guarding someone. Obviously - if he's not there, he can't be guarding someone. And if he's guarding someone, he must be there. Along that line - the bug that has you guarding someone even after one of you walks away - might need to be fixed first :)
I think the dogpile is preferable to all the silly friendly fire that would occur when you have 30 PCs going at 30 PCs and I type KILL MOHAWKED.MAN and end up attacking my sergeant, the purple mohawked man, instead of my target: the short, mohawked man.
Or make a new combat system revolving entirely around groups.
Thing is Hatchets...the problem with your entire argument is that, PC wise. 20 on 1 has never happened. Never. 10 on 1 May have happened at some time or another, but honestly, ignoring any NPC auto-assist piles...I doubt it. And I already agreed that the NPC piles should be fixed and that can even be a hard cap.
Making your arguments rather moot. Last HRPT battle was, I am sure the largest EVER arm battle between two groups of PCs and even then, 10 on 1 did NOT happen. The highest was 9 on 1 PC and it happened 2 times, only 1 of which was all PC....and as I said, that one survived.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on July 29, 2013, 07:15:08 PM
For the "10 PCs on 1" combat zerg problem:
Everyone else should just roleplay samurais like I do, walking around shouting your name and lineage until you receive an honorable challenge.
Swirdsnabsuo is the solution. Change the culture, not the code.
Quote from: X-D on July 30, 2013, 12:34:30 AMMaking your arguments rather moot. Last HRPT battle was, I am sure the largest EVER arm battle between two groups of PCs and even then, 10 on 1 did NOT happen. The highest was 9 on 1 PC and it happened 2 times, only 1 of which was all PC....and as I said, that one survived.
Really? Thats interesting. X-D knows his shit.
I am suddenly less butthurt about the whole affair.
Quote from: Lizzie on July 29, 2013, 10:30:24 PM
You can streamline this even further:
The Jihaen templar is here.
--The Tuluki soldier is here, guarding him.
--The other Tuluki soldier is here, guarding him.
--The third Tuluki soldier is here, guarding him.
The blue-robe templar is here.
--The Allanaki soldier is here, guarding him.
--The other Allanaki soldier is here, guarding him.
In other words, we don't need to see The Tuluki soldier twice. We only need to see him once. If he's guarding someone, make his existence known in the line of him guarding someone. Obviously - if he's not there, he can't be guarding someone. And if he's guarding someone, he must be there. Along that line - the bug that has you guarding someone even after one of you walks away - might need to be fixed first :)
I love this, and I was going to suggest exacly that. Game on, Lizzie.
Quote from: X-D on July 30, 2013, 12:34:30 AM
Thing is Hatchets...the problem with your entire argument is that, PC wise. 20 on 1 has never happened. Never. 10 on 1 May have happened at some time or another, but honestly, ignoring any NPC auto-assist piles...I doubt it. And I already agreed that the NPC piles should be fixed and that can even be a hard cap.
Making your arguments rather moot. Last HRPT battle was, I am sure the largest EVER arm battle between two groups of PCs and even then, 10 on 1 did NOT happen. The highest was 9 on 1 PC and it happened 2 times, only 1 of which was all PC....and as I said, that one survived.
Quote from: X-D on July 29, 2013, 08:06:58 AM
I am fine with 10, 20, 50 PCs being able to ride/run over a single PC...
Quote from: hatchets on July 29, 2013, 09:08:10 PM
Any videos of swordplay with more then 4-5 people on 1, have them standing farther back, AND the combat sequence has 1 or 2 approach at a time, giving the defender a chance to defend and attack those that come at them while the others WAIT for an opening to jump in.
To Unmoot my point, I was simply bringing up your extreme numbers, which you seemed to have forgotten that you momentarily ago were in full support of.
I personally am not going to go through the log of the fight and count up who died or who was attacked by who. I just briefly scroll through to the parts where I might have stabbed someone.
But As I said, and still will say 4 is plenty for human on human and will make fights more interesting across the board.
Equally the suggestion was to include such things to creatures as well.
Quote from: hatchets on July 29, 2013, 08:00:40 AM
Quote from: Scarecrow on July 29, 2013, 07:52:17 AM
Solution: Master Parry, Master Shield Use.
Go ahead, master parry and shield use and go let twenty people swing at you. It's not as impossible to get passed as you think.
You know, if you said that to
anyone else, you'd be right.
There's no getting around that, realistically, a guy can't be attacked by twenty people at once. The max would be about eight, I reckon. And that's just going off my old DnD tabletop days. I also don't think it would be realistic to assume a trample over is what killed Billy Bob the soldier, as if he had pals with him (which everyone did, in this case) they'd be pushing back against the swarm to present said tramplage.
However, whilst I say this, I can't think of a rational and helpful solution. My only comment would be that these kind of battles are -incredibly- rare, so I don't see it being much of a problem.
I just thought I'd add - back in the day, it seemed to be that the penalty to defense for any character facing more than two attackers was so severe that it was tantamount to expecting death. Somewhere along the way, it seems that penalty was nerfed.
Still, getting dogpiled now isn't that fun either.. just wanted to point out that it isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. So X-D is right so far as I've seen - dogpiling is survivable in the current code. What the major problem now is with dogpiling, and more generally having 129587125 PC's in a room, is the pace of combat and/or stuff happening doesn't change from the default - with so many characters, even with brief combat on (which leaves out things I as the player would still like to see, actually), it's really really difficult to keep track of what's going on, unless you're somehow a robot, like Mansa. Ok yes, mass combat should be crazy, and hectic and confusing, but impossible? I really like some of the suggestions regarding dogpiling delays and think they could be taken even further, which I feel could be done to mass combat in Armageddon in general in one way or another, so that we as players can understand what's happening, and have our characters react realistically in turn.
Eve Online has something called Time Dilation when there are a massive number of players all trying to fight each other. Time Dilation is a solution for the server-side load, as apparently their servers would just give up the ghost when too much was happening at once. When it kicks in, it slows game time down, so that the server can process everything that is happening and still stay up, and it is apparently scaled according to what's going on. Maybe something similar could be introduced for mass-scale battles in Arm, but for the aim of player comprehension and playability rather than server processing as modern-day Ginka seems to have no problems with processing 1250897125 commands at once and spitting out 129358713698135192385 lines at once! I have no idea how difficult this would be to implement code-wise though. I suppose it may be just easier to do a completely separate system for mass-battles via grouping or otherwise, which tends to be suggested after every HRPT.. :)
Not having a character react properly to a given situation though just because you as the player didn't notice that x, y or z was going on because of the massive scroll doesn't fit with the aim of realistic roleplay, IMO.
Well, i know i did not clarify, but i still am fine with twenty plus pcs piling on to a lone pc...meaning he has nobody with him. code wise...not saying it will not warrent some kind of rp complaint though. Sorry if that was not clear.
Now, aside from the fact that arbittary hard caps are just as unrealistic as no caps. Another reason i dislike them is the balance issue that would surely come up....this issue would cause people to want more nerfs to certain classes...i am always against nerfs. I realize that most players think they have a bomb ass warrior or whatever at ten to twenty days played...but the fact is...those are just babies. A single fifty day warrior could win against. forty twenty day warriors if the hard cap was 4 to 1 and an unlimited number of other. mundane classes.
Yeah.... Maybe we've been throwing around numbers like 20 vs 1 a bit much. PC gank squads like that-- I dunno about you guys, but I've never seen one coming close to that number in non-HRTP scenarios. Hell, even NPCs don't typically group up like that.
So....
Lone PC = Unlimited number of potential assailants.
PC with friends = Depends on how many friends you have.
group(X) = number guarding X + number in X's follow-tree, excluding duplicates
allowed attackers(X) = max(2, 8 - group(X))
8 people can attack a lone person.
2 people can attack even the most heavily-guarded person, assuming guard checks fail.
In a group of four, 5-on-1 is your worst odds.
Fighting in a group of five, you'll never be attacked by more than four.
I'm not an experienced warrior-player, but that feels about right to me. If you want it a bit more punchy, make it, like, max(3, 12-group(X)).
(Orrrr...you could factor in PCs' actual defense/parry/shield use skills, so the merchant tagalong doesn't help. But clever attackers will probably kill the weak ones first.)
Specific info here, but since that's already being thrown around- here's some data for your argument.
There were 10 PCs on one PC Sunday. Just sayin'. I've got the logs of them taking swipes at him as he fled.
He did survive, near death.
Now that I am not posting from my phone.
I am sure that 20-1 has never happened. It did not happen with the last HRPT, and I am sure that it was the largest PC battle in arm history, with around 80-90 PCs split between 2 rooms. And if it did not happen then, with the highest numbers I have ever seen and likely a record. Then it could not have happened in past events with numbers half and quarter that. All of which I was involved in and never saw it.
NOW...what I find amusing about this entire thread is...the people that want hard caps want between 4 and 8 as the caps. On actual dogpiles in my logs for HRPT(s) and other events over the last 20+ years...MOST, and by most I mean 90%+ "dogpiles" Are 6-1...4-1 and 8-1 are not too uncommon, 9-1 or higher is very uncommon.
I really think people have a perception that it is more because of the spam, If 5 PCs attack one, assuming all dual wielding. Then you get 3 lines of text for each one...15 lines flash on the screen pretty much all at once....for each PC the attack message and 2 swings. Which would seem like OMG THE ENTIRE NAKKI ARMY JUST ATTACKED MY PC!!!!
Refugee, Looked like 9 to me, but I will not argue 10...still, he did survive, after 1 normal round and a flee round...and I can say that PC was VERY much a newb..
Sorta puts the kibosh on the idea that "Nobody can survive" Argument.
The PC was only a 2 week old PC. [probably shouldn't have posted this part]
:)
I wonder how you know so much about him lol.
I just pay attention.
Which brings me to another thought...somewhat off topic I suppose.
But it seemed to me that one side had a LOT more older PCs then the other.
I wonder how things would have went if, before battle, staff was to step in and go.
Alright, everybody with 30 days play or more, go 1 room east...everybody with less then 10 days played go one room west.
Then matched them that way...how it would have gone?
RE: 20:1 being unbelievable and un-doable - obviously y'all haven't ever seen Kill Bill vol. 1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq-E7RefoHo
The game would benefit from a hard-cap limit (figured however staff comes up with) as to how many PCs can be involved in attacking one PC.
Players with massive IG combat experience and/or good combat mentors are not the average player. What happened in the HRPT is only one example, but some kind of change that limits the number of people hitting one human-sized combatant would benefit the game as a whole.
The "dog pile" doesn't only happen in HRPTs. And just because it's marginally survivable, that doesn't mean it's good for the game.
It's the battle-equivalent of
">think (aggressive) Raiding time!;run;e;e;kill target;bash;stand;disarm;kick;kick;kick"
or
">flee self;e;e;e;n;n;n;n;n;e;e;e;e;e;e;think (annoyed) Damn raiders."
Many of us do these things when we must because they work, and will keep doing them because they work. Some people argue on the GDB that such actions are "good roleplay" -- because they're what the PC would do. Sure, that's "good" roleplay. But that doesn't mean it's what's best for the game. That's why code changes are being suggested.
The point of this discussion is to find a better way, a more elegant solution than everyone in a group walking into a room and typing "assist sarge" after sarge takes the first swing.
Look, hard cap limits would be abused...or make no difference at all. Low limits , 3-6, abused, this abuse would then cause people to scream for nerfs, the nerfs would then of course mean that new lower hard caps would need to go in. Limits of 6-8 Would change nothing. as it sits right now, that is the high end for most "dogpiling" anyway.
The amount of change that would have to be put in to every single class and skill to make hard caps even close to viable is insane. And in the end you would just end up with SOI or Atonement where you type kill Joe, then walk away for 30 minutes. Because combat is that slow and boring and the risk of it being lethal...1%.
Soft caps or other solutions to the actual problem (which is still arguable that there is a problem) that would be easy to balance and code would be preferable IMO. A few have been mentioned.
(disclaimer) Not badmouthing SOI or Atonement...I split my time evenly between Arm and SOI in fact.
This is kinda starting to spiral out into two different topics entirely.
The thread was originally made to discuss ways of making group-on-group combat make sense.
So let's discuss that?
We don't care about lone Amos getting roflstomped by a handful of PC raiders-- dumbshit should've known better than to have traveled alone in the first place.
We care about big group 1 fighting against big group 2, and how to make it seem less like every single person in either group is taking stabs at the two people that typed "kill otherguy" first.
Unless I'm mistaken.
Something I don't think anybody has mentioned is that NPC dogpiling or musket lining does happen regularly, and is often a big cause of player death - often newbie death.
If there were a hard-coded limit to how many ENTITIES could attack you at once, it would probably, as x-d says, not affect pcs that much, because purely pc dogpiles don't happen that often. It might, however, keep Talia the Newbie Merchant from dying at the gates of Allanak to 20 half giant soldiers because she made a stupid typo and kicked her friend Amos or didn't know about the spice thing and doesn't have her nosave on for some stupid reason. She still probably wouldn't survive, but she might have a couple more seconds.
At which point, some method of making it at least partly random on targeting past 1-2 would I think be your easiest and most realistic bet.
Laura, I have mentioned NPC piling many times now actually, and Will be the first to agree that it needs a total revamp...on that I do not care if they get hard caps or the ability to autoassist limited, something...but yes, More deaths caused by that then anything...least stupid/needless deaths.
OMG, IntuitiveApathy mentioned time dilation, and I REALLY want that.
I think everything would go better in massive combat if i was able to consider my decisions carefully.
I hope this one gets seriously considered! (I didn't read everything else in this thread)
I am considering the idea still...I am not totally against it...though I think such a thing should not go more then say half normal speed...I can think of problems as well, but the idea has merit.
Time dilation?
MATRIX EMOTES
>emote In slow motion, @ bends backwards, cloak flowing majestically, the swing of an obsidian sword passing inches from ^me nose.
Quote from: LauraMars on July 30, 2013, 11:50:15 AM
Time dilation?
MATRIX EMOTES
>emote In slow motion, @ bends backwards, cloak flowing majestically, the swing of an obsidian sword passing inches from ^me nose.
YES PLEASE :D
Time Dialation might be a bit more trouble than it's worth-- at least for Armageddon....
Time Dialation works in Eve Online because every star cluster is on its own server, which allows them to slow time down without affecting anyone elsewhere.
Seeing that our Ginka is on a single machine, things could get problematic.
Those spoony tavern sitters and indie grebbers will just have to experience their life in slow-mo for a while, out of consideration for all the PCs struggling not to die.
I think it's fair.
Ehrmegerd! Brttle Lerg! (only regular, and applied by staff)
EDIT: Not against this idea, actually.
This is far over a year old and all pcs are dead now and nothing to it is icly sensitive.
I once road out with two others another warrior and a ranger.
We came upon 16 plus spiders.
The ranger went link dead at the beginning and the two warriors pulled all the spiders on the ranger to themselves.
On of the warriors died, but killed at least five spiders first.
The surviving warrior killed all the other spiders.
Yea got to low hp, but still, this is to illustrate that stacks of 10+ can be faced.
Spiders as most know are no slouch to face either.
Granted towards the end the ranger did reconnect and assisted the warrior. But there were only three or four spiders left by then.
(edited to add) I am intrigued by the Time dialation, it would be good to have some moderated speed. Am I right it simply slows all aspects of the process down but holds no other change than that.
What I found in large group battles was the buffering of commands entered. inputting something like a coded attack secondary skill or even flee and it not being processed for what seems several turns.
I'm intrigued by the time dilation idea too. Like most of you, I suspect, I've been attacked, typed in a command, and had to sit and watch blow after blow take my PC down without the command ever being processed.
It's all part of the game and I've always accepted it, but if there was something that could be done about it, that would be great.
Time dilution could be made a global command, it would only really be required at combat orient HRPT or RPT anyways.
I don't like the idea of hard limits, partly because you can't set a hard limit that would work for NPCs. Any hard limit would have to be applied to both PCs and NPCs, partly because of things like NPC soldiers. Take a 50 day old warrior and put them against 10 spiders and it is different than 10 gurth. Same with PCs. Put that warrior against 10 warrior that have been around a bit and it is a drastically different outcome than putting him against 10 merchants. The only way to let that level of skill on the people trying to gang up on the one person count is to not have that hard cap.
Quote from: Twilight on July 30, 2013, 02:11:46 PM
Time dilution could be made a global command, it would only really be required at combat orient HRPT or RPT anyways.
That would work. Maybe make it a request thing for combat RPT's.
Quote from: Barsook on July 30, 2013, 02:13:24 PM
Quote from: Twilight on July 30, 2013, 02:11:46 PM
Time dilution could be made a global command, it would only really be required at combat orient HRPT or RPT anyways.
That would work. Maybe make it a request thing for combat RPT's.
Eve also has something where the people who run the game can reinforce a specific server node if they anticipate (based on player input?) that there's going to be a large battle in a certain place.
Extending that idea to Arm, maybe something similar could be done with Arm to avoid the problem of having to slow the entire game down for everyone else not involved in the HRPTBATTLEFORTHECRAZY - perhaps in these rare and exceptional circumstances, participants could be ported over to a mirrored and/or room-limited separate gameworld server with Time Dilation activated, so that the battle could be worked out. Once the battle is complete, everyone could be dumped back to the main game world again. Yes, this could introduce potential problems, but I think it could be worked out with logging and careful staff supervision, which I assume goes on in these HRPTs anyway. Already with this last HRPT, it seemed that staff did their best with trying to create a sort of controlled situation to set up the big showdown, trying to introduce some sort of order and fairness into the whole thing. This is something I'd never seen before, and certainly had some merit, and at the very least the right intentions I think. This separate "battle server" is just one potential workaround for the time dilation slowing the entire single-server gameworld issue, I'm sure there's other potential solutions as well.
Hmmm. I like that idea. Battle Server!
There's one quick solution to dogpile. Limit 3 people against 1 in any fight. If you assist in it it just tells you there's no room to fight.
NPCs would just loop until they get in on the action. PCs would do the same or consider other targets.
Quote from: Refugee on July 31, 2013, 09:21:16 AM
Hmmm. I like that idea. Battle Server!
+1
Quote from: janeshephard on July 31, 2013, 03:26:41 PM
There's one quick solution to dogpile. Limit 3 people against 1 in any fight. If you assist in it it just tells you there's no room to fight.
NPCs would just loop until they get in on the action. PCs would do the same or consider other targets.
+1
I don't like a hard limit. A soft-capped re-direct makes more sense. Something like:
0-3 attacker: no restrictions
4 attackers: 20% chance the next combat initiator is re-directed randomly within the target's follow group
5 attackers: 40% chance...
6 attackers: 60% chance...
7 attackers: 80% chance...
8 attackers: 100% chance... (making 8 the real hard cap)
Here's another idea: a minor change to "rescue". Make ">rescue" with no targets automatically attempt to pull 1 random attacker off the person in your follow group who has the most attackers on them.
Quote from: Marauder Moe on July 31, 2013, 05:49:30 PM
I don't like a hard limit. A soft-capped re-direct makes more sense. Something like:
0-3 attacker: no restrictions
4 attackers: 20% chance the next combat initiator is re-directed randomly within the target's follow group
5 attackers: 40% chance...
6 attackers: 60% chance...
7 attackers: 80% chance...
8 attackers: 100% chance... (making 8 the real hard cap)
Here's another idea: a minor change to "rescue". Make ">rescue" with no targets automatically attempt to pull 1 random attacker off the person in your follow group who has the most attackers on them.
That might work better (both ways)!
You smack the ranger-sarge's inix, who's following him!
It would probably be fair to exclude mounts, I suppose.
I'm still in favor of the D&D/Pathfinder solution (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/combat/space-reach-threatened-area-templates), which is depending on the attacker's size Y and the defenders size X, then Z number attackers can dog pile the defender.
Archery could have a percentage chance of friendly fire depending on the extent of the dog pile and the archer's skill. A master archer should be able to pull a Legolas and stick two arrows in X's ass, no matter how many people are beating on him.
Defender dwarf/human/elf/mul (small / medium) 8 normal size PC's or 4 half-giants could beat on the average PC.
YYY
YXY
YYY
Defender Half-giant (large) 12 normal size PC's or 6 half-giants could beat on the average half-giant.
YYYY
YXXY
YXXY
YYYY
If Amos was walking home after work and a group of elves attacked him only a fraction of that mob would have any chance to actually hit.
I think simulating that would be a great start.
You all should maybe watch some jump in vids or something...Maybe cops beating vids. All I know is the hard cap suggestions are the least realistic suggestions offered....and/or would be pointless anyway.
Quote from: X-D on August 06, 2013, 02:39:33 PM
You all should maybe watch some jump in vids or something...Maybe cops beating vids. All I know is the hard cap suggestions are the least realistic suggestions offered....and/or would be pointless anyway.
Please. A dozen people don't attack one person all at once in the same second.
No, but they might all attack one person within the same span of ten seconds or so. Or in Armageddon terms, within the same combat round.
Quote from: Qzzrbl on July 30, 2013, 11:21:56 AM
This is kinda starting to spiral out into two different topics entirely.
The thread was originally made to discuss ways of making group-on-group combat make sense.
So let's discuss that?
We don't care about lone Amos getting roflstomped by a handful of PC raiders-- dumbshit should've known better than to have traveled alone in the first place.
We care about big group 1 fighting against big group 2, and how to make it seem less like every single person in either group is taking stabs at the two people that typed "kill otherguy" first.
ITT
Quote from: X-D on August 06, 2013, 02:39:33 PM
You all should maybe watch some jump in vids or something...Maybe cops beating vids. All I know is the hard cap suggestions are the least realistic suggestions offered....and/or would be pointless anyway.
I don't know. I've watched videos on YouTube when there was like a prison riot, or cops pulling a Rodney King. Generally a certain number of attackers could physically whoop a single target's ass. Then some would disengage, so others could get in on the fun. It all happens very quickly, but physically a limited number of bodies have room to attack.
Does that realistically simulate a massing crowd, like being a single target in a riot? No. But does it solve for the current issue where an unlimited number of attackers can get full combat abilities against a single defender? Yes.
And so does other more realistic suggestions on this thread. Given your post, one would think that you would be in favor of the suggestion to slow attacks going in past a certain point and staggering rounds more.
Quote from: X-D on August 07, 2013, 04:08:52 PM
And so does other more realistic suggestions on this thread. Given your post, one would think that you would be in favor of the suggestion to slow attacks going in past a certain point and staggering rounds more.
No, just a "There's no more room to attack Amos!" message. It would be similar to other "You can't do that" conditional combat messages like for bash, or charge, etc.
Of course, that solution would involve giving every race in the game a size category, so it would potentially be a lot of work.
Again, simply limit the number of attacks per round to 5. Resolve the order of attacks by either agility or offensive skill or both.
Quote from: Fnord on August 08, 2013, 04:29:49 PM
Quote from: X-D on August 07, 2013, 04:08:52 PM
And so does other more realistic suggestions on this thread. Given your post, one would think that you would be in favor of the suggestion to slow attacks going in past a certain point and staggering rounds more.
No, just a "There's no more room to attack Amos!" message. It would be similar to other "You can't do that" conditional combat messages like for bash, or charge, etc.
Of course, that solution would involve giving every race in the game a size category, so it would potentially be a lot of work.
Uh... they pretty much already have that though. That's what's taken into account when you get clothing/armor tailored, afaik. Unless you mean size in a way that doesn't relate to height and weight on a numerical scale and instead just mean something like 'all Half-giants are size 4, all elves are size 3, all breeds are size 2, all humans are size 1', etc. I would think if it were to be adjusted for size though, if there was a way of using the sizes for armor/clothes, rather than a specific racial number that doesn't vary, it would make more sense.
Quote from: X-D on July 29, 2013, 02:34:51 PM
You know...here is an option.
What if there was no limit...BUT, working on the Qmans thoughts, ...if you could not 100% target a certain person when starting an attack on another group?
Say, Byn sarge Malik and his 6 troopers come across Raider Bill and his 9 thugs.. Now, Raider bill tells his crew to take out Sarge Malik first, So, everybody either types KILL MALIK or Assist Bill. But the code then flips a coin Virtual of course. And each person has a 50% chance to be on Malik, if they fail then the code simply picks one of the PCs following Malik....Of course you can try to maneuver once combat is engaged, through rescue, change opponent etc...or even flee, return and try for Malik again.
I would think that would be rather simple to code and not set hard limits of any kind.
Also, if Sarge Malik and crew runs in on Raider bill alone...well, raider Bill is rightfully Toast.
I may be picking up something from way earlier in this thread, but I think this idea is awesome and I support it entirely.
Best solution to combat spam?
Allow characters to move other characters to different rooms. Allow players the ability to split up fights and prevent the massive gang-bang.
Just add it as a side capability to bash : bash Amos n. If successful, moves both Amos and Basher north.
Simple, but complicates targetting in combat immensely.
Just for the record, change opponent only works if there are more than one attacker on the person changing the focus of their attack.
So if you are in a fight with someone and you wish to attack someone else, if they are not attacking you, then they will not be an option to change to them, using change opponent.