If push comes to shove

[redxlaser15]

I was clearing out a mansion when I had this idea, and as far as I know it isn’t quite possible:
The ability to shove enemies away from you and into another tile.

Now, you can push enemies out of a window, which would be super useful if you are on high floors. Then there are things like traps and fire you could use too! If nothing else, it can give you a chance to get just a little distance more between an enemy.

This would probably have a fair amount of difficulty in it, and require a considerable amount of strength depending on what you are shoving. There will be no guarantee that you’ll succeed either, and some enemies might actually be impossible to move (good luck shoving a freaking zombie hulk).

[Orange01]

A lot of martial arts and weapons give special attacks that push or knock back enemies.

[redxlaser15]

Yes, but I don’t have any martial arts skills and I can push stuff without weapons. There is no reason that you can do that with those requirements and not without other than maybe game balance to some extent. But I don’t that even then you could specifically choose to shove something or someone. For balancing purposes, we could have it so martial arts and certain weapons give a considerable chance increase to succeed or something.

[AlmostHuman]

It’d be nice to be able to choose how you attack. Not on a Dwarf Fortress level of course, that is just too much. But maybe have a set list of attacks you can perform which changes depending on your martial arts or lack thereof.

Pushing can be one of your default attacks.

[Daeros13]

Maybe, since they are zombies, there would be a risk of them grabbing you and biting.

Some could be especially dangerous to try to push, such as the Grabber Zombies, while others may just blow up, like the Bloaters.

[Terror]

Well get martial arts lol, that’s the price you pay for not having them.

[darktoes]

A generic “push” attack would make sense. It would have to be fairly slow, so you’d be very open to attacks from other zombies, but it would make sense for a single person to be able to handle a single basic zombie on their own with relative ease. At the very least, it would add more strategy to earlygame combat than “hit each other till one of us dies or runs away”. Maybe.

[kevin.granade]

Something like

Issue: Melee Combat Overhaul

or

Issue: Add the ability to manipulate the position of enemy monsters through a "push" command

is still an option.

Basically we establish several different flavors of attacking, called “attack goal” (unless someone suggests a better name) that adjusts what is accomplished by a melee attack.
damage: the status quo, do something to cause wounds that will eventually make the target drop.
move: a tactical option to adjust the position of a target, might incidentally cause damage.
cripple: attempt to inflict debilitating wounds on the target, like breaking legs or feet.

Martial art styles would use these to select which techniques to perform.

[JayThirtySeven]

If you shove a grabber zombie off of a tall building it should get a chance to grab and drag you down with it.

[Daeros13]

In other words, learn to get on github and research stuff before posting?

So that seems “push” #1429 is a perfect setup and figures in martial arts as well. That looks to be near exactly what was discussed here. Shame it stalled and closed.

And that “Melee Combat” #1565 looks like it would increase the effectiveness of hand to hand combat, I wonder if it was OP? Hard for me to tell by the description of it. But I see it stalled and closed as well.

Guess I need to make a github account afterall.

[kevin.granade]

This stuff is ancient history, so don’t feel bad for not finding it. I just like to drop in references to old stuff when it comes up so you can find it easier