This seems like a really simple and useful addition to the game. Basically it would be really cool if the game had something to try out weapons on to see how your DPS is doing. At the simplest form it could just be a stationary enemy with lots of HP that can be repaired with the needle. Maybe it can be used to train combat skills to a certain minimum level (perhaps level 1 or 2).
You mean like a zombie?
I think he means after all the zombies in the area are butchered and you still need something to shoot.
you mean wanderers?
The issue that springs to my mind is that of damage. Dummy Damage.
Everything thing in this game can be destroyed. Now we have a magic cloth dummy that cant be?
maybe in the tutorial room or something. A debug spawn.
But we already have a debug monster for that? heals 50hp a turn, doesnt move.
Actually AFAIK this wouldn’t be that difficult to make work. Just make an item that creates a stationary, immobile monster. When the monster dies, it drops an item (“badly damaged dummy”, or something similar), that you then have a crafting recipe which takes along with some resources to turn it back into a “training dummy” item that you could then use to recreate the “monster”. So the idea isn’t that it doesn’t take damage, but rather that once it dies it reverts back to item form, and then requires repair before you can put it up again.
I’m not sure why such a dummy would take damage the same way a monster would.
At best it’d be wildly inaccurate, at worst it would sometimes take more or less damage from certain weapons than monsters would for no discernable reason.
Just use debug menu to spawn a debug monster.
It exists for the purpose of testing weapons.
It doesn’t pretend to be realistic, but a dummy that takes the same damage as living things wouldn’t pretend to be realistic either.
The issue that springs to my mind is that of damage. Dummy Damage.Everything thing in this game can be destroyed. Now we have a magic cloth dummy that cant be?
I don’t think it is unrealistic that an item made for pummeling would be more resistant to damage than other items in the environment.
I'm not sure why such a dummy would take damage the same way a monster would. At best it'd be wildly inaccurate, at worst it would sometimes take more or less damage from certain weapons than monsters would for no discernable reason.
There could be a few different versions of it, like “straw dummy”, “armored dummy”, etc, that have different levels of resistance to different types of damage. And even if it wouldn’t accurately reflect the amount of damage that real enemies take, it could still be used to compare damage of weapons to each other.
Also, something I forgot to mention in the OP, and something I’m not sure would be easy to code. The training dummy might be a way to test armor as well. If you could dress the dummy with torso armor it might help to get an idea of how much armor you need to take on a new challenge.
As I noted earlier the first idea (just that of a dummy you whack, or something similar) would be very doable just through JSON already AFAICT (which means even if it doesn’t go in you could probably whip up your own with just a touch of work). On the other hand armor is much less doable. 