[MUD-Dev] Balancing Melee vs Ranged Combat in Games Which Model Space

[Travis Casey]

Wednesday, April 04, 2001, 8:09:45 PM, Kwon Ekstrom
<justice at softhome.net> wrote:
> From: "Nicolai Hansen" <nic at aub.dk>
>> Daniel Haman wrote:

>>> How do you balance characters being able to cause damage to a
>>> monster/player when it isn't able to retaliate.

>> I would call this one easy. For a monster, you simply make it flee
>> out of range if its unable to counter-attack.

> Actually, it would be smarter if the mob charge the person using the
> ranged weapon.

Well, whether charging makes sense depends on the situation.  For
example, in a medieval mud, if an unarmed, unarmored peasant is fired
at by someone who's using a shortbow, but is also carrying a sword and
wearing light mail, charging is probably not a smart thing for the
peasant to do.

Rather than trying to run straight away, though, going for cover seems
to make the most sense -- put something between you and the shooter.
That's part of why we had NPCs move at right angles to the direction
of fire in SWmud when possible -- most of our settings were city or
indoor settings, so it was very likely that moving at a right angle
would put the NPC where the shooter couldn't fire on them.  (Since we
were using a room system, that also tended to work outdoors as well,
so long as the NPC was more than one room away.  This could be
considered a problem, but we didn't think of it as such.)

In a coordinate setup, I'd suggest having a way for NPCs to consider
what cover is nearby and head for some.  You'd need some way to
evaluate cover based on distance from the NPC and the amount of cover.

Also, having a system for postures could help -- that way, an NPC
could crouch down behind a rock or low wall, or otherwise assume a
posture to take best advantage of the available cover.

> Ranged weapons should be weaker imho than melee weapons, I'm sorry
> but I think being cleaved in half as a bit more damage than an arrow
> sticking out of me.

It depends on how you're defining damage, I'd say -- a chopping blow
from a sword or an axe will cause a lot more tissue damage than an
arrow hit, but the chance that the blow will kill you isn't as much
greater as the amount of tissue damage is.  Which could just be
considered a fancier way of putting your next statement.  :-)

> If anything a critical hit system could be used to give some
> advantages to ranged combat, but still balance them vs melee combat.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_    Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
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