Combat Overhaul Documentation
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 4:41 am
Combat in ss13, as everyone knows, is effectively clickspam movement spaz-out RNG, with a touch of equipment preparation to give you an edge (sunglasses to cancel flashes, shields to hopefully prevent a disarm attempt etc).
Rather shockingly, this is a pretty bad combat system. It's largely dependent on your connection (whether a click is registered or not) and RNG (disarm and punching I'm looking at you), and both made worse by insane button mash movement. Most of all, it's dependent on STUNS, the ultimate "you lose" mechanic that can end any fight instantly because of how powerful stunning is, and how easy it is to stunlock someone (just keep clicking on them). Personally I find that having an antagonist who relies on raw killing power to survive (wizard and nuke ops) that can be offed by one asshole assistant who gets a lucky disarm is very poor design.
Now I'm not making this post as a "i ded pls nerf" response to combat, it's something I've observed over years, and it's not exactly difficult to notice how flawed it is.
There's also several ways to "fix" combat and reduce or eliminate the RNG presence. I aim to both present a way to remove the RNG and to make combat less of a click button mash:
1. Movement
I'm sure you've experienced it yourself: Any time you get in a fistfight (with or without devolving to weapons) you've likely seen that combat is based on clicking as fast as possible on the other person's sprite while spazing the hell out and hoping your clicks actually connect. Standing still while your opponent moves tends to be complete suicide and syncing your movement gets you both hit. More rarely you can make good use of the more harmful intents to make yourself dense and able to push other players around, allowing you to score an easier hit. While on paper this sounds intense, in practice it's really just a dice toss on whether you win or not.
Here's how I propose it gets changed:
First, combat is changed such that your direction actually matters with both your ability to hit (or interact with) something and the ability to block incoming attacks (more on that later). You would be limited to the 3 tiles in front of you and the two to your sides, leaving the 3 at the back exposed. This is then followed by the introduction of 3 new CYCLE-ABLE movement states: Free, combat, and static.
[X][X][X]
[X][^][X]
[X][X][X]
Free mode is exactly like how we have it now, both your movement and your clicking changes your direction and it's best used for when you're not fighting anything (operating machines or whatever).
Combat mode makes it so you can only change the direction you face by clicking in a direction, moving around and being pushed around will not change it. This mode would be the most flexible for combat since it wouldn't impair your movements unless you directly try to click on someone or something (you'll need to click towards a direction to face it). To prevent people from using this mode literally all the time, you would receive a minor speed down when backpedaling, making it waste your time (and look like an idiot) while outside of a fight.
Static mode is the most rigid of all 3, preventing you from turning no matter what. Clicking, moving around, and being pushed by others will not change your direction whatsoever. This would be useful in the case of absolutely having to face one direction in the middle of a fight, where you cannot afford to be turning around and making yourself more vulnerable (this will be expanded on with shields and disarming).
What you are capable of hitting adjacent to you in any direction would be these:
2. Disarm, grab, and harm intents
Disarm and harm intent right now are both dictated entirely by RNG: Whether you disarm someone, whether you knock them down, and whether you miss completely is totally up to luck. Its effectiveness also isn't wavered by anything other than shields or a stun-immune state (hulks might still drop their items when disarmed, though). Harm intent is also a bizarre intent, dealing 0-9 damage in a punch and with the ability to weaken you for a very long time. At times, this is long enough to get another lucky stun on someone and you could in theory punch someone in riot armor to death this way if you're very consistently lucky (and stripping them). Finally, grabbing is a hideously outdated system used primarily for tabling people and then putting them in a chokehold that you literally cannot escape from no matter what (unbelievably shitty game design).
Instead, how about we do away with the abhorrent amount of RNG and insta-wins? Make punching do a guaranteed 3 damage with no stun chance. It really should remain as a last resort, not something that in many cases is better than an actual weapon. Disarm could make use of our new direction-dependent combat. For example, you would only be able to disarm someone at the back corner tiles, and would only be able to push them down from the very back (trying it from the front would be completely harmless). This would change disarming combat to revolve around getting behind someone to push them over, while the victim uses combat mode to turn constantly or to back up into a wall where they are safe from disarms). Finally, grabbing can be changed such that tabling someone stuns them for significantly less time and chokehold immobilizes the attacker and victim, and can be resisted out of after a few seconds if they're not restrained or stunned.
[X][X][X]
[X][^][X]
[X][X][X]
3. Stuns and stamina
Our stun system as of right now is simply broken. It so completely and totally outclasses the effectiveness of both melee and ranged combat that there's absolutely no point in trying to fight someone who has a ranged instant stun weapon (tasers). Notice I said the word INSTANT stun, disablers are fine (and should be buffed as a result of these changes), and flashbangs give you time to see it coming (and have various ways to protect yourself from them). Things like tasers and stun batons are capable of penetrating all armor for the full duration, and your only hope in hell is either that you're stun proof (a cyborg or hulk or in a mech etc), a lucky shield block, or you're full of stun-reduction chems/implants to mitigate the effects before your opponent reaches you.
Stamina damage is a marvelous system. It provides a unique form of damage that could effectively replace both our instant guaranteed stuns AND our RNG melee attacks. For example, instead of being randomly knocked down by a particularly powerful (or miserably weak) melee weapon, why not just have it deal stamina damage on the side? This would both increase the lethality and the fairness of melee combat. You would never be instantly knocked out, but it would take fewer hits to knock you down due to stamina damage (and both of these can be affected by armor!) Of course, to make this all sane, stamina damage should not be possible to pile on while you're resting or knocked down so when you get up you're fully prepared to take another barrage.
There are certain weapons, like tasers and stunbattons which are however intended to be instant wins to fights. This is because of how easy it is to overtake someone wielding either of these with a simple disarm click in our current system. The new proposed one would literally make that impossible as long as you're vigilant. Instead of being instant stun weapons we could do away with the yellow electrodes and change stun batons to do a very large amount of stamina damage (60-80). This would make it *feasible* to fight or try to run after being hit, and swarming an overzealous officer will be much more possible due to it taking two hits. Thanks to the new disarm and combat mechanics however, the officer will not feel so cheated if they are attacked by multiple people, as he can quite literally back up into a wall or corner to keep hold of his weapons (at which point it devolves into a sort of last stand beat-down).
Finally, I'd like to propose that melee combat actually COSTS the attacker stamina to use (and perhaps even moving around in combat and static movement modes to discourage their constant use even more). Right now if you're knocked down on the ground, your attacker can effectively melee you to oblivion without tiring. If you've both taken hits but you're able to heal at a sufficient rate or have good armor, your attacker may have to retreat and leave you alone, or risk collapsing from exhaustion. As stated above, being knocked down or resting should not allow you to take stamina damage, so while you may have been taking a lot of physical actual damage during your stamina-induced stun, your attacker will be relatively easy to knock over too from stamina too.
4. Armor
With kor's recent armor nerf, armor is now significantly weaker than it used to be. This was designed as a sort of bending-over-and-spreading-your-ass-cheeks-for-the-one-the-only-insta-stun-system-we-all-live-with problem that's going on right now because "armor basically just wasted the attacker's time once he inevitably won". With these changes, combat will no longer be about instant stunning, and will instead focus much more on piling on the hurt, stamina damage, and positioning.
Furthermore, with RemieRichard's new armor penetration mechanic it may be best to make armor actually tough and usable, as it is likely that certain items will gain armor piercing qualities in the future.
If it isn't already the case (though I'm sure it is) armor should also reduce stamina damage in equal proportions to regular (80% melee resist should reduce both 80% of incoming melee damage And 80% of that weapon's stamina damage).
5. Shields
Finally I want to cover shields. Shields as they are are completely riddled with RNG. Whether they block a bullet or an attempt to touch you or not is not an acceptable mechanic. Instead, we can again have protection based on our new direction combat. Shields could provide guaranteed protection for a few tiles in the front and to the side, depending on which hand you hold it with.
For example, a shield held in your right hand would cover:
[X][X][X]
[X][^][X]
[X][X][X]
While a shield held in both hands would cover:
[X][X][X]
[X][^][X]
[X][X][X]
These seems excessively good for protection, but remember that for the former you're throwing away a hand, you're very easy to strike on the left, and for the latter you're left completely defenseless. While being cooped up against a wall in or in a very tight corner would make you effectively unkillable, your enemies would also be able to keep wailing on your shields.
And just to boot, shields should also drain a bit of stamina for every hit they block. So huddling in a corner or crevice will quickly have your stamina damage knock you over as everyone wails on you. If this still seems too good, remember that there are very few shields on the station, and that they should be at least capable of doing their jobs.
This is also where static movement comes into play. For the first example, if you were huddled up in a bottom left corner like this I_ then you would still be able to attack and shoot to your right, all without risking exposing your more vulnerable left side by clicking on someone or something like combat mode would do.
6. Extras
Making a combat system for every possible avenue of the game is next to impossible, as you might imagine. With the prevalence of things like augmentations, hulks, xenos, and simple animals I can't cover everything in this post while keeping it readable. I'm sure there's plenty of ways to balance those around the new combat system (and possibly offer them new functions) but that's beyond the scope of all this right now.
Let me know what you think or how you want this to be tweaked. Remember, the intent of all this is to do away with RNG, movement spazzing, instastuns, and to some extent clickspam while making it all more interesting to play with.
Rather shockingly, this is a pretty bad combat system. It's largely dependent on your connection (whether a click is registered or not) and RNG (disarm and punching I'm looking at you), and both made worse by insane button mash movement. Most of all, it's dependent on STUNS, the ultimate "you lose" mechanic that can end any fight instantly because of how powerful stunning is, and how easy it is to stunlock someone (just keep clicking on them). Personally I find that having an antagonist who relies on raw killing power to survive (wizard and nuke ops) that can be offed by one asshole assistant who gets a lucky disarm is very poor design.
Now I'm not making this post as a "i ded pls nerf" response to combat, it's something I've observed over years, and it's not exactly difficult to notice how flawed it is.
There's also several ways to "fix" combat and reduce or eliminate the RNG presence. I aim to both present a way to remove the RNG and to make combat less of a click button mash:
1. Movement
I'm sure you've experienced it yourself: Any time you get in a fistfight (with or without devolving to weapons) you've likely seen that combat is based on clicking as fast as possible on the other person's sprite while spazing the hell out and hoping your clicks actually connect. Standing still while your opponent moves tends to be complete suicide and syncing your movement gets you both hit. More rarely you can make good use of the more harmful intents to make yourself dense and able to push other players around, allowing you to score an easier hit. While on paper this sounds intense, in practice it's really just a dice toss on whether you win or not.
Here's how I propose it gets changed:
First, combat is changed such that your direction actually matters with both your ability to hit (or interact with) something and the ability to block incoming attacks (more on that later). You would be limited to the 3 tiles in front of you and the two to your sides, leaving the 3 at the back exposed. This is then followed by the introduction of 3 new CYCLE-ABLE movement states: Free, combat, and static.
[X][X][X]
[X][^][X]
[X][X][X]
Free mode is exactly like how we have it now, both your movement and your clicking changes your direction and it's best used for when you're not fighting anything (operating machines or whatever).
Combat mode makes it so you can only change the direction you face by clicking in a direction, moving around and being pushed around will not change it. This mode would be the most flexible for combat since it wouldn't impair your movements unless you directly try to click on someone or something (you'll need to click towards a direction to face it). To prevent people from using this mode literally all the time, you would receive a minor speed down when backpedaling, making it waste your time (and look like an idiot) while outside of a fight.
Static mode is the most rigid of all 3, preventing you from turning no matter what. Clicking, moving around, and being pushed by others will not change your direction whatsoever. This would be useful in the case of absolutely having to face one direction in the middle of a fight, where you cannot afford to be turning around and making yourself more vulnerable (this will be expanded on with shields and disarming).
What you are capable of hitting adjacent to you in any direction would be these:
2. Disarm, grab, and harm intents
Disarm and harm intent right now are both dictated entirely by RNG: Whether you disarm someone, whether you knock them down, and whether you miss completely is totally up to luck. Its effectiveness also isn't wavered by anything other than shields or a stun-immune state (hulks might still drop their items when disarmed, though). Harm intent is also a bizarre intent, dealing 0-9 damage in a punch and with the ability to weaken you for a very long time. At times, this is long enough to get another lucky stun on someone and you could in theory punch someone in riot armor to death this way if you're very consistently lucky (and stripping them). Finally, grabbing is a hideously outdated system used primarily for tabling people and then putting them in a chokehold that you literally cannot escape from no matter what (unbelievably shitty game design).
Instead, how about we do away with the abhorrent amount of RNG and insta-wins? Make punching do a guaranteed 3 damage with no stun chance. It really should remain as a last resort, not something that in many cases is better than an actual weapon. Disarm could make use of our new direction-dependent combat. For example, you would only be able to disarm someone at the back corner tiles, and would only be able to push them down from the very back (trying it from the front would be completely harmless). This would change disarming combat to revolve around getting behind someone to push them over, while the victim uses combat mode to turn constantly or to back up into a wall where they are safe from disarms). Finally, grabbing can be changed such that tabling someone stuns them for significantly less time and chokehold immobilizes the attacker and victim, and can be resisted out of after a few seconds if they're not restrained or stunned.
[X][X][X]
[X][^][X]
[X][X][X]
3. Stuns and stamina
Our stun system as of right now is simply broken. It so completely and totally outclasses the effectiveness of both melee and ranged combat that there's absolutely no point in trying to fight someone who has a ranged instant stun weapon (tasers). Notice I said the word INSTANT stun, disablers are fine (and should be buffed as a result of these changes), and flashbangs give you time to see it coming (and have various ways to protect yourself from them). Things like tasers and stun batons are capable of penetrating all armor for the full duration, and your only hope in hell is either that you're stun proof (a cyborg or hulk or in a mech etc), a lucky shield block, or you're full of stun-reduction chems/implants to mitigate the effects before your opponent reaches you.
Stamina damage is a marvelous system. It provides a unique form of damage that could effectively replace both our instant guaranteed stuns AND our RNG melee attacks. For example, instead of being randomly knocked down by a particularly powerful (or miserably weak) melee weapon, why not just have it deal stamina damage on the side? This would both increase the lethality and the fairness of melee combat. You would never be instantly knocked out, but it would take fewer hits to knock you down due to stamina damage (and both of these can be affected by armor!) Of course, to make this all sane, stamina damage should not be possible to pile on while you're resting or knocked down so when you get up you're fully prepared to take another barrage.
There are certain weapons, like tasers and stunbattons which are however intended to be instant wins to fights. This is because of how easy it is to overtake someone wielding either of these with a simple disarm click in our current system. The new proposed one would literally make that impossible as long as you're vigilant. Instead of being instant stun weapons we could do away with the yellow electrodes and change stun batons to do a very large amount of stamina damage (60-80). This would make it *feasible* to fight or try to run after being hit, and swarming an overzealous officer will be much more possible due to it taking two hits. Thanks to the new disarm and combat mechanics however, the officer will not feel so cheated if they are attacked by multiple people, as he can quite literally back up into a wall or corner to keep hold of his weapons (at which point it devolves into a sort of last stand beat-down).
Finally, I'd like to propose that melee combat actually COSTS the attacker stamina to use (and perhaps even moving around in combat and static movement modes to discourage their constant use even more). Right now if you're knocked down on the ground, your attacker can effectively melee you to oblivion without tiring. If you've both taken hits but you're able to heal at a sufficient rate or have good armor, your attacker may have to retreat and leave you alone, or risk collapsing from exhaustion. As stated above, being knocked down or resting should not allow you to take stamina damage, so while you may have been taking a lot of physical actual damage during your stamina-induced stun, your attacker will be relatively easy to knock over too from stamina too.
4. Armor
With kor's recent armor nerf, armor is now significantly weaker than it used to be. This was designed as a sort of bending-over-and-spreading-your-ass-cheeks-for-the-one-the-only-insta-stun-system-we-all-live-with problem that's going on right now because "armor basically just wasted the attacker's time once he inevitably won". With these changes, combat will no longer be about instant stunning, and will instead focus much more on piling on the hurt, stamina damage, and positioning.
Furthermore, with RemieRichard's new armor penetration mechanic it may be best to make armor actually tough and usable, as it is likely that certain items will gain armor piercing qualities in the future.
If it isn't already the case (though I'm sure it is) armor should also reduce stamina damage in equal proportions to regular (80% melee resist should reduce both 80% of incoming melee damage And 80% of that weapon's stamina damage).
5. Shields
Finally I want to cover shields. Shields as they are are completely riddled with RNG. Whether they block a bullet or an attempt to touch you or not is not an acceptable mechanic. Instead, we can again have protection based on our new direction combat. Shields could provide guaranteed protection for a few tiles in the front and to the side, depending on which hand you hold it with.
For example, a shield held in your right hand would cover:
[X][X][X]
[X][^][X]
[X][X][X]
While a shield held in both hands would cover:
[X][X][X]
[X][^][X]
[X][X][X]
These seems excessively good for protection, but remember that for the former you're throwing away a hand, you're very easy to strike on the left, and for the latter you're left completely defenseless. While being cooped up against a wall in or in a very tight corner would make you effectively unkillable, your enemies would also be able to keep wailing on your shields.
And just to boot, shields should also drain a bit of stamina for every hit they block. So huddling in a corner or crevice will quickly have your stamina damage knock you over as everyone wails on you. If this still seems too good, remember that there are very few shields on the station, and that they should be at least capable of doing their jobs.
This is also where static movement comes into play. For the first example, if you were huddled up in a bottom left corner like this I_ then you would still be able to attack and shoot to your right, all without risking exposing your more vulnerable left side by clicking on someone or something like combat mode would do.
6. Extras
Making a combat system for every possible avenue of the game is next to impossible, as you might imagine. With the prevalence of things like augmentations, hulks, xenos, and simple animals I can't cover everything in this post while keeping it readable. I'm sure there's plenty of ways to balance those around the new combat system (and possibly offer them new functions) but that's beyond the scope of all this right now.
Let me know what you think or how you want this to be tweaked. Remember, the intent of all this is to do away with RNG, movement spazzing, instastuns, and to some extent clickspam while making it all more interesting to play with.