[MUD-Dev] Combat (very long)

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 07:36 PM 6/2/99 -0700, I personally witnessed Matthew Mihaly jumping up
to say:
>
>any quality fight is much much too long for anyone to want to read, I
realized. 
>We fought for a little while but were unable to kill each other, and ended up 
>with a log about 75 pages long.

Here's a combat log for you. 

    Sector: 1424
    Warps lead to: 294-1738

   The Main Bridge of Darklock [? - Help]
   Command: SC

   ==== Start of Scan ====
    Sector: 294
    Port: Deneb, Selling: Organics
    Attack Drones of The Cabal: 96769 [Attack all but Owner]
    O.R.M. vector: 2321
    Warps lead to: 262-766-786-1424-1780-1828
   ===== End of Scan =====

    Sector: 1424
    Warps lead to: 294-1738

   The Main Bridge of Darklock [? - Help]
   Command: M
   Sector to move to: 294

   The Cabal's Attack Drones Encountered.
     96769 of The Cabal's Attack Drones DESTROYED.
     107328 of your Attack Drones DESTROYED.

    Sector: 294
    Port: Deneb, Selling: Organics
    O.R.M. vector: 2321
    Warps lead to: 262-766-786-1424-1780-1828

Maybe I'm copping out, but I tend to find this sort of thing more
acceptable than long strings of "swing and hit, swing and miss, cast a
spell, take a piss" -- hey, that's sort of cute, I should put it in a song
-- since I find that most games have either a good exploration interface or
a good combat interface, but never both. Mine has *no* combat interface. As
a result, I don't have to worry about it. I can invest all my effort in the
actual game, instead of in making sure that the combat is exciting enough. 

Hell, it's the 32nd century, combat isn't ABOUT people swinging at each
other anymore. It's about computers, doing all the tactical work for you
while you concentrate on the strategic issues. Computers are good at tactical. 

And a lot of thorny issues about moving targets just go away entirely when
you start doing it this way. I like that. ;)


-----
| Caliban Tiresias Darklock            caliban at darklock.com 
| Darklock Communications          http://www.darklock.com/ 
| U L T I M A T E   U N I V E R S E   I S   N O T   D E A D 
| 774577496C6C6E457645727355626D4974H       -=CABAL::3146=- 


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