Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[alphawolf29]

I think you guys are all really missing the point here. You're messing with the combat system in the Arena mode a lot, but only messing with freaking megabeasts.

Megabeasts are different. A LOT different than they were before. Look at the raw files, get an understanding of the absolute differences in size between a BC and a Dwarf. Yeah, they shouldn't be so invulnerable, but;

In dwarf mode, combat between a moderately skilled dwarf with a steel battle axe and no armor against a several troglodytes and an ogre resulted in swift execution of all the monsters by the dwarf in ways that would be utterly expected. Limbs go flying, blood sprays everywhere.

Individual creatures are no longer clones of each other. Their abilities to resist damage, recover from damage, move, react, and stand their ground are all highly variable. Combat depends on much on recruiting a dwarf fit for the job as it is in getting their skill at handling a particular weapon up.

Run a few fights against more reasonable opponents before you call everything into question. Why Bronze Colossi are definitely broken, this is because... Bronze Colossi are broken, than the whole system being broken.

lol, we arent really talking about brone collossi. we were talking about the un realistic-ness of materials, and casually how undead are utterly invincible. I had a novice with a leader warhammer *human* take on 4 swordsmen with exactly the same skills and won hands down 3/4 times.

[dreiche2]

Were they heavily armoured? If so, repeat experiment without armour.

[G-Flex]

I think you guys are all really missing the point here. You're messing with the combat system in the Arena mode a lot, but only messing with freaking megabeasts.

I did tests with some other creatures and objects too, but you didn't read that part, I guess.

Also, much of what I found out about megabeasts applies to combat in general.

Run a few fights against more reasonable opponents before you call everything into question. Why Bronze Colossi are definitely broken, this is because... Bronze Colossi are broken, than the whole system being broken.

No. Again, there are very clear similarities between that situation and combat in general. Throughout all my tests, cumulative breaking/bruising of things simply doesn't seem to do a whole lot.

The fact is, yet again, that repeatedly fracturing a body part should eventually break it entirely. It doesn't matter if it's a bronze colossus, or a hydra, or a dwarf, or anything else.


So, yeah, I did run fights with "more reasonable opponents". Things still didn't work as expected, and in a variety of situations. And if bronze colossi are broken, they're broken for a reason, and I think I've figured out one of the most serious ones.

[dreiche2]

However, I'm not sure I see gold or lead ever being a good replacement for something like steel, for an actual warhammer. A warhammer cares about the shape that it's in, and softer metals are bad for that.

Yes, but damage to weapons simply isn't in the current system. In system as it is, I don't see a problem with gold hammers having better damage, especially if they come (?) with weaker armour penetration. 

Yes, at some point heaviness of weapons should become a problem, but not necessarily at that point (esp. if warhammers are rather small anyway).

The fact is, yet again, that repeatedly fracturing a body part should eventually break it entirely. It doesn't matter if it's a bronze colossus, or a hydra, or a dwarf, or anything else.

Well, yes if that's true for any creature then it might be bug / incompleteness of the system. Why not file a bug report and wait for an official comment? No need to further argue about it.

I'd rather be interested in finding out more details of the system, i.e. what works against armoured opponents and what doesn't, etc.

[Pandarsenic]

Well, gee, if you don't know that I recommend reading this thread: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=52120

It contains extensive notation on what works against what things, what elements of the system are problematic, etc.

[dreiche2]

Good thing I posted in that thread then to find out more details of the system, i.e. what works against armoured opponents and what doesn't, etc..

....instead of in this thread, where people still complain about light-as-a-feather adamantine bolts not doing any damage, or argue about something that's probably just a bug and needs official confirmation.

Edit: Not saying there wasn't some discussion about the former. I'd just like to see more of it.

Anyway...

[Grimic]

Run a few fights against more reasonable opponents before you call everything into question. Why Bronze Colossi are definitely broken, this is because... Bronze Colossi are broken, than the whole system being broken.

I'm hoping that by chance you just didn't read the thread carefully enough and still haven't started a DF2010 fort of your own yet to see how broken the combat actually is. It has nothing to do with Bronze Colossi in specific, they're just one example of how you can break a creature's parts to bits and have them still operating just fine.

When I started my first DF2010 fort, I sent 5 or 6 wrestlers to gang up on a wild muskox to get a feel for the new squad controls. Even after they beat every single one of its visible body parts down to a bloody pulp, it was still conscious and trying to limp away, hardly even affected by what used to mean death several times over. All of the wrestlers were long past legendary status (except for the two that died of thirst) by the time I gave up and canceled the kill order. It didn't take more than that to convince me that combat is broken one way or another.

[Funk]

armor even just copper mail makes slashing worthless ,blunt and stabbing is only a little better.

hell i've ended up just striping my foes in a fight as it quicker

[gumball135]

My first experience of the arena:
I created a unicorn, a giant mole, a dwarf (with full adamantine gear and grandmaster in most skills), an ogre, a giant tiger and a cyclops and let them duke it out. The giant mole died from blood loss after getting stabbed through the leg by the unicorn. However, it had managed to fatally wound the unicorn before this, so both critters died. This was after they'd been fighting for AGES, so both were covered in wounds.

The dwarf somehow had his weapon hand ripped off within seconds of engaging the other beasts, then his throat ripped out. He died from blood loss while the ogre was strangling him.

The ogre was being bashed on by both the giant tiger and cyclops while trying to knock off the dwarf, and after he had gotten about 20 different wounds (I'm not sure how damaging, don't understand the new wound system yet), finally dropped unconcious. The cyclops was in a similar state wound wise, as was the tiger.

However, the tiger was the only critter that remained concious in the end, despite having over 1 page of wounds. I quit while he was still knawing on the two other guys' unconcious bodies.

This took place over about 3 minutes. So, long story short, combat takes ages, but it's still fun I had expected the dwarf (wielding full adamantine gear with an axe, all important skills maxed out) to massacre the others, but he was one of the first ones to die. Also, you have to press [ESC] to exit out of menus now, which is annoying. Now, onto fortress/adventure mode!

Edit: After reading through some of the other posts, my experience of combat seems to match up with everyone else's.

[Misterstone]

So I've been skimming, but from this thread and what I have seen myself int he arena, all of the issues are based on a few basic problems:

1) Wounds (tissue damage, bleeding, shattered bones) and related pain are just not effective enough, they don't knock an opponent out the way they should

2)  Attack damage is too heavily weighted towards high inertia attacks, which always gives a huge advantage to heavier weapons or attack limbs (thus, gold swords nastier than steel, etc.) rather than mechanical properties of the weapon, or the speed of the swing (which may not even be modeled), raw strength or skill of the fighter, and so on.

3)  Creatures that have NOPAIN, that don't bleed, and so on are almost indestructable, because it is too hard to deliver the structural damage necessary to destroy them.  Also creatures without real flesh may just be buggy (ie skeletal donkeys encased in magma will not die!)

Is this pretty much the problems in a nutshell?  I hope that's basically it, because it seems like it could be tweaked pretty easily by Toady when he gets around to it.  In fact, just tweaking the inertia/weapon properties issue would fix a lot of it.

I figure if the issue with weapon properties gets addressed, we'll find that the colossi aren't 100% invulnerable.  But they'll be extremely tough, enough that it's FUN(tm) to fight them.

Another problem I have found is that it seems too hard to latch on to things with pinching attacks (such as a crocodile's bite).  I'll play with that some more though.

[BishopX]

I started a hammer dwarf adventurer, and I've killed ~20 wolves so far with her, just wandering around the wilderness with a steel war hammer. In general every one of my strikes shatters some bone. But 4 out of 5 attacks hits the legs of a wolf (even when they are on the ground unconscious). In each of my twenty kills so far there have been 2 causes of death. Either I managed to hit the wolf square in the head and drive it's skull through its brain or I hit the wolf in the chest hard enough to drive a rib through a lung causing it to suffocate.

[RedKing]

I have a human adventurer clad in bronze with a bronze two-handed sword and bronze shield (mrf?) who has so far slain two dragons, 20 goblin-aligned humans (included 10 with titles), 10 wolves, 5 troglodytes, 3 gremlins, a troll, a giant rat and a giant bat. WITHOUT TAKING DAMAGE. Not even a bruise.

She blocks crossbow bolts out of the air with regularity. Even when she misses the block, they bounce off her bronze chain mail harmlessly. She blocked dragonfire (I'm still trying to figure that out...)

Of all the fights, the giant bat was the toughest. I lopped off a wing, then proceeded to try and strangle it to death. After 100+ rounds of strangling (and the bat waking up and passing out again twice), I said f**k it and stabbity-stabbity'd it to death.


Basically after spelunking the depths to find and track down the second dragon, I waltzed into a dark fortress (inhabited entirely by humans), slew any gobbo-allied humans I found and led a pack of prisoner children out again. Kind of like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, but with a lot more blood.

Yeah, combat is a bit frungy right now.


P.S. Oh yeah, my combat skill xp is rocketing up the chart. I went from dabbling to Adept Wrestler because of the bat.

[Patarak]

It's looking like the new combat system has changed how limb parts can be used. I've got two bronze collosi going at it and one of them has both its upper arms pretty much toast, but it's still able to attack the other one with an axe. Unless its grabbing the axe with its mouth or something.

[G-Flex]

So I've been skimming, but from this thread and what I have seen myself int he arena, all of the issues are based on a few basic problems:

1) Wounds (tissue damage, bleeding, shattered bones) and related pain are just not effective enough, they don't knock an opponent out the way they should

2)  Attack damage is too heavily weighted towards high inertia attacks, which always gives a huge advantage to heavier weapons or attack limbs (thus, gold swords nastier than steel, etc.) rather than mechanical properties of the weapon, or the speed of the swing (which may not even be modeled), raw strength or skill of the fighter, and so on.

3)  Creatures that have NOPAIN, that don't bleed, and so on are almost indestructable, because it is too hard to deliver the structural damage necessary to destroy them.  Also creatures without real flesh may just be buggy (ie skeletal donkeys encased in magma will not die!)

Is this pretty much the problems in a nutshell?  I hope that's basically it, because it seems like it could be tweaked pretty easily by Toady when he gets around to it.  In fact, just tweaking the inertia/weapon properties issue would fix a lot of it.

That's most of it, it seems. I'd add a couple, though:

• Attacking previously-wounded parts doesn't seem to cause wounds that are any worse than if you were to attack the part had it not been previously wounded. In other words, it's like you're always hitting a "clean" spot, never causing cumulative damage. This seems to lead to at least one of the effects you mentioned.
• Armor is just way too effective (see one of the posts just above mine). Alligators, hydras, etc. can't even seem to hurt each other through biting, for instance.

Unfortunately, this is all speculation on our part, but I think we've figured out some important enough stuff. The thing we're really the most clueless about, in my opinion, is how hard the problems will be to address.

[Huggz]

I think this just about sums it up:



Not even BLEEDING...