[MUD-Dev] Combat

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 05:11 PM 6/9/99 -0500, I personally witnessed Greg Miller jumping up to say:
>Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
>> Combat in UU is simplistic. It all comes down to one number you whack up
>> against another number, and the bigger number wins. There's a slight skew
>> in the numbers from a random number generator, but nothing worth worrying
>> about. You can buy bonuses to your own number, and penalties to your
>> opponent's number, but in the end it's basically a case of... umm... well,
>> basically, "mine's bigger than yours". (Damn, I'm on a roll tonight.)
>
>Hrm, you know, this started me thinking about UU/TW combat and why
>people in TW don't get upset to nearly the same degree as most mudders
>over being attacked. It seems to me it comes down to the fact that
>virtually all TW battles result in permanent injury, not death, so
>players tend to look at it differently, even though the results may (in
>some cases) be just as extreme when considered in light of the game
>mechanics. 

Exactly. When "killed" in UU, it's really just a ship. *You* are still
fine. It's hard to do this when your avatar in the game world is a living
creature; I think the vehicle concept works a lot better for unrestricted
PK in terms of keeping people from being too upset. However, oddly, in UU
people lose a ship and have to wait till tomorrow to play again. On MUDs,
people get killed and can immediately continue playing. Why is it that UU
players are less upset than MUD players? Just because of the existing
expectations?

>> Instant combat is a neat idea. I like it better than protracted combat,
>> because it lowers the most prominent level of waste I see on MUDs: time. I
>
>I think it comes from the fact that UU started out as a TW-like game,
>and TW started out as a trading game, not a combat game. 

On the www.ultimate-universe.com file download library, you will find
version 1.19 of UU. Which is pretty nifty as a historical example, but not
as much of anything else these days. ;)

I actually recall a game *called* "TradeWars" which had the Cabal in it,
and I was therefore under the impression that UU and TW2K had forked from
the same concept if not from the same source tree. I have been unable to
find this game since the early 90's, however, and I believe it was written
in the early to mid 80's. It had a very stark sort of white-and-grey ANSI
with red highlights as the intro, if I remember right. It may, of course,
have been predated by TW2K and/or UU, but it seemed to me like it was a
combination of the two games. 

>> It's under examination. I'd *like* them to go away entirely. There are,
>> however, certain issues involved there.
>
>Well, both time limits and the side-effects of their removal are design
>flaws, and there'll surely be SOME way to fix those side-effects.

I wouldn't go so far as to say they're *flaws*. I'd call them assumptions
which have become irrelevant: the assumption, for example, that when one
person is playing another cannot play at the same time. UU still drops a
crib-semaphore to prevent multiple player logins. Obviously, this is not
acceptable in internet-based play, so one reason for time limits (giving
everyone a chance to play) is removed. The other reason, which was that
most online services limited your time online for much the same reason --
only one person can dial into a phone line at once, after all -- has also
gone away. Likewise, an internet-based game must acknowledge the
possibility that people may very well not have any physical access to the
machine the game runs on or any detailed knowledge about its configuration.
Kind of hard to set up otherwise.

>[snipped the quiz concept]
>
>I like it. I might use something similar in my mud, although there'd
>have to be some reward other than xp, since I don't use xp.

Yes, certainly, modify experience to skill points or age or military rank
or even just money depending on what your game system uses to indicate
advancement. I say "XP and levels", I mean "whatever you use to represent
player ability and ranking".

-----
| 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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