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Author Topic: Semi-random weapons  (Read 1696 times)

TBCoW

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Semi-random weapons
« on: March 28, 2015, 08:39:29 am »

As it is now we have all the weapons defined in raws. However lately we got knowledge/technology.

What i propose is to have weapons start as worse versions of what we have in raws and as time passes various civs should try to upgrade their weapons in some of the aspects.
For example a battle axe could start with worse slashing ability and a civ would try to upgrade this aspect.
This way we could have civilizations vary more not only in culture but in weapons themselves.

New versions of standard weapons could have custom names but in description there should what weapon type it is and maybe a hint what is better or worse compared to standard one.
Let's say there is a weapon called 'Zongonash' - This weapon is a spear that can stab better. It is heavier than a standard one.
Custom names should be somehow related to the language of civs that created them.

Such feature would be the best for artifact arc.
Weapons could have a +/- starting cap at 15% and 'fully researched weapon' could get a higher advantage over the standard weapon in the raws.
Artifact weapons could be randomized (to very high numbers) so a player with artifact sword could use it to stab well but would be unable to slash a thing.

This feature should make adventure mode better as you can travel to distant civilizations to get exotic weapons.
In Dwarf mode it would be fun to import weapons that could for some reason be stronger than what your dwarves can produce. This would be a nice touch to differentiate upcoming mercenaries with various equipment as they come from other parts of the world.
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Witty

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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #1 on: March 28, 2015, 10:03:46 am »

I like this idea. Procedurally generated weapons have already been experimented with, so this isn't too far fetched.
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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #2 on: March 28, 2015, 10:35:53 am »

Personally I'd like to be able to count upon the different weapon types being consistent between worlds.
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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #3 on: March 28, 2015, 06:03:23 pm »

I don't really like the research thing - current quality system is enough. As mentioned, there should me modifications like "longer blade but slower slash".
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AceSV

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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #4 on: March 29, 2015, 09:35:07 am »

I don't like the idea weapons getting better for no tangible reason.  There is no "best" sword or spear in history, they all have different strengths and weaknesses.  However, I don't mind weapons experiencing cultural drift.  If  The Somber Homes makes short wide curved swords while The Decent Union makes long narrow straight swords, then fine. 

I think it's really important to make the nature of a randomized weapon apparent to the player.  If it generates a Zongonash, there needs to be a description ready that says "A Zongonash is a heavy spear, adept at stabbing."  I'd rather see absolute modifiers such as a Long weapon = 110% penetration/conctact/size, a Very Long weapon = 120% penetration/contact/size so that you can look at a description that says something like "Danmanlibash: A long heavy concave axe" and look up the modifiers and the base values and know exactly what the weapon's stats are. 

I would like the idea that your dwarves can analyze and copy foreign weapons.  If you've never seen a longsword before, you can't queue one up in your shops, but if obtain one via goblinite or trade you can "dissect" it and add it to the list of weapons you can produce. 



Back to your original idea, I think you could use the new knowledge/book system to do that.  Instead of just saying "this culture is 15% better at making axes", you could have a Legendary +5 weaponsmith who likes axes write a treatise on the art of weaponmaking.  Any dwarf who reads the book gets a boost to their Weaponsmith skill.  You could throw in some extra variables to make them relate to a specific type of weapon instead of all weapons.  So instead of just waving your hand and saying "this culture is good at axe making", you've got a culture that's good at axe making because they've all read a book about axe making or have spoken with someone who has read it.  But this is still not saying "Danmanlibashs are just better than axes", it's just that the dwarves of The Somber Homes or whatever are more likely to produce masterwork axes. 
« Last Edit: March 29, 2015, 09:37:57 am by AceSV »
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Andeerz

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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #5 on: March 29, 2015, 09:14:13 pm »

I don't like the idea weapons getting better for no tangible reason.  There is no "best" sword or spear in history, they all have different strengths and weaknesses.  However, I don't mind weapons experiencing cultural drift.  If  The Somber Homes makes short wide curved swords while The Decent Union makes long narrow straight swords, then fine.

Hear hear!

This is very true.  There is a Youtube channel I highly suggest for anyone who wants to get an introduction to the strengths and weaknesses of various designs of weapons: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt14YOvYhd5FCGCwcjhrOdA

This guy is pretty awesome.

Anyway, I think it would be cool if the systems of innovation, knowledge, and economy in this game could (likely far in the future of the development of this game) make it so that the innovation adoption of different weapon styles (and fighting styles and armour styles and other martial tecnologies) by different cultures would reflect the kind of warfare these cultures experienced as well as the economic situations of the cultures.  For example, perhaps one would find the adoption of pike weapons and large block formations more commonly within cultures that have large professional standing armies able to merit the use of such a weapon to good effect (it is my understanding that this was not a weapon to be used by undisciplined groups that did not train together!).  Or perhaps warhammers and maces would not be as commonly used by cultures that did not frequently encounter heavily armoured adversaries.  As a final example, maybe a culture without sufficient infrastructure to support enough mining of iron or copper would have obsidian or stone based weapons (think of the macuahuitl).         

Also... I'd like to throw in that as part of what would be necessary for being able to model this sort of stuff, the characteristics and physics of weapon designs (including the characteristics of materials that make them!), mechanics underlying damage, and the like need to be well modeled so that the entities in this game can actually make rational choices about the weapons they use that are believable.  This game actually attempts this to a degree, and that is admirable!  But it still needs a lot of work!  For an example of what would need to be modeled, a longsword of the lengths seen in medieval Western Europe required a metal that could be in a shape that long while holding an edge, being resilient enough to withstand repeated impacts, and being light enough.  Very few metals could fit that bill, and that is a big part of why you only really saw swords of that length made out of iron (though they could be made out of some kinds of bronze, but bronze has its issues... not the least of which was expense... Also, I am excluding modern alloys here...).  This example is a bit oversimplified, but you see what I mean.  :) 
« Last Edit: March 29, 2015, 09:34:07 pm by Andeerz »
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TBCoW

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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #6 on: March 30, 2015, 05:04:30 am »

I may have not been clear with what i exactly meant by this suggestion.

I don't want only 1 weapon from existing civilization to be the best in the whole game.
The idea was that starting weapons have the same stats but as history passes each weapon gets different in some aspect up to certain cap.

Let's compare katanas and arming swords. They are both a type of sword and may have been more similar when people started using metals (I'm not exactly sure about this but in this matter i don't think it is important).
We can compare those 2 and see that while they are both swords they are different in looks and use (piercing, slashing).

I'm certain that weapons leading to the last 'versions' of these were perfected until we got what we have nowadays.
This i what i mean by having a cap on upgrading - the progress could lead to some minor changes in fighting, which would add some flavor and players wouldn't rate weapons based on material/quality only.
The low cap is meant to ensure that a longsword suddenly isn't better at bashing than a maul.
The high cap on artifacts could lead to some hilarious weapons (either bad or good) and with the artifact arc should make some memorable games.
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Deboche

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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #7 on: March 30, 2015, 07:58:03 am »

I like the idea of randomized weapons and names but the short description should be something like "A x sword" where x describes the weapon somewhat. For example, "A long thin sword" would describe a katana, maybe long, thin and curved.

I just don't wanna have to read the full description to find out if a Gonhotir is an axe or a spear or whatever. So if you want to find out what your civ call their weapons you have to go into the full description. "This is a Gonhotir, a war hammer with a long handle and a spike at the tip. It was created by the dwarves of Blahblahblah."
« Last Edit: March 30, 2015, 08:08:25 am by Deboche »
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Naryar

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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #8 on: March 30, 2015, 02:40:10 pm »

I feel the same as Deboche.

Semi-random weapons, yes, but only if they have names that can be understood.

A "gonhotir" will make me check the goblin descriptions to see what kind of weapon it is.  A long-handled spike-tipped war hammer, however, I can see what it is immediately. (Lucerne hammer)

There's the issue of overly long names though. *<-steel long-handled spike-tipped war hammer->* is a bit long in a creature description.

Besides it will confuse the newbies even more.

AceSV

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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #9 on: March 30, 2015, 04:24:28 pm »

I don't think it would be too hard to remember what weapons are, since it's not going to change over the course of the game.  If I can name 150 pokemon, I can remember that a Zongonash is a kind of spear and a Gonhotir is a kind of hammer.  There's allegedly only 7 weapons to keep track of in your own civ, and having to look up what a foreign weapon is will make it that much more foreign.  I for one play DF with the wiki open at all times, so the need to look up a term causes me no shame. 

It might help to give weapon names in both English and Dwarven as we do with surnames(although I'm not sure where you would put that).  A Cut-Lass is probably easier to remember than a Rit-Saruth.  A lot of weapons have quasi-meaningful names, for example the cut-lass sword and wind-lass crossbow, tri-dent mean three-teeth, hal-berd means staff-axe, a bec-de-corbin is a crow's beak, a morning star refers to its shape, a Lucerne hammer refers to the city that invented it.  There are also weapons related to their home civs, for example the Saxons used a kind of dagger/sword known as a sax or seax, and the Franks were known for their francisca throwing axes.  Rather than just throwing attractive syllables together, the random name generator could combine meaningful words.  For example, Danman-libash is heavy-axe, or something more poetic like Vumshar-obok, gloom-pillar. 

Getting the machine to come up with "logical" weapons names would be an interesting task.  Using the previous examples, you would program it to relate danman/heavy with weapons that have a higher size than the default, and libash/axe would be related to weapons that are based on the axe.  Obok/pillar could be related to shaft weapons, like spears or staffs, and vumshar/gloom could be a generic word that goes with any weapon.  So the machine would modify the weapon and then use its properties to eliminate certain words from the list and then pick a randomized name based on the remaining result. 
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #10 on: March 30, 2015, 04:49:37 pm »

Has not every kind of weapon that practically makes sense in combat been invented in real-life?  Okay everything that makes sense given our present or past level of technology, so not sci-fi rayguns.
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Deboche

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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #11 on: March 30, 2015, 05:01:06 pm »

I was thinking there'd be some freedom for the generated weapons so that new and weird stuff would be created, with weird names. The game would take one or two adjectives that best describe it, "long", "short", "sharp", "double-edged", "heavy" and so on and attach it to the weapons types we already have.

So by pressing "k" and looking at the object or looking at it in a list of items, you'd see:

"a long heavy war hammer"

but the full description would be something like:

A fornithen(randomly generated name), a large war hammer with a long shaft, counterbalanced on the other end by a metal ball. It was invented by the dwarves of blahblahblah.

So GoblinCookie, it wouldn't be a completely new weapon, just a new design for already existing weapon types.
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BoredVirulence

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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #12 on: March 30, 2015, 05:14:17 pm »

Has not every kind of weapon that practically makes sense in combat been invented in real-life?  Okay everything that makes sense given our present or past level of technology, so not sci-fi rayguns.
Practically, for human on human combat, considering certain economic conditions, such as availability of metals.

Considering everything on Earth, yes. But we've got goblins, dwarves, and elves to throw into the mix, different cultural clashes, underground fighting, and megabeasts. So, no I don't think that our history reflects the conditions found in DF. That said, I'm not entirely sure if this is the right way to go about it. Needless to say we do need some quasi-procedurally generated weapons. I also support standard weapons found in all games.

As others have said, when generating new weapons we need not just modify it, we need trade offs. Don't just make it better, make it more expensive if its heavier, make bigger increase contact area.

Ideally, it would be nice if world-gen could keep track of how well weapons do in certain scenarios, and use that feedback to specialize weapons further. Dwarves on a southern continent may develop an improved axe for forestry, heavier with a smaller contact area, but find it performs better against goblin invasions than other axes, and thus produce more phasing out other axes.

The player could make any weapon they have access to, but it would be nice if environmental pressures force specialization in cultures for NPC's and worldgen. Of course, I doubt we'll see that anytime soon.
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AceSV

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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #13 on: March 30, 2015, 05:53:30 pm »

Has not every kind of weapon that practically makes sense in combat been invented in real-life?  Okay everything that makes sense given our present or past level of technology, so not sci-fi rayguns.

Not necessarily.  Weapons are generally invented by evolution, not as completely new ideas.  Short Roman style gladius were made slightly longer and slightly longer until they reached the size of a spatha, then they made those slightly longer and slightly longer until they reached the length of a long sword and knight sword.  In japan they said, you know, I really don't need to stab, and changed their swords into the curved katana, while in europe they said, you know, I really don't need to slash, and changed their swords into the pointy estoc and rapier.  We didn't start from scratch each time we invented a new weapon, so we only make weapons based on previous weapons.

It's not outrageous to think that a different course of history would lead to a different line of evolution, even without all the elves and goblins and forgotten beasts. 



This is a relevant discussion about weapons becoming generalized or specialized:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AikYrawU7M
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Andeerz

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Re: Semi-random weapons
« Reply #14 on: March 30, 2015, 07:43:37 pm »

I'm certain that weapons leading to the last 'versions' of these were perfected until we got what we have nowadays.
This i what i mean by having a cap on upgrading - the progress could lead to some minor changes in fighting, which would add some flavor and players wouldn't rate weapons based on material/quality only.
The low cap is meant to ensure that a longsword suddenly isn't better at bashing than a maul.
The high cap on artifacts could lead to some hilarious weapons (either bad or good) and with the artifact arc should make some memorable games.

Hmmmm... I think weapons stop evolving only when they become completely obsolete.  I don't like the idea of a "cap" in that regard, since every weapon has its advantages and disadvantages (though, admittedly, there are some weapons that are worse in all regards than any of their predecessors in terms of combat-worthiness, but the ones that come to mind are due to devolution, or evolution towards aesthetics and portraying status or something... i.e. smallswords and spadroons)

Has not every kind of weapon that practically makes sense in combat been invented in real-life?  Okay everything that makes sense given our present or past level of technology, so not sci-fi rayguns.
Practically, for human on human combat, considering certain economic conditions, such as availability of metals.

Agreed.  And I do indeed think that this is the right way to go about it in this game, regardless of forgotten beasts and orcs and gobbos.  If anything, this will make things even cooler if we go by how weapons evolved in our world.

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As others have said, when generating new weapons we need not just modify it, we need trade offs. Don't just make it better, make it more expensive if its heavier, make bigger increase contact area.

Ideally, it would be nice if world-gen could keep track of how well weapons do in certain scenarios, and use that feedback to specialize weapons further. Dwarves on a southern continent may develop an improved axe for forestry, heavier with a smaller contact area, but find it performs better against goblin invasions than other axes, and thus produce more phasing out other axes.

The player could make any weapon they have access to, but it would be nice if environmental pressures force specialization in cultures for NPC's and worldgen. Of course, I doubt we'll see that anytime soon.

Agreed!!! ...sort of... I think in order for this stuff to make sense, the physical characteristics of weapons need to be better modeled.  I know I found it somewhere, but I remember reading something that basically boiled down all the relevant characteristics of weapons that make them what they are... like weight, bladed or not bladed, length of contact surface, etc.  There are quite a few factors.  And taking this into account could plug into whatever speculative way it is that the game would possibly determine what weapon is developed and adopted where, by whom, and what situations it is effective in.   
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