Warrior Skill : Formations.

[Cale_Knight]

"Extremely experienced warriors may learn how to not only fight, but how to lead as well. A warrior can show his comrades how to position themselves for maximum advantage in battle."

I thought of this while reading the thread about groups of folk ruining tracks for hunters. This skill would allow a warrior to create a formation consisting of everyone who follows him. Being in the formation would give a few advantages and disadvantages.

1) Movement rates would be slightly decreased, representing increased speed and/or efficiency from marching in time rather than straggling all over the place.

2) Fighting in formation would give a small combat bonus.

3) A group moving in formation would be considered a single creature by the tracking code. IE:

A few hours ago a small/medium-sized/massive group marched to the north/in from the south.

The justification here is that a small group of soldiers marching together would be moving in a very tight pattern, giving a greater chance that other tracks wouldn't be disturbed. Another possibility is that larger groups take up more spaces. 2-4 people would be one "slot," 5-8 would be two, and more than that would be three.

4) Characters in the group other than the leading warrior would have their "look" distance decreased by one to represent their focus on moving in formation.

At the low end of this skill, the warrior would only be able to lead formations on foot. More experienced leaders would also be able to lead a group riding in formation as well. This would be a top-tier skill and very difficult to branch.

Thoughts?

[RunningMountain]

Why only warrior?

[Cale_Knight]

Mainly because the warrior helpfile is the only one that specifically mentions them leading armies.

[House Rising Sun]

Fighting in groups already gives you ridiculously huge bonuses against your target. Your six guys attacks one guy in the other block of six, and he dies, while those other six attack your friend at your side, and he dies.

It would be more interesting, and possibly a way to work mass combat more effectively, to be able to form units in formations that disallow individual targeting and negate gang bonuses against individuals. That way, you're fighting against an entire unit, doing damage randomly across the group. The unit itself has its own statistics based on the characters within it, and it's treated in combat just like any other mob.

One pc attacking it is going to get squashed, and even a group of unformed pcs up to twice the size of the unit is going to find itself in trouble (it's too disorganized), but another organized unit actually stands a fighting chance.

Or, is the playerbase and demand for something like this too small to worry about? If it is, we don't really need those other perks either.

[Rindan]

I don't see much need for formations for two reasons.  

First, a six on six battle really is not going to be formation fighting no matter how you look at it.  The formation is very unlikely to be more complex then "watch my back!"  

Second, I don't think that Zalanthas folks fight in formations even when in mass combat.  I think Zalanthas folks treat combat more like the ancient Greeks did in the Iliad.  That is to say that they fight in small units and focus on single man combat.  I personally envision mass combat in Zalanthas to be more like a horde of small units clashing.  From a distance it might look like mass combat, but as soon as you move in close, it would look like hundreds of small battles taking place on very close and personal terms.  I don't personally see Zalanthas warriors forming into a phalanx formation and marching forward on the enemy in step.

Despite my dislike for formations, I can think of two changes I would like to see to make mass combat suck less.  

First, if you guard someone, you should ALWAYS be guarding them.  In other words, if I guard Lord Templar Bullseye and then get into a fight, I should still be guarding him.  Sure, I might be guarding with a penalty, but I should still be able to have a chance to keep someone away from him.  In a sense, changing guard so that you can keep guarding someone even after a fight has started creates a formation of sorts.  

Imagine a templar going to battle with a dozen soldiers acting as his body guards.  Before battle, the templar gets his soldiers to guard him.  Now the templar has a dozen people guarding him.  The templar enters into the battle field and of course promptly attracts the attention of everyone.  The way things are now, as soon as his body guards are engaged in combat, he is screwed unless he has some magik up his sleeve.  Under the way I propose guarding work, he wouldn't be screwed.  Instead, as each person charged at the templar they would be intercepted by body guards.  Even if 50 other soldiers tried to assault the Templar, they would always have to get through the Templar's dozen guards.  Of course, as the Templar's guards were forced to fight more and more people their ability to defend their templar would quickly diminish, but they would always be able to at least TRY and get in the way of an attack.

In my ideal world, if a Templar with a dozen soldiers is attacked by Byn unit of a two dozen mercenaries, most of the Byn unit's mercenaries would find themselves in combat with the Templar's body guards.  An exceptional warrior or two might find himself able to plow through the defenses and directly engage with the Templar, but most people would simply have to fight off the Templar's body guards.  If you wanted to kill a well defended target in a battle, it would require either an assassin, a very skilled warrior, or you would need to kill off most of the target's body guards.  As it stands now, once the battle has been engaged for a while all of the important people are basically defenseless and screaming to get gang-banged by everyone and their dog.

The only other thing I would like to see in regards to mass combat would be to have room scale changes.  In other words, if a gate needs to be defended in an HRPT, for the HRPT, make the gate 10 rooms wide.  This way, instead of dumping 50 people into a single room gate, you put 5 people in each room and tell them to hold the line.  This would make the combat FAR more manageable and fun as it is on a scale where you don't simply have to close your eyes and hope to hell that you are not the first key word that the enemy army uses.

[Salt Merchant]

This way, instead of dumping 50 people into a single room gate, you put 5 people in each room and tell them to hold the line.  This would make the combat FAR more manageable and fun as it is on a scale where you don't simply have to close your eyes and hope to hell that you are not the first key word that the enemy army uses.

Or how about if a limit were imposed on the number of people that can melee one person at a time? With half-giants counting as two people in this regard. Maybe a limit of six. Still pretty bad, but at least it's not an entire army at once vs. the suddenly boned you.

[RunningMountain]

I like the idea of limiting combat to a certain amount. Seriously. Once a person is surrounded on all sides, how many more can truly engage them to fight in melee combat? Six is a good number for humans and others and half-giants should count twice so no more then 3 half-giants can fight a person.

I like Rindans idea of making rooms larger too. I think expanding the world is in general a good idea. Instead of just having:
The Main Gate

Have three or four rooms such as this.

Outside the Main Gate
Under the Main Gate
Continuing Under the Main Gate
The Main Gate

[bloodfromstone]

I like that, RM. It would go a little ways to help control the madness that is group vs. group combat.

[Bogre]

I disagree with the room thing, because we already have movement lag to account for that.

[Agent_137]

I disagree with the room thing, because we already have movement lag to account for that.

But that doesn't do much for preventing 30 people for being in the same room. i don't see how it's applicable to the issue.


oh wait, I see. Yea, having 18 rooms for a single gate is absurd . . . unless there's a big battle about to happen. THEN i'd like to see that area expanding.

[Anael]

Maybe let formations give defensive bonus only, and/or bonus to guard and rescue checks.

[RunningMountain]

oh wait, I see. Yea, having 18 rooms for a single gate is absurd . . . unless there's a big battle about to happen. THEN i'd like to see that area expanding.

Woah 18 rooms? I was thinking more like 3-4 rooms for a gate. And just because there is room lag doesn't mean it shouldn't take 5 more seconds to walk through a teeming mass of crowds that would be gathered around such a busy thing as the main gate to the center of civilization for the north or south city.

-RM

[Agent_137]

18 = gross exaggeration.

[Cenghiz]

Let me give an example.. You become a badass elementalist of element XXX. You go to a mission under the command of templar YYY. With the templar's permission, you call forth a badass guardian to protect you in battle and order it to guard you.. The guardian has unnatural size, unnatural speed and magickal abilities.
Then the PC group realize you're more of a threat than any others, they get into the room and they all type 'hit mage'.
Your guardian prevents the first attacker with ease, the so the other five warriors land 5*2=10 attacks to you.. Each damages you for 10 points (you're a mage, you're most possibly empty-handed) and you die.
If it was the real world, it would take time for the third or the fourth attacker to find an opening to hit at you.. You would have time for "cast 'mon un...'" or simply "flee".
But I don't know how this can be corrected easily.