Four points. Fully automatic. 10 rounds. To the face. At point-blank range. Four lousy points with a submachine gun firing jacketed hollow-point bullets. Man, those Fallout 2 NPC''s have got some *strong* dental work! What''s the best damage model for hand-to-hand, melee, and ranged combat you''ve seen? I''m thinking a good one might be the old Traveller system: Weapons have a damage rating, and also a penetration value. The higher the value, the tougher the armor. So a bullet and a spear could do the same HP of damage, but against metal armor with a high penetration value a spear would glance off; high enough, and even bullets would bounce. Also, maybe damage should be less variable? Lot''s of systems (Diablo, Fallout, etc) say weapons do "x to y" damage. Maybe that should be ALOT less in range? It also seems to me that effectiveness should drop with damage. I''d like to know about a system that handled this. Maybe combine penetration value, impairment, and maybe hitpoints for each body location and you''d have.... what? Better realism, but would it be fun? -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

Syndicate & Syndicate Wars spring to mind for me (moreso the former than the latter).

Oh, I guess I should have asked. Could you please describe the system, for those of us who might be unfamiliar?

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Just waiting for the mothership...

Best combat system I have ever seen was from the Cyberpunk 2020 RPG by R. Talsorian Games. All weapons did a random amount of damage. 1d6, 2d6, etc... Head shots did double damage. If any limb (or head) took 8 or more points it was considered mangled beyond use or gone (obviously fatal if head - a 4 point wound to the head killed you due to damage doubling). If a limb was destroyed - you made a death saving roll. Make it and you live - blow it and die. You had an overall Hit Point scale as well. If you ran out of hit points - you died. So you could kill people with one well placed blow or a flury of smaller blows. You died alot in this game if you got stupid. Just like real life .

Landsknecht

PS - Armor was handled well to. Armor had a value that was deducted from any incoming damage. Armor could NOT reduce a hit to 0 damage (if you got hit - you took a point no matter how thick you were). Armor piercing things halved the armor value of what they were hitting but also delivered half the damage (AP rounds deliver more power to a tighter area.)

Edited by - landsknecht on March 19, 2001 11:34:01 PM

I like JA2 combat, it is excelent with some fices of course.

I''d be in favour of reducing randomness. A lot of systems are based on the old D+D system which seemed to like using a dice roll for everything. You have a random amount of hit points, the opponent has a random chance of taking some of those off, and when he or she does, they take a random amount away. Essentially, there''s no need for so many levels of randomness in the system. Each extra level introduces extra calculations (meaning more work for the CPU or indeed for the human player rolling his dice) without really adding much. In fact, it also means the player is less in control of his character since the prevalence of random values starts to edge out the controllable variables.

My system is going to have virtually identical health levels for all player characters, with slight variations based on race. I believe the aforementioned Cyberpunk works this way. Adopting this model simplifies things a lot. You could split up those health points across body locations, representing the current state of that area. Instead of increasing a character''s ability to take damage as they advance through levels, skills, or whatever, just make them more able to (a) cope with damage, and (b) avoid damage.

Weapons will have a ''fixed'' damage value, but the actual damage dealt will be modified so it follows a ''Normal'' distribution. (ie. there is a large chance of the normal amount being dealt, and progressively smaller chances of amounts either side being dealt.) This is practical in a computer game and adds the random element without it being too random, and without people wasting time trying to work out what the difference between 2d12 and 4d6 is, in terms of range and distribution.

As for what makes things ''fun'', well that''s getting a bit abstract. I just make sure players are in control of plenty of variables, without giving them too much to worry about, and I''m sure it will be entertaining.

REALITY IS USUALLY VERY BORING.

Thats the entire reason we created these kinds of games.

Randomness adds spontaneity. It would be very dull if every enemy you encountered you could just shoot in the head and move on.

A realistic combat model would be incredably frustrating to play in anything but a first person shooter.

*You see Gangsta'' X*
*Gangsta'' X suprises you!*
*Gangsta'' X shoots you in the head and you die*

Well, that was a real combat scenerio... but not a very fun one...

Rainbow Six has the most "realistic" system. One shot and yer dead. As for gameplay, it blows.

The best combat system is probably Unreal and/or Quake 3. Not realistic, but it doesn''t pretend to be and it''s very fun.

Yeah, I guess I'm not so much looking for reality, as "plausibility." If it's not fun to die with one round to the head, it sure isn't fun to waste 30 rounds of valuable ammunition at point blank range and only cause a 4 points of damage. ("It's alright! Just a flesh wound!!!" )

Maybe it's just me, but the suspension of disbelief takes a critical hit when this happens. It's not realism that's the problem, it's expected effectiveness. Now if it were a some weird crystal shard weapon I was using, then it'd make sense.

Combat *DOES* need to be survivable to be interesting. But I think I like the suggestions so far that lower or eliminate variability. That way, at least you can have more control over the effect of your decisions.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

Edited by - Wavinator on March 22, 2001 3:12:21 AM

quote: Original post by Caffeine

REALITY IS USUALLY VERY BORING.

Thats the entire reason we created these kinds of games.

Randomness adds spontaneity. It would be very dull if every enemy you encountered you could just shoot in the head and move on.

Not sure if you''re responding to me here, or someone else...

I never suggested realism, I just suggested reducing randomness, which is an unrelated point. Believability, yes. Consistency, yes. Realism, no. That''s the way I view it.

Imagine a game of chess. That is one of the most involving kinds of ''combat'', and yet there is absolutely nothing random about it. Reducing the random factors means the players are more in control. This means that they feel better when they do well, and when they do badly they can learn from their mistake rather than get upset at a fluke event. Ultimately more rewarding than the old ''roll a bucket of dice'' method and leave victory and defeat 90% in the hands of chance.