[Gameplay] Simplistic overhaul to tactical RNG rolls

Because rnd(0,90) is not fun to play tactically with

You know the feeling - your sovereign Lord Uberkiller, supreme master of Carnage, with his +50 Sword of Slaying anything (giving him a total Attack of 90) encounters a dying Wolf (1 Attack, 2HP), swings his mighty blade and... does 1 damage, the wolf retaliates for 1 damage. WTF?

While these kind of outcomes should be possible, they should be extremely unlikely, and not happen with 1:90 probability as it is right now. Similarly your Sovereign's Armor of utter Invulnerability (90 Defense) should not just roll a 0 against the Wolf's bite with a 1:90 chance.

Thus my suggesting:

In tactical combat each point of attack represents a 30% (20%? 40%? 50%?) chance to inflict 1 point of damage to the opponent - it will be unlikely that you do maximum damage, but neither will it be to do none. The same goes for defense - each point of defense has the same percentage chance to block 1 point of damage - again, you will have a nice average value with the extremes being unlikely.

As an example:

Lord-in-training Uberkiller, promising apprentice of Hurting-Things, has a attack of 3 (wooden sword) and defense of 2 (padded loincloth - don't ask). His opponent, the fearsome Target Dummy, has a attack of 1 (sharp splinters) and a defense of 1 (straw).

Lord-in-training Uberkiller strikes - the mighty Deity RNG rolls for his 3 points of attack (1-10, 3 or lower is a hit): 3, 1, 10 - Uberkiller slashes the dummy for 2 damage. Will the Straw protect the dummy? - Deity RNG rolls for the dummy's 1 defense (1-10, 3 or lower is a hit): 2 - Oh no! 1 of the 2 points of damage were prevented by the nefarious dummy's straw amor. And now the dummy threatens to harm Uberkiller with its sharp splinters; will Uberkiller win this fight? Will he even survive? Who knows, but sadly we must leave the scene of carnage...

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Seconded.

MoM used this.. then on the other hand, MoM units behaved in a sensible, non-game-breaking way too, with every individual rolling for attack and defense separately. I'l like to have that back too. Of course it would require an overhaul of item stats as well, so I don't think we're going to see it happen.

The good part about the Elemental system is that units are more easily comparable. A single man unit has a similar attack attribute as an 8 man unit. In MoM it's difficult to estimate whether an attack 10, defense 10 unit is better than a six man unit with attack 4, defense 4.

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RNG is often referred to as the Random Number God

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Bell distribution maybe?

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Quoting Vallu751,

reply 1

Seconded.

MoM used this.. then on the other hand, MoM units behaved in a sensible, non-game-breaking way too, with every individual rolling for attack and defense separately. I'l like to have that back too. Of course it would require an overhaul of item stats as well, so I don't think we're going to see it happen.

The good part about the Elemental system is that units are more easily comparable. A single man unit has a similar attack attribute as an 8 man unit. In MoM it's difficult to estimate whether an attack 10, defense 10 unit is better than a six man unit with attack 4, defense 4.

Good to see another oldschool MoM fan. With the high Mod-ability of Elemental the item overhaul should be less of a problem (for either modders or staff) - I'm more worried about implementing the necessary changes to combat; I don't think modders could do that.

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Good point CharonXeno. Item balancing is easy for modders, hard for Stardock. Engine changes are easy for Stardoc, impossible for modders.

I hope the devs make the combat mechanics open for modding as well. Gonna hold my breath now..

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Goodmorning all,

Quoting Dark Snathi,

reply 3

Bell distribution maybe?

I suggested at https://forums.elementalgame.com/392880 why Bell curves are the way to go. Rolling on every attack for to hit or not is great, but when you've got a dragon hitting you with 90 attack, you're going to be bowing down before the RNG asking for it to roll it's mighty die ... alot. the end result will be well distributed . . . but you can get the same effective distribution with 1 call to a Bell random number generator in about 1/40th of the processor time.

Also with just attack and to hit bonuses like in MoM it's clumsy and course grained defining your probability to hit, to counter this I expanded on a suggestion to have attack and defense define if you hit or miss, and damage and armour define how much pain is involved. That suggestion can be found at https://forums.elementalgame.com/394023.

The system is somewhat less simplistic, then the MoM method, but is much more scalable to high damage (90) situations, and very versatile and flexible. I'm adding 5 rather then just 2 variables. . . but i think they are work it.

Robbie Price

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Thanks for the reply. I agree that rolling X times is probably a waste of processor time when you can just use a function that does that much more efficiently, but I merely wanted to explain my idea in simple terms.

As I said in another post - Good artists copy, great artists steal. While the old MoM combat system has gathered a lot of dust and could be greatly improved, even a small step from the current - at least to me - unfun and unrealistic tactical combat system would be a good start.

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Well Mr. Price, the link didn't work for me. Said some thing about resource not found. Other than that, I agree pretty much with what you're saying. For attack and defense compares, I'd just use DEX vs DEX. If the two scores are equal, figure an average of 50 percent hit probability. Then, as you suggest, use armor to as armor and use it for protection, reducing damage. Shoot, I'd even go for tables alotted for each damage type. Damage for rows and armor type for columns. Roll your hit, then damage, modify with armor, and look up the effect. This way you could even throw in special attack effects along with basic damge. It's the old table top damage routine.

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