Clothes vs monsters

[Hague]

I think it’s less about the effectiveness of armor and more about how crowding works in the game. Perhaps we should add “flanking” to the game. I know we don’t have facing mechanics, and it’s better for it, but what if you have two hostiles in melee on opposite sides give both hostiles a bonus to-hit? The resulting extra critical chance might make crowds more dangerous. Implement sneak-attacks into that, and an enemy that can become invisible and you can get flanked by them for lots of extra damage. That is to say, enemies capable of sneak attacking need to be in flanking position and their attacks deal bonus damage. Doesn’t work if the target is immune to critical hits. Biter zombies could be a variant with very sharp teeth that are granted a sneak attack. So if one were on your NW side and a fat zombie on the SW side, the biter would bite you and deal extra damage and possibly extra chance for bleeding.

[Arek_PL]

[quote=“Hague, post:21, topic:6559”]I think it’s less about the effectiveness of armor and more about how crowding works in the game. Perhaps we should add “flanking” to the game. I know we don’t have facing mechanics, and it’s better for it, but what if you have two hostiles in melee on opposite sides give both hostiles a bonus to-hit? The resulting extra critical chance might make crowds more dangerous. Implement sneak-attacks into that, and an enemy that can become invisible and you can get flanked by them for lots of extra damage. That is to say, enemies capable of sneak attacking need to be in flanking position and their attacks deal bonus damage. Doesn’t work if the target is immune to critical hits. Biter zombies could be a variant with very sharp teeth that are granted a sneak attack. So if one were on your NW side and a fat zombie on the SW side, the biter would bite you and deal extra damage and possibly extra chance for bleeding.[/quote]something like crossfire in frontline tactic? good idea

[IcedPee]

If you’ve played State of Decay on PC or XBOX, there were these huge fat zombies, that would simply grab your head and just bite the hell right out of your neck. Body shots were useless on the things, only headshots were effective.

Those
Fucking
Things.

If Fat Zombies were like that in DDA I would "U"nload my waterskin of lemonade, if you know what I mean.

[Hague]

I’m thinking they’d be the Brutes.

The Feral zombies were pretty dangerous too. If they paired together with a Brute. Brute would knock you down and the feral would insta-gib you for being downed.

[Murphy]

It’s hard to get 100% coverage on all parts.

[Womble]

Skills are not distinct from the armor problem. It’s easy to get high skills (esp. hand-to-hand) because leather+plastic makes characters largely invulnerable to zombies. Yes, you do take occasional hits. No, this does not solve the problem.

[latogato]

It’s hard to get 100% coverage on all parts.

There are many clothes with 95% coverage, also the coverage calculation is wrong, because if you wear two clothes with 90% coverage - for example two t-shirts - your total coverage will be 99% because there’s a 90% chance of an attack hitting either, when it should be all or nothing.

[latogato]

My problem is with the crowding, if simple monsters would be able to hurt the player character - just a little - crowding would be not needed, because many small damage would add up.

While it is a good idea, the problem is the armors can make the character invulnerable and no workaround ideas will fix this problem.

[Hague]

Reminds me of going straight to Navarro and stealing Mk II power armor right off the bat. Everything is easy after that.

[Murphy]

Possible solution: Nerf bashing damage protection. It’s fine if that kevlar armor stops bullets and bites, but it’s not rigid and should not protect against blunt trauma. Plate mail, helmets and power armor are the only ones that should do that.

[KA101]

Possible solution: Nerf bashing damage protection. It’s fine if that kevlar armor stops bullets and bites, but it’s not rigid and should not protect against blunt trauma. Plate mail, helmets and power armor are the only ones that should do that.

Uh, stopping trauma is its job: converts bullets to bruising. Plate armor by itself transmits blunt trauma: you need padding underneath it to soak that. (The ornamental suits should NOT include that padding!)

I’d bet that if I were to slug someone in the vest they were wearing, I’d hurt my hand far more than I’d hurt them. Kicking, probably not much better.

[Datanazush]

You’re about right there, a single bullet-resistant plate will transmit all the force from the punch equally. The difference is that it’s transmitting it across it’s entire surface area, meaning you won’t be hurt nearly as badly.

That’s how bullet resistant gear works. The main way a bullet hurts someone is a combination of speed and a small contact area. A kevlar/ceramic plate will absorb both of those and turn it into a (relatively) slower hit over a large contact area.

It would make for a pretty handy-dandy crafting recipe if we could line the inside of an ornamental suit of armour with thick clothing or rags. Not as effective as a proper suit, but still pretty good against getting bashed.

[John_Candlebury]

What bothers me about armor values is that an item can only have one protection value. It is not a problem with simple clothes and such, but its kind of problematic for things like MBR vests with plates inside them, scrap suits, and most other pieces of armor. Realistically, they should not offer complete protection everywhere they cover. Take the MBR vest for example. the armor plates go on your back and front torso, while your sides are relatively less protected (well thats what it seems like from the photos) so it would be better if they had:
20% uncovered, 60% full protection, 20% just the protection given by the empty MBR vest.

[Hague]

Add three new attributes to armor: Bonus Coverage and Bonus Bashing and Bonus Cutting Protection. If a coverage check for a specific piece of armor succeeds, it then checks for bonus_coverage>0 and then uses the same result to check if the bonus coverage was hit as well.

So a person is wearing a 90% torso armor with 3 bashing, 3 cutting protection. It has bonus coverage of 10% (not reliable) and bonus bashing 3, bonus cutting 6.

If the person is hit in the torso, the game rolls an 85 out of 100 and so the torso armor is struck, the roll would need to be 10 or under to get the benefit of 6 bashing protection and 9 cutting protection from that attack, gaining the bonus protection.

[kevin.granade]

“Add three new attributes” (to every piece of armor in the game) to cover a fairly obscure corner case is pretty much a non-starter.
I mean, does anything BUT the MBR vest have that issue?
I agree zombies should grow a grab attack. What I’m thinking is they have a rider to each attack that works regardless of armor that applies a single-turn debuff to the target, with a single zombie it’s not going to mean much, but if you get surrounded and are soaking a bunch of hits it’s going to add up fast.

[Hague]

Yeah. I’m not gonna disagree with you there, Kevin, writing new attributes for every piece of clothing/armor would be a non-starter. Though there’s nothing saying that everything would do this. The default for bonus coverage and armor would be 0 for everything. As for other examples, bonus armor would also apply to armor that has plates over mail or padding as per the ceremonial armor and Yoroi you can find. Even power armor wouldn’t be hardened in every spot. By bonus protection layers you can create full armor suits with weaknesses but without making them a flat 0 for armor in a non-covered area. Perhaps there’s weak joint sections, typical of most plate armor. Padded workout clothes, steel-toed boots, and any armored clothing with pockets would have, in a sense, patches of “bonus” armor, like the pockets on the front of turnout gear. If you just picture a lot of the clothes in the game, I’m sure you can pick out spots where one area over the total coverage would be stronger or weaker than another.

Granted, I don’t have a problem with abstraction as the game goes right now. I was merely presenting a solution to an issue that someone put forth, as both an earnest suggestion and a mental exercise.

[vache]

The coverage problem is going to be a tough one to solve without defining a whole lot of specific coverage areas. That’s the only way I see to differentiate between two t-shirts with 80% torso coverage, and a t shirt with 80% coverage and arm guards with 20% coverage. The ideal solution would be to have, instead of a coverage percentage, have in the item definition for t-shirt: “covers” : [ “UPPER_LEFT_ARM”, “UPPER_RIGHT_ARM”, “UPPER_TORSO”, “LOWER_TORSO” ], and for the arm guards: “covers” : [ “LOWER_LEFT_ARM”, “LOWER_RIGHT_ARM” ]. Then, to implement it properly in the game, attacks would have to randomly pick a part to hit, then check the player for items covering that part.