'Kick' attack to knockback an enemy

Game Talk The Drawing Board
21

The whole point of the thread was to basically make a knock back action with special effects. A kick. Simple. Stop thinking about combat for a minute there, holy hell.
The most important functions it could have would be:
-push enemies back as long as there is nothing behind them
-push small furniture far away, making noise. It could hit and knock back ther stuff in the process.
-kick items far away. I’d like to be able to just kick the stuff in a door to close in a hurry. Or kick a can far away just to make noise and attract attention.
-kick doors. More noise, faster.
I’d also love to have kicks be effective against small, non flying enemies.

After reading a bit of the post over me, edit: it should indeed be accurate, at least mostly. Leave juuust a bit of chance maybe. Having it be accurate enough helps with planning your moves and etc. It’s more fun.
It should be strength based also, of course.

22

No. A kick doesnt work.

period.

Stop constricting our imaginations wit action hero physical feats.

23

I see no argument there apart from saying “no I don’t like this, stop”. Ignore him.

24

No you choose not to.

this idea, as proposed, is unlikely to ever make it past this thread.

Not least of which is that kicking isnt really a good option in the game. Ive told you why already. You CHOSE to ignore it.

Re-purposing the smash attack to work on mons is suitable, and has been suggested before. No kicking fridges to budge them, no magic laws-of-reality bending.

Lol

25

See http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=11144
Specifically http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=11144.msg247576#msg247576

Drop the ‘kick’ part, it’s an irrelevant detail about how you might want to make a push happen.
The description of the action might say kick, but there’s no reason for it to always be a kick.

26

Just like most other suggestions, then? That comes off as a surprise to nobody. Maybe if we brainstorm well enough somebody who actually likes the idea and knows coding can try to implement it. This is no different to any other suggestions thread. You not liking the idea prompts you to say what you’re saying, really; nothing more.

I understand why you gave the most extreme of examples, but I also expected you to use some common sense. Alas, it seems to not work with people deliberately trying to bend wording into suiting their own agenda, so let me clarify. When we say “furniture” we don’t mean all furniture. Just like (G)rab relies on your STR, so should a kick. I believe I already mentioned that in my previous post. Want to be more realistic? Fine. No kicking fridges, or book cases, or brick kilns, or any heavy object for that matter. Instead, let us kick tables, chairs and lockers over. Dressers too, maybe. Furthermore, vehicles - imagine kicking a shopping cart into a zombie to slow it down. That should be feasible, right?

Kicking objects out of the way - clothes, empty containers, lumps/chunks of steel/plastic (adding pain to that can be amusing), pipes and sticks, weapons etc. What’s wrong with that? Don’t think “kick as hard as I can to do as much damage”, but rather a nudge with your foot when it comes to items laying on the ground. We’re relying on the character making a decision here - kick that heavy metal object hard, or shove it gently? Kick that can/rock hard, or move it a few inches? The process can be automatic, if you want to differentiate it from a (t)hrow. The character decides how far the item goes (based on weight) without giving the player a chance to aim. Light objects get kicked far (farther than you could throw them?), heavy objects don’t.

Understand that it’s that kind of a panic, last resort move, mainly used when being chased: be it zombies, or preying woodland creatures, or robots. You either kick the door down, since you don’t have enough time to pry it open, or kick a monster back when you’re climbing through a window frame to grant you these split seconds required for you to make your escape. You can add a chance to stun a monster after getting pushed back into a tile, giving you even MORE time and making the move even more useful. Like I said, it’ll be balanced in a way that makes overusing it harmful to the PC. Perhaps make zombies and robots more prone to getting kicked - what with them being dumb and all - and woodland creatures/human NPCs almost impossible to kick back successfully. Fair stamina usage could make it less effective, and so can the chance of being hurt bad if you fail to execute the move properly.

EDIT:

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:25, topic:13185”]Drop the ‘kick’ part, it’s an irrelevant detail about how you might want to make a push happen.
The description of the action might say kick, but there’s no reason for it to always be a kick.[/quote]

Sure. Again, I don’t think anybody would mind (s)mash or (G)rab having the very same functionality. We’re just discussing what it would perform and what its ultimate goal is.

27

More specifically, while kicking and pushing is quite dangerous against a human opponent, I feel like it would be significantly less dangerous against a basic zombie as they move and more importantly react much more slowly than a human.

28

Judging from how easily regular zed movement is impeded by shrubbery and objects such as chairs and tables, as well as how they cannot push injured, slow-moving zed out of their way, I’d guess regular zed don’t have very good balance, from lack of simple motor skills.

Also, since you mentioned it, zed would be easy to knock down, kick or otherwise, as they react slowly, and thus wouldn’t be gliding around and evading strikes like dominick cruz. Easy to nail with a kick to the knee, or a good shove.

29

Actually this solution, a weak physical attack that can inflict ‘down’ or knock something backwards, is a good answer for people who dislike kiting in combat.

STUMBLES could be expanded to mean ‘easy to knock over’.

30

Also, it should of course waste stamina, to not be able to push a mosnter infinitely.

31

Good point, downing would likely be easier than pushing in many cases.

32

Just want to say that I like this idea, and agree with StopSignal and KliPeH.

33

Should we call this "s"hove then? A possible message would be “You (fail to) smash the (zombie) out of the way!”

All fine and good if all we’re doing is trying to push a zombie back one square (at the cost of stamina, of course). Wouldn’t work on furniture, but we can already "g"rab that. Speaking of which, how hard would it be to allowing players to "g"rab a zombie instead of just furniture? That would lend itself a similar utility.

For moving everything on a square out of a door, without worrying about gently moving each item exactly where you want it, I think "g"rab would be the most intuitive command. “You grab the pile of stuff.” “You move the pile of stuff” If you feel moving 1000 L of stuff at once is a little OP, then “As you move the grabbed pile of stuff, a few items fall out of your arms.”

For moving stacks of items in a more destructive manner, it would be fun if "s"mashing a stack of items had a high chance of moving nonsmashable items to adjacent squares (guarunteed chance to move a single item.) Sadly, this would interfere with "s"mashing corpses and "s"mashing corpses that have already been pulped, so it might be best to not change the utility of “s” and use other existing keybinds like “g” instead.

…Or… dump realism in favor of utility and ease of use and call it a "k"ick. We all know it’s really a "S"hove, but the average gamer wouldn’t appreciate us changing the utility of “S”! (Now that I think of it though, we already have "Q"uit, why do we even have "S"ave? Couldn’t they be rolled into the same command?) Then there’s "B"ash, "b"ash, "L"ug, "P"ush… we got option here.