Blobmania 说:
It may be a little awkward at first, but there needs to be some sort of opening or the whole fight will come down to whoever has the best shield and weapon, rather than who is thinking properly about what he's doing.
One option would be to code in a second "attack mode" for melee weapons, which uses attacks specifically designed for shield wall combat. That would provide much more scope for adding other close-ranged and protected attacks as well, but could be balanced in open combat with lower manouverability or something similar.
But again, the problem with alternative attack modes is that the AI won't use it. The issue of spear animations is both a player one (principally multiplayer) and ai one (singleplayer). X mode switch is fine and dandy to feature and if it's easy to, should be, but we can't rely on it for the means to actually make spear armed infantry -useful-. Multiple attack directions is the holy grail of that but as far as I know will really require work on Taleworld's end - not ours. The only possibility that leaps to mind as I understand it would be to re-appropriate another animation set (2 handed, 1 handed, or polearm) to use their slots - and that's not really something Papa could do or probably wants to.
Papa: To be honest the X camp is Outlawed's (he has some great ideas on it I think) and Blobmania. My camp is the "change regular spear animation to be more shield-wall-y". When you have a weapon that can only thrust, and hence can be blocked automatically by holding down the lower guard, it needs some other incentive to actually be useful. Most of the time that's anti-cavalry (which means its gimp in inf vs inf), or it's high damage or high speed. I'd love to see it where you have the spearman actually present the shield in a defensive posture while he is thrusting. It doesn't have to be an ironclad, perfect posture, just something that works akin to a phalanx of aspises (aspisi?), where if you have a line of spearmen in perfect order, cracking it from the front is going to take numbers or kicking or shield bashing. But if you have that formation broken, then the spearman would be easy prey for the swordsman.
I mean think about how many dang advantages the swordsman has in most cases:
1) More attack directions
2) Usually equal or higher attack rating
3) Usually equal or higher speed
4) Shield-damage if it's a 1h axe
5)
FACE HUGGING - do this, and the spearman can't do jack **** unless it's a lucky hit.
The X option is great for multiplayer but unless you script it for the AI it doesn't solve the fundamental singleplayer issue. Considering how even with formation scripting AI never really engage one another in a solid, perfect line, I'd see a match of spearmen AI vs spearmen AI not as a neat and tidy | meets |, but more a pushing/shoving match where side A might penetrate the line and start to stab away at the fleshy inner of side B, but their very push leaves their sides open for side B to start stabby-stabby, and so you get a vicious, bloody swirl of spear-thrusting.
