Some changes to the melee combat system

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

With the advent of mid town killer robots, I have really noticed that unless they attack you in in numbers around the 20s, zombies are truly laughable foes. Part of it is because the zombies by themselves are very weak, but I think its mainly because our current melee combat system is very, very, bare bones and completely devoid of any tactical thinking.

In the past two days I have been briefly thinking about ways to change this system that don’t involve things like halve all of the armor stats or buff all of the zombies; because well, those are actually really bad solutions. These are the main points of the system I have came with, without messing with balance numbers or anything:

-Melee attacks in general would become weaker, but they would get an increased chance for stunning the victim; this chance would scale with the damage rating of the attack. Further modifiers would exist:
a) Better armor reduces damage and the chance of being stunned.
b) A creature becomes easier to stun the emptier its hp bar becomes.
c) Every subsequent attack after the first one in a turn would have increased chances of stunning.
d) A higher pain level makes attacks more likely to stun and slightly increases the time spent stunned for.
e) A higher encumbrance level increases the time spent in the stunned state
f) Finally a creature cannot gain more stun time for being attacked while its stunned (admittedly this rule doesn’t make much sense, but It would prevent both though monsters and the player to be completely stun locked until they die).

As an example, if you are wearing inactive power armor attacks would be unlikely to stun you, but if a monster actually manages to stun you expect to be stunned for several turns as you regain your footing.

  • Both stunned creatures and the player take extra or even critical damage for all melee attacks performed against it. This would be the strongest change brought by this system; ideally it would be balance until the point were a single weaker enemy in melee is a complete pushover, but fighting more than one at the same time becomes exponentially dangerous, more or less what would happen in a real fight.

-A shot with any firearm or a head-shot with a considerably damaging thrown object would have almost guaranteed chances of stunning most normal enemies. This would allow the player to engage in groups in a safer way and single enemies in a faster way. You could for example throw a rock at a zombie and then finish it by smashing its head open with a wrench while it briefly stumbles backwards.

-A creature that is attacked to many times while stunned would gain the grounded status, while grounded the creature would always receive critical damage and their armor rating would be halved.

Well its actually a rather massive rework and it would involve some gruesome changes in the way the game is played, but I believe that this system is very worth attempting.

2

I’m against.

Melee attacks from zombies are already very weak, except at the very start of the game. Armoring self would become even easier than it is now, making zombies stop being a threat even faster than now.
Zombies spamming stun would severely affect starting characters, who would get wrecked by dogs and hunters, while not doing anything against armored characters.
There’s also the part where it could easily result in “bullshit” - getting stunned every other turn, getting stunned for so long you have no chance to recover, getting stunned by weak attacks and forced to stand in acid losing valuable items etc.
Finally it would nerf both lightly armored characters (who need to recover their dodges and move a lot) and heavy weapon users (who need all the time they can afford to swing) - both of which are already inferior to heavily armored characters and medium-speed weapon users, who wouldn’t suffer as much from the change.

As for player side - by early midgame, most player melee attacks are crits and thus stun. This is more annoying than useful, as it causes constant stumbling and makes zombies unpredictable. If crits were nerfed not to happen a lot, it would require reworking all those techniques that rely on crits to work.
The damage nerf would have to be something much more creative than just a flat nerf, or it would make weak weapons (sledge hammer, steel spear) weaker and barely affect strong weapons (nodachi, punch dagger).

Ranged stun sounds like it could be mildly useful for early game characters, but then the stun duration would have to be quite huge for it to matter. But I’d rather see it as a more active method of running away (something better than just kiting) than a combat initiator.

I see no reason for the grounding. It sounds like even bigger nerf for early characters, so that when they get hit, instead of seeing torso at 30% and 50 pain they get a gravestone. And the armor halving part would mean medium armors would no longer guarantee immunity from weak zombies (while increasing stun duration, as you said it’d scale with encumbrance), so once again heavier armors rule while light armors are a constant (but random and mostly player-independent) risk that semi-stunlock happens and ruins a character.

I don’t like player stuns because they take away control and put the character in the hands of RNG. Stunlock/confuse chain/stacked paralysis type deaths aren’t “fun”, they’re basically “you randomly died” types of death.

I’d much rather see changes like hulk smash ability. It was a simple addition that nerfed heavy characters (can’t be blocked, can be dodged, reduced damage on high dex), promoted mobility and made formerly weak zombie types a threat, while not making things significantly more bullshitty. Well, except for the part where it often damages the armor.

3

Zombies can stop being a threat very fast now, actually several professions start with completely zombie proof garments, armoring yourself would actually come with disadvantages, for example, you wouldn’t be able to charge a group of zombies wielding a soap bar and expect not to die because you are wearing survivor armor. Here is where the being hit more than once in the same turn rule becomes important.

There's also the part where it could easily result in "bullshit" - getting stunned every other turn, getting stunned for so long you have no chance to recover, getting stunned by weak attacks and forced to stand in acid losing valuable items etc. Finally it would nerf both lightly armored characters (who need to recover their dodges and move a lot) and heavy weapon users (who need all the time they can afford to swing) - both of which are already inferior to heavily armored characters and medium-speed weapon users, who wouldn't suffer as much from the change.
Zombies spamming stun would severely affect starting characters, who would get wrecked by dogs and hunters, while not doing anything against armored characters.

As I said, the chance for stun would be dependent on the damage received by the player, the point of this is that doing on average about 6 points of damage, a single zombies wouldn’t be able to stun the player reliably, and even if they did, they wouldn’t stun you for long, at the max for enough time for the zombie to lie another attack at you. If its not possible to have the stun chances be completely dependent on damage stats, you can simply add tags like “stun_unlikely” and “stun_likely” to weapons and monsters.

No and Light armor has the benefit that it would allow you to hit enemies more time while they are stunned (because the lower encumbrance allows you to move faster). In other words you trade damage for the ability to tank attacks. In general I think that its not bad for the general strategy for playing lightly armored characters to be: try to never get hit by anything strong ever.

Now well sure medium armor would still be the balanced choice, but at least this system would mean that you can no longer afford to be reckless and charge groups of normal zombies and expect that nothing bad would happen.

Heavy armor would mostly trade the ability to perform more damaging attacks (because melee would take more time and you’ll lose the stun bonus) for a great protection against zombies (if you want numbers lets say that at least 5 attacks would have to hit you in the same turn before you have a decent chance to be stunned). Its when wearing heavy armor that things like zweihanders would become viable, if only because the slowness of a higher encumbrance wouldn’t allow you to take advantage of the brief period a light weapon stuns an enemy.

I see no reason for the grounding. It sounds like even bigger nerf for early characters, so that when they get hit, instead of seeing torso at 30% and 50 pain they get a gravestone. And the armor halving part would mean medium armors would no longer guarantee immunity from weak zombies (while increasing stun duration, as you said it'd scale with encumbrance), so once again heavier armors rule while light armors are a constant (but random and mostly player-independent) risk that semi-stunlock happens and ruins a character.

The grounded state is there to make heavy armored characters vulnerable if they are reckless with charging at groups of zombies. In general a lightly or not armored character wouldn’t be stunned for enough time for them to actually be hit enough times for the penalty to take effect. To be honest halving was a bad choice of words, while grounded, most attacks should damage you mostly straight through armor.

4

THIS, and

this. With both, zombies would have more abilites, which means more problematic ability combinations, which means more strategy, less berserking working against big zombie numbers. Also, stun would make group combat something less desirable. I like both ideas, just think the ideal number about stun parameters and so on would be found only after severe testing.

Also, another problem is that combat skill are the most used ones, and such, they can keep going up and up and up to a point where it gets ridiculous. If 10 in a skill is world-class level, in the future we shouldn’t be able to reach 15, 20 and so on in melee, or if we could, that have to be a hard and epic achievement :stuck_out_tongue:

5

I am for any change that makes fighting multiple enemies a huge danger. Currently, I have “good” armor and stood surrounded by 6 zombies until I hammered every one of them. I took pain, but I never really felt in danger.

I think a “stun” level, or perhaps a “balance” level would be a great thing to track. The more you get hit, the more off balance you are. Certain weapons can affect how off balance you are after swinging (low skill player wielding heavy items).

As for early characters, I would actually be pleased to see zombies become a bigger threat. It’s really easy to run away from zombies, and that’s what an early character has to do. There are some creatures that are hard to run away from, but I think it’s fine that if you run into a pack of zombie dogs on day 1 with no armor that they rightfully kill you. Not everyone survives in the zombie apocalypse!

6

I would still survive.

Anyway your saying make it more a simulation then a game which would give lots of rng things that can kill you.

I just doubt that people will like it.

7

I would like to see more special attacks for generic zombies to choose from. Examples:

Dogs, especially Z-9, should have a bite-and-hold attack where they target a limb and add +3 encumbrance for a short time and do a modest amount of damage, and during this time, they won’t do any other damage.
Zombies should have a lunge attack that they use in close range, or a grab/pin attack.
Heavier duty zombies should have a throw or stun attack.

It would be interesting to have some sort of disarm system that involved some combination of a special attack, player stats, and player skills, though doing it right would be REALLY hard. I know getting cutting weapons stuck in an enemy is one of the most annoying experiences in the game for me. If it were implemented, there would have to be a SCT message, and it would have to be dropped on the ground nearby to grab. A critical hit from an aforementioned lunge or throw attack should have a pretty good chance to disarm. Z-9’s should have a disarm special too.

8

And now this sounds like a giant “fuck you heavy armor users, enjoy random bullshit death”. Heavy armors would become high risk high reward, which is the opposite of their current role. And a more minor issue: it’s just anti-realistic.

I’d rather have it look like this: zombies mob the armored survivor (short time stacking combat debuffs for each zombie who hits) and a strong mutant zombie (brute or some new armor piercer zombie) gets in and starts dealing enough damage to go through armor. Having a zombie swap mechanic would be useful for this (stronger zombie pushing past weaker one).
Player isn’t robbed of control, but the debuffs mean the big zombie will be hard to hurt. The choice is whether to “rush” the strong one who can deal damage or smash some of the weaker ones who keep the debuffs up. Or maybe pull out a shotgun and attract all the special zombies.
Maybe even forbid heavily debuffed player from using “big” weapons (not sure what “big” would mean here) or just scale debuffs with size+debuff vs strength. Would make knife characters more viable (though spear users and heavy smashers - who suck - even worse). Same for rifles/shotguns vs pistols.

9

The balance against one or two zombies is maintained, they’d be spending some of their efforts stunning you instead of trying to damage you, but if enough even weak zombies were regularly throwing stunning attacks at you, it’d seriously impede you.

Honestly though, I think this would be pretty easy to do, just adding a stunning effect to zombie attacks, and the effect could self-limit such that it doesn’t eat up all your moves, that shouldn’t be too hard to do. Will take a look at it soon.