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[Eric Blank]

I encountered an issue last night, which doesn't really count as a "bug" but is nonetheless an annoying situation to wind up in, which might only be resolvable by force-quitting the game under certain circumstances.

Link to post about what happened: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=51245.msg8537266#msg8537266

Basically, my adventurer lost consciousness while wrestling an eagle, and the eagle was unable to 1) escape my grip on them or 2) kill my adventurer in a timely fashion because of my helmet. This put me in a stun-lock loop that lasted 16 real-time minutes, wherein I was unable to act in any way, including unable to open the escape menu.

Now this is not a new issue at all, its been able to happen for a very long time now. However, in the new adventure mode update, it appears to have taken on a new life; the between-turns animation and sound effect sequence is what I think caused this to take so long to resolve, as between the eagle's turns attacking me the game played the animation and sound effect faithfully, over and over and over. And that takes time. This is something that any player can end up being caught in while wrestling a smaller creature.

So Ive been thinking about it and ive come up with several suggestions that might help mitigate this;

1) like I described in my post in the adventure mode thread, a timer or limit on the number of times animations and sound effects can play when the currently-controlled character is unconscious. When this happens it should disable the animations and sounds until the character remains conscious for several turns (NOT when the character regains consciousness and immediately loses it again.)

2) Pause after a certain number of turns wherein the player could not act and give them the option to auto-resolve in some way, say by giving up and dying (as a default), quitting the game, switching to another character in the party if there is one, or other future possibilities depending on circumstances, or letting the game continue until the combat resolves. This should repeat after a number of turns so you get another opportunity to change your mind

3) always permit the player to open the 'escape' menu and quit the game, even when their character is unconscious/it is not their turn/another menu is open.

4) break wrestling grips when the creature that initiated the grip loses consciousness or is about to pass out due to exhaustion.

5) amend animal targeting code to allow them to target creatures [THROAT]s (or any external body part that has a tissue with [TL_MAJOR_ARTERIES] tag) or attempt to strangle them with a wrestling grip of their own (enable wrestling grips through mouth body parts?) - this is a natural tactic animals instinctively use in the real world to take down prey.

[Crystalwarrior]

I agree with this 100%. I think blocking Esc menu during conflict resolution is annoying.
You're also right about 4 and 5, these are symptoms of the issue.

I also think the auto-resolve is a good idea and it could enable fast-forward mode when unconscious. In fact why does the player even need to see all the actions performed against them during unconsciousness? Perhaps when you're unconscious, you only awaken to what happened afterwards. Cuz right now, being Unconscious you're still acutely aware of everything happening including speech.

I also dunno what happens when you're unconscious with other party members swappable so I need to test this, but you should be able to instantly swap to your active party member if you're KO'd.