Incline Fallout 2 Mechanics Overhaul Mod Discussion

[JohnTheRevelator]

Looks like I got excited over nothing, this will never get finished.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

To finish a mod forever you need to take forever to finish it of course.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Here's a vid of where I am atm with my phase-based grande scheme:



As you can see, left clicking creates a context menu for you to attack, move, equip, etc. These options don't mean that you have to do them all separately: as seen in the vid, pressing equip on a pistol lying on the floor (a) moves you there, (b) picks it up, and (c) equips it.

As you can also see, attacking creates a rather large submenu with toggles for bodypart to aim at, attack mode to use, and several extra options: whether to attack a, possibly non-existant(!), target on a hex or the floor of the hex, which of course ignores the bodypart options; whether to continue attacking if the hypothetical target is out of sight (save/spray); whether to immediately attack or close in for a better shot (close/far); and finally whether to stay in place if the target is out of sight or to adjust position (stay/pursue).

You can press a button on the new UI to generate a ghost that dry runs all the actions, and click on the bubbles next to the actions to delete them from the queu.

The temp numbers (e.g. 0/222) next to the actions indicate how much time they're estimated to take to complete (222), and how much you've already completed (0), meaning that at the end of a phase you could be half-way through an attack action, which you can then complete or abort.

Finally, it's of course a feature and not a bug that this system leads to a lot of uninformed decisions: you might not be the most responsive character and believe that spending one phase checking to see around a corner if those super mutants you think are there really are there will result in them blowing you away. So a better move might be to just turn the corner guns blazing at where you think they're standing, even if it's actually a small orphan playing with a stray puppy he recently adopted.

Any people with experience with phase-based combat games that know any possible additional options or mistakes I made here? tuluse, DraQ?

In unrelated news, I felt that as long as I'm mangling the UI, I might as well add sort buttons to the UI. What would you people prefer, by item-type, value, and weight, with gold always on top?

 

[tuluse]

I don't think it's a good idea to have so many and such detailed actions in a phased based game. You're going to be making an educated guess where the other guy is, how could you make an intelligent decision to attack left or right arm?

You can have detailed actions if turns are short, but this seems like a poor combo to me.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

I don't think it's a good idea to have so many and such detailed actions in a phased based game. You're going to be making an educated guess where the other guy is, how could you make an intelligent decision to attack left or right arm?

You can have detailed actions if turns are short, but this seems like a poor combo to me.

I sort of get where you're coming from, but I think having such extensive options is necessary because:

in, e.g., Frozen Synapse you don't get to aim for bodyparts because, um, there's no bodyparts, but that's because you don't have things like HP's, status effects, or armor: you just have a kill shot or no shot. If, on the other hand, your game tells you that it might be a good idea to try and disarm a heavily armed goon by going for the arms, or finish him off with one shot by going for the head, or bypass his formidable armor by going for the groin, then you can't take these options away from him. I would agree with you that when firing at a hex at a certain height without knowing who's there, ideally it should just height-on-hex options for attacking.

Of course, your point was that you're often not going for where the head or groin is on a particular hex, but on potentially any hex, because the enemy can move. This I agree is annoying because ideally in phase-based you would not want to introduce conditional attacks (attack hex 132 only if the enemy is still there). I think something like Frozen synapse avoids this by (a) using auto-attacks for most characters, (b) only using one weapon per char, and (c) only using ranged attacks. You can't have auto-attacks in Fallout, and with melee included, just moving to an enemy almost always involves him already having moved out of the way by the time you get there, making the differentiation between attack and follow, or attack and hold ground necessary.

I actually think it's the other way around from what you said: to not have to use detailed, conditional, options, you would need extremely short, one-step phases, so that a melee character can accurately follow his target one step at a time and a sniper can always simply choose to hold his ground. I guess most roguelikes work that way?

 

[tuluse]

Tough questions.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Ze promised inventory sort buttons. These should work with any version of FO2 whether modded or not as long as it has sfall included, but who knows really! Just unpack it in the main folder of whatever you're using.

The way it works is that it always sorts all items in your inventory according to item type (weapon, ammo, armor, etc.), with cash always appearing at the top. The order in which you want the types to appear can be changed through an .ini file included.

The way items are arranged within these types is decided by three buttons you can click: sort by value, weight or flags (not sure whether this is of any use really, but it broadly lets you sort items according to subtype, with two-handed weapons appearing alongside other two-handed ones and other stuff).

Here's a small demo vid with all kinds of wacky items with debug art because I just tested with a whole lot of random items:



You can get the glorious mod with source files HERE.

edit: fixed the link D:

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Let's talk damage for the millionth time! Note that this is of course tl;dr, unless you are interested in reinventing the wheel finding a unified field theory for rpg damage calculation.

Now, I was going over the damage types and thinking about how silly and convoluted they are. There's a couple of sensible ones (normal, fire), and then every weapon type they were unsure where to place simply got its own damage type it seems (laser, plasma, explosion, etc). I mean, why is explosion damage (i.e. the force of a shockwave, alongside the piercing of shrapnel) treated seperately from "normal" damage, which treats similar blunt and piercing blows?

The idea I guess is that you can have different types of resistances for creatures and armors, and then adapt your weapon choice to it. But given the convoluted mess that the system is, even in the rare instances where you would adapt, it's only because of meta-knowledge getting you there, which is little more than a boring exploit (e.g. wanamingos being vulnerable to fire).

I don't feel that a lot of simulationist rpg's (I've only looked at GURPS and Millennium's End) handle it much better. GURPS has an even larger mess of damage types that keeps piling on with each setting, and Millennium makes things more convoluted by introducing changing damage types (e.g. a slashing attack against armor shifts into a blunt attack if partially blocked).

So here's what I was thinking. I want to try and make a damage system that is (a) relatively simple and easy to understand, (b) adheres to the sacred tenets of simulationism (which DraQ can of course only be the arbiter of) and (c) extremely flexible, as in that any conceivable weapon/object, whether it's a toothpick or an orbital beam weapon, can be easily fit in it.

What I'm thinking is reducing all the damage types down to two, that's two: burn and trauma/physical/normal/I don't have a good name yet. Burn would comprise of the old laser/electrical/plasma/fire types, while physical would comprise of the old normal and explosive types (EMP we'll leave aside for the moment).

Each attack, regardless of type, has two damage-related effects tied to it: penetration and force. Armor still has the same two stats (separately for burn and physical) that affect attacks: DT (flat reduction) and DR (relative reduction). Using these four stats together, you get the resulting damage, which (bear with me here) is no longer measured in HP, but split into shock and tissue damage. If either of these reaches 0, the critter dies. But we'll get back to this later (again, bear with me), back to the damage calculations:

DT - Force (FRC) = chance of ricochet (lighter objects and harder armors will increase the chance of a ricochet, in which case the following calculations don't apply)

Penetration (PEN) - DT = the amount of the projectile/object that penetrates the armor (EFF PEN).

Force (FRC) * (100-DR) = the amount of force that remains in the object (EFF FRC).

EFF PEN * EFF FRC = the amount of Tissue Damage done to the critter.

EFF FRC - EFF PEN = the amount of Shock Damage done to the critter (the less a projectile penetrates, the more force is spread out).

What differentiates burn and physical attacks, other than the different resistances creatures and armors have against them, is the way shock and tissue damage work. For physical attacks, high tissue damage means that a large wound is created, which results in bleeding, meaning that unless treated using First Aid or stimpaks, the critter will continue to steadily sustain further tissue damage. Shock damage means that a critter feels a force that can knock him off his feet, possibly doing additional shock (or tissue) damage as he hits a tertiary object, and when the accumulated damage is high enough, causes him to lose consciousness. Unlike tissue damage, which gets progressively worse as the critter bleeds out, shock damage gets progressively better, with an unconscious critter eventually regaining consciousness.

For burn attacks, tissue damage doesn't result in (much) bleeding, as the wound is immediately seared shut. Shock damage also differs in that it doesn't result in the critter being flung around, but does its damage internally, causing possible paralysis (though like with physical attacks, shock damage does still steadily recover).

So, combining these effects, we can piece together archetypical weapon types. For physical attacks:

- High penetration, low force: Thrusting attacks with sharp objects/shrapnel, light bullets (ricochet easily, penetrate easily if they don't ricochet, do relatively little tissue damage, small amount of shock damage if it doesn't penetrate)
- Medium penetration, medium force: Slashing attacks with sharp objects, heavy bullets (medium chance of ricochet, medium chance of penetration, does high amount of tissue damage, medium amount of shock damage if it doesn't penetrate)
- Low penetration, high force: Concussive attacks with blunt objects/explosive shockwaves (little chance of ricochet, little chance of penetration, medium amount of tissue damage if it penetrates, usually relies on high shock damage)

For burn attacks (note that the exact same applies as in the brackets above):

- High penetration, low force: Lasers.
- Medium penetration, medium force: Plasma, Fire.
- Low penetration, high force: Electricity.

Note that this has several consequences. For one, hitting a heavily armored individual with a club will very rarely pierce that armor, but it will also always do at least some shock damage, possibly knocking him off his feet. However, given that this individual is steadily recovering from his shock damage, you might not be able to kill him no matter how much you pummel him. Conversely, using a thin blade might not cause any shock damage to him, but if you do manage to pierce his armor and strike an artery, you could simply cause him to bleed out.

So, finally, what does HP now do? Well, as you use first aid to patch someone up, his HP decreases. He won't die if it reaches 0, but it does mean that using first aid or stimpaks no longer does anything other than stop things from getting worse. This means that you need to recover your HP's after combat using the Doctor skill (and resources) to get battle ready again.

 

[Glovz]

This new approach is interesting, I want to see more of the math. How is Force calculated and given a value (is this simply another name for the damage potential of a weapon)? Should EFF FRC be divided by 100? How will EMP be treated? (maybe as shock without getting better or worse over time?) In the UI the user would see two meters then that represent burn and shock, or is this in the background where burn and shock are then combined to affect the HP meter/amount?

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

How is Force calculated?

Mass times acceleration. Well, it strictly doesn't have to be calculated, but simply a value assigned to weapons you would consider to produce a signicant impact. Like I said in the examples, you'd give a laser weapon high penetration and low force, and something like a sledgehammer high force and low penetration. Melee damage would give a multiplier to both penetration and force, while AP rounds would only give a bonus to penetration.

There probably won't any longer be something like a damage range: an identical (non-critical) attack will always produce the same effect. The variation will now come from the different part of the body you hit (more on this in a while).

Should EFF FRC be divided by 100?

Yeah.

How will EMP be treated? (maybe as shock without getting better or worse over time?)

I will show exactly how this works in a while, but pretty much exactly how you say it. Given that shock only interacts with DR, there's only EMP resistance, no threshold. I also want to make the effects of EMP a bit more interesting by treating Power Armor not so much as an armor, but a robot which the critter inside occupies, and which has its own "tissue" and shock damage stats. Given that the power armor is susceptible to EMP damage, it can get knocked out this way, meaning a weak critter not strong enough to manually take it off is trapped. But eh, maybe it'll be too much hassle.

In the UI the user would see two meters then that represent burn and shock, or is this in the background where burn and shock are then combined to affect the HP meter/amount?

No, you're right. Tissue and shock would replace the HP and AC meters (I'm actually dropping HP altogether, but more on that when I reveal my revolutionary SPECIAL-C system ).

 

[hiver]

Power armor would have protection (not absolute but significant) against EMP integrated, and it would be designed so that a lot of it is mechanical and hydraulic, especially in Fallout alternate timeline.

Therefore, you could safely argue that even in case of some critical EMP damage protection failure, the suit would never become completely immobile or dysfunctional, but rather go into a sort of reboot - meaning the player would either loose APs or a turn in such a case.
Im also confident that West tek would include some sort of "bail out" option that could only be activated from inside.


/
How long Jim?

To finish a mod forever you need to take forever to finish it of course.

Oh.. ok.

Thats some awesome work on the phase mode man... youve come far.

As for mistakes of it, that cant be deduced from these samples. People playing the alpha or beta of the system will do that for you.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Hey Jim, my two cents:

What I'm thinking is reducing all the damage types down to two, that's two: burn and trauma/physical/normal/I don't have a good name yet. Burn would comprise of the old laser/electrical/plasma/fire types, while physical would comprise of the old normal and explosive types (EMP we'll leave aside for the moment).

a) Normal: Usual physical damage delivered from violent kinetic interaction between two objects - Everything from punches to bullets can be put on Normal damage. Fine. I guess you could put a explosion shockwave here too, althrough I don't think a bulletproof vest could realistically protect you from a grenade explosion (maybe from the shrapnel at best). Explosives aren't just shockwave, there's shrapnel (still normal damage), but what about the flame? Grenades rely more on the shrapnel, but Rockets explosions burns too.

b) Heat: Essentially fusing Fire, Laser and Plasma. Van Buren did something similar when it fused Fire and Laser into Heat, but AFAIK it kept Plasma separate. I'm not sure if its actually correct. What's the dif between Fire, Laser and Plasma?
Fire: Mostly spread-out, area damage, burns
Laser: Tightly focused beam at a single place. Causes burns and explodes skin, but afaik it doesn't cause flame.
Plasma: Big ball of hot super-ionised gas, might cause fire too.

I don't think you can keep Electrical along with heat. Yes, Electricity burns but it also electrocutes. Does bad things to muscles.

Also, additional implication:
- Metal Armor: If you keep Laser and Fire together, Metal Armor will become flame-proof armor, which is odd (have fun wearing burning hot metal! Add a helmet and you're on your way to become Dr. Doom). If you put Plasma and Electrical, then Metal Armor will prety much become Tesla Armor. Metal Armor being good against laser is ok-ish, but against Plasma, Flame and (even worse) Electric damage is just lol.
- Tesla Armor: Just got turned into a Fire-proof suit, which it never was. It had high DR and DT vs Lasers, Plasma and Electrical attacks.
- Floaters are immune to electrical attacks, making the pulse rifle totally useless against them.
- Any fire-proof suit (say, Fire Leather Armor made from Fire Gecko Skin, like in Ashes of Phoenix) will also be laser-proof, plasma-proof, electric-proof, etc.

I've been thinking about damage types myself for Van Buren. My ideas for them were more or less like this:

Laser: Has extra penetration/%critchance
Fire: Gives a "Burning" status effect that limits your actions (because OH GOD I'M BURNING!) if you don't have flame-proof armor on.
Plasma: Plasma has loadsadamage, but loses considerable strength from distance. Best used as a close-midrange weapon. Some other ideas too, like making plasma weapons non-aimable - sorta hard to aim a big bolt of plasma, and giving it some splash damage.
Electrical: Hits muscles, AP loss?
Explosive: Increased knockdown and cripple chance.
EMP: Not sure (ideas for it here are nice)

Also, about crits: One thing you need to change to make your system useful is the Critical Tables. As it is, the Fallout Critical Tables have too many armor bypasses. Pretty much every effort to overhaul it (Van Buren, Ashes of Phoenix) has it using partial armor bypassing instead- say, your armor was bypassed by 20%, so you receive 20% extra pure damage unmodified by armor. Total armor bypasses should be left to criticals in very unprotected body parts and high rolls.

Rest of your damage math is interesting and must be analysed further, however.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

On the whole I agree with you that, as with any fargoing abstraction, the scheme isn't perfect. But I still think it has an elegance that makes up for that: two damage types (burn and normal), two armor resistances (DT, representing hardness, and DR, representing thickness) that aren't even different for the burn and normal, etc. As I'll show when I get the new char screen out for the system in full, this simplicity allows me to do a lot more with status effects and bodily systems.

- Metal Armor: If you keep Laser and Fire together, Metal Armor will become flame-proof armor, which is odd. Metal Armor being good against laser is ok-ish, but against Plasma, Flame and (even worse) Electric damage is just lol.

No it won't: Metal Armor will remain effective against Laser because it has high DT and Laser has low Force, meaning it will ricochet often. If it doesn't ricochet, however, it'll penetrate just fine. Because Metal Armor has relatively low DR (it's thin compared to, say, Leather Armor which is more shock absorbant than hard), an attack with high force and low penetration, like Electricity, will do more shock damage to it than to leather armor (which, unlike with normal shock damage which sends bodies flying, causes the muscle spasms you mention, or paralysis I mentioned originally). Fire or plasma, being medium force and medium penetration, will either penetrate the metal and cause loads more tissue damage than lasers because it still has all that excess force, or it won't penetrate and cause a moderate amount of shock damage, tho still less than Electricity (treating being cooked inside your armor mechanically the same as receiving a debilitating electrical shock doesn't seem that huge a stretch to me).

- Tesla Armor: Just got turned into a Fire-proof suit, which it never was. It had high DR and DT vs Lasers, Plasma and Electrical attacks.

I admit that Tesla Armor is hard to makes sense of in my system, but it was entirely construed just to make use of the silly damage types to begin with. I might have to make alternate use of it.

It's more or less the same with the other examples you mention: electricity-immune floaters, fire-proof jackets. As with the fire-sensitive wannamingos these are there to make use of the damage types in a way that I can't imagine makes for fun gameplay.[/QUOTE]

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

After a short hiatus, here's the revolutionary feature presentation of SPECIAL-C:

Attributes:

I've started to feel that attributes in rpg's present something of a catch-22. You more or less have 2 ways to approach them, either you:

- have them operate more or less separately from the rest of the character system, with only minor bonusses granted to secondary stats and skills. The problem with this is that this lets you build characters that have nothing to do with your attributes: minimum endurance characters with huge HP-counts because of the Lifegiver perk, low Charisma characters becoming rhetorical stars through high Speech, etc. The other way is to:

- have them determine your character progression. If you want a character that's great at speech or has a lot of Hitpoints, you pretty much have to invest in Charisma or Endurance respectively. But what's so interesting about a system that does little more than essentially railroad you into a very specific character progression at chargen?

What I think is best is to bypass the whole issue by inverting the relationship between derived stats and attributes: rather than have, say, melee damage be based on how much you invested in Strength at Chargen, your Strength is decided by how much you invest in stats like Melee Damage or Carry weight, skills like Control, and strength-based perks.

Char Points:

Instead of skill points, and a perk choice each three levels, you get a certain amount of Char points per level and at Chargen. You can spend these points whichever way you want, whether it's on skills, or (formerly derived) stats, or perks/traits. Each increase, like the old skill increments, has a steadily increasing cost involved the more you invest. Traits have been split up into GURPS-y advantageous ones (costing Char points) and disadvantageous ones (giving Char point bonusses). All of this is supposed to give a lot more flexibility and make it easier to balance (instead of having to balance almighty Agility due to its tie in with Action Points, I can just make Action speed investments expensive in terms of Char points).

Health:

The endpoint of health is still Hitpoints, which is also the only stat in the Health column above which you can invest in. The way you lose HP's has now been split into Tissue damage (generally the result of attacks that pierce the skin/armor) and Shock damage (blunt blows, or other attacks, such as electrical shocks, that don't strictly depend on piercing). If you have 40 HP's, it doesn't matter whether you sustain 40 Shock damage, or 40 Tissue damage or 20/20 of both, you die in each scenario. Each attack can additionally do damage to the circulatory system (which does Tissue damage over time), or the nervous system (which does the same for Shock damage). For instance, a slashing knife could do 10 tissue damage, while having a x2 bleeding modifier, meaning it does 20 damage to the circulatory system. As time passes you will steadily bleed out until your tissue damage reaches 20. Tissue damage always moves towards the state of the circulatory system, meaning that you can also be healed this way over time if the latter is healthy (e.g. if you've sustained 10 tissue damage but no circulatory damage, then your tissue health will steadily revert to 0).

All this damage (under the Vital Health header) is healed through the First Aid skill. The Non-Vital systems are what decide the efficiency of your stats and skills and are healed through the Doctor skill. E.g., if you get your legs reduced from 100% to 20% efficiency, everything related to the Agility attribute (movement speed, sneaking, maneuvering, etc.) gets reduced to 20% efficiency as well. You damage these non-vital systems by scoring a critical hit on a certain bodypart while doing Tissue damage (e.g. to damage the Respiratory system, which reduces Strength based stats and skills, you critically hit the right or left side of the chest). A critical hit while doing Shock damage results in a status effect, such as weapons being dropped or the critter being knocked off his feet. Addictions now work as a cap on the functioning of these non-vital systems (e.g. if you're 20% addicted to stims such as buffout or stim packs, then your Respiratory, among other systems, is capped at 100-20=80%).

Anyway, why implement such a convoluted health system? Because I actually think it makes everything less convoluted. SPECIAL, like most rpg systems, has a huge mess of damage types and accompanying resistances, in addition to damage mechanics that operate outside this logic entirely (Poison and Radiation). This mess to me doesn't result in any interesting gameplay, for reasons I've gotten into earlier. With this new system, there are no damage types left whatsoever (ok, aside from EMP). Even something like Poison (very little tissue damage, but with a huge Nervous system damage multiplier, meaning you will steadily sustain Shock damage each second) or Radiation (damage to all your bodily systems) can be handled through this model.

Body Dimensions:

As mentioned earlier, projectiles and attacks now have their trajectories, and pass through a hex on a 7 by 10 grid. This also means that when you aim for a critter, you can do so on any location on this grid, so it's potentially more precise than the different body parts in the original, as you can see in the beautifully designed UI-element below:

Each of these body "squares" has a different type and chance of a critical hit. There can be some variation of body sizes for critters: the biggest Super Mutant will have a height of 4, meaning his torso and legs are each 4 squares in height, making him reach the top with his head, and a width of 2, meaning he has two extra squares of torso on each side, meaning his arms hit the outside of the grid.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Just a post to give an updated description of the new damage formulas (in earlier posts, these were still divided into a burn and normal type, now these two have been merged as well), and an explanation how drugs work now:


Drug System:

Drugs will be more or less an extension of the crippling system. Instead of giving direct bonusses to primary and derived stats as they did before, they increase the value of a bodily system. So, e.g., Mentats can boost the cognitive system from 100% to 150% activity, which in turn gives a bonus of 50% to both your INT and PER stats. This then steadily decreases back to your max value (not below that, so you could in fact use mentats to heal brain damage), which is normally 100%. However, each drug use also increases your dependancy on that (class of) drug, which in turn lowers this cap below 100%. The cap is lowered for all the systems affected by the class of drug, even if the drug itself doesn't. What that means is that, e.g., Jet belongs to the class of stimulants, which can affect the Respiratory (STR), Immune (END) and Locomotive (AGI) systems, even tho Jet only affects your agility. Thus, having 20% addiction to Jet lowers the cap for all of these systems to 100-20=80%. Each drug, including stimpaks, belongs to such a category and thus is addictive; addiction being something that no longer dissipates with time, but you need to spend resources on to get rid of.

Damage System:

I've added the formulas and some global examples in spoiler tags because it's all a bit crunchy and I don't want to scare people off now do I:

Spoiler

Each attack has four values attached:

FOR = Force
PEN = Penetration
CRC = Circulatory System modifier (if larger than x1: the amount of tissue damage over time caused)
NRV = Nervous System modifier (if larger than x1: the amount of shock damage over time caused)

Both the critter and his armor have (separate) resistances against these attacks:

PR = Penetration Resistance (a flat reduction)
FR = Force Resistance (a relative reduction)

PR - Force (FOR) = chance of ricochet (lighter objects and harder armors will increase the chance of a ricochet, in which case the following calculations don't apply)

Penetration (PEN) - PR = the amount of the projectile/object that penetrates the armor (EFF PEN).

Force (FOR) * (100-FR) = the amount of force that remains in the object (EFF FRC).

EFF PEN * EFF FOR = the amount of Tissue Damage done to the critter (TD).

EFF FOR - EFF PEN = the amount of Shock Damage done to the critter (the less a projectile penetrates, the more force is spread out) (SD).

(TD + SD) * NRV = the amount of Nervous system damage done.

(TD) * CRC = the amount of Circulatory system damage done. (Shock damage won't cause bleeding)

----------Penetration-------Force--------Circulatory Dam-----Nervous Dam
Laser        +++            - - -               -                      - - - 
Plasma      ++               +                +                         +          (the nervous and circulatory damage simulate corrosive effects)
Electricity  - - -             ++              - - -                      ++  
Fire            -                +                 -                          + 
Sledge      - - -            +++            +++                     - - -        (given that it causes close to no nervous damage, the victim will steadily recover from the damaging blow if given the chance; also, if a sledge would penetrate, it would cause massive bleeding, but in practice it wouldn't do that)
Needler      +              - - -              - - -                      +++      (Needler pistols, like scorpion bites, would serve as a nerve toxin)
Knives      ++               -                +++                     - - -
JHP           +                -                 ++                      - - -       (even expanding rounds like JHP won't end up doing a lot of shock damage if they don't manage to penetrate)
AP           ++               -                   +                      - - -

 

[Cosmo]

What I'm thinking is reducing all the damage types down to two, that's two: burn and trauma/physical/normal/I don't have a good name yet.

"Impact/Energy" is the best solution IMO.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

What I'm thinking is reducing all the damage types down to two, that's two: burn and trauma/physical/normal/I don't have a good name yet.

"Impact/Energy" is the best solution IMO.

I've reduced them down to one now actually so that's no longer an issue (okay, 1 + EMP).

 

[tuluse]

I don't see what the point of attributes are in the new system. Why not just drop them entirely? Are they just like quick summary of the character you've built?

With regards to health, I'm thinking you don't need overall HP at all. Didn't Deus Ex do a system where each limb had it's own health and that was it. You died if torso or head went to 0.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

I don't see what the point of attributes are in the new system. Why not just drop them entirely? Are they just like quick summary of the character you've built?

Their only function is attribute checks in dialogue. So if you want those high Int options, you should invest in some smarty pants skills. That's also why they're not an absolute, but relative, representation of what you've invested in, because the attribute checks assume your stats are unchanging (this leads to the problem that you could suddenly turn retard by spending too many points on non-INT related stats, but I think it's worth a try to see how it pans out).

With regards to health, I'm thinking you don't need overall HP at all. Didn't Deus Ex do a system where each limb had it's own health and that was it. You died if torso or head went to 0.

Did this health system apply to NPC's as well? I can't remember them being invincible if you just shot them in the arms and legs, which unless I've understood it right is what this'd entail (I've tried looking up more info, but couldn't find anything and haven't played the game in ages).

If everything you hit counts towards killing a critter, then you need one single variable determining that, which has to be HP (that's why I'm also against having to seperate health bars, like head and torso in DE, because if I understand it right it then becomes stupid to hit someone in the head after hitting him in the torso).

 

[tuluse]

Their only function is attribute checks in dialogue. So if you want those high Int options, you should invest in some smarty pants skills. That's also why they're not an absolute, but relative, representation of what you've invested in, because the attribute checks assume your stats are unchanging (this leads to the problem that you could suddenly turn retard by spending too many points on non-INT related stats, but I think it's worth a try to see how it pans out).

I mean why don't you drop those checks and just check against the skill or derived skill?*

Did this health system apply to NPC's as well? I can't remember them being invincible if you just shot them in the arms and legs, which unless I've understood it right is what this'd entail (I've tried looking up more info, but couldn't find anything and haven't played the game in ages).

If everything you hit counts towards killing a critter, then you need one single variable determining that, which has to be HP (that's why I'm also against having to seperate health bars, like head and torso in DE, because if I understand it right it then becomes stupid to hit someone in the head after hitting him in the torso).

I don't remember exactly how it works either tbh

Anyways, I don't think your last argument holds much water. 1) your system means any section getting lower health reduces effectiveness of enemy, so it could still be worth it to do that over killing them faster. 2) Part of the system is that it's semi-random what section gets hit right? So the wrong section getting hit is part of the fun/frustration.

You could do other stuff like make limbs not hittable once they're at 0.

Edit:
*I just realized you could use the attribute system as a kind of synergy measure. So investing in barter or speech gives Charisma, and charisma makes both those checks easier. It would be an interesting way to make the character system seem not so abstract.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

I mean why don't you drop those checks and just check against the skill or derived skill?*

Because being perceived as Strong, or performing a feat of Strength in dialogue (a la armwrestling that Super Mutant in Broken Hills) is simulated better through an amalgamation of all ST-based stats/skills rather than one particular one, which is what the system would more or less do. Besides, I'm staying away from content modding as much as possible.

*I just realized you could use the attribute system as a kind of synergy measure. So investing in barter or speech gives Charisma, and charisma makes both those checks easier. It would be an interesting way to make the character system seem not so abstract.

That's not synergy, that's circularity. You invest in A and B, which combine to make C, which boosts A and B. Unless I'm getting you wrong.

Forcing you to spend time doing intelligent stuff like studying science and medicine, or whatever, in order to pass intelligence checks in dialogue might make for an interesting change from the 10 INT character spending all his points on unarmed combat and small arms beating Zax at chess.

Anyways, I don't think your last argument holds much water. 1) your system means any section getting lower health reduces effectiveness of enemy, so it could still be worth it to do that over killing them faster. 2) Part of the system is that it's semi-random what section gets hit right? So the wrong section getting hit is part of the fun/frustration.

You could do other stuff like make limbs not hittable once they're at 0.

The point of my last argument was simply that if you have two (deadly) health bars, one for torso and one for head, then reducing the former to 20/100 means it always is more sensible to go for the torso with the next shot, rather than the head, which is still at 100/100. I don't like this from a simulation, or from a gameplay point of view.

Just to be clear, you don't hit a critter in a "system": hitting someone in the upper part of the head doesn't automatically hit them in the eyes. This area simply has a certain critical hit chance for damaging the eyes (decreasing sight), and for hitting the cognitive system (decreasing INT-related stats and skills). This is in addition to (and as a result of) the Tissue damage you do.

 

[tuluse]

That's not synergy, that's circularity. You invest in A and B, which combine to make C, which boosts A and B. Unless I'm getting you wrong.

Forcing you to spend time doing intelligent stuff like studying science and medicine, or whatever, in order to pass intelligence checks in dialogue might make for an interesting change from the 10 INT character spending all his points on unarmed combat and small arms beating Zax at chess.

You invest in A, which raises C, which makes A and B easier. So B checks can be passed with less investment. There is some circulation to it, but I'm just spit balling here.

The point of my last argument was simply that if you have two (deadly) health bars, one for torso and one for head, then reducing the former to 20/100 means it always is more sensible to go for the torso with the next shot, rather than the head, which is still at 100/100. I don't like this from a simulation, or from a gameplay point of view.

Just to be clear, you don't hit a critter in a "system": hitting someone in the upper part of the head doesn't automatically hit them in the eyes. This area simply has a certain critical hit chance for damaging the eyes (decreasing sight), and for hitting the cognitive system (decreasing INT-related stats and skills). This is in addition to (and as a result of) the Tissue damage you do.

Sometimes I just skim over things I was expecting you do to a full on Deus Ex style limb based damage system.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

You invest in A, which raises C, which makes A and B easier. So B checks can be passed with less investment. There is some circulation to it, but I'm just spit balling here.

I mostly don't like indirect/synergy effects like these because they make choices less visible for the player, and harder to balance for me (suppose I've invested a lot in A, making further investments expensive, does it then become smarter to cheaply invest in B just for the boost received from C to A, even if I don't intend to use B? IIRC this seemed the case in AoD, where a cheap investment in a weapon you never used might be worth it for the synergy bonus to your prefered weapon).

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

I was trying out a text box for player input to use for a new approach to the barter skill I want to try out (I'll maybe get into that later), and thought I'd use it for some other stuff as well. One possible application being a string based item generator and a map teleporter, I thought I'd put those together for cheat/modding use. You can download it here, just extract in your executable folder.

How it works is you press left ctrl + C (for items) or + V (for maps) to bring up the menu, then type (case sensitive) the first letter(s) of the item/map you want. The tool then auto-completes it for you, after which you can press Enter to generate it. Here's a vid for the item generation:



and here for the map teleportation (keep in mind that the maps use the actual filenames, which the devs often didn't make all that clear, and without consistent case useage, so try around a little):



A final thing to keep in mind is that the typing isn't all that responsive. This is because I haven't yet found a terribly convenient way to block out the regular key bindings (e.g. to avoid pressing "a" starting combat).

EDIT: forgot to add something of course, fixed now.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

People over at NMA were requesting more features, so here's an updated version:

Fixes:
- You can now, um, move again.

Features:
- It's now one single happy menu you load with left ctrl + C, where you click on what you want to generate:
- Items: generates an item where the mouse cursor is. If there's a critter where the cursor is, then the item goes in his inven (should've probably also done this for containers...). If the critter is unarmed, the item is a weapon, AND the critter has an existing animation type for said weapon, then he equips it
- Teams: gives that team to the critter under the cursor.
- Scripts: gives that script to the critter under the cursor.
- Critter: generates that critter (pid) under the cursor.
- Scenery: generates that scenery (pid) under the cursor (hmmm, should've made scripts work for them too...).
- Maps: transports to that map.

Here's a video demo showing as many features as I could cram in a minute:



edit: New version.

The most important new feature is that it now checks for other places in a string. E.g. if you type DUDE in the script box, it doesn't find any script starting with DUDE, but what it does find is OBJ_DUDE. While this makes it all a bit slower for obvious reasons I think it's necessary if you want to end up finding anything realistically.

Other changes:
- place containers and fill them up with items!
- give scripts to scenery!