[MUD-Dev] Re: Re[2]:[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD Design doc (long)

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Willey <Michael.Willey at abnamro.com>
Cc: mud-dev <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Friday, December 18, 1998 2:26 PM
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re[2]:[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD Design doc (long)


>That's the real point at which your system's balance
>breaks down - when one combatant can kill another
>without needing to regenerate mana, the kill becomes
>instant.


In my current system, combat is always instant. Similar to a diceless
system, it comes down to numbers. Attack logic is as follows:

I attack you by typing a command.
Your defenses degrade my attack.
My attack forces degrade your attack forces.
If your attack forces are overcome (i.e. attack value < 0), you die.
My attack forces degrade from the stress of the attack.
If my attack forces are overcome, I die.
You counterattack. (This is *automatic* -- you cannot ignore an attack.)
My defenses degrade your attack.
Your attack forces degrade my attack forces.
If my attack forces are overcome, I die.
Your attack forces degrade from the stress of the attack.
If your attack forces are overcome, you die.

If my attack and defense values equal your attack and defense values, it is
possible we will both survive and be sitting ducks. Hopefully there is no
one else standing there waiting to pick up the pieces.

You will notice that if I have lots and lots of attack strength, I can
wander around and blow people away all day long. Something had to be done
about this, so there are... dirty tricks. There is camouflage, which makes
you look nastier or wimpier than you really are. There is the self-destruct,
basically a tac nuke that blows the $#!+ out of anything nearby when you
die. And there are even more insidious devices, things that can make your
life a LIVING HELL.

We haven't touched the question of psychological warfare yet, or even simple
escape -- devices exist that can register attacks and actually take evasive
action immediately before your attack forces respond. Coupled with something
vicious to autodrop on the way out, this can be very nasty -- if you survive
the initial attack, you can conceivably waste your opponent without risking
yourself. I can drop some of my attack force somewhere and just leave it
waiting to ambush someone, in which case you could be killed without my
being at risk. It's even possible for me to create a guerilla attack team
that actively searches for things to kill without human intervention.
(Currently, I can't create a team that looks specifically for YOU, but this
is in the works...)

There are literally *hundreds* of nasty tricks that can be acquired; in
combination, there are tens of thousands of vicious, imaginative plots that
can seriously screw up your whole day. The flip side... *you* can use these
nasty tricks, too. ;)

The major problem: With all these options and all these possibilities, the
learning curve is STEEP. With well over a thousand possible things you can
do or use or buy or pursue, attracting the new player is apt to be
difficult. The target market is most likely to be old-hand players who enjoy
SF wargames and simulations, but don't particularly need any specific level
of realism -- just a feeling that they can do anything they want with the
tools they can find. There's a certain aspect of inventiveness that pervades
the system.

>Another problem:  How do you protect players from the
>ravages of real lag?  Wouldn't that leave their
>characters as drooling idiots, standing around being
>punching bags for their opponents?


See my above comment on counterattack. Note also that an offline player on
my game does not drop out of the world -- you can, in fact, be killed while
you are offline. Conversely, you can kill others while you are offline. Some
people dislike this idea, and I am one of them... but it works, and it works
well.

| Caliban Tiresias Darklock            caliban at darklock.com
| Darklock Communications          http://www.darklock.com/
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