Weapon guidelines, part 2: Damage and Speed

We’ve got guidelines in-game for the to-hit bonuses now, but damage is a bit stickier. Part of the problem is that the damage model the game uses is not terribly good. But we can establish guidelines for what we want there as well! This conversation is likely to be referenced when working on the Project Document. Once we’ve made some work there, though, we need to start drilling down to the details of how a person should figure out what sort of damage their new item will be doing, so keep that end in mind but please make sure to keep those concrete suggestions grounded in the firm foundation of how it serves what we are actually trying to accomplish.

So what do you want from weapon damage?
Please read my previous attempt at discussing possible breakdowns of weapon damage here:


It has recently been updated, so even if you haven’t read it before it might be worth a look.
Also keep in mind my proposed changes to how monsters receive damage:

My initial feelings are:
We want a variety of damage types that are better or worse in a variety of situations.
This encourages characters to not become complete specialists, and introduces the meaningful decision of what equipment to bring on an outing - one that can be helped by scouting ahead, with factors being weighed in such as skill with the weapons offered and exactly how big a bonus they offer. I think we want some weapons to serve as general purpose fallbacks (swords, for example), capable of filling the roles of chopping, bashing, slicing and stabbing fairly well, but which are inferior in a major way to a specialized weapon like a spear in the specific situations where the spear’s focus excels. There should be situations where a Sledgehammer is strictly superior to a sword. We want to make sure to factor in that some weapons will be much faster than others - if it does half the damage but attacks three times as awesome, it means the knife would actually be MORE damaging than the sledgehammer, which is something to keep in mind - faster/lighter weapons have effective damage values higher than they may seem at first glance, and their damage values as listed need to reflect that difference since they already benefit from dealing damage more precisely (a lot less damage is wasted, since the enemy will die sooner from the same DPS allowing you to move on to the next one).

We want a variety of damage amounts that make weapons more or less effective depending on your build.
I think the primary limiter here will be a need to have a weapon’s damage and speed degrade based on, for example, a lack of strength. But there might be other solutions.

We want an agreed upon range of damage
Rather than constantly adding ‘better’ weapons we should agree on a scale over which damage can occur, and decide not to allow “mundane” weapons to pass this upper bound.

The ‘simplistic’ and traditional RPG way to go about it is to have each sort of damage have a possibility of different status effects/‘abilities’. For instance:

Bashing/heavy weapons could have knockback/armour damage, but missed blows could lead to a longer recovery time.
Peircing weapons could have the possibility of doing exactly that (hitting enemies behind) but could have a chance of getting stuck for a turn or something.
Slashing weapons could cause bleeding but have a chance to ‘glance’ off and do little damage.
Stabbing weapons could have a chance at a quick attack or slowing (I’m not sure about this one to be honest).

All bullet based ranged weapons would be piercing or stabbing I suppose - they might need a slightly different model.

This is simplistic but it does give weapons much more a situational use - if it were to be combined with armour types and things, it could be made quite interesting. Bashing weapons wouldn’t want to be used in groups, piecing would want to be used in corridors, whilst slashing weapons would want to be used against foes that bleed. However, if you had an enemy with tough armour but that could bleed, you might want to use a bashing weapon and then switch to a slashing one.

I really like the idea of keeping all weapons within a range. If this could be clamped down on so we said ‘all common weapons need to be within this range, uncommon within this range etc.’ I think that would really help balance wise.

Using large weapons in tight places might come into effect…

To expand on what Binky said, beside the weapon itself, we should consider this in relation with the enemies too - as GlyphGryph has outlined in Issue #2024

Cutting weapon: I tend to see this as the tried-and-true damage type, as it should work in most cases, the standard damage. Cutting damage range should be fairly even to reflect the reliability of slashing attacks and average speed (still depend on the weapon itself of course). Addition effects may include bleeding (organic and living enemies only) or dismemberment. Cutting damage works best against light armor (zombies, fungaloids, triffids) and is rendered ineffective against heavy armor (robots, giant insects (chitin armor)).

Bashing weapon: Hard-hitting but slow, this can be characterize by high average damage across bashing weapons but with slower speed. Not as reliable as cutting but can be devastating in the right hand. Bashing damage can bypass, and in some case amplify against heavy armor and less effective against light armor or soft, “squishy” enemies (enemies with flexible body - triffids and fingaloids). When crit can stun or knock-back enemy.

Piercing weapon: Lower average damage but high crit-chance and effective against enemies with specific weak point (insects or living human), can be stopped by heavy-duty armor. Perhaps we can give long piecing weapons like the spear the ability to impale enemies from a distance of 1 title or impale 2 lined up enemies.

Energy weapon: High-damage, energy should be effective against most enemies, this is balanced by being a rarer damage type and costly to use. High damage and consistence damage per second (good to-hit) but have a long delay?

Chemical: Mostly useful againt living organisms . Poison-based attacks are effective against living enemies (NPCs, triffids, fungaloids) but not againts robot or simply poison-resistant enemies. The same to acid-based or gas-based. Nerve gas should be particular useful against intelligent beings but is rather useless against mindless ones (zombies, robots).

All good points. One thing that I would want to be avoided though is having to constantly swap weapons when you get onto different terrain/different situations as this does become tedious. For instance (using my example), if you HAD to change to piercing weapons in a corridor because they were so, so much better, then it means a lot of swapping around and weight balancing numerous weapons because each was only effective in certain situations.

Two ways around this:
-Don’t have negative effects/strong negative effects against enemies which don’t correspond to the weapon (like trying to use a bashing weapon on a flexible enemy).
-Have all weapons deal a base damage/two types of damage (except for some certain ones) as well.

For “hybrid” weapons, I think they should have lower average damage compare to dedicated ones. So you can choose between being flexible or efficient but rigid. Having extreme resistant (both positive and negative) shouldn’t be a bad thing as long as it’s not the norm; I think early on enemies should have average resistance, we can introduce monsters with extreme resistant later into the game.

About swapping weapons, I suggest we implement to ability to “ready” weapons, this feature is in many roguelikes nowadays (NetHack and Infra Arcana are 2 examples), so we can have one main weapon and one backup one. Also, not directly related, but changing weapons should take time (and in general, changing equipments); BUT swapping between main weapon and readied one should be quicker.

[quote=“infectedmochi, post:6, topic:4606”]For “hybrid” weapons, I think they should have lower average damage compare to dedicated ones. So you can choose between being flexible or efficient but rigid. Having extreme resistant (both positive and negative) shouldn’t be a bad thing as long as it’s not the norm; I think early on enemies should have average resistance, we can introduce monsters with extreme resistant later into the game.

About swapping weapons, I suggest we implement to ability to “ready” weapons, this feature is in many roguelikes nowadays (NetHack and Infra Arcana are 2 examples), so we can have one main weapon and one backup one. Also, not directly related, but changing weapons should take time (and in general, changing equipments); BUT swapping between main weapon and readied one should be quicker.[/quote]

+1
Both good ideas, it’d definitely make balancing early and late game monsters easier and give a lot more options. Readying weapons has been planned with the new carrying overhaul, but having it bound to a button would be great.

Hmm, this feels kinda strange- spears being useful against robots, (vs hammers), and axes dealing piercing damage.

‘Cutting’ should be renamed to ‘Slicing’

Hmm, how to model chopping damage- say you swing a wood cutter’s axe at someone in plate armor, it’s very likely to ricochet, (cutting/piercing hitting hard armor). But on the other hand it’s very good at breaking bones if it doesn’t have to start with them- going through the flesh helps direct the energy.

Perhaps there should be some kind of ‘order of resistance’ system?

–Spears are very good at slicing soft material & going through gaps in hard bits- say ribs that would have stopped (most) sword slashes, absorbed an axe chop & taken a hammer bash- they can be completely bypassed by a spear.
Put another property on armor- porousness. Piercing weapons can take advantage of a much lower porousness in armor, and can slip through the cracks & gaps to deal slicing/critical damage.

@hybrid weapons having lower damage
This seems off- such an effect should be accomplished strictly through resistances. Is that the suggestion, or is it more ‘spear has higher base damage than claymore’?

Okay, thinking about it some more, I will rename the first damage type to “slicing” to make it clearer what is actually happening here.

I’m imagining the pros/cons for a weapon focused on each of the following types of damage. This is less special-cased than my previous proposals:

[ul][li]Slicing Weapons: (long-lasting status conditions, fast speed)
Fastest attacks. (justified from a realism perspective since effective slicing is a single move attack, slice across, while swinging with bashing weapons and stabbing weapons are almost always two-move attacks, towards and then withdraw) Lowest damage and dps, but highest chance of crippling enemies to reduce their efficiency. Weak vs. armor, since damage prevention prevents them from even having a chance of crippling, and their low base damage is easily countered by armor.

Good versus groups, since you can distribute the damage amongst several enemies and use crippling attacks to wear them down over time and control engagements.

High damage slicing weapons come primarily from the quality of the weapon, with smaller weapons being faster and larger weapons being more accurate.

[/li]
[li]Forceful Weapons: (short-lasting status conditions, high persistent damage)
Most damaging attacks. Damage of this sort is the hardest to heal from, and is the best for moving the enemy with blows (knocking them back or knocking them down) or stunning them. Decent versus armor by sheer virtue of putting out enough damage to overcome it, but not because it has any special bonus vs. armor. Have the highest range of damages.

High damage forceful weapons are based primarily on weight, balance, and hardness. Smaller weapons are better for safely subduing weak but fast enemies, since attacks can be fast enough to keep them stunned and knocked down, while larger and heavier weapons are most effect versus slow moving and heavily armored enemies.

[/li]
[li]Piercing Weapons: (casualties)
Most effective attacks. Piercing weapons do not deal much overall base damage, and do not have any bonus to attack speed, but their damage versus armor is doubled, and their damage versus critical areas is tripled. They also have a decent chance to cause crippling attacks, although their slower attack speed makes them a worse choice for this focus than slicing weapons. Their major drawback is a very high chance to become “stuck in” the enemy - an enemy turns, moves, or falls upon being struck will make the weapon more difficult to extract, taking more time or even causing the wielder to lose their grip. However, a weapon that is left stuck in prevents the damage from being healed - if the strike was to an important critical zone, this can permanently render even super-regenerators helpless from a single attack. (think staking a vampire through the heart)

They are most effective in the hands of a skilled character by enabling them to destroy or knock enemies out of the fight very quickly. The more skilled a character is, the more pronounced this effect will be, especially since most of them will be point weapons and thus suffer an accuracy penalty.

High damage thrusting weapons are longer weapons that can reach deeper into the enemy, and are most effective against single creatures with high health, since overwhelming damage to a critical area can bypass that. These weapons, however, have a much higher chance of getting “stuck” than smaller stabbing weapons, and the strike speed doesn’t really change between the two. Smaller weapons are easier to strike with without losing control, but do less damage per strike, making them effective at quickly taking out numerous smaller enemies with a “one hit, one kill” approach.[/li][/ul]

Note well
These damage types will also be shared by projectiles!

Regular bullets will cause piercing, hollow points will cause piercing followed by slicing, and launched rocks will primarily cause force damage. Explosives will cause a mix of all damage types, with a balance depending on the type of explosive (frag grenades will mostly cause cutting, for example)

Obviously a lot of this will be down to numerical balancing and other factors, but I have to say that piercing weapons sound to be an all round best choice and therefore a bit of a no-brainer. If you know you’re going to be up against regenerative foes (which you probably will after a few play throughs) you’re going to want that, the high damage and piercing through armour is great and if it gets stuck you can just change to another weapon presumably (it’d be a bit silly if the player got stuck to the weapon).

This sounds like it would lead to a ‘stab until pierced and then change to secondary weapon’ tactic, which we presumably don’t really want. If item damage was implemented, piercing weapons could be more easily broken (especially if stuck), which would be a good trade off. More interestingly, this chance of being broken/damaged could increase when stuck in something.

Mk, so slicing has the obvious downside- crap against armor.

Piercing can get stuck, so their drawback is fighting more than one enemy, (depending on skill?).

What’s the downside to bashing? (there are larger & smaller weapons to handle larger/smaller enemies) Their weight?

Throwing more crap at the wall.

[spoiler]How about if piercing is entirely related to armor mitigation, rather than standing as a damage type–
So, bullet A has a piercing rating of 10, with a potential cutting damage of 20 & bashing damage of 6.
It’s trying to pass through armor with hardness 3, soft 8
-Hard armor is a 1-1 cost, so the pierce of 10 becomes 7 after mitigating the 3 hard armor.
-This 7 pierce is twice as effective against soft armor, so it brushes through the 8 soft armor with 3 pierce leftover.
-The bullet’s full 20 cutting damage & 6 bash damage get through & deal massive damage.

Replace that armor with something that has 6 hardness, 20 soft
-10 pierce drops to 4 after mitigating the hard armor, and then pierces through 8 of the soft padding.
-At this point cut/bash is calculated as if the receiving party were wearing 12 soft armor.

Though this doesn’t really model spear ‘piercing’ very well- lunging directly at a chitinous exterior wouldn’t do much irl, so it’s kinda goofy to have a spear directly mitigate hard armor with ‘piercing’. At this point I’d defer back to porousness for spears.

‘Precision’ would the the weapon property that can take advantage of porousness- so things like daggers, rapiers & spears would have very high precision.[/spoiler]

Piercing weapons are the obviously superior choice… if you’re fighting a single foe, and you’re willing to make the time investment. Point weapons suffer accuracy penalties, they don’t attack particularly fast, they have much lower DPS if you aren’t getting critical hits (the doubled damage would bring them up to about the effectiveness of force weapons versus armor… except if it’s not a critical hit, half the follow through damage).

Against enemies that are crit-resistant they are a terrible choice. Against enemies with high dodge, they are also a pretty bad choice.

The downside of force weapons is that they aren’t particularly good at anything. It’s the ‘safe’ fallback. Things can get a bit interesting with the knockbacks and stuns, but they are either slow (making you highy susceptible to groups of faster enemies) or fairly low damage (making you highly susceptible to more powerful enemies). Against an tough enemy, the slicing weapons have a chance of disabling it early in the fight and the piercing weapons have a chance of outright killing it with a single blow, but for the force weapons it’s basically just going to amount to a back-and-forth-brawl until one or the other goes down. Your only option to overcoming the threat is work your way through it’s HP one hit at a time. And they are good at that, but sometimes you just want to get a fight over as quickly as possible!

Seems pretty decent- there’d be various options for builds, and they’d all be viable. Though, I’d put forth that bashing weapons have the benefit of only needing one skill to handle all kinds of enemies- whereas a slashing build would need some form of bash/pierce, and a pierce build would need slashing/light bash.

Heh, I think I’m more interested in the armor side of things though, so I’ll just coast.

Slash weapons and force weapons don’t combine so well, but both combine well with piercing (sledgehammer is pure force → warhammer which is force+piercing; straight razor is pure slicing → dagger which is slicing+piercing).

First thing’s first, this is my first post here, so here I go…

      When it comes to weaponry and damage types, you've boiled it down to three types; Piercing, Slashing/Slicing/Cutting, and Bashing/Force.  The main issue I have with this is it doesn't, at least, just looking at the behaviors of the weapon types according to prior posts, quite do the intricacies of combat weaponry justice... Looking at the RL functions of various weapons and combat, the object of combat is to, presumably, render one of two situations true:
  1. The incapacitation of the subject through the compromise of internal organs or other vital functions (Cardiovascular, Neural, Respiratory are main target systems/body functions… this is the LETHAL OPTION)

  2. The destruction of the target’s ability to continue assault- Cripple, targeting the musculoskeletal system to cause damage so as to render the threat of the target to null (remove weaponry and disable… this is the NONLETHAL OPTION)

    In the pursuit of either scenario, physical trauma may come in several forms, just to boil it down into catagories-
    

MELEE DAMAGE

SHARP FORCE TRAUMA
Sharp force trauma, as defined here, is the transfer of force along a narrow ‘edge’ to amplify the strike, creating immense pressures at the blade’s contact point, which allows the weapon to rupture the dermis and possible intrude upon internal systems. When pursuing the LETHAL APPROACH, this is the ideal weapon for fast kills. However, these weapons, while fast and fairly accurate, do not possess sheer force to compare to the blunt weapons. Points for each variant of the weapon is described below.

NARROW VECTOR
The narrow vector of bladed weapons refers primarily to what’s currently classified as piercing damage. The application of a force to a singular or narrow point of impact so as to cause critical damage easily. These tend to be light weapons, but are not the fastest weapons to use. Missing or overshooting a stab can be a deadly mistake, opening you up to attack, which won’t be easy to defend against. However, striking an enemy deals high damage, and critical hits are immensely powerful, as they represent you making a stab (and succeeding) on a vital point. One issue with these weapons, however, is the difficulty in using them against swarms of opponents. I’ll go over hybrid weapon types later, but you won’t be stabbing quite as often when you need that blade to defend against the next bite attack. Makeshift versions of these weapons, or barbed weapons, tend to remain in the wound channel and require pulling the weapon out. Properly made normal weapons do not have this disadvantage, but barbed weapons treat this feature as an advantage, doing half the entry damage when exiting, thus making up for itself. Blocking with these weapons tends to be difficult if you’re not actually using a hybrid with narrow sharp force as primary, due to the manner in which the weapon is wielded, it’s hard to stop incoming attack. Against armor, though, these weapons have a threshold. Most of the time, it’s possible to pierce the armor of the target to get at the soft bits, and critical strikes made by these weapons ignore armor, but an armor which is harder than the blade can pierce will damage the weapon, and NOT AFFECT the armor. This severe disadvantage is somewhat shared with broad vector sharp weapons, but not to the extent broad vectors suffer.

    In short, narrow vector sharp force represents PIERCING WEAPONS,
               They excel at doing damage to individual unarmored targets  (High, consistent damage for a reduced overall chance to hit)
               Critical strikes ignore armor, and do immense damage   (It's difficult to hit enemies, but critical strikes make up for it in their immense power. Armor ignorance is unique to pierces)
               Armor above the threshold, however, damages these weapons with no effect on the armor.  (If you cannot penetrate the armor, your weapon SUFFERS)
               Overall, the weapon's strike pattern renders it slow, especially on misses. High penalty on recovery, but otherwise mediocre (not ideal for multiple targets, or dodge heavy targets)

                                    These weapons excel at point damage, but are difficult to use nonlethally. Nonlethal use would primarily cripple joints and muscles, but would not be very effective

BROAD VECTOR
The broad vector of sharp weapons refers to the application of the force distributed along a length of ‘edge’, reducing point damage and pressure, but increasing speed and accuracy. Bladed weapons like the katana or broadsword trade size for power, and heft. The increased weight allows these weapons to be more effective at this job. They can engage in two different manners; drawing across the body, or attempting to draw THROUGH the target. The former does less damage than the latter, but does not have a chance to stick in the corpse. Serrated edges do more damage than keen blades when drawing across, providing a potential counterbalance to the assumed superiority of trying to slice through the target. Keen edges are better at slicing through the target, and on hits, will tend to stick halfway in, however, the sheer intrusion of the blade into the body does quite a bit of damage, and you might just manage to cut off a limb for no recovery penalty. Broad vector sharp weapons suffer NO miss recovery penalty, due to the speed of the weapons, and their traditional use in multiple quick combination strikes. Armor is their greatest disadvantage. Drawing across the target will do little damage, as you’re really now just drawing across armor. Your best bet is to weaken the armor through draw-through strikes. Don’t give up on these though, there should be a small chance to get lucky and ignore armor, but criticals do NOT ignore armor unless the RNG decides that was one of the lucky hits. Speaking of criticals, these should be the strikes that sever limbs and severely cripple targets, often killing through the sheer maiming or bloodloss…

                In short, broad vector sharp force weapons represent CUTTING/SLICING weapons,
                             They excel at fast strokes, with two attack variants of their own advantages and disadvantages
                             They suffer no penalty for missing, but do not make critical strikes nearly as often
                             Armor cripples these weapons, but can be weakened by draw-through as a last resort
                             Critical strikes can cripple targets and put them on a bleedout timer (or instakill if the head is severed)

                            Trying to use these weapons nonlethally is a bit of a joke, but you can try to hit for blunt force damage on the flat of the blade to KO rather than kill.... I'll get back to that later

BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA
Blunt force trauma is the powerhouse of weapons, blunt force favors concussive force over speed, and does not disappoint. Blunt damage is characterized by the broad application of force to the target directly, and is differentiated from sharp force in that the concussive force is DIRECTLY applied. No blades, no piercing, just sheer force. These weapons can potentially be used for nonlethal damage, knocking the target out, but are still very lethal, when used properly. It’s harder to use a weapon nonlethally than lethally The damage these weapons do is based mostly on their heft, rather than the velocity one can swing it at… 10 pounds of steel falling one meter still applies over 437 newtons of force to the target. Still, velocity matters, and in compensating for their heft, recovery on the larger weapons (classified as Heavy vs Light) is much more difficult than on smaller ones. Strength matters to mostly continue the assault, as these weapons are draining stamina-wise to use. Points for each variant are described below

LIGHT WEIGHT
The more common examples of blunt weapons (No, not including the sledgehammer) are lightweight weapons which are easier to use, and their speed results in high damage for their size. The lightweight weapons category excels at recovery in exchange for the damage blunt weapons are known for. They can easily cripple, and when not breaking the skulls, still gives them a rattling. These weapons daze and stun easily, but don’t handle well against targets capable of redirecting or even completely absorbing such force. Monsters like slime globs are difficult to kill with blunt weapons, let alone the lightweight ones, and make recovery more difficult. Hitting soft targets increases recovery time, but this is compensated by the damage dealt to hard constructs. While not quite as effective as heavy weapons in this aspect, armors are weakened greatly, and at least 20% of the damage ignores armor completely. Softer armors absorb damage better, and give this weapon a hard time, but that’s why you have sharp force weapons. Critical strikes severely daze opponents when they aren’t killed, providing a free turn to run or continue fighting. Status effects include hemorrhaging (internal bleeding) or the aforementioned daze effects. Crippling reduces damage output by the crippled target, allowing a null threat scenario to occur without killing the subject.

                  In summary, you already know how this got split, it's based on weight, with all force weapons being split between these two categories. (Hybrid weapons will be explained LATER)
                                Light force weapons excel at stunning and crippling targets, while providing a decent attack rating (High hit, medium status effect chance, low crit chance)
                                They are reasonably fast, and do not take much time to recover (reduced recovery penalty on a miss compared to heavy weapons, faster on hit, though.)
                                Soft armors severely reduce damage, and slow the weapon down, but hard armor is no barrier to these weapons (Soft armor makes HITTING into a small penalty, it takes longer to recover, but hard armors are weakened or damaged on hit, and 20% of damage is unmitigated, no matter what)
                                Status effects such as Crippling, stunning, disorienting, and KO make combat difficult for the enemy. (Especially crippling, which reduces damage output and speed)

                       These are ideal nonlethal weapons, but are just as lethal when used for murderous intents. (Higher status effect chance when explicitly using a weapon nonlethally)   

HEAVY WEIGHT
Light bludgeons may be nice for those without much physical prowess, but the heavy bludgeons define physical concussive force. These weapons crush bones, shatter skulls, and render the subject incapable of walking away… If they survive. These weapons are heavy, and missing is extremely costly. Penalties for recovery after a miss should be large, but the normal damage is high, in compensation. Status effects include heavy crippling, KO (as opposed to just stunning) and limb destruction. As a nonlethal weapon, these are NOT ideal, they are too unwieldy for consistent status effects (SEs happen on Critical hits with Heavy Bludgeons) and do too much damage. Armor just crumples when struck, suffering massive damage, and potentially complete destruction of the hard armor in particular, with 60% of damage completely unmitigated by armor. Soft armors need to be thicker or more effective in order to reduce damage from these weapons to degrees similar to the protection afforded against lighter weapons. Dodge-heavy enemies will counter this, however, easily dodging and countering the strike while you’re still recovering. Brute targets who rely completely on hard armors rather than speed are especially vulnerable.

                                          In summary, heavy weapons are the bread and butter of anti-armor in melee range.
                                                 Heavy bludgeons suffer from missing (when they miss), but do high damage when they hit. Critical hits both inflict status effects and severe damage
                                                 They also counter armor thoroughly, 60% of damage is unaffected by armor, and armor is usually destroyed or severely damaged outright
                                                 Soft targets are vulnerable to a degree, but can recover. Creatures who specifically absorb kinetic energy (slime blobs, anyone?) give heavy weapons a hard time
                                                 Heavy bludgeons are also fairly slow. Even when you hit, you still have to heft the weapon back to a position from which to launch the next attack.


                  Rewrite fairly complete? Just post what you think.


   I know you have your own ideas, and whatever happens, feel free to contradict me, but this is a possible groundwork for MELEE weapons. Ranged gear needs to be figured somewhat differently, based on the system I've devised, but I'll get to that after I get to hybrid melee weapons... Anyways, thank you for your consideration, and I hope for you a good day.

Hrm, might I suggest something:

Tie critical hit chance to the armor/creature, and put a multiplier on the weapons.

So instead of having a flat critical hit chance against all enemies, enemies have varying levels of criticality, and weapons can take advantage of or cripple these chances, (a spear getting a 2-3x multiplier and a hammer getting a .3x multiplier; attacking something like a giant armadillo with a 5% crit rating, a spear would jump up to 15% while a hammer would drop to 2%).

Also nerf critical damage a bit- seems like it goes to 10x, where 2x or less would be sufficient as a max crit bonus.

[quote=“GrizzlyAdamz, post:16, topic:4606”]Hrm, might I suggest something:

Tie critical hit chance to the armor/creature, and put a multiplier on the weapons.

So instead of having a flat critical hit chance against all enemies, enemies have varying levels of criticality, and weapons can take advantage of or cripple these chances, (a spear getting a 2-3x multiplier and a hammer getting a .3x multiplier; attacking something like a giant armadillo with a 5% crit rating, a spear would jump up to 15% while a hammer would drop to 2%).

Also nerf critical damage a bit- seems like it goes to 10x, where 2x or less would be sufficient as a max crit bonus.[/quote]

One thing you might want to also think about is counter-armor weapons, or heavy bludgeons… Maybe you could track armor status and as it gets damaged (or destroyed) it opens up areas for critical hits, like damage to the armadillo’s dermal bone and scutes opening up the armadillo from 5% crit rating to higher levels depending on the damage sustained. This also opens up the strategy of bashing armor apart, then switching to precision tools to dispatch it.

I’m writing from a cell phone so I will keep this brief.

This is just in response to piercing damage and it’s usefulness against armor. While this is true, I’d like to point out that if you were fighting a robot, the spear would almost certainly not be someone’s first choice despite the fact that we normally associate robots with armor. A sledgehammer would be a much better choice for smashing a ‘hard target.’ The shock of impact would cause much more damage to rigid structures than piercing weapons would.

One thought is giving robots (and skeletons, and other appropriate enemies) a ‘rigid body’ tag that makes them especially vulnerable to force-based weapons while more resistant to slashing damage. Piercing can go unchanged.

Here, Aether mentioned an armor threshold for piercing weapons:

[quote=“Aether Veritatis, post:15, topic:4606”] NARROW VECTOR
The narrow vector of bladed weapons refers primarily to what’s currently classified as piercing damage. The application of a force to a singular or narrow point of impact so as to cause critical damage easily. These tend to be light weapons, but are not the fastest weapons to use. Missing or overshooting a stab can be a deadly mistake, opening you up to attack, which won’t be easy to defend against. However, striking an enemy deals high damage, and critical hits are immensely powerful, as they represent you making a stab (and succeeding) on a vital point. One issue with these weapons, however, is the difficulty in using them against swarms of opponents. I’ll go over hybrid weapon types later, but you won’t be stabbing quite as often when you need that blade to defend against the next bite attack. Makeshift versions of these weapons, or barbed weapons, tend to remain in the wound channel and require pulling the weapon out. Properly made normal weapons do not have this disadvantage, but barbed weapons treat this feature as an advantage, doing half the entry damage when exiting, thus making up for itself. Blocking with these weapons tends to be difficult if you’re not actually using a hybrid with narrow sharp force as primary, due to the manner in which the weapon is wielded, it’s hard to stop incoming attack. Against armor, though, these weapons have a threshold. Most of the time, it’s possible to pierce the armor of the target to get at the soft bits, and critical strikes made by these weapons ignore armor, but an armor which is harder than the blade can pierce will damage the weapon, and NOT AFFECT the armor. This severe disadvantage is somewhat shared with broad vector sharp weapons, but not to the extent broad vectors suffer.

    In short, narrow vector sharp force represents PIERCING WEAPONS,
               They excel at doing damage to individual unarmored targets  (High, consistent damage for a reduced overall chance to hit)
               Critical strikes ignore armor, and do immense damage   (It's difficult to hit enemies, but critical strikes make up for it in their immense power. Armor ignorance is unique to pierces)
          [b]     Armor above the threshold, however, damages these weapons with no effect on the armor.  (If you cannot penetrate the armor, your weapon SUFFERS)[/b]
               Overall, the weapon's strike pattern renders it slow, especially on misses. High penalty on recovery, but otherwise mediocre (not ideal for multiple targets, or dodge heavy targets)

                                    These weapons excel at point damage, but are difficult to use nonlethally. Nonlethal use would primarily cripple joints and muscles, but would not be very effective[/quote]

I’m still in favor of redefining ‘piercing’ & giving spears slicing damage, (to better imitate their performance v robots).

I like this, but I don’t know how tricky it’d be to implement it, (certainly easier for humanoids than critters).

Hey gryph, how on-topic do you consider armor talk? (I like armor talk.)

Fairly off-topic, but honestly I think I’ve gotten enough feedback here to work on weapons, so feel free. Keep in mind the already planned changes to how things will be working referenced in the first post.