I dont know if this is planned or not, but a cover system would be great when NPCs get added to the game.
The character takes cover behind furniture and walls.
For a few movement points you can move out of cover, shoot and if your character has enough movement points left, hide again.
While hiding, the chances of getting shot are reduced depending on the cover.
And if you want realism, bullet penetration and destructible covers
It’s a great idea and it adds a lot of tactical options. I’ve implemented/am implementing this (I’ve not finished yet) it in my RL (see the Cyberpunk RL in the Other Games sub-forum) and found it pretty easy. I was originally going to make it quite complicated with ducking/leaning out and so on, but I’ve found it works best as such:
-For every obstacle tile a bullet passes through it has a chance of destroying the bullet (dependent on the cover rating). Some cover is also destructible if the bullet hits, some not (metal and so forth). Cover with holes in it (grates and stuff) have a low cover rating. This works both ways, so the player will struggle to shoot through a metal sheet and so on.
-Separate to obstacles, you can get into cover by crouching behind something. Getting into/out of cover takes a turn - and getting into cover adds extra cover points to the obstacle. So what might have had a 20% chance of letting a bullet through the cover now has a 10%. It also gives you a small shooting accuracy penalty.
This sounds like a cheap way of doing it, but it’s way easier to calculate and works pretty much the same as a more complicated system. Leaning out could easily be done by removing the accuracy penalty and lowering the cover rating a bit, but I think this would get tedious as the player would always want to get into cover and lean, which isn’t realllllly that much fun in an RL/turn based game.
This one is actually already in the game, IIRC it just doesn’t have messages right now.
This one is actually already in the game, IIRC it just doesn’t have messages right now.[/quote]
I think the best way to show this is to colour the tiles (on the aiming line) which the bullet passes through in orange (or any colour) to show that you’re shooting through cover. Messages would work also. I’ve implemented a targeting chip which shows you a better read out (20% chance here, 50% chance here and so on). I’ve definitely not sorted out the percentages though - if you shoot through two pieces of cover you’re pretty much guaranteed not to hit.
So, on another forum, Hektor brought up the interesting point of something along the lines of melee cover, where bushes don’t necessarily let you hack freely at things, and provide a small defensive bonus. Sort of like those grid based tactics games. So while you can’t move as fast, it might be nice if that super fast/weak hitting skeleton, couldn’t do nearly as much to you.