Wild Animals and the bash command

[jmordetsky]

I think more large animals should open combat with the bash command. Let me explain why...

Last night I had this dream that I was walking around amongst some giant piles of cut down trees near some railroad tracks. I have no idea why.

Any way, out from behind a lumber pile comes this bear....a hungry bear...So, me, being creature of logic and rational...I scream like a 4 year old and take off....but the bear is fast and dives at me knocking me the ground.

He then proceeds to start knawing on me. But then all of a sudden, I'm my current arm char and I draw my sid dagger and stick him a few times and scramble away....but I digress...

The point being...large animals are almost certainly going to try to chase you down, and knock you over and then eat you. So...I think bigger hunting creatures should typically sneak in from a given direction and then bash you. As opposed to sneak in from a given direction and then bite you.

The other day I was being chased by some gortok and they were hitting at me, but I'd flee and run away. I think they should have bashed me, knocked me over and then started biting at me. Then I couldn't run

Also, should you be able to just stand up? Shouldn't there be some sort of saving throw that allows and aninal to try to keep you on the ground? Sort of like subdue?


Thoughts?

[Quirk]

Not ideal, as "bash" is a somewhat crude way of representing an aspect of combat. If I'm fighting a bear with a spear, if it attempts to charge me down it's likely to receive a gory hole in its chest. Code-wise, the bear's bigger and stronger than I am, and thus very likely to knock me down, whether I have that spear or not; realism-wise, it's got to defeat my weapon before it even gets in range to attempt it. Having most animals charge in and insta-bash strikes me as a bad idea, I'd much rather have animals capable of doing so endure a couple of rounds of combat before they'd have an opening to try their bash.

Quirk

[grog]

So it's not enough that a Mek can bring you down to 2 hp with a single strike, you want him to be able to knock you down first?

[mansa]

Some already do.

[UnderSeven]

I'd like to add that I personally think the animal bash is a little buggy as is.  Last I checked they could do it without delay based purely on a randomization.  Therefore you could in theory be bashed repeatedly in a row.  That would be like an animal with unlimited momentum.  Personally before we see other animals with the same ability, i'd like to see the ones who already have it fixed a bit.

[Tamarin]

I lost a fairly long-lived character because a beetle, a fairly easy thing to kill if you have some training, knocked me down with its first attack.  Then a tarantula walked in.  4 hits.  Mantis head.

[Lazloth]

http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2646

[Forest Junkie]

I'd like to add that I personally think the animal bash is a little buggy as is.  Last I checked they could do it without delay based purely on a randomization.  Therefore you could in theory be bashed repeatedly in a row.  That would be like an animal with unlimited momentum.

AFAIK, this is true. In a previous battle with a carru, I was bashed to the ground, then bashed again before I could even -stand-.

[jmordetsky]

IS that to say a carru can't ram you....then as you fall down, lower it's head and ram hit you again?

Ever see a bull fighter get gored?

[UnderSeven]

Carru gore, that ISE their attack.  The ram however is a bash where they litterally rear back and charge you, knowing you over, into the next room and I think even taking stun away.  Hitting you while you're down would make perfect sense, manageing to instantly have the momentum to toss you around again right after doing it doesn't.  All I ask for is delay after they charge before they can do it again,  That's really not much to ask.

[Forest Junkie]

IS that to say a carru can't ram you....then as you fall down, lower it's head and ram hit you again?

Ever see a bull fighter get gored?

Carru are not bulls, and bulls are not carru. Let's stick to actual game concepts please.

Let me further explain the situation. After the carru opened combat with bash, my pc was fallen, lying upon the ground, rolling over on his ass. The carru then charges me into another square. How? How can it do this when I'm on the ground, eh? These seemingly spammed commands end in death many times, due to lag out. I don't care if the code for carru in combat is changed though, as I'll simply work around it.

[X-D]

Heh, yes, lost chars to insta-uber bash before, specialy fun when a spider can bash ya 4 times in a row in less time then a pc can bash twice.


Some of the npc no-lag commands are funny though, I do wonder how the halfling you are fighting finds time to eat a whole carru corpse while you are fighting him.

Found out tembo can scan one day, also found out they have no lag between scan/look/attack.

But I don't worry much about it getting fixed, just means that with the way it is currently, even though people talk of not treating npc's differently then pc's you have no choice as far as combat, as long as code treats pc's and npc's differently then so will I.

[UnderSeven]

This brings up an issue though.  So since the code treats the npcs differently, and the arguement is this is fair because npcs arn't smart and you can trick them with stuff that wouldn't work on pcs, is it then okay to cheat the code and treate them like npcs?  

The answer would seem to be no, every npc even vnpcs should be treated like pcs, but then if we accepted they were stupider and treated them like pcs, they have an massive advantage in that they can do things that don't make sense, such as bash you repeatedly.

My answer? I don't play warrior pcs anymore, or rangers for that matter, because I don't really find the way those npcs scripts to work to be playable.  It leaves me feeling you're damned if you do (ie, treat them like npcs to even out the advantages) and damned if you don't (ie, oping for good rp.)

It's a decision I don't wish to me, I don't feel keen on cheating npsc and I also don't feel keen on losing chars I put effort into for reasons like that.

In closing, a carru isn't exactly the most deadly npc in the game (to name one example,) and yet it has the potiental to be if luck, yes luck, comes into play.  What I want to know, is how can something that can repeatedly bash you and kill you no matter how skilled you are, not just kill you.  If it has the strength to do it one way, it should be able to do it anyway.  

If a npc can kill pcs with the random chance of these undelayed commands hitting four times in a row, I'd rather they didn't have the commands at all and instead were just boosted so much that they could kill pcs that way with four hits in a row.  Clearly this isn't a serious suggestion, but my point is I don't really like that because of this code they can be almost like two different creatures.  The moderatly strong carru or the uber buff mek-carru, depending on how often the randomizer hits that bash.

[jmordetsky]

Carru are not bulls, and bulls are not carru. Let's stick to actual game concepts please.

Okay and while I'm at it I'll have the Imms write a dissertation on the physical anatomy of a carru so I won't be forced to draw analogies between the real and made up worlds.

I don't think a carru or a spider bashing you very 4 times before I can type bash twice is unrealistic if you read the and docs then genuinely *think about* what a carru or a giant desert spider is and what they might be capable of.

I do think that this behavior from another biped (human/elf/dwarf) is slightly ridiculous. The gith insta grabbing their weapons is slightly far fetched and the anecdote about the halfling eating a whole corpse during combat might need a little tweaking...

As for not drawing parallels between ARM and the real...well then we might as well not think about representing things *realistically*. What needs to be done is we think rationally and creatively about what type of creatures the npcs represent and determine what kind of behaviors would be realistic for the creature in the context of the fantasy world.

A little tiny halfing eating a whole carru while fending off my attacks with one hand is cartoonish. Though a giant worm swallow an entire carru corpse into it's gaping maw as I desperately slashed at its hide...is not.

[sacac]

Hmm.. They are -giant- spiders for crying outloud.. that means they have some big ass legs and some mean ass pincers:)

[UnderSeven]

Sigh. Okay, lemme try to explain again..
THE SPIDERS ARE USING THEIR LEGS AND PINCERS THE WHOLE FIGHT.  So if that's how they're bashing you than EVERY single attack should be a bash.  

The carru are using their antlers the WHOLE FIGHT, so everything they do should be a bash too under that arguement.

My point?  These creatures should reflect their potiental, they shouldn't be so tough one moment and then unstopibly bad ass the next.  If there is a reason they arn't using these things constantly and have a randomizer set to decide when they do use them, than the randomizer should at least take into account there seems to be a reason they arn't constantly doing it and prevent them from constantly doing it.

[sacac]

There not using there hold leg the whole time.. remember.. (Hopefully) Your PC is jumping around and trying to dodge?

[SailorMars]

THE SPIDERS ARE USING THEIR LEGS AND PINCERS THE WHOLE FIGHT. So if that's how they're bashing you than EVERY single attack should be a bash.

I disagree. Perhaps when they do actually bash it's due to a number of 'virtual' things. They chased you down, you're off balance, they got their full weight behind the attack, you bumped into someone else you were fighting with, your toe got stuck in the sand, etc. Any of those could explain why every attack isn't a bash. Or, from the other side, any of those could explain why there was a bash, in addition to a willful act by the creature, depending on how smart they may be.

[UnderSeven]

I disagree. Perhaps when they do actually bash it's due to a number of 'virtual' things. They chased you down, you're off balance, they got their full weight behind the attack, you bumped into someone else you were fighting with, your toe got stuck in the sand, etc. Any of those could explain why every attack isn't a bash. Or, from the other side, any of those could explain why there was a bash, in addition to a willful act by the creature, depending on how smart they may be.

That's more over my point.  If they're able to bash so much because they're so huge and it's just something they do, using their large legs and pinchers than every attack should be a bash, but if that's NOT the case, than they shouldn't be able to bash constantly. Currently the way I understand, the code is a randomized chance they bash and it's possible for them to bash as many times in a row as that chance comes up, no delay, no draw backs.  My arguement is that they should have a delay between the last time they bashed and the next time they can bash.

[SailorMars]

My arguement is that they should have a delay between the last time they bashed and the next time they can bash.

Oh. Yeah. Mobs seem on some randomizer that may result in no lag whatsoever, or long periods of not doing anything special. It probably wouldn't hurt to have a minimal time between their actions, like PCs have. Or maybe that levels the playing field because they don't have the equivilant AI of a human player. I dunno...

I remember when the code for carrus was first put in...

And this pretty tough looking Mul got raped by the stun loss right in front of me and my companion..I was like uh oh.

[Dan]

He was raped by a carru? Damn, did it ask for consent first?

Anyways...

These animals are large and dangerous, it is possible for them to trample you over and over if they see fit. Spear or not, the code takes your ability to hit them into account here. It is possible to dodge out of the way of their attacks.

If you really need one of these things dead, then I suggest you shoot them from a distance with arrows or just plain avoid them. They are very dangerous beasts, not to be taken lightly. The code reflects this.

[X-D]

Nobody is arguing that the animals and such are not supposed to be a danger or that they should not be able to kill most pc's easily, Just let them follow the same rules everybody else has.

If I have a dwarf going against a bahamet, a shelled animal bigger then a house and that bahamet kicks the dwarf, well, that dwarf just got kicked by a foot bigger then a kank that is attached to a leg that has to carry 20ton(?) animal around, I expect him to take a huge amount of damage/stun and get knocked ass over tincups, maybe several rooms.

What I do not expect is for that animal to be able to kick/bash/kick without any delay what-so-ever.

I have no problem with a tembo being fast and strong, with deadly natural weaponry, I do have a problem with them being able to hunt/scan/l/attack in under 4 seconds.

[SailorMars]

If you really need one of these things dead, then I suggest you shoot them from a distance with arrows or just plain avoid them. They are very dangerous beasts, not to be taken lightly. The code reflects this.

I'll buy that for a dollar, but...

[satire]There are magick elves, dwarves, and humans running around that can do this too! They look like everybody else, tend to be sort of introverted, but when push comes to shove, watch out![/satire]

Heh, my point is, and I could be wrong, but all mobs seem bound by these rules, be it the major races, a vestrik or a silt horror. I would think NPC  elves, dwarves, and humans would be bound by the same rules as PCs, but again, maybe that random factor gives them an edge to make up for not having a human player... Just my 2 'sids.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Some things can be considered makeup for not possessing advanced AI. Other things can be considered buggy, pure and simple. The ability to bash three times in a row with no delay is one of the latter. I do not like the idea of death-trap animals. IRL, animals are semi-predictable. A moose can bash the fuck out of you IRL, but it can't bash you and then bash you again without turning around. This is currently what carru can do. So, unless it has antlers on its ass, and it bashs you and then backs up to bash you again, this is unacceptable.