Looking at stone slinging IRL, I found that the untrained and novices are terrible at it, often being completely incapable of discovering proper form by intuition or trial-and-error. Yet, traditionally trained and naturally skilled sling throwers can compete with bow archers in all except the obvious differences between arrows and rocks.
It left me believing that skilled throwing should be bound to professions and skill books, as martial arts and the rest. Average survivor simply shouldn’t be capable of becoming a thrower in the first season(s) unless they chance upon the book(s). That should apply to all the throwing weapons, and the weapon-like random objects. Should be severe debuffs to unskilled throwing, if that’s what it takes. Debuffs on the act of throwing, not necessarily the damage on hits. Many of an unskilled thrower’s hits should be glancing blows, and that would cause lower damage on unlucky hits.
Unskilled throwing should be a desperate act, or a foolish one.
Grenades being manufactured things, like guns, mines, et. al., they can’t help but have set damage ranges independent of skill. Explosives should one-shot many things, including an unlucky and lightly armored thrower who shouldn’t be throwing a grenade.
I don’t know if we need to get that excited about limiting throwing rocks and such, you can certainly train yourself to throw rocks with decent accuracy. Slings are pretty different, it sounds like perhaps their recipe should be limited to a certain book and/or change the skill used for it. That said, I don’t think I’ve ever used a sling ingame since they’re so mediocre.
Yeah, realism to fantasy balance is the whole of the debate, but I’ve come to believe that deadly throwing is significantly harder to learn than most others. Think it should be treated as a martial art.
For sake of argument, ignore that he’s using a sling. Notice his form and how he throws sticks. This is a model for the average person who feels like they’ve practiced throwing. Unskilled. I think he’s skill capped, and has reached his highest potential, until he’s trained by someone else. In CDDA, that someone else would have to be a book or NPC.
You can still get awfully good at throwing things just by practicing. Just because you don’t do it the “right” way doesn’t mean you can’t be effective. If you implement high end throwing as a martial art or impose a skill cap you would have to do that to a whole lot of other skills to justify it, and i don’t think that’s fun or realistic.
Making the sling more innaccurate probably won’t make any difference one way or another since you can usually make a bow at that point which will outperform it.
I don’t think there’s a way to limit a weapon to a skill level. The only real way to make slings inaccurate with low throwing skill is to make them generally inaccurate and hope that high skill cancels out the dispersion. I’d accept that perhaps the best slingers can perhaps outrange a bow, but I find it fairly hard to believe they could match the accuracy at that range. Even then, an arrow through the chest or what have you is still probably going to do more damage than a rock, depending on the strength of the person.
That’s silly. Anyone can throw a rock at someone’s head. Even most primates.
Krav Maga adds a fairly small damage buff and some special moves. It makes a difference, but you still need very high unarmed skill and strength for it to be effective. I could understand making slinging somehow specialised, but I don’t think throwing in general needs to be special. Especially when the character can pick up a bow, grenade, rifle, sword, etc. and use it perfectly with no prior training or experience.
Most will miss. Training consistently teaches to aim for center mass. Practically a maxim in either combat or game hunting.
Not limitations.
Improvement and accentuation.
Code for martial techniques is made for adding onto primitive actions that average survivors can do. Trained throwing styles can be defined as arts, with the benefits as techniques. Once that is in place, basic throwing of all kinds stays in, but has its effectiveness reduced.
Pretty much how it works now, for all projectiles.
On average, you’re right. In flight, rocks drift less than arrows. Bows aim more easily than slings. If that means slings have higher dispersion stat in CDDA, then it works out in the wash.
For non-augmented humans, we can probably settle for 100m as maximum effective range, with experts having 1m dispersion at that. Open to real data, of course. Effective range to plausibly hit for significant damage; not the furthest down range a projectile can be sent.
Slingshots are accurate, even at range. I’d be comfortable comparing their accuracy to most bows. They aren’t hitting anywhere near as hard as bows, though. They’re small game weapons. They hit very hard at short range, but their pellet is small.
Slings are also accurate at range, with larger shot, and slower throws. Staff slings go farther, less accurately.
I meant we shouldn’t make slings less accurate than they already are. This wasn’t a comparison to bow accuracy.
Because bows are more accurate, the average bow shooter should do more averaged damage than the average slinger. The bowman hits more often with less skill. However, sling per-shot damage should be higher, and the best slinger should be nearly as accurate as the bowman, so the best slinger should do more averaged damage than the best bowman.
It should be harder to become the best slinger than it is to become the best bowman.
Exceptions are okay.
Throwing blades is more dangerous to the thrower than slinging is. Doing it effectively is just as challenging.
Throwing a rock at someone’s gut isn’t going to do anything, you pretty much have to aim for the head. Even then, most people are going to have a decent chance of braining someone from across a room. A pretty good chance if they’ve been practising on and off for a few weeks. That doesn’t mean you need specialised training.
I doubt that’s as simple codewise as it sounds. Even then, it’s not like you can sling a rock in such a way that it has a chance to knock someone down or anything.
You might get lucky and be able to implement a martial art that makes slings more accurate, or throwing in general, but that seems awkward.
Indeed. Which is why it isn’t a good way to handle untrained sling use. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of ways to go about it.
As far as bows v slings is concerned, I doubt anyone could reach even basic proficiency with a sling in the time it takes to become combat competent with a bow. And a bow is still probably going to be overall more deadly. A bladed arrow piercing through your chest is going to do a lot more damage than a rock hitting your chest, same for headshots. Especially taking into account compound bows, which are amazingly powerful.
That’s one of the few things I could see reasonably needing training or a book, but I also think most people could work it out given enough time. I’m not sure what to think really. I don’t think specific weapon training really fits with everything else ingame.
Other than occasionally getting it stuck in an enemy or missing, pretty perfectly. And the accuracy improves through using the skill, no special books required. Techniques are just bonuses or special moves, they don’t actually grant the ability to use the weapon.
I think throwing weapons should be treated like any other weapon, make them reasonably accessible and improve with use, but balanced enough that they aren’t the obvious best choice. For now, that probably means making it so you can’t oneshot a brute with a throwing knife when you can’t do that with a .50 cal.
That’s not done anywhere else, and I don’t think it’s really necessary.
Putting all kinds of efforts into making it require training seems foolish, they aren’t swords that you can use in specific ways to achieve special goals, you throw something and it hits or it doesn’t. That’s handled perfectly by the throwing skill, it clearly just needs a bit more emphasis on having them do a reasonable amount of damage, or like I suggested earlier, being more of a strategic tool rather than an actual killing weapon.
Slings ARE different to throwing, so I’d say we should put those aside for now. If, later on, a book on ancient rock slinging gets added and it becomes the only recipe source for a sling, staff sling, and whatever else, that would be fine by me.
At the end of the day, slings and throwing weapons aren’t as practical as guns, melee or even bows, so it’s not really worth putting all that much effort into them. As long as we can make sure they have reasonable damage and accuracy, so they can be useful without being over-competitive, that should be enough.
Having a skill you can sink in time training in the game, but which cannot be effective unless X, which is more restrictive than everything else in the game, seems like bad game design.
You can naturally progress through the materials and crafting for melee and primitive ranged weapons without RNG killing you, you can be perfectly deadly with a sword or spear without a MA backing you, and even be halfway decent with unarmed. Even with the later, which is the most MA-reliant, encountering at least one MA is relatively easy.
you can make do with pipe guns for emergency gun use for whatever ammo you have found, and there’s enough guns around that by the time you’ve amassed enough ammo, you’ve found a whole lot of guns.
Figuring out how to nail someone with a rock effectively shouldn’t be harder than all of these, nor it should be harder than amateur deathmobile-making.
Reasonable tweaks on damage, accuracy and range should push throwing to be a secondary, but cheap weapon outside edge cases like the superstrength mutate cyborg, in particular, reaching max aiming fast but having high dispersion should kill long range sniping until later levels while still allowing hitting enemies up close.
Reasonable tweaks to weapons could also push back the trickier throwing weapons to require more skill before becoming effective. After that, either a change on the weapon descriptions or gating the crafting of those weapons behind enough throwing skill would prevent them from becoming trap options for those unfamiliar to the game.
Speaking of dispersion, I wonder if we’re getting far too in-depth with this anyway. Most bows have a range around 10-25, rifles go much further, while throwing rarely gets a range above 10 tiles. Just judiciously apply the Nerf-hammer to damage for throwing weapons, primarily rocks, and it’s basically sorted, throwing has it’s place as a low damage, but versatile, short range backup weapon. Not enough to take on a horde, especially with the size of the weapons, but it could take down a brute with some skill, or soften up a few normal zeds.
If you want to get really fancy, make it so that any throwing weapon with special damage stats has a “GOOD_THROW” tag. If a weapon with the good throw tag is thrown properly, with a chance equal to (throwing skill)/10, it applies its throwing weapon stats, otherwise it applies the normal derived bash damage from its weight and volume.
But that’s slings again. We should be sticking to manual throws, object in hand, and staying away from bow and sling comparisons. Apologies for my part in perpetuating that tangent.
See no basis for this whatsoever. Unassisted throws don’t work like this. Practice assists accuracy and distance. We have a more rational view of it in code already:
{
"type": "skill",
"ident": "throw",
"name": "throwing",
"description": "Your skill in throwing objects over a distance. Skill increases accuracy, and at higher levels, the range of a throw.",
"tags": [ "combat_skill" ]
}
Strength is the energy available to put into accelerating the mass. Acceleration of the mass over distance is what must decide the impact if it hits. Throwing generic items trains the throwing skill, but that doesn’t affect much of what happens on a hit.
We need generic object throwing to be nerf-fixed, so that skilled throwing (objects and weapons) becomes meaningful.
If we’re modeling the top end of generic objects on professional baseball, maybe we should trust “kinetic force of rock sling” for this one. At least use the method, if not the claims.
More generally, for all throwing, that isn’t the point of it being in play. Throwing is not supposed to be a competitor to all other options. In fact, throwing should be one of the least desirable ballistic choices. It’s a last resort, or what you’re already good at.
Simply not true. Especially for CDDA zombies. Ever wonder why your NPC buddy is so neurotic about pulping corpses?
When a generic skill is found too generic, we branch it. Already happened to guns. Javelin, tomahawk, throwing knife, sling. These are clearly distinct skills that share little with each other. Nor are they significantly similar to throwing a baseball or refrigerator.
Tomahawk features melee and throwing techniques which are clearly trainable and worth specialization.
That’s why throwing is OP. It’s trying to be too many things and isn’t internally consistent.
Throwing weapons are very practical. They’re primitive, so you don’t have to scavenge them. They’re multipurpose and worthy backup. There are modern innovations worth scavenging for.
Derp, I meant to say hitting them in the head, not necessarily killing them outright. Pretty much everyone has thrown a few balls in their lifetime, so I think it would be a pretty safe assumption that most average people could hit someone nearby in the head within a few throws.
Modifiers yes, but I’m not sure how easy it would be to make it so you had to have a specific martial art to use slings.
I’m personally not sure that early throwing is that bad, but I’ve also never sat with a pile of rocks and taken on a horde on my first day, so I don’t know for sure. High skill throwing seems pretty awesome, but if most people agree early throwing is OP then it needs to be fixed.
I’m not talking about sling damage, I’m saying you can’t have a sling technique. There’s no equivalent to arm blocks or leg sweeps or grab breaks for slings or throwing, so having a martial art is silly.
Agreed. Slings or throwing knives might be good early game for someone who stumbles on an early throwing skillbook, but it’s not like it could compare to more powerful weapons.
Assuming you’re trying to kill them in the first place, a pierced heart is usually more effective than a bruise. And you’re dreaming if you think throwing a pebble will pulp a person’s flesh.
But those are all things that have multiple weapons and are conceivably different. With the possible exception of slings, which could be 50/50 archery/throwing or something along those lines, all of those things are a variation of throwing something at something, and only have one weapon for each. Otherwise we would need a skill for one-handed swords, two-handed swords, axes, longbows, shortbows, etc.
For tomahawks use the melee skill when it’s used in melee and the throwing skill when thrown. There’s no reason to add a special skill for it.
I don’t think it is. With the exception of some weapons being too overpowered, it’s otherwise pretty well sorted out. There’s even room for some extra mechanics, like larger objects taking longer to throw or requiring large objects be wielded first (looking at javelins).
They’re practical if you don’t have anything better. I’d still rather a sword or a gun over a throwing knife.
Uses club, tomahawk, lance, and dagger. Doesn’t need to be exclusive to apply.
Wrong comparisons. Nothing wrong with that.
So pulping zombies is useless. BRB, telling the necromancers.
They pierce better.
Separate throwing weapons from throwing. That’s two skills, not * amount. All throwing weapon arts would use the one throwing weapons skill.
Throwing a “throwing weapon” while not in a martial art that has that weapon in it would throw the item as a generic. It would still throw, and would increase “throwing” skill, not “throwing weapons” skill.
Throwing a “throwing weapon” while in a correct martial art would allow defined techniques to trigger. Those techniques would account for the object being thrown correctly. Example: Throwing an axe while in Okichitaw style could stack cut and pierce onto the damage. Without the style, the axe throw would either do the damages on the weapon definition or the damages from generic weight & volume math. I would choose weight & volume.
Equiping a multipurpose weapon, like tomahawk, while using the correct style, would also trigger its melee tecs. E.g., you’d get the weapon+style-specific blocks, counters, etc.
Martial arts have “throwing arts” in them, as techniques within the style.
I found day zero throwing to be just as scattershot as day zero shooting.
Does not follow, throwing and slinging are not the same thing. Throwing is a very intuitive action that can be made very effective through plain repitition.
There are a number of variations on this, tumbling thrown weapons might require training, other throwing tools such as an atlatl might require training, etc, but I haven’t seen a rationale for restricting throwing in general.
That’s missing the point that slinging and throwing are different, a natural overhand throw is quite close to being optimal, and it can simply be tuned with practice.
I’m extremely against the concept of training being necessary for throwing to be effective.
Again, apologies for contributing to the tangent. I agree that throwing and throwing weapons are fundamentally different. The differences I found in code as I went here weren’t quite what I expected, but I’m more familiar now.
However, sling “gun” uses “throw” skill, and the others are “thrown” ammo types.
Throwing in general shouldn’t be restricted. Throwing weapons should involve training and be included in the martial arts.
It’s probably a majority opinion I disagree with, but I see plenty of reasons that the arguments here severely over estimate plain throwing of non-weapon objects.
That sounds like poor design.
You’re separating throwing into:
a sub-optimal skill that only exists to waste the player’s time.
a skill that can only be trained after completing a task as restrictive as forging. This skill has zero synergy with the previous skill, even if the player was using the previous skill with the exact same weapon just minutes before reading the martial arts book.
Weapons requiring different training is not enough of a reason to split skills, look at all the melee skills in the game: bashing can work both on hitting things with a rock as well as a sledgehammer, cutting can work on a knife just as well as chainsaw lajatangs, piercing can work on a shiv just as well as with a spear.
Requiring training is not something I’m fond of, it strikes again as singling out a group of weapons for no good reason, when there are plenty of other weapons that would require just as much if not more training.
A character can pick a whip or a chainsaw lajatang at skill 0 and still wield it, they can pick a minigun or a rocket launcher and have no problem reloading and shooting it (nor have any issues with firearms safety), or start using a modern hi-tech bow.
The character will suck at actually hitting things, true, and there may be better weapons to start learning, but you can still use them and train the skill all the same.
“Gun” skill contributes nothing to firing a pistol?
Y/N/M?
Where did I say that the player should be prevented from equipping and using any of the throwing weapons?
You keep saying “bad design” at misinterpretations.
{
"type" : "martial_art",
"id" : "style_swordsmanship",
"name" : "Medieval Swordsmanship",
"description": "The art of the longsword and other weapons, preceding the later development of fencing. Designed for combat both unarmored and in armor, it includes grappling as well as defensive and offensive sword techniques, plus familiarity with other weapons like polearms.",
"arm_block" : 99,
"leg_block" : 99,
"onattack_buffs" : [
{
"id" : "swordsmanship_attack_buff",
"name" : "Perfect Defense",
"description" : "Bonus dodges after an attack.",
"buff_duration" : 3,
"melee_allowed" : true,
"bonus_dodges" : 2
}
],
"ondodge_buffs" : [
{
"id" : "swordsmanship_counter",
"name" : "Displacement",
"description" : "The enemy has presented an opening in their defense.",
"min_melee" : 2,
"melee_allowed" : true,
"max_stacks": 1,
"buff_duration" : 2
}
],
"techniques" : [
"tec_swordsmanship_counter",
"tec_swordsmanship_grab",
"tec_swordsmanship_break",
"tec_swordsmanship_zornhau",
"tec_swordsmanship_unterhau"
],
"weapons" : [
"sword_wood",
"sword_nail",
"sword_crude",
"zweihander",
"zweihander_inferior",
"zweifire_off",
"zweifire_on",
"arming_sword",
"arming_sword_inferior",
"longsword",
"longsword_inferior",
"dusksword",
"estoc",
"q_staff",
"i_staff",
"makeshift_halberd",
"glaive",
"pike",
"spear_steel",
"halberd"
]
}
What part of that style definition prevents equipping a sword?
woah wait. Throwing is throwing. you don’t need to slit it into wheather the item was INTEDED to be a trown weapon or not, everything different about that comes from the weapon, not how good you are at throwing things that were menat to be trown vs things that wern’t. Thats not seperate skills, unless ‘throwing weapons’ skill is really ‘ability to understandm, calculate and manipulate the spin of the weapon through the air.’
Not a martial art, at best/worst a seperate skill that goes hand in hand with throwing.
I think that should be something that kicks in at higher levels of throwing, not a seperate skill. Unless you want to branch it out into a full spread of weapon proficiencies which have some carryover with one another, and ‘how comfortable you are with weapon_ID_type’ or something. Thats a bit overeaching a plan so instead, go with:
High levels of throwing skill, give accuracy, and a better chance of getting the thrown weapons special_effect (through intentionally getting a specific side/ the blade to hit the target) this would allow throwing to be nerfed however much damage / chance of hamage / high damage is deemed apropriate, and add in various stuns, damage bonuses, or to change the damage type, on crits. Based on the weapon thrown. (rocks get some minor stun crit, blades actually land blade first inhibiting mobility slightly and doing more cutting damage etc…) This could implemented in relatively small stages, and be broadened later if deemed necesary.
I’ve been given the distict impression that even in irl weapon-tumble-manipulation, its a matter of practice more than teqnique, or taught skill. practicing until you learn how to judge the balence and end result of throwing. I don’t doubt that tutoring would massively improve the learning rate, such as NPC or book reading on throwing, but not manditory.
still going to have to disagree with this. What is a martial art about throwing? Bows I could see having a martial art, but throwing is too intuitive, and there is no counter_throw and such that would make any sense in having.
That is simulated with marksman skill. pistols and rifles and bows are all very different in how they feel to shoot, what remains the same is the fundamentals of finding the ‘comfort’ spot for you, the positon that you always fire from, with that specific weapon so your eye is always in the same spot aiming down the sights, not flinching, or pulling, or otherwise doing something that would cause inacuracy. That is the point of marksmenship. "Aim down the sites, and pull the trigger sounds easy, but there are lots of ways to be seriously inaccurate.
I see no mention of “not allowed to equip or use” where did you get that?
Eh... kind of memeish, and not fully relevent so its spoilered also contains comments on sexting F-word etc..language
You mean marksmanship? What has this to do with anything?
Notice the break line in my post. It’s there for a reason, namely, breaking from ‘response to you’ to commenting to the thread in general, namely, on Kevin’s and other’s “might require training” on slings and the like.
You specifically said:
You are proposing two skills, you are proposing that one of the skills is only usable while under martial arts, which means the entire skill is gate-locked behind a book, and all the training the player did with the generic throwing skill becomes useless once they read the book.
There is a marksmanship skill, not gun skill. It helps minorly with sights, be it on a bow, a pistol, or a sniper rifle. Frankly, most of it’s effect is on gun modding and crafting, not shooting.
That’s more an artifact of dividing them by damage type instead of dividing them by handedness. Had they been divided into one & two-handed, with perhaps pole and/or light on top of that, we’d still have about the same number of skills, just divided differently.
The gun skills also suffer from it’s own odd artifacts, like repeating crossbows and SMGs, or weapon mods letting you blur the lines between weapon types.
