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1:50 pm
January 12, 2012
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quill18
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Alright, let's start talking crunch. How do we want skills to work, and what skills should we have? This will help drive other discussions (like classes and leveling mechanics).
Ideally, any skill system should be completely intuitive in two ways:
- A new player should be able to easily identify what is good and what is bad. For example, a positive modifier should always be good. Bigger numbers are better.
- An experienced player should be able to figure out the effect of something pretty easily. For example, here is a formula for damage reduction from Dungeon Crawl:
(base AC of body armour) * (13 + Armour skill) * (maximum damage of the attack) / 1700
I don't care how much I play the game, I'm not doing those calculations in my head. Yes, computer games can handle far more complex equations that a tabletop game, but that's not an excuse to make things inscrutable.
Now, classically Roguelikes are often somewhat opaque — but I don't like that. I think that to be a proper strategic/tactical experience, you need to give players all of the information. Even in the worst case where proper balance dictates a fair deal of math, the final value should be available to the player.
Straight Percentage-Based Skill System
If you have an 80 rating in Firearms, then you have an 80% chance of hitting your target.
If you have a 10 rating in Dodge, then you have a 10% chance of dodging attacks that were supposed to hit you.
If you have an armor rating of 25, then you take 25% less damage from everything.
Pros: Very straightforward.
Cons: A narrow range of usefulness. Who'd want to use firearms with a skill under 60%? And obviously there's a cap of 100%. Also, it's weird that a 50 would be a GREAT dodge skill but a CRAPPY firearms skill.
Variant: Modifiers.
Maybe the 80% within a certain range (which might vary by weapon). Beyond that you get -x% per meter.
This would have to be displayed to the player during targeting, so he can make an informed decision.
Variant: Opposed skills.
Your basic chance to succeed is always 50%. But then you ADD your skill (e.g. +30% firearms) and SUBTRACT their dodge (e.g. 10%) and you get your actual chance of success (e.g. 50+30-10 = 70%). This would have to be displayed to the player during targeting, so he can make an informed decision.
This also blows the cap off our skills. Now there's a point in having a Firearms rating above 100, because you're going to get countered by creatures with a high level of dodge.
Combine both variants and you have a system that feels intuitive (it's kind of how the real world works), is easy to understand, but still allows us a lot of room for balance tweaking.
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I'm just a dude with Fraps and too much spare time.
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1:58 pm
January 12, 2012
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quill18
| | Ontario, Canada | |
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Here's another direction:
Discrete Skills System
As in, skills that you either have or don't have. You either have Firearms or you can't use them (or only use them at a substantial penalty). Your chance to hit is static (e.g. "always 80%"), but maybe you can later pick up the "Sharpshooter" skill that gives you +10% to hit. Or maybe "Sharpshooter" unlocks an activated ability that makes your next attack automatically crit (and has a 30 seconds cooldown).
Dungeons of Dredmore is an example of something like this.
Fallout and Skyrim are examples of systems that are a bit of a mix. You have a vaguely percentage-based system, but you occasionally get perks/feat/talents that unlock for a specific, discrete bonus. Sometimes these have skill requirements before you can unlock them.
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I'm just a dude with Fraps and too much spare time.
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3:01 pm
January 12, 2012
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quill18
| | Ontario, Canada | |
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Post edited 8:35 pm – January 12, 2012 by quill18
Next up are the skill types. There are potentially two broad categories here:
- Skills that help directly in combat (Firearms, Dodge)
- Skills that are less direct (crafting & gathering skills)
The later doesn't often make an appearance in Roguelikes. Dungeons of Dredmor is a notable exception.
One thing to avoid is the situation where the player feels that he is sacrificing combat effectiveness by going after "interesting" skills like crafting. Some games resolve this by separating the skills into separate pools, so that when you level up you have X points to spend on combat skills and Y points to spend on non-combat ones. The downside to this is that someone who is only involved in pure combat will still be forced to muck around in the other stuff. And what about someone who wants to try a funky non-combat oriented build, like some sort of mad scientist guy who just builds battlebots?
Obviously the solution is to make the non-combat stuff perfectly balanced with the combat stuff. It's not easy, but games like Skyrim did a pretty good job.
It also helps if the cost of improving a skill goes up. Going from 91 Firearms to 92 might cost just as much as finally leveling up Bio-Analysis from 30 to 40.
Some possible skills:
Combat Skills:
Firearms — And we may want to split this into Pistols / Long-Arms / Heavy Weapons
Melee — And we may want to split between Physical and Plasma-based (a.k.a. lightsabers and such)
Dodge — Do we want a ranged vs melee split?
Armor — How does this work? Your rating acts as a multiplier against the actual armor rating? A split between Light Armor and Heavy Armor seems obvious.
Throwing
Explosives — When we are throwing grenades, do we use this skill or Throwing? Both (one for accuracy, one for damage)? We may not want an Explosives combat skill at all, since things like laying a mine may not justify a whole skill to sink points into. The *boom* of a bomb is mostly going to come down to how it was made (i.e. crafting). Maybe your explosive skill affects how much time it takes to deploy mines?
Gathering Skills: (get stuff you can sell for money or use for crafting)
Mining/Prospecting/Geology (Does your character ACTUALLY mine, and therefore fill up his bag with rocks, or are you mostly just "flagging" resources, which will then be extracted directly to your ship by, I don't know, robots or orbital mining lasers or something.)
Bio-analysis/Exobiology/Herbalism (Picking plants)
Crafting Skills:
Armor Crafting
EDIT: We could have a "Plasma Crafting" skill to handle all things that are contained plasma fields, like Plasma Swords/Glaives/Bolts (for cool crossbows), maybe even plasma grenades.
Non-plasma melee weaopns might be Metalsmithing?
Explosives Crafting — As noted above, "Explosives" may also have a role in combat. The actual damage may be locked-in at creation, but the time to deploy a mine or ready a grenade may be affected by this skill.
Pharmacology — Stimpacks for buffing and healing.
Spacecraft Skills:
We are still talking about having a space sim/strategy component, so it makes sense to consider some skills here, but again I caution: We don't want to get into a situation where players feel useless on the ground because they've spent points here. We may want a separate skill pool for space stuff, or we may want skills to have a crossover. Maybe there's an "Engineering" skill that does stuff in both space and ground. Skills like "Piloting", on the other hand, would be useless on the ground…and are we really making a game where we need a Piloting skill?
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I'm just a dude with Fraps and too much spare time.
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5:43 pm
January 12, 2012
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Donetuil10
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(base AC of body armour) * (13 + Armour skill) * (maximum damage of the attack) / 1700
Wow! Talk about an accountants wet dream. I could never understand the reasoning for such ridiculous equations in a video game. I play games to get away from work, not to be thrown right back into the meat grinder again.
And what about someone who wants to try a funky non-combat oriented build, like some sort of mad scientist guy who just builds battlebots?
This is a path I could have fun playing. Problem is as you say, the balance between leveling up combat vs non-combat is difficult to achieve. I always like to point out Fallen Earth's character progression when this point comes up. That game's main theme is post apocalyptic. In a burnt world, having salvaging/harvesting skills are just as important for survival as shooting a gun. So in that game a non-combat player can keep up with a combat player.
Now in our world are we going for galactic opera, galatic exploration or civ building? If its opera, than crafting and harvesting really don't matter. Players are just progressing a story. The other two must have the harvesting/salvaging and crafting in order to survive in my opinion. I don't believe I can give an answer to the balance of leveling combat vs non-combat until a choice is made on galactic opera, galatic exploration or civ building.
I noticed you left Dodge as a blank. In a way it makes sense. I mean aren't the skills athletics and acrobatics really one and the same game mechanic wise? Being able to break shuttle run records should give a player a dodge bonus to armor. But then again someone who can tumble perfectly on the trapeze should also get a dodge bonus. Its same type of dodge just different style of moving.
I'm all for breaking down skills into sub-skills (melee into bladed, blunt, energy). But we should try to avoid redundancy in having two skills that really are the same.
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10:39 pm
January 12, 2012
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Nick Doom
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quill18 said:
One thing to avoid is the situation where the player feels that he is sacrificing combat effectiveness by going after "interesting" skills like crafting. Some games resolve this by separating the skills into separate pools, so that when you level up you have X points to spend on combat skills and Y points to spend on non-combat ones. The downside to this is that someone who is only involved in pure combat will still be forced to muck around in the other stuff. And what about someone who wants to try a funky non-combat oriented build, like some sort of mad scientist guy who just builds battlebots?
if we have to 2 pools could we not have it be your race and class deside the way your point get split up
that way any one who wants to play the combat guy pics a race for that or if he/she does not they pick anothere
also it give you the chance to try and play a style that goes against there character so as to handy cap them there player and make it harder
(side note i cant believe i am saying this but it's the 3rd time i got the maths wrong to post lol)
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5:53 am
January 13, 2012
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Demonac
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Post edited 2:18 pm – January 13, 2012 by Demonac
Deciding where to start with a skill system is always difficult. It's sooooooo much easier for me to look at an existing system, think of things to add and figure out what needs improvement.
One thing I would say is that when it comes to balance in a computer game, transparency is indeed a virtue, but so is the ability of the computer to do a bunch of ugly math to improve the game (in a way that board games and even pen-and-paper should envy).
For example, I like the relative (opposed) version of the skill system. "Your basic chance to succeed is always 50%. But then you ADD your skill (e.g. +30% firearms) and SUBTRACT their dodge (e.g. 10%) and you get your actual chance of success (e.g. 50+30-10 = 70%)." But a couple of things instantly come to mind. First, you definitely want to hit more often than you miss (unless you are doing a wild-west style "dodging only" system with little-or-no damage-mitigation). Now, your example does that by giving a bigger to-hit bonus than dodge bonus, but if to-hit and avoidance skills are costed on an equal basis, I would still change the base number to be more like 70%. It's not that big a deal if a player (or enemy) can get up to 100% hit chance, but it's really bad if you get anywhere near 0% due to high dodging skills on a monster. You really want there to be a pretty-good chance to hit the vast majority of the time, just so it feels good and isn't too frustrating, so I'd say there's a real sweetspot somewhere. Say, for the sake of argument, that you want the chance of success to more often than not fall in the 55%-85% range. What you want to do in that case is make a graduated system where the skills are opposed, but we throw in a little math to reduce the impact of extreme imbalance between the shooter and the target. So if one of the opposed skills exceeds the other by 15% or more, any difference beyond that is reduced by half.
So in this example:
Shooting +25% VS Dodge +10%, the shot would hit 70+25-10=85% of the time.
Shooting +10% VS Dodge +25%, the shot would hit 70+10-25=55% of the time.
Shooting +35% VS Dodge +10%, the shot would hit 90% of the time (rather than 100% in a flat system). You now actually need +50% to reach 100% hit rate against a foe with Dodge +10%
Depending on the degree of skill disparity that is likely (and/or possible) to occur, one might even put in a second break point where skill above that point is quartered rather than halved. It's one of the advantages of a computer that you can fine-tune things in this manner.
It is still intuitive in the sense that more bonuses to hit make you better, but slightly less transparent in that a player who knows more about the game would likely aim for a certain amount of to-hit bonus, but beyond that point they would generally take a bonus to some other stat, given the choice. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.
Now, it's also possible that you could reward a player who chose to focus heavily on to-hit by having some other benefit (a bonus to damage, or to crit chance, or to armor penetration) which would kick in whenever you hit one of those 'break points' in the to-hit algorithm. So if your to-hit exceeds the target's dodge by 15% or more, maybe your attack will have +10 armor penetration, and +20 armor pen if he exceeds the target's dodge by 45% (whatever armor penetration means in our game ). On the one hand, this makes the system more complicated in the sense that there are more details. On the other hand, it arguably increases the intuitiveness, in the sense that a player (knowing nothing of the math behind it) can still decide "I want to be the most accurate guy ever!" and will continue to benefit no matter how much they pump their hitting skill, despite the fact that a small chance of missing is near-impossible to eliminate.
This point goes without saying: "This would have to be displayed to the player during targeting, so he can make an informed decision."
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2:06 pm
January 13, 2012
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quill18
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Good post, Demonac. I definitely believe a higher than 50% base chance is likely the way to go (I was picking that for simplicity for the argument.)
The idea of graduating the system somehow is a great idea, and I love the idea of converting (in some fashion) an excess of hit chance into a critical hit chance. This ensures that no "extra" hit value is wasted, and also keeps things a little more exciting for the player (because a straight up 100% chance to deal fixed damage is boring).
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I'm just a dude with Fraps and too much spare time.
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2:14 pm
January 13, 2012
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Demonac
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Post edited 2:17 pm – January 13, 2012 by Demonac
quill18 said:
Good post, Demonac. I definitely believe a higher than 50% base chance is likely the way to go (I was picking that for simplicity for the argument.)
Yeah, I didn't think you were actually suggesting 50% miss chance, but I figured it was worth discussing how often players should be hitting. Obviously my numbers are very rough as well, and totally subject to change. :)
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2:30 pm
January 13, 2012
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quill18
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Post edited 2:36 pm – January 13, 2012 by quill18
Any thoughts on non-combat skills and abilities? I don't meant what skills we should have, but rather how they should work. Let's pick one or two representational non-combat skills that we might want to have and try to flesh them out.
For example: Mining and Armorcrafting.
Mining
This is the ability to gain ores/metal/gems from deposits you can find in roguelike mode. You may be physically and immediately mining them (in which case it would go in your inventory), or you may be "flagging" the deposit for retrieval by mining robots or orbital mining lasers from your ship (in which case we'd want it to go into your ship's cargo hold). That aspect is not particularly important right now.
We can assign an ore type a difficulty. For example:
Copper 1
Iron 10
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Unubtanium 110
This represents the minimum mining skill required to harvest (below which it's "red" and can't be mined). If you have at least that much skill it's "orange" and you have a 50% chance to successfully harvest (if you fail, the mining node disappears). If you exceed the minimum by x%, then it becomes "yellow" and you have a 75% chance to harvest. If you exceed the minimum by y%, then it becomes "green" and you have a 100% chance to harvest.
Now, this chance to fail may not add anything at all to the game, but I think that a transition from "you can't pick this at all" to "you can pick this perfectly" is a bit jarring.
On the topic of gaining skill points through use: I think it would be good to have a random chance to occasionally gain a free skill up by using a skill, but you can still spend points when you "level up" to manually improve a skill as well.
Armorcrafting
Here, I would NOT recommend that there be some way to "fail" at crafting an item, and therefore waste materials. I think that a certain minimum skill is needed to make something from the various recipes. Therefore, improving your skill unlocks more recipes. There are also other ways to use your skill rating:
1) Maybe the more you exceed the minimum, the less material is required? So at "orange" difficulty it takes double the mats. At "yellow" it takes 1.5 times. At "green" you only need the minimum (i.e. you produce the good without waste).
2) Maybe the more you exceed the minimum, the greater the chance that you "crit" while producing the item, which adds a random enhancement ("+5% damage") or a socket (like WoW/Diablo-style gems, or SWTOR-style mods). It would be interesting if this could somehow be balanced so that higher skill items don't automatically obsolete lower-tier items. Imagine if the player could either craft:
Unobtanium Breastplate
100 armor
Plasticium Breastplate
20 armor
+7 Strength
+10% Energy Resistance
1 Empty Socket
Now we give the player the opportunity to make a choice, which is awesome. It also gives you a reason to keep improving a skill, even if you've learned all the recipes in the game — because you want to get good enough to start having enhancements show up on the Unobtanium Breastplate.
Note that there should be a cap on the NUMBER of enhancements, and the quality of the enhancements could be based on the level on the item. So at some point you will have the ability to make a low-level item with 3 low-level enhancements, a mid-level item with 3 mid-level enhancement, a high-level item with only 1 high-level enhancement or an epic-level item with no enhancements. At that point the choice between the low-level item and the mid-level one is a no-brainer, but choosing between the mid/high/epic one is still interesting. The player might just make as many mid- and high-level items as he has the materials for, then see which mods he ended up getting and picking the most ideal out of the bunch.
I'm not sure that #1 is a winner, but #2 is very cool.
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I'm just a dude with Fraps and too much spare time.
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2:42 pm
January 13, 2012
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quill18
| | Ontario, Canada | |
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Demonac said:
quill18 said:
Good post, Demonac. I definitely believe a higher than 50% base chance is likely the way to go (I was picking that for simplicity for the argument.)
Yeah, I didn't think you were actually suggesting 50% miss chance, but I figured it was worth discussing how often players should be hitting. Obviously my numbers are very rough as well, and totally subject to change. :)
We'll probably discover that 73.14159 is the ideal base number.
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I'm just a dude with Fraps and too much spare time.
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5:36 pm
January 13, 2012
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Demonac
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Post edited 5:38 pm – January 13, 2012 by Demonac
I think the crafting idea of giving more random bonuses the more your skill exceeds the minimum is very cool (and a little different than most). Even though it's a little indirect, greater crafting translates to increased combat abilities, so that doesn't cause any combat/non-combat angst. I'm not as sold on the big slice of seventy-pie…
As for the mining, I think we should follow Rule #1; when in doubt, rip off WoW. They have a lot of devs spending a lot of time trying to solve problems, so (regardless of how you feel about the game as a whole) they come up with a lot of good solutions. For harvesting skills, we could either give them a passive bonus that helps with combat, so for example, if mining was direct physical, carve the ore out yourself with your vibro-pick, then mining skill may give a passive bonus to strength (or melee damage, since it doesn't sound like we're using indirect attributes). Since we probably aren't going with direct mining, we might have to come up with a different bonus that makes sense. Or, alternatively, we could create some combat skills/abilities which are unlocked by certain levels of the mining skill. Which ties into the next thing…
I don't think of this as being an "autoattack" game; the idea all along has been that you make decisions, plan your moves, and you are never "on the clock". Therefore, I think we should head towards an MMO or 4E D&D model where rather than just "ranged attack", you are choosing to "Semi-auto burst", "Rolling Shot", "Power smash", or "Quick strike". Abilities with pros and cons, unlocked based on your class/race (or whatever we go with for initial customization), and based on your skill tree selections. If we are to combine the percentage-based skill increases with the idea of unlocking abilities at different levels, I think we should really aim for something like the tree from Path of Exile.
For those unfamiliar… go watch quill's Let's Play. But seriously, the direction I'm suggesting might allow you to put points into +2/4/6% accuracy (ranged to-hit), and at that point you'd unlock the option to select a new ability, or just ignore that and continue on (or put points into a whole different part of the tree). But if we mirror the good ideas from Path of Exile, the tree may not be 100% linear (in that more accuracy leads to even more accuracy and so on forever). Maybe after 6% accuracy, the tree splits, and the next few points are like 1% accuracy, 2% armor pen, or on the other side you have dodging and ranged damage bonus for a while and then, I don't know, maybe those two trees converge to another set of general ranged stuff, while the accuracy/pen branch ALSO leads to a new killing-power increasing branch, while the dodging/damage branch also opens up a new defensive branch. Mostly, I found the tree from your Path of Exile beta video very inspiring. I could do a lot within a model like that…
Now, one thing worth noting is that any model where you gain a point when you level, and (much of the time) that point just goes into some passive numbers… that lends to some unexciting levels. I would suggest having our skill tree (web?) broken into two or three different sections, and that each time you gain a level, you gain one point in EACH of the sections. This does NOT have to mean a combat/noncombat skill division. I think each sector of the tree could contain a variety of things – the idea is that you don't gain 3 points that could all go into the same branch, but any character would really have 3 separate choices each level.
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5:56 pm
January 13, 2012
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quill18
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Demonac said:
mining skill may give a passive bonus to strength (or melee damage, since it doesn't sound like we're using indirect attributes).
Yes!
rather than just "ranged attack", you are choosing to "Semi-auto burst", "Rolling Shot", "Power smash", or "Quick strike".
Yes!
Abilities with pros and cons, unlocked based on your class/race (or whatever we go with for initial customization), and based on your skill tree selections. If we are to combine the percentage-based skill increases with the idea of unlocking abilities at different levels, I think we should really aim for something like the tree from Path of Exile.
Maybe.
the direction I'm suggesting might allow you to put points into +2/4/6% accuracy (ranged to-hit), and at that point you'd unlock the option to select a new ability [...] Maybe after 6% accuracy, the tree splits, and the next few points are like 1% accuracy, 2% armor pen, or on the other side you have dodging and ranged damage bonus
Appealing.
I would suggest having our skill tree (web?) broken into two or three different sections, and that each time you gain a level, you gain one point in EACH of the sections. This does NOT have to mean a combat/noncombat skill division. I think each sector of the tree could contain a variety of things – the idea is that you don't gain 3 points that could all go into the same branch, but any character would really have 3 separate choices each level.
Interesting.
What we need now are mock-ups of what character sheets and leveling screens might look like. One version with base stats (like str/dex). Another without. One version with skills are a simple table and you can put points in places arbitrarily. Another version where they are part of a talent tree/web. One version where the talent tree is just passive bonuses and one where they unlock active abilities.
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I'm just a dude with Fraps and too much spare time.
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5:56 pm
January 13, 2012
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Demonac
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Oh – the other thing about mining (I was writing this post before, but it was lost when I had to reboot), is we should keep the failure chance, but instead of failure = zero stuff, easy stuff (relative to your skill) should always succeed, middle stuff should have a small to moderate chance to "fail" and yield only half or 2/3 of the normal amount, and hard stuff (that you just learned to mine) should fail maybe half the time, yielding only 1/3 the normal amount. So you always get something for your find.
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6:16 am
January 14, 2012
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atigersgrin
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quill18 said:
One thing to avoid is the situation where the player feels that he is sacrificing combat effectiveness by going after "interesting" skills like crafting. Some games resolve this by separating the skills into separate pools, so that when you level up you have X points to spend on combat skills and Y points to spend on non-combat ones. The downside to this is that someone who is only involved in pure combat will still be forced to muck around in the other stuff. And what about someone who wants to try a funky non-combat oriented build, like some sort of mad scientist guy who just builds battlebots?
You could have the player earn experience in separate pools. One each for Combat, Magic, Gathering, Crafting, Spaceship . . . You level up when you reach enough experience goals in any pool. You can only level up within the pool that caused you to level up, but you can choose any ability available to you in that pool. Someone who is focused on the one pool would continue to level up there more often and not have to deal with the others as much. This would also mean you get level ups that are relevant to what you are currently doing in the game.
Also since this will be a "real-time" gridless roguelike we should have abilities that highlight our unique play style. Time should be a major theme. In the Combat pool it includes reload time, time to change armour/weapon, and as mentioned time to place mines/traps. In the Magic pool it includes spell cooldown and spell duration. Our character has the ability to stop time with his mind, but he can only think while this is happening. We can have the character develop his time stop ability to include bullet-time effects or time distorting bombs like Demonac had talked about when suggesting his tower defense game. For the Gathering, Crafting, and Spaceship pools it effects the passage of time. Mining Unobtanium causes 8 hours to pass to start, but takes less time as you level up that skill. Your ship takes 24 parsecs to make the Kessel Run to start with, but after you level up its speed it can do it in 12 parsecs. Completing quests faster give you bonuses to make the passage of time matter.
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1:19 am
January 15, 2012
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quill18
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Time should be a major theme. In the Combat pool it includes reload time, time to change armour/weapon, and as mentioned time to place mines/traps.
Excellent idea.
Your ship takes 24 parsecs to make the Kessel Run to start with, but after you level up its speed it can do it in 12 parsecs.
Parsecs is a measure of distance, not time. Retcons aside, Han got it wrong.
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I'm just a dude with Fraps and too much spare time.
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3:45 pm
January 16, 2012
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MetaSkipper
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quill18 said:
Parsecs is a measure of distance, not time. Retcons aside, Han got it wrong.
Maybe, but since the Kessel Run is full of black holes, most ships have go the long way. The MF's ship, though, with it's superior navigation computers, can make it in a short route.
What about over 100% stats? e.g. 150% Accuracy?
e.g.
150% Accuracy vs 70% dodge?
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Artificial Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity.
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3:59 pm
January 16, 2012
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MetaSkipper
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My thoughts on damage mechanics:
Base Damage- Theoretical damage dealt to an unarmored target
Effective Damage- Theoretical damage dealt to unarmored target after modifiers (armor, resistances)
Dealt Damage- Damage dealt straight to target
On Armor and Dodging
Armor- (See A Thesis On Combat for a wee bit more)
Ideally, armor should reduce damage taken (if your armor is increasing the amount of damage you're taking, that'd be quite silly). Now, how much damage it mitigates comes down to several factors.
Damage Reduction- The effective damage is reduced, but takes no damage itself. At 100%, effective damage is 0.
Damage Mitigation- The armor splits the damage between it and the target. At 100%, the armor takes all the damage.
Note that these two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Dodge-
Now, dodging is not technically mutually exclusive to armor, but since certain kinds of armor are heavy and make dodging harder, they may partially be in some cases.
Simple Dodge-
Roll for dodge. Passing means no damage taken. Failing means damage taken.
Complex Dodge-
Roll for dodge. Passing means no damage. High failing means partial damage. Low failing means full damage taken.
Stats and Ratings-
An interesting idea, if you ask me, is having trade-offs in stats. For example, let's say you have a 100 in Strength. Now, you can wear strong armor, but it may take 80 Strength, meaning you only have 20 left for weaponry or carrying. Or, you may have a high Speed stat, but carrying a lot will slow you down.
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Artificial Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity.
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5:17 pm
January 16, 2012
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quill18
| | Ontario, Canada | |
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MetaSkipper said:
Damage Reduction- The effective damage is reduced, but takes no damage itself. At 100%, effective damage is 0.
Damage Mitigation- The armor splits the damage between it and the target. At 100%, the armor takes all the damage.
Since the words Reduction and Mitigation could be confused, we may want to use "Deflection" (i.e. the damage is deflected away harmlessly) and "Reduction/Mitigation/Absorption/Ablation" (i.e. the damage was absorbed by the armor).
Constant-based Armor Model
For purposes of this discussion, let's say the player around 100 HPs in total. 10 damage would represent a significant, but not critical, amount of damage. 20+ would be dangerous. 5 or less would be fairly trivial and might be completely ignorable by someone tough/armored enough, or with rapid regeneration.
You are presenting percentage-based damage reduction.
There is also constant-based reduction, as in "with 10 points of armor rating, you reduce incoming damage by 10".
This gives us the possibility of modeling hardness. For example, you have an armor that has a rating of 10. If the incoming damage in 10 or less, then the shot is deflected harmlessly. If it's over 10, then the damage is reduced by 10.
What's the difference between the two scenarios? Armor damage.
If the damage is less than the armor rating, literally nothing happens. If it exceeds the armor rating, then the NET damage can either:
- Damage the player
- Damage the armor
- Damage the armor and the player
If you are throwing small stones at someone in full plate, you can do so all day and nothing will ever happen. But throw a stone big enough to start denting the armor, and you can eventually accomplish something. Throw a boulder and it's like the armor isn't even there.
In this scenario, armor doesn't simply have an armor rating: it has hit points.
On Hit Points
Why do players gain hit points when the level up? It makes no physical sense. It doesn't matter how long you've been a soldier: A bullet to the heart will kill you. You have to imagine, instead, that what's really happening is that you are more skilled at not putting yourself in a situation where the enemy gets a clear shot at your heart. You are using cover more and dodging more and just generally being a harder to hit target. Eventually you start to tire and slow down (50% HPs), eventually you get winged, which slows you more (20% HPs), and eventually a bullet strikes true and you die (0%).
So in a sense hit points represent some combination of dodge/stealth/etc… more than toughness. But since we are going to have an ACTUAL dodge skill, we may not want this at all. Maybe a player ONLY EVER has 100 HPs.
In this scenario, it makes a lot of sense that armor not only reduces damage, but also splits the damage with the player. It becomes "virtual hit points". The reason a cop can survive a bullet hit isn't because he has a lot of hit points — it's because he is wearing a kevlar vest.
This system is realistic (which isn't always good), but it makes sense and is pretty easy to understand (which is good). It also gives us a lot of options for different ways to defend ourselves.
Armor Piercing
With these examples, one way to model "armor piercing" is to have a bullet ignore "up to X armor rating". If an armor-piercing round "only" does 10 damage, but has 10 points of armor-piercing, then its damage would not be reduced at all by the armor described above.
The question would still remain as to whether HP damage should be split between the armor and the player. Maybe the "10 armor piercing" also means that the target is guaranteed to take 10 real points of damage. Another example:
Armor: 10 armor rating.
Bullet: 20 damage and 5 armor piercing.
Net damage: 20 – (10-5) = 15.
The player must take 5 right up front due to armor piercing.
Net remaining damage: 15 – 5 = 10
This is split between the player and the armor, so the player ends up taking 5 more and the armor takes 5.
Armor Damage
In some games, like Diablo, armor damage is simply a nuisance. I guess it's meant to be a money-sink? Seems kind of dull. However, in this game where the player is going to do many short "dungeons", what it represents is a cap on much time he can spend in a dungeon before he's forced to return to his ship. Repairing the armor doesn't need to cost anything, it's just not something he can do in the field. So then you might want to find armor that doesn't necessarily protect you more, just that is more durable. And it gives value to "Armor Crafting" skills, which might either allow your armor to take less damage, or give you some options for repairing it in the field. Again, you may not want to micro-manage this exactly — maybe it just repairs a little every time you rest.
Player Damage
Something else to consider is a system where the player doesn't have a single, general HP pool. Instead, we could have a Dwarf Fortress model where you have specific body parts that can become damaged (or destroyed!)
But that's a discussion for another post.
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I'm just a dude with Fraps and too much spare time.
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5:19 pm
January 16, 2012
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quill18
| | Ontario, Canada | |
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NOTE: I'm not dismissing percentage-based mitigation. Just making sure we test out different implementation ideas.
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I'm just a dude with Fraps and too much spare time.
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6:15 pm
January 16, 2012
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Demonac
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The fixed HP model has a lot of interesting features. It does, however, have the drawback that we have to do a lot more thinking to balance the system (make more mistakes and learn from them) than the 'tried and true' abstract HP model that everyone is familiar with.
On the "a lot more thinking" front though, it creates different interesting possibilities for having certain character types behave differently. Maybe an undead or monster of some kind does gain HP every level, while regular sentients do not (some of them may have limited or no ability to wear armor, or maybe they get both, but have some other major drawback). Then maybe a robotic sort of character doesn't have the hit-point pool – he kindof IS the armor. Obviously, healing would work a lot differently for him, and depending on what armor model we are using, armor penetration might work differently on him as well.
That said, archetypal variation on that basis would hamper the "any 2/3 traits you want" concept, since "races" with a different HP/armor model would probably have to be a separate category from the other traits. Not by any means a dealbreaker, just another thing to consider. I happen to like the Ninja Zombie Robot version where the combination doesn't have to make since, because that adds a bit of a playful element, but maybe from a story/ambience perspective we don't want to go so playful? We'll see.
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