Momentum mechanic

[StopSignal]

What about, if you hit an enemy while running and having good speed, it would give a critical or at least buffed attack?

So I thought of this, what about, if you have been running for at least four tiles in a direction, without changing direction, and with a good speed of course (so it wouldn’t work while you are too hurt), you’d gain “momentum”. A message would appear to indicate it, of course.
Momentum would do two things, it would make the next melee attack buffed, and it would also hamper the ability to aim.
Therefore buffing and nerfing.
It would make moving and attacking a bit more interesting than just “attack and back away, preferably to bushes”. It helps people who have an aggressive way of playing.
Of course, of you walk one tile or move in another direction, momentum is lost.

[Coolthulhu]

I’d rather see it affecting attack speed: if you change facing rapidly, you get a small (flat) penalty to attack speed, just for the next attack. Unless the target is in the direction you have last moved.
If you change facing by running, the penalty is increased.
No flanking or anything, just penalizing the hit-step-hit-step method of kiting compared to more proper methods.

Not sure if it’s a good idea, though.

[StopSignal]

I don’t think that’d be a good idea. It penalizes way too much an early game way of playing. It kind of just takes a tool from your hand instead of adding more interesting tools.

[Coolthulhu]

I don’t see a good way to make offensive momentum useful, then.

It needs to trigger a lot to matter - something as occasional as once per fight would only really work for monsters, not player.

[John_Candlebury]

Two ideas related to this:
-Jousting or slashing swords from vehicles and maybe eventually horses could implement momentum as extra damage.
-Lances and the two handed swords could have a high damage attack that is triggered when you are running at high speed and leaves you vulnerable for a pair of turns or so, it wouldn’t be that useful during the fight but could be used as a risky way to initiate fights by targeting the most dangerous zombie in a horde. The predator zombie and its lower tier variants could also do something similar to this

[kevin.granade]

I actually looked into this quite a whie ago and would like it to be a central mechanic, but it just hasn’t bubbled to the top of the list:
Walking would not accumulate momentum.
Running would.
With each “step” (keypress) taken in a direction while running, the game tracks an increase in momentum in the direction moved.
This momentum caps at your top running speed, which is limited by your stamina level, if you’re winded you can’t run as fast.
Steps in the direction of the monentum have their move costs reduced, they make momentum reduce a lot.
Steps opposite the direction of momentum have their move costs increased.
Stps in in-between directions are affected as you’d expect, with partial increase or decrease based on how much they are aligned with current momentum.
When running in a direction, ‘.’ would do “keep running in this direction at this speed” instead of “don’t move”.
If your momentum is high enough, you might become incapable of stoping in a single action, you might have to spend a turn or so just shedding your momentum by “stepping” in the opposite direction.
Also at high levels of momentum, you’d get the effects people have mentioned in this thread, like increased force behind attacks and reduced ability to fire ranged weapons.
Probably we’d introduce a new movement mode, “jogging” or similar, that would cap momentum at a level where you can still stop immediately if you want.