Can we expand character’s and NPC anatomy for more combat realism? Now combat with bandits is to long on my weapons level (bows, crossbows, AR-15 with 2 mags). I thought it’ll be fast enough to kill 5 bandits with longbow, because it’s good piercing ability, so it should be deadly for unarmed enemies, I started to shot them and it took all of my 30 arrows I had, to kill the first melee bandit, that followed my almost a mile when I shoot-n-run from him, and at least 25 arrows was in his body till he died.
As I guess there is simple hitpoints health system of NPC. Can we make it more realistic, at least similar to Rimworld or even DF’s anatomy, that will use inner organs, lungs, head, brain, bones etc., to separate effects of bashing, cutting and peircing weapons. And damaging of some part should affect more dramatically to overall body. We can try to do it for character for first time and after testing and debugging will expand it to NPCs, after all we can use such system for most part of Zs, with their own “features”. After design of such feature we could expand such way medicine treatment system for more simulation. I’m sure there are a lot of Medic experts in community that could be involved and interested in such development. Then maybe targeting system will be rebalanced, auto-targeting or shoot specific part would be nice.
NPCs have the same exact health system as the player. You’re likely getting unlucky and hitting their arms and legs as well.
As for the rest of that it’s been outright stated that for CDDAs purposes they won’t be going into the detailed combat of dwarf fortress adventure mode.
i-am-erk and I have discussed adding more body parts and creating a flexible anatomy system, but that’s more in the context of adding elbows and letting insect mutants actually get another set of arms. Even if we do that, the details on vital organs are going to be limited to a “vital organs” body part, not distinct lungs and bones.
There’s also been discussion of redoing ranged critical hits, so that you can either aim for the center of mass or a high value target. If you aim for the center of mass, your critical hits will be less damaging, but most of your hits and grazes will potentially injure your target it. If you aim for a high value target (like the head, for instance), only your best hits will hit the target at all.
This is a diagram I whipped up to illustrate the concept when the devs were discussing it: the green and blue circles are “core” and “critical” hits, the red circles are “hits”, and the yellow circles are “grazes”. The left person is a high value target and the right is the center of mass aiming.
Basically, if you aim for a high value target, you are much more likely to miss, but the few hits you actually make will do more damage. If you aim for the center of mass, you’re more likely to hit.
All that said, there hasn’t been any concrete plan to turn any of this into code. It’s all aspirational at this point.
That’ll be too complicated task, to reach DF in combat 
Maybe we can make something like Rimworld, I mean more serious damage effects, more bleeding for live humans NPC, about 50% of piercing body hits should result death in 1 minute or instadeath. Bullet hits should have shock effect even unserious hit to arm or leg should demoralise enemy so he don’t want to fight any more. Bullets also make a lot of damage when hits to body, inner bleeding, organ smashing, multiple bone crashes, Human after such hit falls and can’t move for at least minute, But ingame enemy can absorb all the glock mag ammos and continue pursuing my character.
I played without NPC for many years and tried them now, and it’s too disappointing for me. Combat was really good versus Zs, they have no morale and die only after headshot, so a couple critical hits before the deadly one seems realistic for current lore, But live humans are not so immortal, they bleeding, breathing, get pain. They should be more flexible in tactics enemies, but more vulnerable when not in armor, I think. Piercing damages for living characters are fatal in 80% without proper treatment
That works both ways. If you simulate that for NPC, the PC would/should suffer the same.
Yeah, and it’s good challenge I think, current system lets you recover even fully damaged hand\leg, it’s too simple. Player should avoid risky combats, fight from cover, use grenades and affraid to be shot even once, it’s not an action movie. Attacking gang could be performed only with high prepared sniper position, using traps, bombs etc. And direct confrontation must be suicidic in game, players have to find tricky, intelligent ways to get what they want from other survivors especially if they are well armed.
Rebel - sabotage rules I don’t know where to use all these DIY Bombs etc…
You are dramatically overestimating the lethality of wounds, even deep piercing wounds to the torso. You are also dramatically overestimating the effectiveness of bullet wounds to the limbs.
Look at the 1986 Miami FBI shoot-out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout: Platt took bullets to the arm (that went into his torso, penetrating his lung), his right thigh, his left foot, and one or two times in his right arm. He was still able to walk and murder two FBI agents and incapacitate another two. He then took another two buckshot shells to his feet and was still capable of trying to drive until a point blank revolver shot incapacitated him. Toxicology tests performed during the autopsy confirmed that Platt was not on drugs at the time of the shoot-out.
There are some problems with CDDA’s injury model, but the intermittent robustness of NPCs is not one of them. For every NPC that fights through multiple hits to the limbs and torso, I’ve also seen an NPC drop from two arrows to the face.
Yeah, sometimes it goes like this, but all of these men are fully trained ex-soldiers with combat experience, they know how to fight and resist shock effects, they were ready to fight at that moment, it’s not usual situation, thats why it’s so famous. For obvious civilian it’s very hard to overfight he’s self instincts and nerves. Policemans are training such situations everytime for many years to be ready.
I took part in couple real conflicts for last 6 years and experienced many fights and 2 ambushes, so normal human will panic and stuck laying down when somebody is shooting in his direction, shocking when his finger got shoot away, and almost every radical inspired fanatic terrorist running dropping his weapons and sh#t after near 50m explosion or catching bullet. 7.62 cal easily shoot away hand or foot, higher leg bones fragmentation results amputation in 100% field treatment, because otherway it consumes most blood and cause man die.
As we play for yesterdays civilian survivors, so I thing it’ll be more realistic to make most NPCs and player more vulnerable.
You forget that we are among the most durable species with some of the best stamina and adrenaline systems out there. And there is a thing called survival instincts, something that doesn’t just go away. Granted, vital organ damage will get any creature killed, but basically everything that’s alive in the game is infected and somewhat a part of the blob if I’m understanding the lore correctly. The blob, as you may know, has no vital organs and presumably “heals” pretty quickly. This stands to reason that any creature that is at least minimally part of the blob would be less reliant on vital organs and would be less vulnerable to them getting damaged, resulting in most things being able to at least take a couple of shots before going down.
It’s hardly scientific, but I did a little testing.
Default World
STR DEX INT PER all set to 10
Archery 6, Marksmanship 6
Longbow, Simple Steel Arrows
Spawned in NPC and shot at them using only precise shots.
Arrows Fired - Notable Chest Armor
9 - trench coat
10 - trench coat
11 - leather vest
14 - leather jacket
16 - two leather backpacks
31 - kevlar vest
37 - kevlar vest + leather jacket