Opportunity based melee attack system

[deoxy]

The “cooldown” concept drives me crazy - yes, I could use a palm-nose strike on that guy, but I used on the previous guy, so I can’t just this minute, I’ll have to just punch him instead. Oh, now I can use it, yay!

Either there’s some kind of condition that has to be dealt with (a status on yourself) or inflicted (a status on them), or you have to have the energy to do it (stamina). Those two things are quite sufficient, I think. Want to have some kind of “cool down” from doing SuperAwesomePunchInFace attack? Make it take a lot of stamina, require the enemy to have some kind of “vulnerable” status (“off balance” for instance), or require a status of the player (“chi-focused” or something - takes an action to get it ready), or give the player a status afterwards that prevents it (“chi-drained” or such). Don’t have very many of these statuses, mind you, but have them overlap - if I can’t SuperAwesomePunchInFace because I’m too tired from doing it a moment ago, there’s no reason I should be able to SuperAwesomeKickInFace instead, since I’d be too tired to do that one, as well.

On top of just not liking the cooldown idea on the whole, I’d point out that we already have statuses and stamina - I don’t think we should add another thing like cooldowns into the mix.

The idea of “offense/defense” sounds GREAT, though - when I’m dealing with a horde, and I’m out of stamina, my DPS drops by half, and that’s really all there is to it (both good and bad). If I want to try to get my stamina back up (say, to run away), there’s really nothing useful for me to do but stand there and take hits.

Some kind of “just keep them back while I catch my breath” sort of thing would be great - I’m not using my full strength trying to put them down, I’m just batting their clawing hands away, or tripping them to delay them a few moments. Stamina restores at normal rate, but there’s no attack eating it back up (or some kind of significantly lesser usage).

[Rysith]

As opposed to any kind of player or martial art black/white -listing, I’d prefer to see attacks (defined in json of course) with one or more attributes stating the “goal” of the attack, such as “damage”, “crippling”, “defense”, “avoidance”, “delaying”, “stunning”. The player would choose a goal for their attacks, basically switching “modes”, and that would bias which attacks get selected. Examples of how that might play out at the end.

I think I’d like to see that system be be somewhat skill-gated, which might address some of the anti-cooldown issues that deoxy raised as well - If I’m melee 0 / unarmed 1, even if I choose a focus there could still be ‘suboptimal’ techniques added to the list of things to try, and so I won’t SuperAwesomePunchInFace every turn. As I acquired martial arts and became more skilled, the selection of techniques available would grow and the biasing would grow stronger[1] so that when someone is melee 10 / unarmed 10 and they choose “damage”, they might be able to SuperAwesomePunchInFace almost every turn, which I think would be a nice way to demonstrate skill progression beyond the current “do more damage”. It might also mean that lower-skilled characters could flail away with whatever setting because it didn’t do much, but a skilled fighter needed to manage their settings more closely - SuperAwesomePunchInFaceing every turn might be great for damage, but drain stamina quickly, and so a skilled fighter wouldn’t just stay on “damage” all the time, but would alternate between damage and defense or avoidance as they needed to, much like an actually-skilled fighter.

[1] Possibly with the option to choose multiple goals, which would just expand the pool of possible techniques while focusing even more on the ones that did both - damage + stunning might heavily prioritize something like Brutal Strike that is slow but high-damage and provides a stun.

[kevin.granade]

The “cooldown” concept drives me crazy - yes, I could use a palm-nose strike on that guy, but I used on the previous guy, so I can’t just this minute, I’ll have to just punch him instead. Oh, now I can use it, yay!

I understand where you’re coming from, but IMO a cooldown system sits in between a totally random system like what Coolthulu proposes (and what df does) and a MUCH more detailed system. As far as believability, random and cooldown are similar, both reflect the concept of, “situational factors influence relative value of different attacks” in a very abstract way. Where cooldowns are better is they allow more flavorful attacks to happen periodically but consistently, where random throws any idea of consistency out the window.

Either there’s some kind of condition that has to be dealt with (a status on yourself) or inflicted (a status on them), or you have to have the energy to do it (stamina). Those two things are quite sufficient, I think. Want to have some kind of “cool down” from doing SuperAwesomePunchInFace attack? Make it take a lot of stamina, require the enemy to have some kind of “vulnerable” status (“off balance” for instance), or require a status of the player (“chi-focused” or something - takes an action to get it ready), or give the player a status afterwards that prevents it (“chi-drained” or such). Don’t have very many of these statuses, mind you, but have them overlap - if I can’t SuperAwesomePunchInFace because I’m too tired from doing it a moment ago, there’s no reason I should be able to SuperAwesomeKickInFace instead, since I’d be too tired to do that one, as well.

I’d prefer this kind of thing too, but it’s about 20x as much work to make it work like this (that’s my actual estimate, not hyperbole), and since I’m not the one stepping up to write it, there’s only so much I can insist on. IMO a cooldown gets us 60-80% of the behavior we want with 5% of the work.
To more directly address your example, you might not be able to execute SuperAwesomePunchInFace over and over again because now your dominant arm is extended, or the enemy is knocked back too far, or you’re off balance after the last one, or a number of other things. The question is, is it worthwhile to track all of those things and implement that level of detail in order to get the specific behavior? I’m honestly not sure.

On top of just not liking the cooldown idea on the whole, I’d point out that we already have statuses and stamina - I don’t think we should add another thing like cooldowns into the mix.

This idea fundamentally does something to vary which attacks are made. Not adding, “something more than stamina” means rejecting the idea as a whole. IMO randomly tweaking chance of success or damage output every turn is going to be less understandable and predictable than a simple concept like a cooldown.

[quote=“deoxy, post:7, topic:13457”]The idea of “offense/defense” sounds GREAT, though - when I’m dealing with a horde, and I’m out of stamina, my DPS drops by half, and that’s really all there is to it (both good and bad). If I want to try to get my stamina back up (say, to run away), there’s really nothing useful for me to do but stand there and take hits.

Some kind of “just keep them back while I catch my breath” sort of thing would be great - I’m not using my full strength trying to put them down, I’m just batting their clawing hands away, or tripping them to delay them a few moments. Stamina restores at normal rate, but there’s no attack eating it back up (or some kind of significantly lesser usage).[/quote]
Glad you like that part, this concept was preexisting and I just wanted to make sure that it didn’t get lost .

[deoxy]

I’d prefer this kind of thing too, but it’s about 20x as much work to make it work like this (that’s my actual estimate, not hyperbole), and since I’m not the one stepping up to write it, there’s only so much I can insist on. IMO a cooldown gets us 60-80% of the behavior we want with 5% of the work.

As much as I dislike it for the logical slap in the face, I do have to agree with your point.

To more directly address your example, you might not be able to execute SuperAwesomePunchInFace over and over again because now your dominant arm is extended, or the enemy is knocked back too far, or you’re off balance after the last one, or a number of other things. The question is, is it worthwhile to track all of those things and implement that level of detail in order to get the specific behavior? I’m honestly not sure.

When I said, “Don’t have very many of these statuses, mind you, but have them overlap” I really meant it - it shouldn’t be a LOT of work to implement, because there should be very few statuses involved.

To crib from other systems a bit, even a single status goes a LONG way. In 3rd edition D&D, there was the concept of “focused” for monks, where they had to do something to achieve a “focused” state; having that state allowed a few different things, some of which were fairly minor, and some of which were more major but cost you the “focused” state. In 4th edition, there was the generally applicable “combat advantage” state - the classic “backstab” worked when you had combat advantage against the target for any reason, among other such things.

I would suggest at MOST 2 of each kind of state (good and bad), so four states, max. Actually, we already have “stunned” and “down”, both of which have an inherent penalty and suggest some kind of vulnerability, so I’d suggest only one more bad state, one that gives the vulnerability part with no inherent penalties - “off balance” or something. One “good” state would probably be sufficient (like “focused”).

As far as believability, random and cooldown are similar, both reflect the concept of, “situational factors influence relative value of different attacks” in a very abstract way. Where cooldowns are better is they allow more flavorful attacks to happen periodically but consistently, where random throws any idea of consistency out the window.

Combat should involve a significant amount of randomness, at least against intelligent opponents… against zombies, maybe less would be OK, as you could pull the same trick as many times as you wanted.

SuperAwesomePunchInFace

SuperAwesomePunchInFace

If SuperAwesomePunchInFace becomes a thing around here, I am going to laugh. A lot. For a loooooonnng time.

I may have to make a mod that gives a martial arts style just for that. Gives nothing but defensive stuff and a crit technique for x50 damage and half movement points, available at level 10 unarmed skill. snerk

[viggolo]

how about:

if you roll a Hit and roll high on a random die and pass a threshold (e.g. you roll 70 on a d100 and pass a 10 check):
you deal your primary damage and then:
get to roll to hit again on the same turn with a penalty and if you succeed, you do one of your fancy attacks from your fancy attack list. After attacking, roll the d100 and if you pass the harder check now, you get to roll to attack again until you run out of luck or possible attacks. If your attack kills your target and you pass another ‘lucky’ roll you get to roll a ToHit on a nearby hostile enemy?

so you attack a zombie, hit him, ‘pass a luck check’, get to roll another to hit with a different attack from your list of possible attacks, hit with it, roll luck and pass again, repeat.

Every other luck check ought to be more difficult than the last lest you want to be able to combo forever. It could be weighted or modified by some stats/statuses or whatnot. This is more passive than having to choose modes, prompts, going through menus or whatever, which is good for a game with thousands of possible enemies and encounters. Having to manually swap attack modes and styles would get cumbersome and tedious over time.

[Coolthulhu]

[quote=“viggolo, post:11, topic:13457”]if you roll a Hit and roll high on a random die and pass a threshold (e.g. you roll 70 on a d100 and pass a 10 check):
you deal your primary damage and then:
get to roll to hit again on the same turn with a penalty and if you succeed, you do one of your fancy attacks from your fancy attack list.[/quote]

This would drop a lot of the advantages of the opportunity system. For example, attacks would no longer be “always good” - you’d want to remove bad attacks from the list just so that they don’t eat up your fancy attack slots. This would mean either manual blacklisting (bad) or having to wear gloves to cover your claws just so that they don’t aux-attack (horrible).

I’d prefer this kind of thing too, but it’s about 20x as much work to make it work like this (that’s my actual estimate, not hyperbole), and since I’m not the one stepping up to write it, there’s only so much I can insist on. IMO a cooldown gets us 60-80% of the behavior we want with 5% of the work.

I’d disagree about that estimate: cooldown would get us a lot of behavior, but it would eventually turn into a lot of work if we were to combine it with automatic selection.

Having a simple, mostly stateless, player-driven “attack routine” means that we can give player a combat AI which will almost always pick the best attacks for a given situation. It wouldn’t require micromanagement.
By adding cooldowns to that, we now force the player to micromanage around the AI: we want to use the SuperAwesomePunchInFace against hulk, FlyingGroinKick against survivor zombie, then SissySlap against everything else until our good attacks cool down. But this would impair player’s ability to influence combat: we want the good attacks to proc against strong stuff as soon as possible so that they can cool down, while we also want to use the optimal attacks. So manual “use SAPIF against hulk” doesn’t cut it - it forces the AI to drop the attacks which could actually be BETTER than SAPIF (due to them gaining random turn advantage).

By having only move cost, accuracy, and damage (clipped to monster’s current hp) to care about, the simple AI system could easily make best decisions in vast majority of cases, whether player was in a serious fight or just otab-ing through a dungeon. This would mean that the player wouldn’t need to “switch to manual” often, saving us a great deal of UI, which we all hate to write and use.

[viggolo]

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:1, topic:13457”]Our current melee system is pretty simple: when you attack, you attack with currently wielded weapon. Then you get bonus attacks due to mutations (if you have them).

How about this:

[ul][li]When attacking, game enumerates all possible attacks[/li]
[li]Some of them are pretty weak most of the time: headbutts, elbow strikes, pistol whips[/li]
[li]The attacks get some random permutation to accuracy/expected damage every time[/li]
[li]The effectiveness of attacks is evaluated based on enemy (for example, armor is subtracted from damage)[/li]
[li]Attacks are weighted somehow: usually just by DPS, but sometimes by being finishing strikes (dropping monster to 0 hp or less) or special effects[/li]
[li]Best one is picked and executed[/li][/ul][/quote]

Game picking the most damaging and accurate (of all of them on average) available free attack from the list automatically is a pretty simple way to go here. I like this, even if it results in the player doing the same one-two punch over and over, it gets the job done and that’s what matters. Disabling some attacks you’d want to avoid should also be possible (e.g. if the game automatically chooses an attack that always knocks an enemy away when you don’t want that to happen)

[Coolthulhu]

Disabling some attacks you’d want to avoid should also be possible (e.g. if the game automatically chooses an attack that always knocks an enemy away when you don’t want that to happen)

I totally forgot to mention that as an example of an undesirable attack, even though I kept thinking about it.

Knockback is probably the best reason to include that blacklisting, yeah.

[Rysith]

[quote=“viggolo, post:13, topic:13457”]Disabling some attacks you’d want to avoid should also be possible (e.g. if the game automatically chooses an attack that always knocks an enemy away when you don’t want that to happen)

I totally forgot to mention that as an example of an undesirable attack, even though I kept thinking about it.

Knockback is probably the best reason to include that blacklisting, yeah.[/quote]

I’d still like to be able to (attempt to) let the game know what sort of effects I (as the player) want, and let the game (as the character) work out what I can actually do based on some randomness and the character’s skills. It seems appropriate that even if an unskilled character wanted to, they couldn’t perfectly control what sorts of attacks they were doing, it would mostly just be swinging and hoping for a hit. Similarly, if the character has high skill I (as the player) don’t want to have to repeatedly alter the set of moves that are being used (from ‘only the fast, safe moves’ for normal zombies to ‘only the high-damage stunning moves’ for brutes to ‘moves with knockdown and knockback’ to clear space for a retreat), I’d like to be able to choose categories of moves (potentially pre-defined, potentially that I’ve set up myself) that the character can (because they are high-skill) reliably pull off. If I don’t want knockback I don’t blacklist knockback moves, I choose a style that doesn’t use them like ‘fast attacks only’ or something.

[kevin.granade]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:9, topic:13457”]I’d prefer this kind of thing too, but it’s about 20x as much work to make it work like this (that’s my actual estimate, not hyperbole), and since I’m not the one stepping up to write it, there’s only so much I can insist on. IMO a cooldown gets us 60-80% of the behavior we want with 5% of the work.

I’d disagree about that estimate: cooldown would get us a lot of behavior, but it would eventually turn into a lot of work if we were to combine it with automatic selection.[/quote]
I don’t follow, attacks that are cooling down wouldn’t be added to the list of available attacks, it couldn’t be simpler from that angle. I could definitely be missing something though.

By adding cooldowns to that, we now force the player to micromanage around the AI

This is a good point and an unintended side effect of the cooldown approach.

The thing I’m trying to prevent is that random variations with no cooldown will do one of two things.

1. Execute the same attack every time if the difference between the best and next best attack is larger than the random variation. (Also applies to each additional attack option, there will be a strong bias toward the top few attacks).
2. Sometimes nerf the best attacks so much that an extremely suboptimal attack is executed repeatedly, leading to YASD because damage output is so unreliable.

I don’t think it’s too hard to work around this, but we need to be clearer about our goals as opposed to the mechanisms we’re using.

By having only move cost, accuracy, and damage (clipped to monster’s current hp) to care about, the simple AI system could easily make best decisions in vast majority of cases, whether player was in a serious fight or just otab-ing through a dungeon. This would mean that the player wouldn’t need to “switch to manual” often, saving us a great deal of UI, which we all hate to write and use.

This bias toward damage over time would lead to non-damage-dealing attacks not being worthwhile. Even if you switch modes and consider only attacks that cripple, delay, or deal other status effects, only the ones that deal the most damage would actually execute. I don’t want to sacrifice more interesting kinds of attacks in order to add more variation in just damage dealing attacks.

There’s a straightforward solution though, instead of filtering the list, alternate attack modes could change the evaluation function that selects the best attack. “Delay” mode could evaluate based on chance-to-delay, expected delay, and move cost.

[Coolthulhu]

This could get complex fast, but I’m afraid it has to - avoiding manual control isn’t easy.

The weight change of effects would probably have to depend on the target. Otherwise the player would need to switch to aggressive to attack hulks, then back to defensive in the next turn, thus defeating the whole point of modes.

[viggolo]

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:12, topic:13457”][quote=“Kevin Granade, post:9, topic:13457”]I’d prefer this kind of thing too, but it’s about 20x as much work to make it work like this (that’s my actual estimate, not hyperbole), and since I’m not the one stepping up to write it, there’s only so much I can insist on. IMO a cooldown gets us 60-80% of the behavior we want with 5% of the work.

I’d disagree about that estimate: cooldown would get us a lot of behavior, but it would eventually turn into a lot of work if we were to combine it with automatic selection.[/quote]
I don’t follow, attacks that are cooling down wouldn’t be added to the list of available attacks, it couldn’t be simpler from that angle. I could definitely be missing something though.

By adding cooldowns to that, we now force the player to micromanage around the AI

This is a good point and an unintended side effect of the cooldown approach.

The thing I’m trying to prevent is that random variations with no cooldown will do one of two things.

1. Execute the same attack every time if the difference between the best and next best attack is larger than the random variation. [glow=red,2,300](Also applies to each additional attack option, there will be a strong bias toward the top few attacks).[/glow]
2. Sometimes nerf the best attacks so much that an extremely suboptimal attack is executed repeatedly, leading to YASD because damage output is so unreliable.

I don’t think it’s too hard to work around this, but we need to be clearer about our goals as opposed to the mechanisms we’re using.

By having only move cost, accuracy, and damage (clipped to monster’s current hp) to care about, the simple AI system could easily make best decisions in vast majority of cases, whether player was in a serious fight or just otab-ing through a dungeon. This would mean that the player wouldn’t need to “switch to manual” often, saving us a great deal of UI, which we all hate to write and use.

[glow=red,2,300]This bias toward damage over time would lead to non-damage-dealing attacks not being worthwhile. Even if you switch modes and consider only attacks that cripple, delay, or deal other status effects, only the ones that deal the most damage would actually execute. I don’t want to sacrifice more interesting kinds of attacks in order to add more variation in just damage dealing attacks.

There’s a straightforward solution though, instead of filtering the list, alternate attack modes could change the evaluation function that selects the best attack. “Delay” mode could evaluate based on chance-to-delay, expected delay, and move cost.[/glow][/quote]

From one side: why would one actively engage in mortal combat with an enemy if not to neutralise them as quickly and efficiently as possible? Choosing to cripple your opponent over dealing immediate lethal damage is pretty much absurd. Landing a crippling strike ‘may’ be useful when you know you can’t deal enough damage to your opponent in a short time frame (swarmed from every side) or when you know that there is no way that you could harm your opponent (insanely armoured) but then why wouldn’t you just run in the first place… seems like an error in judgement from the start. So that’s probably why the game should always prioritise maximum damage/accuracy because it expects you to know better not to engage in combat you aren’t going to win.

However, there ‘could’ be some attacks in ‘some’ very specific and rare situations which stat-wise don’t do a lot of damage but would debuff the opponent to take more damage from there on. Such a strike would probably be much weaker damage-wise than a full broadsword swing to the dome piece, but cumulatively allow to stack more damage on your opponent than if you’d just be swinging at it wildly. Or of course you may want to cripple a zombie’s legs while he’s in a doorway to stop the horde from catching up. Another lower dmg attack would be one that is focused on penetrating armour (precise stab between the plates doesn’t have as much punch behind the swing) which might be more useful in a specific combat situation vs a tanky enemy.

For general-purpose combat versatility, damage/accuracy is still preferred

[Coolthulhu]

From one side: why would one actively engage in mortal combat with an enemy if not to neutralise them as quickly and efficiently as possible?

Stunlocking+knockbacklocking hulks is an overpowered technique. While it isn’t supposed to be treated as a proper tactic here, the combat AI system should, where possible, allow efficient “mashing”, without player having to constantly click through menus.
Similar for the acid zombies, which are better disabled and killed in 4 turns than killed in 2 turns with one of those turns spent under their attack.
So the ability to prioritize debuffs and mobility would be helpful.

[kevin.granade]

From one side: why would one actively engage in mortal combat with an enemy if not to neutralise them as quickly and efficiently as possible?

Neutralization doesn’t require killing for one, if your actual goal is to run away it’s a hell of a lot easier to trip an opponent and run than to kill them.
Another is effort expended, if you need to make a single low-effort attack to neutralize an opponent for long enough to escape, that conserves energy for escaping and neutralizing other opponents.
Another is dealing with multiple opponents, it might be feasible to temporarily incapacitate several opponents for long enough to deal with one of their allies, but if you tried to kill the first outright it’s allies could get some hits in.
In our particular scenarios, these effects are even more exaggerated, because some opponents are relatively easy to incapacitate temporarily, such as by tripping a zombie, but at the same time are more durable than humans, such that one-shot kills are difficult or impossible to perform.

Choosing to cripple your opponent over dealing immediate lethal damage is pretty much absurd. Landing a crippling strike ‘may’ be useful when you know you can’t deal enough damage to your opponent in a short time frame (swarmed from every side) or when you know that there is no way that you could harm your opponent (insanely armoured) but then why wouldn’t you just run in the first place… seems like an error in judgement from the start. So that’s probably why the game should always prioritise maximum damage/accuracy because it expects you to know better not to engage in combat you aren’t going to win.

In other words, if you make such an error in judgement, the system should just abandon you to your fate? In case it’s not clear, rhetorical question, it shouldnt.

[Michi]

I love everything I am reading here, because as a few of you have mentioned, combat is not very nuanced right now.

My only insight comes from the existing special attacks some weapons have combined with what I have seen from the martial arts stuff.

Basically, I am making one choice. What weapon am I using - does it have some useful special effects, and does it interact with the martial arts style. After that, the game takes over, and I dont know about everyone else, I don’t even look at eh scrolling text to see if I did a fast strike or a block or whatever, I just keep an eye on my health and if the mob died.

Having the player be able to make choices right before a fight and during the fight would make the combat more interesting, whereas adding more possibilities solely controlled by the AI without meaningful interaction by the player won’t add a lot to the current system, IMHO. Just more text to scroll by during combat. At the same time, I definitely don’t want something that would being overly cumbersome when I need to, say, clear out a school.

The stances idea is step towards player interactivity, but I see people choosing offense 90% of the time, and then defense when stamina is down and no chance of running away.

[Coolthulhu]

Having the player be able to make choices right before a fight and during the fight would make the combat more interesting, whereas adding more possibilities solely controlled by the AI without meaningful interaction by the player won’t add a lot to the current system, IMHO.

Even the AI possibilities would actually add a lot, though not directly during the fight but rather during preparations.
Choices such as leaving a free hand vs. 2h weapon, lighter armor for more special attacks or heavier for more reckless weapon attacks, perception for special effects or dexterity/strength for pure damage.
Then, during fight, those choices would influence the fighting style: kiting, standing and smashing, getting 3 zombies lined up for area attacks.

If we want something more complex, I’d consider adding Sil-like conditional attacks on movement. For example, a martial art could have a free sweep when moving past a zombie, a hard punch executed only after moving towards target (this one would combo nicely with stacking bonus, so that you’d move from zed to zed only to keep executing charge punches), or a prepared attack against first approaching target in given turn.

I’d rather avoid player choice being made mostly through mode switching and specific commands, because that’s UI stuff and could get tedious fast.
Once in a while would be fine, but I’d prefer to keep it from turning into “go offense until tired, go defense on retreat, go offense until tired”. It would be less bad to keep it all offense all the time to be honest.

Examples of good choices I see:

[ul][li]The aforementioned charge attack, attack in passing, attack when disengaging and prepared attack[/li]
[li]Attack that can be executed only after not attacking for a turn[/li]
[li]Penalty applied to every target you move past (ie. start and end movement adjacent to)[/li]
[li]A group attack when you and a NPC hit the same target. Or possibly you and a dog.[/li]
[li]Attack that requires the target to have a wall behind it[/li]
[li]Other terrain dependent attacks - curbstomping[/li][/ul]

Anything that doesn’t require the player to say “I want to do exactly that” instead of “I know there is a smart thing to do here, do that”.

[kevin.granade]

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:22, topic:13457”]Even the AI possibilities would actually add a lot, though not directly during the fight but rather during preparations.
Choices such as leaving a free hand vs. 2h weapon, lighter armor for more special attacks or heavier for more reckless weapon attacks, perception for special effects or dexterity/strength for pure damage.
Then, during fight, those choices would influence the fighting style: kiting, standing and smashing, getting 3 zombies lined up for area attacks.[/quote]
This goes far beyond the damage over time evaluation you were talking about, and starts evaluating the player’s health and armor, as well as the attack potential of nearby enemies. This is way too much AI.

If we want something more complex, I’d consider adding Sil-like conditional attacks on movement. For example, a martial art could have a free sweep when moving past a zombie, a hard punch executed only after moving towards target (this one would combo nicely with stacking bonus, so that you’d move from zed to zed only to keep executing charge punches), or a prepared attack against first approaching target in given turn.

That kind of thing is attractive when your goal is to build an immersive fighting system, but it’s just another form of micro-management, you still have to do specific things to trigger your special attacks. It also ends up driving the combat system, because options like delay, cripple, evade don’t necessarily map well to a movement-based system like that.

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:22, topic:13457”]I’d rather avoid player choice being made mostly through mode switching and specific commands, because that’s UI stuff and could get tedious fast.
Once in a while would be fine, but I’d prefer to keep it from turning into “go offense until tired, go defense on retreat, go offense until tired”. It would be less bad to keep it all offense all the time to be honest.[/quote]
I agree that the frequency of adjustments needs to be low, and for the vast majority of encounters (routine one where you’re in no real danger, and even non-routine encounters where you can defeat each opponent before being attacked by a new one), you would just keep it at damage-offense, but I want there to be options for when you are dealing with too many opponents, or need to retreat from an encounter, and when to switch from offense to defense, or when to use tactical options like delay or crippling attacks.

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:22, topic:13457”]Examples of good choices I see:

[ul][li]The aforementioned charge attack, attack in passing, attack when disengaging and prepared attack[/li]
[li]Attack that can be executed only after not attacking for a turn[/li]
[li]Penalty applied to every target you move past (ie. start and end movement adjacent to)[/li]
[li]A group attack when you and a NPC hit the same target. Or possibly you and a dog.[/li]
[li]Attack that requires the target to have a wall behind it[/li]
[li]Other terrain dependent attacks - curbstomping[/li][/ul][/quote]
Again, this kind of thing is immersive, but it can’t change the kind of attack being made, because if they do, it risks having players accidentally trigger suboptimal attacks that can get them killed.
Fundamentally, if there is a really interesting difference between attack types, the decision to use one or the other MUST be explicit.

Anything that doesn’t require the player to say “I want to do exactly that” instead of “I know there is a smart thing to do here, do that”.

Attack goals have the property you’re asking for, you’re asking for a general class of behaviors, not a specific one.

[Rivet]

Worth the effort?

Very worth the effort.

[Coolthulhu]

This goes far beyond the damage over time evaluation you were talking about, and starts evaluating the player’s health and armor, as well as the attack potential of nearby enemies. This is way too much AI.

I mean the player setting those up and AI only caring about what it can predict. For example, putting on a heavy armor would slow down all attacks by a flat amount, so fast attacks would suffer more than slow ones. This in turn would make the AI pick “huge axe slam” more often than “elbow strike”.

That kind of thing is attractive when your goal is to build an immersive fighting system, but it's just another form of micro-management, you still have to do specific things to trigger your special attacks.

Then scrap (or just “move back”) those that make it more tedious and just keep those which offer tactical advantages. For example, moving past a critter and executing a totally bland, regular, unbuffed attack for free (but full move price for moving) would not be any more micromanagement than regular combat with kiting - in fact less.
Still, I’d rather at least try to make it work than instantly going for manual selections on everything. Maybe it’s easier than it sounds?

It also ends up driving the combat system, because options like delay, cripple, evade don't necessarily map well to a movement-based system like that.

It would synergy with those pretty well: if you had free attacks on disengage, the evade option would push stuff back, while attack option would hurt things.

I want there to be options for when you are dealing with too many opponents, or need to retreat from an encounter, and when to switch from offense to defense, or when to use tactical options like delay or crippling attacks.

This should be treated as necessary evil and avoided where not necessary. For example, by limiting the number of modes and keeping them in the same menu as martial arts (as in, “offensive” would be a martial art).
Crippling, avoiding and delaying could easily be one mode (defensive).

Fundamentally, if there is a really interesting difference between attack types, the decision to use one or the other MUST be explicit.

To some degree yes, but a lot could be done by stretching the implicitness of them.
Combining with movement, involving pauses, depending on surroundings - in the end pure DPS should be reserved for endgame characters who can afford to stand around and mash tab.

[pisskop]

just putting it out there that tracking which way a critter is facing based on last movement direction or turning to do something (defend) would be nice.

and then we could add in things like light directions and back attacks and stealth