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[arkhometha]

With climbing and whatnot, will goblins climb down on ropes from Giant Cave Swallows or Giant Bats?
I can imagine, after you and your band of heavily armed friends break into the dark fortress, that goblins with crossbows will strafe you from on high.
On that note, do you have any plans to fix the flying pathing bug? I can inmagine that that particular bug would have a lot to do with climbing pathing.

What flying path bug?

And I'm almost sure Toady did not do climbing ropes yet.

[NW_Kohaku]

A lot of posts since the last one...

But you can't assume that it's not modeled in the game; Toady's post didn't indicate anything about that. He merely said he was testing simultaneous attacks, not which aspects or whether or not the dual-stabbing gave him advantage over other arena contestants.

Yes he did:

I don't have much to say about multiple attacks or how penalties for that would work.  It's pretty complicated in the end.  Certain things would be easy and effective (say, if you had needles you wanted to poison people with, or light sabers or something), and certain things would be wantonly silly, like a punch+kick maybe.  I haven't really addressed this in any satisfactory way, and I'll probably be walking a fairly idiotic line until I actually focus in on combat a bit.

He's saying he doesn't have a system that is at all satisfactory for it yet.

Besides which, consider how many systems Toady has done some preliminary work upon, and then forgotten to ever come back to.  When's the last thing that Toady changed, left broken, and then actually came back to fix?

The last one I remember was the mining scarcity, and that took a two-year gap to actually fix.  By then, there were people who had only played without scarcity, and they were constantly complaining about not being able to build solid gold pyramids on every single embark, as if that was a perfectly natural thing to have enough gold mined from any random hole in the ground to make a solid gold pyramid.

Hence, it's worth flagging down the obvious pitfalls now, when it doesn't seem like Toady is aware of them, before he makes a mistake and doesn't come back to fix it for years afterwards.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying a double-stab is better, I'm just saying it's not abysmally horrible and nigh-impossible to pull off.

But what I'm saying isn't that it's impossible to pull off, I'm saying it's not better, and you agree with that.  I'm just saying that there's nothing yet to indicate that Toady is going to code constant double-stabbing not to be better, and he should be warned before he gets too far into coding it that way that it shouldn't be that way.

Also, jumping attacks are taught in some martial arts. A flying side kick is effective, you've got your whole body mass flying at the target.  You see superman punches in MMA.  Just because they're not like in martial arts movies doesn't mean they don't exist.

You're thinking of unarmed martial arts, which is different from armed martial arts. 

I'm talking about the jumping-sword-first attacks you do see in movies because they're showy, but incredibly stupid, especially if we assume we're dealing with armored adventurers. (Because why wouldn't they be?) Just because you see something in wrestling or wire-fu movies doesn't make it an effective combat technique.

No school of martial arts based around armed combat teaches jumping attacks because it's extremely likely to wind up with you knocked down and struggling to get back up... and the whole point of armor is that you're almost impossible to kill while wearing it as long as you aren't lying prone on the floor. 

You can't make these transitive claims that because jump-kicking someone from behind works between unarmed and unarmored combatants when one combatant is unawares will automatically mean there shouldn't be anything different against an armed, armored, aware opponent.  And that's exactly the claim that's being made because you aren't bothering to make the distinction.

You can't argue dual-wielding is too mentally difficult to be effective because it can be trained and seems competitive. Escrima in particular is brutal and lethal.  It seems more about flow then attacking with both hands simultaneously.
When it comes to full armor you can't fight with knives or light swords anyways but you should be able to shield bash and slash/ stab at the same time dual-wielding-wise... of course in DF you could wield two ultra-light one-hit kill adamantine longswords that cleave steel armor and the skill and strength to use them both - what attacks would there be for a shield to block ?

I would think simultaneous dual attacks would have to be handled differently; damage penalty and longer recovery back to balance point as opposed to sword-weaving style's multiple high-speed twice the attack/ defense opportunities at a penalized efficacy.

ugh it's way late...

Escrima, though, is one of those few martial arts that does actually have two weapons... (and is focused, again, on unarmored targets.) 

And how does that work?  You still only attack with one weapon at a time - you guard or feint with the other one. The only thing a second weapon does is allow for an opportunity to attack, guard, or feint from either side of the body.

And again, the thing I'm arguing here is what you're arguing at the same time - that having two weapons doesn't just mean you deal twice as much HP of damage, and that concepts like balance are actually considered.

[Tabithda]

What flying path bug?

A fortress mode "bug"(more of an oversight of sorts really...) wherein fortress civilians who are capable of flight will not path in open space tiles but will still fly over walls and the like to get to a location provided there is a land route to that location.  This results in things like not flying over a river to escape a goblin, or a mason flying over a wall(with no route to the top of said wall) to get to a building site and then proceeding to repath while on the wall, causing the mason to think he is stuck on the wall despite the fact that he flew up there to begin with.

[Whatsifsowhatsit]

NW_Kohaku, I mostly agree with you, but the whole thing was already discussed quite intensively at an earlier stage, so I think Toady has in fact been warned by now. And if he leaves it broken for a few years, only to come back to it much later, that only means that there's so much other stuff to deal with that would have been postponed instead if he had worked on that thing originally. The bulk of the combat stuff just isn't scheduled for this release.

Of course, it makes sense, given that he is now working at it to some extent, that Toady at least starts it up in the right direction, but he still has to end up with something wholesome enough to accept for the time being. I think he'll be able to figure out how to deal with it for now, even if it is going to be "walking a fairly idiotic line" for the time being. If that's how he thinks it will be, that's probably because that's the best he can do with the time he is willing to spend on it for the time being.

[LordBaal]

I'm worried about the size of the file as you retire more and more fortress...

[tahujdt]

What flying path bug?

A fortress mode "bug"(more of an oversight of sorts really...) wherein fortress civilians who are capable of flight will not path in open space tiles but will still fly over walls and the like to get to a location provided there is a land route to that location.  This results in things like not flying over a river to escape a goblin, or a mason flying over a wall(with no route to the top of said wall) to get to a building site and then proceeding to repath while on the wall, causing the mason to think he is stuck on the wall despite the fact that he flew up there to begin with.

What I meant was that when Goblins get up in the air, they will get stuck up there because they are using their own pathing routine instead of the mount's. Fixing the other one would be nice too.

[Damiac]

I think you're assuming an awful lot from just a little information Kohaku.  I haven't seen anywhere that said duel wielding = double damage. All I've seen on the matter is Toady double stabbing something, which made no mention of attack speed or anything else.

And yes, I was speaking of unarmed styles, which of course would be quite different from armed vs armor.  While duel wielding might still have a place, and a practical use, you'd be right to say it's not realistic to make it a more effective fighting style.  Of course, why bother even including it at all if it's never useful?

Wielding two weapons does allow you to leverage drawing one back against thrusting the other, which in effect increases the speed which you can attack with effective strikes. 

Aside from all that, no matter what, I'm sure whatever we get will be somewhat silly and unrealistic in one way or another.  I hope you can live with that, because I think you will have to.

Also, wire-fu is the most realistic genre of media, I don't know why you'd every say otherwise.  Except maybe pro-wrestling, which is true to life and not staged in any way.

[Neonivek]

No school of martial arts based around armed combat teaches jumping attacks because it's extremely likely to wind up with you knocked down and struggling to get back up

This is rather incorrect and you forget that most martial arts that arn't relatively modern (like Boxing) are also armed.

Armed combat teaches jumping because often you will need to jump. What it doesn't teach you is how to jump badly and often these jumping attacks have VERY specific uses.

For example sometimes with a staff weapon they are used to gain space quickly if needed, or they are used to put your entire weight into an attack.

As well there are many martial arts that are rather "flowery" but are so because of how they are performed or because of exibitions (Even Boxing has a few flashy moves that are illegal because they are too powerful). Or rather many martial arts, especially armed martial arts, teach moves because they are showey.

I think you're assuming an awful lot from just a little information Kohaku

I often don't read everything Kohaku says mostly because it isn't important to what I want to respond to.

For example I will now complete the Kohaku quote and see if there was anything I needed to listen to.

You can't make these transitive claims that because jump-kicking someone from behind works between unarmed and unarmored combatants when one combatant is unawares will automatically mean there shouldn't be anything different against an armed, armored, aware opponent.  And that's exactly the claim that's being made because you aren't bothering to make the distinction

Nothing. I said that there are "Jumping attacks" in martial arts and even armed martial arts. So everything after this is moot because it doesn't need to be informed by what was said here.

So my suggestion when someone makes huge posts is that really not everything said is important and you don't have to respond to everything.

[WillowLuman]

Effective, practical jump attacks work on the same principle as how cougars kill things, i.e., a tackle. Body mass of combatant + gravity = lots of force, unless they're tiny. The physics mechanics for jump attacks would likely be used for birds of prey dive-bombing things.

[Eric Blank]

I think a jump attack would certainly let one put a lot of force behind an attack, but you'd need some measure of skill and balance if you don't want to hurt yourself or immediately lose the advantage.

Also, I think birds of prey largely decellerate drastically before tackling or grasping their prey. If they collided at full speed they'd risk serious injury, whereas their dive-bombing technique allows them to locate prey from high above and close in very quickly with minimal time for the prey to react or escape.

[eux0r]

i think some people are generalizing a little too much, so just for information:

-while there rarely are any cases where this is true, attacking with both hands at once does not inevitably come with a disadvantage
-remove the thing about "rarely" from the point above once you realize that blocking basically means attacking an attacking arm/leg/weapon
-jumping and attacking at once does not mean you have to jump towards your target for it to be of use
-jumping does not automatically lessen your balance, it can actually often be used to improve your balance

i only have experience with karate and kung fu, but im sure this is true for other martial arts and forms of combat as well.

[WillowLuman]

I think a jump attack would certainly let one put a lot of force behind an attack, but you'd need some measure of skill and balance if you don't want to hurt yourself or immediately lose the advantage.

Also, I think birds of prey largely decellerate drastically before tackling or grasping their prey. If they collided at full speed they'd risk serious injury, whereas their dive-bombing technique allows them to locate prey from high above and close in very quickly with minimal time for the prey to react or escape.

While not using the full speed of their dives, the purpose of the dive is not merely to reach the prey, only to slow down then attack from a standstill. Peregrine falcons peak at 120 miles per hour but still impact with their talons at about 80 mph. Fact is, most raptors have strong, flexible bones in their feet for high-speed impact, though they usually finish off their prey by tearing the throat. Golden eagles can and have broken the arms of falconers.

[Lolfail0009]

On the subject of dive-bombs,

Toady, how will flying adventurers attack with weapons while flying/diving? Many of the current attacks would realistically require a solid footing, or an insanely large amount of balancing force generated by an obscene wingspan.

[Eric Blank]

Hmm... I can just imagine an insane adventure trying to ride a claymore to the ground like a pointy pogo stick to try and impale someone.

[WillowLuman]

On the subject of dive-bombs,

Toady, how will flying adventurers attack with weapons while flying/diving? Many of the current attacks would realistically require a solid footing, or an insanely large amount of balancing force generated by an obscene wingspan.

Seeing as nothing like this exists in real life, flying creatures with material culture and weapons, modelling it "realistically" would be difficult. But I guess on things like this, requiring both imagination due to novelty and real consideration for physics (unlike magic), we get into the really fun territory of speculative fiction.