Collection of some battle system suggestions

Here are my suggestions regarding the battle system and related things. Some or perhaps all of them have been suggested before. I just want to draw some attention to these subjects:

1. The Enemy's Troop Selection: In cases when the battle is supposed to last for more than one rounds you first face the lowest level troops in the enemy party. That is, if the enemy has 30 knights and 30 peasants, for example, you first defeat the peasants and hence improve your tactical advantage due to the troop numbers. Then, you take the knights more easily. I know that in ancient wars they used to "send" the worst warriors first to ease the job of the elite warriors but thousands of warriors were used to be involved in those wars, not tens or so. Thus, your troops are valuable and so are those of your enemy. So, to keep your party alive you have to send the best soldiers first. At least that is what I would prefer.

2. Target Selection: "Target the closest" approach is a bit too simple. A refugee one step from you is not a serious thread as a crossbowman 20 meters away can be. Priority and weight assignment can be a solution.

3. Battle Tiredness: You can continue fighting for hours without you or your horse get tired. I'm not talking about walking around the world map. In the battle field people do get tired and this should be implemented in the game.

4. Sprint: This is not completely independent from the above suggestion. They should be implemented together.

5. Troop Formations: Troops still lack the capability to line-up. Right at the beginning of the battle or after "Hold this position" command is given they should be forming a line facing the enemy spawn point. Of course one may suggest the closest enemy, ranged enemies or the most crowded enemy group as the point to face.

6. "No Attack" Command: I need such a command in "Capture the Nobleman" quest or when my ranged troops try to attack an enemy in the middle of my knights. Many times it is the knights that get killed.

7. "Hold THAT Point" Command: Okay, the name is a bit informal but I think I'm not the only one that sometimes needs to send his troops to a specific point.

8. "Attack Troop" Command: Just order your troops to target one specific troop selected by mouse.

9. Aiming the Horse: Ranged NPCs always aim at the rider rather than the mount. It is obvious that in some cases it is better to aim at the mount, especially when the rider has his shield up. You can knock tens of sea raiders down with your spirited charger and steel shield without using any weapon and yet without being hit.

10. Jumping with your Horse: Currently this feature is a bit exaggerated. You can jump over a Khergit coming towards you with his lance couched, which means you can reach heights as high as some three meters or so.

11. NPC's Timing: They still deploy their swords etc. too early.

Annexations:
12. Dodging: I think most of us agree on this.

barbaros said:

13. Blocks should be breakable. Power strike skills and weights of weapons for opponents can be compared to decide.
14. If a character is hit for a minor damage, attack should not be interrupted.
15. Quick crouching to avoid high swings.

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Thank you barbaros.

I'll second the "target priority" thing. It's incredibly frustrating, and quite frankly a bit ridiculous, to lose half your troops to crossbowmen just because the nearest troop happens to be carrying a melee weapon. There's bolts flying everywhere, and they're just standing there with their sheild down, waiting for the enemy to get close enough to whack with their sword. You'd think that getting hit the first time would be a wake-up call to protect themself.

I think there also should be horse strafing when holding ctrl or so.
And not to forget, when sprinting and then hitting there should be some kind of power hit performed.

Great suggestions for the rest. I was planning on making such a thread like this myself, and I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks combat could need a little work.

I knew that I missed something:

12. Dodging: I think most of us agree on this.

Raz&Momaw, thank you for your support!

Good list. Since you are making a collection of previously made combat suggestions I have a few to add
13. Blocks should be breakable. Power strike skills and weights of weapons for opponents can be compared to decide.
14. If a character is hit for a minor damage, attack should not be interrupted.
15. Quick crouching to avoid high swings.

You also should be able to crouch with shield raised to avoid getting hit by arrows.

I've never thought about it. Good idea!

As for 14), I'd like to add;

a) chance of being interrupted when you get 0 damage (lower than 1 point damage) is depends on the difficulty setting in Opiton menu. e.g. Easiest(1/4 damage)=0%, Easy (1/2 damage)=50%, Normal(100% damage)=25%.

b) every 2 Ironskin Skill increases the damage point threshold. e.g. if you have Ironskin 1 or 2, you have a chance of not being interrupted while you got lower than 2 damage points (damage 0 and 1). If your Ironskin was 10, you have a chance not to get interrupted when you've got 0-5 damage. Chance of not getting interrupted is the same as a).

Edit; I'm not sure about shield bashing now. It's cool and useful but npc would really abuse them...

16) the speed of Enemy re-commemncing the attack move should be slower. (They are able to re-attack faster than the player can)

17) When one enemy (A) dies, the enemy immediately behind him (B) cannot hit the character (attacker) the moment A died.

Raz said:

I think there also should be horse strafing when holding ctrl or so.

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I'm not sure that it's possible. Can they move their legs sideways so much?


And I think that some weapons need some unique 'edge'. take the javelin, for an example. now, it is one of the worst throwing weapons. but checke the athletes. they run to get more force behind the throw. Could the accuracy penalty when running be reduced and the damage increased? I mean things like this when I mean unique edge. not weapon specific ultra-combos.

Raz said:

You also should be able to crouch with shield raised to avoid getting hit by arrows.

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Seconded!

Worbah said:

Raz said:

I think there also should be horse strafing when holding ctrl or so.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure that it's possible. Can they move their legs sideways so much?


And I think that some weapons need some unique 'edge'. take the javelin, for an example. now, it is one of the worst throwing weapons. but checke the athletes. they run to get more force behind the throw. Could the accuracy penalty when running be reduced and the damage increased? I mean things like this when I mean unique edge. not weapon specific ultra-combos.

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I recall having seen this in a documentary of "Guns germs and steel" in talking about the military advantages the Spanish had over the Incans. The horse did in fact strafe side to side, so unless I'm losing my mind..

I'd still wait for a horse expert to come in, but I know what I saw.

Volkier has repeatedly said that horses are more agile in real life than they are in the game.

It would also be nice to have javelins get more power when you run forward, as well as getting less of an accuracy penalty.

Dodging and jumping backwards I completely support. Dodging sideways should be a dive, though, to get you out of an oncoming horse.

I asked my mom (she's been riding for 30 years or so) about the horse-strafing. She said it's possible, but fairly slow.

Indeed. But I find it annoying horses act like cars, instead of animals. I didn't mean fps human-like strafing, but you know, when the horse is already at speed and you want to slow down with your right hand to the front for bashing someone. Just little things like that. Could also be handy in the midst of battle, and it makes stationary mounted guys less vurnable to foot troops, and a bit more agile.

AFAIK game developers use existing models to represent humans, cars, aircrafts, horses and other moving (or animated?) objects in their game. I don't know if Armağan uses his own horse model or a generic one. If it is a generic one it would probably be hard to implement strafing and other "extra-ordinary" functionalities. On the other hand, if he has his own horse model I am really not sure if it is feasible to add "strafing" to that model. I mean, yeah strafing would be nice but IMHO it has a lower priority than other widely-discussed battle-system-related suggestions.

One thing that does not appear on the list I'd like to see ingame is weapon collision, especially needed when using long polearms.

Regarding 3 & 4 - good point, but i thought of something more general - to have an 'effort' button, so while running it's a sprint, when sidestepping it's a dodge, when moving towards a foe in close combat it's a push, when swinging your weapon - it's a really damn hard strike. Of course the energy consumption of such actions would be several times more than normal.

I've a few suggestions:

1. When commanding archers, having a "ready" and "fire" command, because atm they just fire randomly. Also a formation command: I hate seeing them shoot each other in the back of the head!

2. Parries: when someone brings an overhead slash upon you, and you block with plate 5; they might try and force their way through your guard = a test of strength. Which leads me onto my next suggestion:

3. Unarmed attacks: when in a test of strength, so that you're not stuck in that position for other enemies to hit you, what about a swift kick to the genitals to knock them backwards? Bludgeoning, of course.

Dodge, a little side hop like in UT.
Bash button, If you block an upwards slash you have an instant to kick, apply to sheild bash, and sword, you right click and then you can bash with sheild or elbows or something.
Hold down attack, if you hold left mouse button you will give continuous attacks in the specifided direction, speed based on level.
Sheild independent, you can get an attack ready behind a shield, but need to move sheild to attack.
If you swipe sword at legs you will get a higher chance of knock down, based on level.
They're adding boxing, so add grappling, hard, if at close range, maybe you use bash button and turn or something, could be done on horses also at specified time.
Movement speeds, regular and then sprint.
Stamina, like in BF2, you sprint for a while hitting double forward, and would add a whole new dynamic to fighting for sure.
Adrenaline, maybe.
Crouch I think, haven't really decided.
Dizziness, if you get a good contact with head there will be blurred vision and ai will appear dissoriented.
With boxing and bashing and such you could get attacks on the return, if you bash with you elbow tword you, you could swing away also (lol repeated bashing), until they fall down (then you could kick them (lol)).

I dont' know about some of this, but all the stuff about grappling and all is illisrated in the Talhoffer I guess. All things apply to ai and level based.

1)I would especially add horse constitution bar-only light riders,horse archers or javeliners could ride around and shoot, or hit and run, not heavily armoured knights-that would prevent a player with high riding skill from constatly riding around footmen chooping them down with a 2hander
2)a rider should suffer damage when falling of the horse
3)stun effects-the vision should blur when-U fall from the horse, get rammed by a running horse, get hit with a blunt weapon,suffer  big dmg, like 50% hp or more, from any weapon-the effect should last for a proper  amount of time(in seconds)
4)special key for special moves adequate for weapon config. in use at the time-shield bash for shield user, grapling move , like a kick, for 2 hander user (useful when U are too close and can deal full dmg), special stance with the spear firmly on the ground for stopping horses for spearmen
5)when U get ran over by horse you should really be hurt-more dmg,more 'air', and stun effect-armoured horses should be virtually unstoppable unless U use the special spearman stance or a BIG hit with a huge 2h waepon like a bardishe-they should plow through the ranks like an icebreaker through thin ice
6)for incresed effect your vision should shake as a those heavy horses approach at full speed (dependin on the number of horses)
7)archery/horse archery should be nerved, especially plate wearing trooops should suffer minimal damage from bows, except longbow(war bow),which btw shouldnt be used by horse archers (they should use only small bows with low power draw requirement)-instead crossbowmen (at diminshed rate of fire) and javeliners (with less ammo) should be made effective against havily armourde units
7)that way the charge of heavy riders should be alomost unstoppable by foot soliders unless there are spearmen,crossbowmen, javeliners-this is absolutely neccessary taking into account horse constitution bar-heavy knights should have high impact as they cant ride for too long

Maybe the unarmed attack, grapple, shield bash, special move etc. could take the position of the attack button, but only when defending - ie when right mouse button is held down - 'cos at the moment you can't attack while defending, so it's a natural move.

Also what about coup de grace? Knocking people unconscious, you could go around and press F to finish off fallen enemies.