Generic design idea for item degradation

[Lyx]

IIRC, in the past it has been mentioned a few times, that it would be interesting if equipment (armor, weapons) would degrade over time. The reasons for "why" would be:

- Currently, using expensive equipment has no disadvantage besides of initial cost
- Since item-stats currently are more hierachic, rather than linear, this is further amplified. The player "levels up" his equip just like stats.
- As soon as you hit the limit of native items, there is no incentive anymore for caring about your gear - you're done. And the only way forward is creating more items with ever more inflationary over-the-top stats.
- "Its more realistic" (tm)

Mind you, i dont care about the last point. I do however care about the other points, because they're gameplay-relevant. If equipment would have "running costs" in adition to "initial costs", then the player would need to more carefully choose what equipment to use for which purposes. It also would make looting interesting for more than just trading it in.

AFAIK, no mod implemented something like that. I suspect the reasons for it not being done are:

- No one came up with a design which doesnt require lots of annoying micromanagement
- Everyone seeked for a "realistic" (of course!) implementation.
- Implementing all that may be difficult to impossible.

Well, if one drops the realism-mindset, it may be less difficult. What was the problem in the first place? It was that equipment doesn't have "running costs depending on usage". Well, if all you want is running costs which depend on item usage and price, then you dont really need to track and model item-degration "realistically". Something like the following would do:

1. Every armor and weapon gets a condition-stat, which starts out at - lets say 5.
2. At the end of every battle, for every equipped item there is a chance that the condition value will drop by 1.
3. If Condition reaches 0, the item is NOT destroyed. Instead its stats will be temporarily reduced.
4. The player can repair ALL the items in his inventory by visiting an armorer or blacksmith and paying a repair-price. (no micromanagement).

Now, something like this seems quite possible to me with the module system. Food-items do already have counters which can be modified via scripts. Item-degration and restoration also seems possible, considering lame horses. Your thoughts?

 

[The Mercenary]

It's feasible. I know one mod had item degradation back in .7xx, but it's a defunct mod. It was a mod based on Darklands.

 

[jik]

upkeep is not a bad idea.  I'm not sure if they are changable on the fly but you can use the imodbits to adjust the stats.  Not only that, but you could improve the condition of a weapon by using the bonus bits.

The only other way is to swap the item for a damaged version after the battle.  A lot of work depending on how many standard weapons you have.  I might do this in my mod, since I am reducing the number of weapons used.  I find a lot of them pointless.

If you are going the route of maintainence for gear, you would need to reduce the intital cost to factor in things like this for the overall management.  What about for regular troops, or is this only for heroes?

 

[Lyx]

The only other way is to swap the item for a damaged version after the battle.  A lot of work depending on how many standard weapons you have.  I might do this in my mod, since I am reducing the number of weapons used.  I find a lot of them pointless.

If you are going the route of maintainence for gear, you would need to reduce the intital cost to factor in things like this for the overall management.  What about for regular troops, or is this only for heroes?

I hear you regarding reducing amount of gear I already assumed that doing degration would work via swapping items UNLESS, one uses modifiers ONLY for item conditions (which would mean to make the current modified items standard items with reduced abundance). Thats a LOT of work, if you have many items in your mod, so this approach probably isn't efficient for mods which rely on having many items. If however one is dealing with something more similiar to native.... perhaps even a bit less items than native... then this approach may work.

Take into account that one of the reasons (besides of just "having more") why mods add equipment is that currently upgrading ones own equipment is the only thing which the player has to do regarding items - and there is not much else besides of troop-costs to dump the cash on. Obviously, this results in that at some point in native "you're done" - there is nothing else to do regarding items - so the mod adds more items (typically of even higher level - which in turn means, that now there also need to be new higher level troops to counter the increased player-power. Power-Inflation).  BUT: If the game isn't only about upgrading gear, and there is a downside to using very expensive equipment, then you dont run that quickly into the "add more items" in the first place. So to get to the point: item degration means that you need less items in your mod.

As for the second part of your post: I'd guess one can expect non-heroes to care about their equipment themselves. I am not certain if it can be elegantly done with heroes, but it would be desirable, since else you have a loophole: dumping highlevel equip on heroes still has no downsides. So, even though a first implementation would probably target the player only, i guess in the mid-term it would be desirable to have it affect heroes as well - but without significantly increasing micromanagement. I guess optimally, managing this stuff would consist of just going to an armorer/blacksmith, and then having the option to: 1. Repair all items in inventory, 2. Repair equipped items, 3. Repair equipped weapons only, 4. Repair items of all heroes (excluding self).

As for how to counterbalance the increased costs... that to a significant extend depends on the taste of the modder. I personally would not give the player more loot, but instead generally slightly reduce the trade-penalty for weapons and armor. I would however intentionally not fully counterbalance it, because IMO, battle-loot currently is a bit too rewarding and other tasks (quests, etc) are way too lame. But as i said, how to balance it significantly depends on taste.

 

[fisheye]

Regular troops don't have inventories per se. You can just factor their equipment upkeep into their wages. You can argue the same thing for companions to save a lot of hassle. They're warriors, they how know to maintain their own equipment. Wages should increase to reflect this.

As for keeping track, the idea of using the quantity inventory slot to track the quality is a solid one. Note that if the quantity hits 0 it will disappear.

The imodbit is a separate inventory slot so you can translate quality to imods on boundary changes. E.g. quality from 0-10, if the quality drops below 5, apply one imod at random depending on item type: bent, chipped; if quality drops below 3, apply one at random: rusty, ragged, broken, crude etc. If quality hits 0, item is gone for good.

One more idea is the idea of maximum quality level. A masterwork heirloom sword can be repaired all the way back to masterwork, but a bandit's old crappy falchion can never be upgraded to better than ordinary level. This makes high quality weapons much more valuable.

 

[jik]

good points as always fish eye.  This could lead to weapons breaking (disapearing) in battle for the player, if you know the signs of the degrading weapons.  A message at the end of a battle stating the status of your weapon at the end of the battle report should lead the player to fix busted stuff.  Ya, people have complained that if weapons break in battle, then you have to carry more weapons into battle is crap if you get told your weapon is in bad shape.

 

[Lyx]

When one introduces breakage however, one is no longer doing it for gameplay reasons, but for "realism for realism's sake". I'm not gonna argue if that is desirable, because doing that on these boards, would be quite stupid

One thing which hasn't been mentioned that much, is that introducing running costs for equipment, opens up the possibility for larger rebalancing of the game. Without running costs, the only downside to aquiring "better" weapons is buying costs. So you enter the leveling treadmill: For stuff to remain interesting, it must be increasingly more difficult to get better weapons -> exploding item costs. But wait, you also get lots of items as loot after battle... so for the player not becoming rich in no time, there has to be a vast discrepancy between buying price and selling price. But: If running costs are a significant factor, then the initial cost doesn't need to be insanely high anymore, because it no longer is just about if the player can afford to buy gear, but also if he can afford to maintain that gear. So, you could in theory significantly reduce item price and decrease the trade-penalty for equipment... thus buying and selling of gear feeling more believable. Tough, if you go that route, then be prepared for lots of work, because you're gonna rebalance the entire equipment economy.

 

[Shik]

Regarding existing systems - Rubik's custom commander mod for 1.011 has item deterioration implemented:

1. After the player or the current commander of player party is stunned, there is a change for the armour( inculde body, head led and hand) to become deformed (get a worse item modifier) or damaged (disappeared).

 

[fisheye]

good points as always fish eye.  This could lead to weapons breaking (disapearing) in battle for the player, if you know the signs of the degrading weapons.  A message at the end of a battle stating the status of your weapon at the end of the battle report should lead the player to fix busted stuff.  Ya, people have complained that if weapons break in battle, then you have to carry more weapons into battle is crap if you get told your weapon is in bad shape.

You can't change items in mid-battle. There are no modsys commands that manipulate an agent's inventory.

The best you can hope for is changing stuff between rounds.

 

[jik]

bit of a necro post, but does anyone know how shields are broken (the fact that they fall away and you can no longer equip them) happens?  I need to attempt this with a weapon item if possible.

 

[jik]

If anyone is following this, I was able to remove, or might I say disarm an NPC character in a scene.  Ok, kind of in the scene.  If I start a dialog and trigger the change_screen_equip_other operation on the troop the agent is tied to, I am able to remove his equipped items during the scene.  Yes, you may say that from the scene, you go to a dialog (which is a form of presentation) and from there you go to an inventory presentation.  This is all true.  But, the scene does not change during that time.

What I mean is this.  With my little test code, I can "piss off" the NPC and have him draw his weapon and attack.  If I use my trigger, even when he is mid swing, I can take the weapon out of his hand, take off his boots, take off his armor.  When I drop back to the scene, it picks up where it left off, though he does a bit of a stutter (probably since he can no longer use that swing animation) then goes back to attacking me.

I'm close, but I wish I could access how the inventory presentation deals with changing your equipped items.

This also may cause problems with standard troops and seems like it would only work properly with NPCs (since there is only one instance of them in the game).

 

[jik]

Ok, triple post, but this will be the last one if no one else is interested.

I ran a script that would change the items to 0 in each of the troop's slots.  This of course doesn't work since item tuple 0 is an actual item.  So I need to no how to set it to null...

The other issue is that this does not update from inside the dialog/scene.  Seems you might need to jump to a presentation for this to happen.  If i jump to a presentation (the inventory one) I can see the changes I made, and if you then jump back the come too pass.

If this is not needed by any one else, then I will stop posting here.  Would be nice to get some input/feedack to help the process.

 

[fisheye]

I ran a script that would change the items to 0 in each of the troop's slots.  This of course doesn't work since item tuple 0 is an actual item.  So I need to no how to set it to null...

Did you try -1?

 

[jik]

I will give that a try, but I still need a way to refresh it.  Maybe  I could flash up a presentation quickly?  I'll post a vid so you can see what was working....