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[1v0ry_k1ng]

Some long overdue fixes that seem more important that mostly everything else:

1) make shield protect the hand holding it in manner similar to armor
2) make shield penetrateable when used in this fashion
3) make shield quality affect block rolls and its use as hand-armor
4) make destruction of heart cause death
5) make a bruised brain cause unconsciousness rather than death
6) limit the number of weapons and shields that can be held (fix the remove item exploit)
7) make throwing or firing a bow or attacking take the character out of sneak mode.

this would go a long way to improving adventure mode!

[jaxy15]

4) make destruction of heart cause death

It already does. It causes ridiculously severe bleeding.

[Carp McDwarfEater]

Not sure about number seven. I can picture a dirty goblin shooting a dwarf from the cover of a bush, sneaking a little bit away to avoid being spotted, then shooting another dwarf.

I also don't think attacked with a melee weapon should break your stealth if you kill your target in a way that's quick and quiet, like bashing them over the head with a *Birch chair*. 

[FallingWhale]

5) make a bruised brain cause unconsciousness rather than death

It does, but the skull caves more often than it should.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, brains should bruise more easily - there's a thread that showcases how a skull can be fractured dozens of times over without actually causing any brain damage at all.

As for 7, there might be a case for throwing something from hiding, and still being in hiding.  That said, there is much less of a case for wrestling someone and remaining hiding.  (Unless maybe you're just "hiding" in relation to other people in the room by gagging the victim while you are shivving the target in the back or some other complicated maneuver, but the notion the victim wouldn't be able to figure out there was an arm around his/her throat is just a little silly.)

For 2, making shields penetratable in general (or even become damaged or broken) would be a decent idea - simply activating your shield at all is basically a temporary invulnerability right now, but making crappy copper or even wooden shields simply be pierced by a candy spear, and keep going through to the armor behind it (with some bonus damage capacity lost for the amount of distance between the shield and armor) to hit flesh behind if enough penetration power remains would make shield type and quality more interesting and important.

As for 6, "fix a bug" isn't really a suggestion, nor something you need to suggest, it's something that Toady will get around to when he gets around to it, and there's already a bug report for it.

[Neonivek]

I should state that it is more then possible for the brain to suffer a fatal injury without causing any form of unconsciousness.

One of the reasons you go to the doctor if you hit your head even if you seem fine afterwords is because your brain could be leaking blood which will eventually end in death. Which can actually take days (Which as far as the game is concerned is a "Bruised" brain).

Brains can have "Deadly" bruises such as Hematoma... and non-lethal bruises.

Also going unconcious from a "Brain bruise" should be a large indication of a major injury.

Also... It is more then possible to throw or fire something while still sneaking. It can be a major give away but even back then it was more then possible to stealthfully kill multiple people without them ever knowing where you were.

[Bytyan]

I would like to see more differentiation in shields if this were to go through. A midivel knight could hack through a heavy wooden shield with an iron/steel sword, but if it were properly constructed it would come apart in chips, with the first layer losing pieces until it fell apart, with more layers underneath with crossed grains. Metal shields were softer and thinner than other armor, but would seldom feel the bite of the edge, and could deflect a blade and survive the blunt force by virtue of being attached to a human arm, which has some give. Low quality wooden shields, sure. Degraded high quality wooden shields, ok. Passable quality metal shields that failed to block and are acting as hand armor? Arguable. I've got a soft punching pad that I've hit for years, and it's fine. Why would a shield held by a wilty little recruit be any different?

[NW_Kohaku]

I would like to see more differentiation in shields if this were to go through. A midivel knight could hack through a heavy wooden shield with an iron/steel sword, but if it were properly constructed it would come apart in chips, with the first layer losing pieces until it fell apart, with more layers underneath with crossed grains. Metal shields were softer and thinner than other armor, but would seldom feel the bite of the edge, and could deflect a blade and survive the blunt force by virtue of being attached to a human arm, which has some give. Low quality wooden shields, sure. Degraded high quality wooden shields, ok. Passable quality metal shields that failed to block and are acting as hand armor? Arguable. I've got a soft punching pad that I've hit for years, and it's fine. Why would a shield held by a wilty little recruit be any different?

You're thinking about cases of steel sword versus steel shield.

I'm thinking of cases like "the dragon charges you" or "the ettin swings its axe". 

If something massive enough slams into your shield, you should still get bowled over or even hurt if it's forceful enough.  Likewise, extreme enough spear blows with a giant candy spear wielded by a clown or the like could just shred straight through a copper shield like it wasn't even there.

[Bytyan]

@kohaku
I am assuming, first of all, that a candy spear is a 3/4 inch diameter rod that tapers to a point, like an ordinary spear. If it is a point of infinite sharpness, then my logic is moot.

When I learned to use a shield, putting myself in the direct line of force (as in terminating the arch which the weapon was being swung) was a tactic of last resort. The shield was more for parring than blocking per say; if at all possibly, you want your opponent to finish their movement, with you away from their pointy bits. If someone swings a sledge hammer overhead, and I stop the force, I'm going to get shattered. If I move 6 inches to the left and let the hammer slid off my shield, somewhere to the right of where I was standing will get shattered. The shield I was using was small, round and composite. A similar metal shield could divert a sword edge or spear tip of a much harder material with extreme force behind it, provided it is not trying to stop the force Like how train couplings last a long time, even though they are changing the path of huge trains.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, again, if something akin to a bus was rolling at you at a good speed, you aren't going to be able to meaningfully deflect that with a shield.  If a 25-ton dragon charges, a shield isn't going to be able to meaningfully deflect that.

Likewise, candy does have a physically impossible sub-atomic edge, which isn't exactly infinite sharpness, but pretty darn close.

Further, I think one of the old tricks, although I'm not sure if it still applies, was that you could use a shield to "deflect" the ground if you were falling from a great height.  There are simply some forces that are extreme enough to overcome any capability for deflection, which means you can't just have a blanket "completely nullifies all damage" effect.

Also, not all shield users are highly trained, and not all blocks are going to be perfectly deflecting the attack.  Modeling for a spectrum of possible efficiencies of deflection should be possible.

[slothen]

while we're at it, limbs get severed far too easily by edged weapons, and body parts repeatedly crushed by blunt weapons should eventually sever.

[Funk]

7.burn loads of sulphur or other fumigants and hope you choke your attackers

[slothen]

just remembered a big one, but i suppose it isn't inherent to the combat engine, but to item definitions.

Metal bolts are 100% metal, not just the pointy end.  Same for metal ballista bolts (which isn't intended, considering the job specifies arrow head, not the entire thing at the forge).

Also would be cool to implement range as a modifier in the weapons for chance to hit, accounts for the creature's range and weapon size/length.  So a sword should have an advantage against a dagger).

[G-Flex]

There are a lot of problems with combat as it is now. Some of it relates to problems with how bodies are defined (such as all bone being of equal strength, and skulls being encased in as much fat/muscle as a person's torso or arms are, I forget which exactly).

• Regarding damage to the brain: DF really needs a concept of recoverable (or mostly recoverable) minor damage to the brain. We need concussions and things like that. Unfortunately, nervous tissue damage in DF never, ever recovers, which is something that would have to be changed in order for this to be the case.
• Temperature-related effects are still bonkers. Fat still melts off of you at a temperature that is essentially just a high fever. This is a serious problem because it results in serious injury and affects damn near any heat-related thing that can affect a creature. I have a bug report about it that's gone unacknowledged for nearly two years. In addition, high internal body temperature, particularly vital organ temperature, should result in effects similar to fever, but I've literally seen animals get burn wounds on their brains and survive, despite the fact that this would require the brain to reach temperatures very much in excess of what is survivable.
• I still subscribe to the hypothesis that DF treats body parts as if they have no flexibility when attacked, as if every kick and punch is against a magically-immobilized component. In essence, kicking someone in the head might as well be stomping them against the ground or kicking them while held against a wall, because the game doesn't account for body parts absorbing some of the blow in the form of momentum. For example, punching someone's arm or skull in real life is less likely to shatter the bone in part because a lot of that force will just go toward shoving it back or aside; body parts have flexibility and motion that DF doesn't seem to simulate in this way. I could be wrong about this, but it would certainly explain some things.
• Certain kinds of organ damage, and bones breaking, need to be more harmful. Many organs don't do anything yet, and I assume that'll change, but even skewering someone's internal organs doesn't seem to hinder opponents very much. Opponents are very good at being disemboweled without even necessarily keeling over in pain, and survive major organ damage quite happily, at least for a time. Organ damage, massive internal injury in general, and broken bones ought to be more disabling even if they're not more immediately fatal.
• When a projectile (and possibly any weapon) penetrates clothing/armor/flesh, it only penetrates through a distance equal to its penetration size or something related to it. This sounds reasonable, but consider that a projectile should be able to completely pass through a layer if it has enough force. I don't remember exactly what my testing was like with this, but I remember there definitely being problems where a cloak would entirely prevent blowgun darts from ever hitting the target, because it couldn't penetrate more deeply. Speaking of which, clothing in general should probably get looked at, since some of it seems to protect far too well in general.
• More animals need to be properly differentiated from each other. Probably most of us have seen examples of animals killing other animals they simply should not be able to kill, because they simply aren't well-differentiated at this moment. They often have virtually identical body definitions, materials, and tissues, so you have strange things like dwarves (probably) biting harder than a wolf can. I think we need to see some work done here before combat results involving wild/domestic animals start to make sense.
• Weapon definitions/formulas need to be a little more complex in order to better account for things like whips and flails. Some notion of how much of the weapon size is actually used in the attack, or actually retains any inertia, is important here, so that the game knows that being hit with a 10-foot-long chain isn't the same as getting hit by a 10-foot-long pole of the same mass.
• Speaking of weapons, it's patently ridiculous that materials like silver are still better for, say, hammers and maces, if that is indeed still the case. I think part of the problem here is that weight isn't slowing down the weapon swing (or the weapon attack rate) enough, or lowering the effectiveness of the swing enough (swinging a heavier weapon should, past a certain point, be rather clumsy). This ought to be fixed. One idea I had was to change how weapons are manufactured by creatures/entities altogether. In my opinion, instead of weapon sizes being absolute, they should be relative, such that a "short sword" manufactured by a human is a proper size for a human, one manufactured by a dwarf is a proper size for a dwarf, and one manufactured by some kind of giant or tiny creature is the proper size for that creature as well. This way, weapon sizes and weights are always optimal for the race creating them, which is how that race should be making those weapons in the first place; there's no reason dwarves would be making hammers better-suited to humans than to themselves, or vice-versa. The scaling probably shouldn't be linear, since due to square-cube law type stuff a creature half the mass of another creature could effectively swing a weapon greater than half the mass of the weapon appropriate for the larger creature, but that's a minor formula detail.
• Cumulative damage to a body part still isn't quite complete as a feature. With something like a bronze colossus, it's possible to chip away at a body part until it breaks, but for squishier tissues, this is not the case. Certain creatures are, at least under certain conditions, basically unkillable: Vampire giant sponges have been mentioned as something impossible to kill because you can never, ever fully destroy their one body part/tissue. It stands to reason that absolutely any tissue layer or body part should be able to suffer complete destruction/severing if it takes enough damage. The same applies to damage from fire; there are creatures you can dump in magma or light on fire indefinitely and they'll just catch fire and spew smoke for eternity because it'll never actually kill them.

That's all I can think of at the moment. I underlined one bit because I figured it would be the most controversial/suggestion-like thing I mentioned, whereas the rest is mostly common-sense stuff.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, G-Flex, on your point 6, I've been meaning to get to trying to help deal with that for a while, now.

I think that if we performed some sort of testing, and produced some sort of set of specific suggested raw changes, we might be able to convince Toady to make some changes to the raws.

One of the most simple problem is the fact that, as you just said, a cow and an alligator are basically the same creature, with identical attacks, including bite, but cows are larger, and as such, a cow has a stronger bite than an alligator.

It would take some sort of dedicated testing, but we could probably work out a way to test how strong a creature's bite is in the arena, and then look for real-life data on creatures to adjust the power of bites, and suggest a set of data for that.

Likewise, we could work out ways to make more proper versions of crocodile leather that aren't as soft as cow leather, and the like, as well.