[MUD-Dev] Battle Systems

[Batis]

At 07:49 =F0=EC 1/9/1999 -0400, you wrote:
>Ok, i've seen a lot of good battle systems on muds. However, they always
>seemed very automated to me.
>You attack a mob, then trade blows every round, perhaps casting spells=
 also.
>Many times (especially with lower level stock spells), damage spells are a
>complete joke. Sure, the higher level ones are wonderfull against players,
>but the lower ones aren't any good(Is this because if it were more=
 powerfull
>it wouldn't be fair on players?).
>Anyway, thats not the only problem i've seen. A complete lack of combat
>tactics. Sure, there are tactics involved with player killing (tracking,
>innitiating combat, fleeing), but in the actual battle, its a matter of
>trading more powerfull blows and lossing more hitpoints and being faster
>with skills/spells and lag then the other person. There is skill, but very
>little tactics.
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Thats my premise, here is an idea i would like to bounce of you guys.
>
>My new battle system is based less on the combat round as the mud sees it,
>and more on a psudo initiative/action lag based system.
>
>Basicly, get rid of the auto attack function in a battle.
>If two players initiate combat, then don't do anything, nothing will=
 happen.
>They will dance arround each other and thats it.
>
>To attack with your primary you would type "hit."
>there will be an option to toggle between hit attacking with your secondary
>weapon as well and using "hit2" to attack with it.
>
>after the attack is made, you get set into a lag state. Basicly, its the
>recovery from your attack, and initiative. once you are out of lag, you get
>a message telling you.
>

What you are suggesting is close to the combat system Mordor code-base (
http://mordor.nazgul.com/ ) is using. You type kill and then have to wait a
bit to type it again. Check the code out, it's interesting.

>Spells can have casting times, as well as lag periods. So can some skills.
>weapons can have speeds (It takes longer to recover after using a halberd
>then it does after stabbing with a dagger)

Spells lag should be different from the combat lag. I.e. it doesn't matter
when you last typed 'hit', but when you cast a spell last. I know this goes
things far from reality, but I've seen that in action and it works far
better (try Isengard or even better DeratiaMUD, both based on Mordor. The
second has an excellent code, with skills added to Mordor).

>Parry as a command here.
>if you want to parry or dodge, you type it in and you do so until you enter
>in a differant battle command.

Good idea.

>Instead of multiple blows per round, what  you get is lag improvement.
>As you improve with the specific weapon, you also get faster with it, which
>results in less lag, which has the same effect as multiple blows.
>Haste and Slow spells act by affecting lag for everything you do.
>Etc.
>
>Thats my system. Here are the things i know about it.
>-It should help improve battle by slowing things down a bit.
>    Every blow counts a lot more then before. It is especially
>    usefull if you are a mage, or a pacifist. As a mage, you can just
>    try to maintain a defence while casting spells. Or if you're a
>    pacifist, you just flee. Why would a pacifist, when attacked,
>    attack back?
>-It does place a lot more emphasis on connection speed.
>    If your lagged, or drop link, it will be worse then with the
>    normal system, but that can be solved by common sense
>    (If your lagged so bad, why not stay in a safe area?) and
>    stopping battle with linkdead players.
>-With this system, we can make mobs a lot smarter, easier.
>    Using fightprogs, we can script their actions. A smarter
>    mob is 10 times more deadly then a dumb mob.
>    A couple examples:    In my mud, a mob is set with what
>    skills/spells/abilities it has and how good they are.
>    With a good scripting language for them, it would be
>    possible to make strategies and combo moves.
>    If the mob sees that it is fighting a mage, and the mage is
>    casting a spell, it would try to disrupt the spell. It might
>    identify the person, then attack with spells that the person
>    is weak to and avoid those that he is strong to. It cast
>    maladictions and then follow up with exploitations
>    (Make player weak to fire, then fireball). Etc, etc
>

And as Brooke Paul says, it's not like typing 'kill' and then sit back and
yawn :) (like in automatic combat).

>I'd like to hear what people think of this. Would this work?
>Could i make it better somehow? How about my assessment
>of normal mud combat, is it accurate?
>
>Thanks for reading through this, i'm not very blunt sometimes:P
>
>-Philip Loguinov.
>    -Draymoor Spellcleaver
>

Finally, let me say that a new Open Source code-base is under construction,
called OlympianMUD (based on Mordor, but really trully heavily modified),
and will feature a combat system similar to your suggestion. I'd gladly
post more details about OlympianMUD combat system by request. It will be
release late October to very early November.

Friendly,
Dimitris Batis.




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