Real Physical Combat (Suggestion and Discussion)

silvarius2000 · September 28, 2012

Hi everyone! Before I deliver my suggestion I would like to recommend a viewing of these videos below to get the people discussing into what I'm trying to deliver.

Longsword Sparring

Common Misconception on swordfighting 1

Common Misconception on swordfighting 2

A guideline to how/what is Half-swording

Half swording

Sword and Shield Fighting (30 minutes warning)

Examples of SwordShield Fighting (short)

Hollywood example of Spear/Shjeld/Gladius Fight

Right I hope you guys liked those clips because I want to set the theme straight here. Fighting is never static. It is dynamic, chaotic, and very personal (if you are against one anyway). Now this suggestion is based on the premise that combat in Project Eternity would be BG/BG2 inspired where positioning for close combat fighting has never been particularly decisive in general save for some exceptions. But otherwise unless you are facing a dragon or spellcasters, your fighters would never get bounced around, shoved around and falling around.

Now with Unity engine, the models are 3d rendered and (I'm assuming here) capable of some ragdoll motion or some similar effect. If not then perhaps some coding towards movement based on the combat stats being rolled but thats another discussion.

My suggestion would be

1.To make the characters in close combat fighting move meaningfully. Perhaps a more serious version of the NWN dance of death since I always thought that was a great interpretation of DnD Combat. Project Unity however is free of the DND constraint and I'd imagine, free to experiment with fighting model/systems.

2.Make grappling like the half swording technique a viable technique to bypass heavily armored characters (Mages in PE!) since you could leverage the half sword to pierce a weak point in his armor

(reference http://www.thearma.org/essays/armoredlongsword.html)

3.Make mobility even more essential even for heavily armored characters, extremely so for the lighter armored. Flanking should be deadly since an unblocked attack is pretty much fatal for the victim. This would tie in with earlier Kickstarter Updates on Formations since being in a formation means the individuals flanks are covered by his friends.

4.Make mass a viable stat. A big heavily muscled bunch of guys in armor and weapons charging at a line of not so heavily muscled guys should smash the weaker guys formation apart leaving them vulnerable to flanking and coordination by virtue of their powerful charge/mass.

5.Weapons with reach become even more important because they can mess with formations and especially charges. Only problem would be reacting to a surprise attack from the flank or behind since its so clumsy.

6. Weapons without reach such as daggers,poniards and short clubs/maces become great when the fighting gets hemmed in with no room to maneuver because those weapons dont need much swing space as opposed to the heavier/longer weapons. This would give room for the legitimate use of shorter weapons.

I'm really really excited about this project and I've been having these ideas for awhile. If you guys would look at it I'll really appreciate it. If the developers love the idea... well. I've got a nice bottle of liquor to toast to you guys (no its mine, all mine)

THANKS GUYS

eimatshya · September 28, 2012

3.Make mobility even more essential even for heavily armored characters, extremely so for the lighter armored. Flanking should be deadly since an unblocked attack is pretty much fatal for the victim. This would tie in with earlier Kickstarter Updates on Formations since being in a formation means the individuals flanks are covered by his friends.

4.Make mass a viable stat. A big heavily muscled bunch of guys in armor and weapons charging at a line of not so heavily muscled guys should smash the weaker guys formation apart leaving them vulnerable to flanking and coordination by virtue of their powerful charge/mass.

5.Weapons with reach become even more important because they can mess with formations and especially charges. Only problem would be reacting to a surprise attack from the flank or behind since its so clumsy.

6. Weapons without reach such as daggers,poniards and short clubs/maces become great when the fighting gets hemmed in with no room to maneuver because those weapons dont need much swing space as opposed to the heavier/longer weapons. This would give room for the legitimate use of shorter weapons.

In theory, many of those sound like neat additions to combat. In a turn-based game or game in which you play as a single character, I could see these working, but I'd be a little concerned about them in a RTwP game. You usually don't have a lot of precision when you are trying to monitor six characters in RTwP since when the game is paused, you generally can't tell what everyone is about to do and when it isn't you can't micromanage all six characters at once. As such, it's usually more difficult to be precise about positioning and mobility. At best, you get your characters in the general formation you want, but outside of narrow, enclosed areas, all-out preventing enemies from running around your blockers is pretty much impossible (unless they implement some kind of zone of control mechanic). They are designing a new combat system for this game, though, so perhaps they will be able to come up with something that would be precise and reactive enough to make complicated combat maneuvering a viable option. I have not seen such a thing in the existing RTwP games that I have played, however.

Edited September 28, 2012 by eimatshya

Adhin · September 28, 2012

Yeah, ultimately it seems more like, for this typeo f game anyway, animation flare/visual thing over something we'd have any direct control over. That said for melee at least (and perhaps variations to archer/ranged, and mages) doing 'stances' as a general thing I could see being an interesting switch. Both tactically and visually. But that's something that's been in PnP stuff that doesn't really make its way into a lot of cRPG's. ToEE did a looot of the rules for that which I adored. But basically giving a more defensive stance vs balanced vs balls out crazy man stance (rage, rawr) would be nice. Also adjusting how that effects each given style fo combat would be nice, such as 2H vs shield/1h vs dual wielding... speaking of which I really hope they have dual wielding in heh.

Then also keep in mind it'll probably involve monsters often enough, and other general beasts where animations vs humans like that just wouldn't make any sense either. I'd kinda prefer a more generic swing animation like they usually use, and just add in stance animation shifts (with blended swings for that) and animations for dodges and stuff like you had in NWN. In fact the basic animation variation you had with NWN, but in group combat scale would be pretty nice. They had block anims, dodge, all that good stuff. Wasn't exactly the best but throw that into isometric infinity style stuff and I think that would work out real nice like.

Real Physical Combat (Suggestion and Discussion)

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