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[Sean Mirrsen]

In my experience master swordsmen don't do stupid giant flashy maneuvers. They have the ability to hit you very quickly, many many times, and bypass your guard with just about every single hit. The better you get, the better you are at blocking, dodging and attacking quickly and accurately. Generally with extreme economy of motion, so they waste very little time and energy getting the job done. I've seen good fighters go out onto the war field with a sword and buckler and trounce groups of average fighters that had larger shields and polearms to back them up. They do that the way Champions in DF do it now, by being damn near impossible to hit and almost never missing.

Considering that this is Dwarf Fortress and not a flashy graphics-fest game, I think we should avoid the ridiculous maneuvers unless someone is actually using an artifact or something that makes such things practical. Otherwise, all you're doing is leaving yourself open to attacks and tiring yourself out needlessly.

Don't get me wrong now, I see the point of realism in DF. However, I personally find "You slash the goblin in the bodypart!", repeated ad infinitum, rather tiring. Just like there's nothing wrong with adding uppercuts and scissor-kicks to the unarmed attacks, there should be nothing fundamentally wrong with adding some flavor text to the boring slashes and stabs. "You spin around and fiercely strike the goblin in the head with your Iron Battleaxe!" is much more satisfying, even if the attack glances away. Not being able to perform the move until a later skill level is merely a meta-game "reward" with little practical gain.

[Lancensis]

Flails and Morning Stars are both broad classifications rather than specific weapons. Flails can include nunchuks and similar. Morningstars have spikes. Therefore, a spiked ball on the end of a chain is both a flail, and a morningstar.

A Flailingstar!

[Footkerchief]

I don't see how it's unclear. A morning star has a spiked head. That includes flails. A flail is a type of morning star.
Sometimes, people are unclear on the distinction between the two, and use the term "flail" to include things which are morning stars, but are not flails.

But some things called flails don't have spiked heads, so it's not actually that clear.  There are further confusions since there's no clear delineation between the bumps/flanges of a mace and the spikes of a morningstar.  As Mephansteras said, it's basically an artificial distinction now, but a useful one for game purposes.

Don't get me wrong now, I see the point of realism in DF. However, I personally find "You slash the goblin in the bodypart!", repeated ad infinitum, rather tiring. Just like there's nothing wrong with adding uppercuts and scissor-kicks to the unarmed attacks, there should be nothing fundamentally wrong with adding some flavor text to the boring slashes and stabs. "You spin around and fiercely strike the goblin in the head with your Iron Battleaxe!" is much more satisfying, even if the attack glances away.

Incidentally, having multiple attack types per weapon means that you can add duplicate attacks with different verbs, to get a little variety in the flavor text.

Also, Blade of Darkness was a great game.

[Mephansteras]

In my experience master swordsmen don't do stupid giant flashy maneuvers. They have the ability to hit you very quickly, many many times, and bypass your guard with just about every single hit. The better you get, the better you are at blocking, dodging and attacking quickly and accurately. Generally with extreme economy of motion, so they waste very little time and energy getting the job done. I've seen good fighters go out onto the war field with a sword and buckler and trounce groups of average fighters that had larger shields and polearms to back them up. They do that the way Champions in DF do it now, by being damn near impossible to hit and almost never missing.

Considering that this is Dwarf Fortress and not a flashy graphics-fest game, I think we should avoid the ridiculous maneuvers unless someone is actually using an artifact or something that makes such things practical. Otherwise, all you're doing is leaving yourself open to attacks and tiring yourself out needlessly.

Don't get me wrong now, I see the point of realism in DF. However, I personally find "You slash the goblin in the bodypart!", repeated ad infinitum, rather tiring. Just like there's nothing wrong with adding uppercuts and scissor-kicks to the unarmed attacks, there should be nothing fundamentally wrong with adding some flavor text to the boring slashes and stabs. "You spin around and fiercely strike the goblin in the head with your Iron Battleaxe!" is much more satisfying, even if the attack glances away.

Ah, I see. Yes, adding flavor to the attacks is fine. There are a ton of strikes that are practical and used all the time in actual combat that could be used to spice up the depiction of combat. Especially, say, combined maneuvers "You bash the goblin's sword away with your shield! You hack at his exposed arm, severing the hand at the wrist! Your backhand strike cuts along his cheek, scraping along his helmet.". That kind of thing is cool.

I just wanted to avoid some of the flashier 'hollywood style' of combat that emphasizes highly visible attacks over functionality.

[CobaltKobold]

hmm...I'm not sure there's anything to distinguish a (spiked-ball-and-chain-on-stick) flail from a (spiked-ball-on-stick) morningstar, at the moment.

And yeah, combat skill = economy of motion, not flashy. This is not Dwarf Flynntress.

[Shoku]

They still stood around doing nothing, because it was still failing the personality check for the instructor, who wasn't reckless enough to send such green recruits off to spar.

Minor details like this have a potential to be awesome. However, I'm afraid they aren't awesome, unless the player somehow knows about them. There's a huge difference between, say, these two examples:
- "Why are my recruits wounded? I see! It's because their captain is reckless and let them spar too soon."
- "Why are my recruits wounded? I don't know. The random number generator probably had a bad mood."

I suppose there is plenty of other cases in DF when the personality plays a role. The problem here is that unless the player know about them, he's going to assume they aren't there, and that it was all just randomly generated. What the player can't see is as if it weren't, and it has no effect on his enjoyment of the game. The whole feature is basically pointless and wasted.

Finally, my questions:
1. Do you intend to somehow tell the players about details like personality effects, which are invisible as for now?
2. Until you make it happen, could you at least write about it in the devlog like now? 

An easy solution would be to make it an negative thought for the injured dwarf. "Displeased that his captain got him injured in training exercises he wasn't ready for yet."

In my experience master swordsmen don't do stupid giant flashy maneuvers. They have the ability to hit you very quickly, many many times, and bypass your guard with just about every single hit. The better you get, the better you are at blocking, dodging and attacking quickly and accurately. Generally with extreme economy of motion, so they waste very little time and energy getting the job done. I've seen good fighters go out onto the war field with a sword and buckler and trounce groups of average fighters that had larger shields and polearms to back them up. They do that the way Champions in DF do it now, by being damn near impossible to hit and almost never missing.

Considering that this is Dwarf Fortress and not a flashy graphics-fest game, I think we should avoid the ridiculous maneuvers unless someone is actually using an artifact or something that makes such things practical. Otherwise, all you're doing is leaving yourself open to attacks and tiring yourself out needlessly.

Those things are in slasher games because of control limitations. You can't be expected to press buttons to make your character throw six punches in a second so to decouple the character speed from character speed they make the attacks bigger or award different attacks instead of just scaling up the speed of the attacks they had been using before (and accuracy is usually all up to the player aiming the attack so that's where skill of choosing attacks comes in.)

I'd like to see some turn based rpg system that handled experts moving quickly without just throwing them extra turns.

In my experience master swordsmen don't do stupid giant flashy maneuvers. They have the ability to hit you very quickly, many many times, and bypass your guard with just about every single hit. The better you get, the better you are at blocking, dodging and attacking quickly and accurately. Generally with extreme economy of motion, so they waste very little time and energy getting the job done. I've seen good fighters go out onto the war field with a sword and buckler and trounce groups of average fighters that had larger shields and polearms to back them up. They do that the way Champions in DF do it now, by being damn near impossible to hit and almost never missing.

Considering that this is Dwarf Fortress and not a flashy graphics-fest game, I think we should avoid the ridiculous maneuvers unless someone is actually using an artifact or something that makes such things practical. Otherwise, all you're doing is leaving yourself open to attacks and tiring yourself out needlessly.

Don't get me wrong now, I see the point of realism in DF. However, I personally find "You slash the goblin in the bodypart!", repeated ad infinitum, rather tiring. Just like there's nothing wrong with adding uppercuts and scissor-kicks to the unarmed attacks, there should be nothing fundamentally wrong with adding some flavor text to the boring slashes and stabs. "You spin around and fiercely strike the goblin in the head with your Iron Battleaxe!" is much more satisfying, even if the attack glances away. Not being able to perform the move until a later skill level is merely a meta-game "reward" with little practical gain.

If you really want the martial arts type movements in I'd basically guess they should have low accuracy but higher benefits from combat skills. If combat eventually knows something about how people are blocking and their stance and such there could be openings that were also important for if these attacks would be worth doing but it gets a little bit rock-paper-scissors at that point.

[Neonivek]

As for the answer yes there are attacks where you have to be highly skilled to pull it off or pull it off with any sort of effectiveness.

You think someone is going to train for a week and snap swords with a sai? Is it an essential skill? Also a yes.

Some weapons are also known to be very difficult to use unless you are particular good at them. Most flails are like that and have more then enough ability to harm the weilder.

Some of the more flashy swordmen attacks are built for more then one opponent. They are mostly herding techniques made to prevent the swordsmen from simply being overrun by more then one opponent. There are also attacks that were created to allow the swordsmen to attack from different possitions that may arise.

You need to sort of step out of the box of "1 on 1 flat surface duels with similarly armed opponents" to see anything more then utilitarian straight forward attacks. Mind you they arn't jumping off the walls, but it is a change.

There are also flashy attacks that are also effective as well (Hookswords are full of utilitarian awsome)

I just wanted to avoid some of the flashier 'hollywood style' of combat that emphasizes highly visible attacks over functionality

On the contrary highly visable attacks are a battle strategy and often part of battle philosophies. SURE you probably could just punch someone in the neck and kill them rather quickly that way. If you can somehow rip out their throat in the process then you can demoralise your opponent.

Or less brutally, if you can fight in a way that makes your swings look effortless, then others may be more cautious when challenging you.

Then there are attacks made for demonstrations but that carry little battle use. It is for the popularity of the martial art as well as the above. (Even Boxing has some of these)

There are many reasons why many martial arts including weapon arts carry on attacks that are not quite as effective. Another is that they became part of the martial art itself especially with martial arts made to emulate nature such as animals.

Some are a bit more flashy due to missing elements. Some of the movements in martial arts made much more sense when weapons were involved.

I can even go on as to mention Drunken Fighter where the martial art is more based around throwing your opponent off balance. It would likely be a lot less effective against anyone who knows the martial art.

Though then you get Ki, Magic, Force involved and everything changes... but that is different.

[smjjames]

hmm...I'm not sure there's anything to distinguish a (spiked-ball-and-chain-on-stick) flail from a (spiked-ball-on-stick) morningstar, at the moment.

And yeah, combat skill = economy of motion, not flashy. This is not Dwarf Flynntress.

Not to mention using your shield as an impromptu hammer, my champions in my last game with legendary and really high to legendary (not sure when they started making gobbos fly) would often use the shield bash as if it was a hammer.

[Footkerchief]

As for the answer yes there are attacks where you have to be highly skilled to pull it off or pull it off with any sort of effectiveness.

You think someone is going to train for a week and snap swords with a sai? Is it an essential skill? Also a yes.

Yes, obviously there are difficult maneuvers in anything, but locking them off completely for novices is very artificial.  "Can't even be attempted" was a key phrase in what I said.  That difficulty isn't necessarily related to prowess, either -- the sai maneuver, if it's ever been used in real combat at all, probably relies as much upon strength as upon skill.

Some of the more flashy swordmen attacks are built for more then one opponent. They are mostly herding techniques made to prevent the swordsmen from simply being overrun by more then one opponent.

Trying to "herd" opponents by swinging a sword around sounds like a good way to get exhausted and killed.  Is there some reliable source on this?

[Neonivek]

Trying to "herd" opponents by swinging a sword around sounds like a good way to get exhausted and killed

Well it is either that or they can all just close the distance and kill you. Your supposed to herd them and then get to a better possition if possible. If you just stand there and do wide swings then yeah... your going to be killed.

As for a source... that is going to be tricky and annoying to find.

sai maneuver, if it's ever been used in real combat at all

It has. They arn't technically Sais but I can never remember what the Magistrate's weapons were called. Similar design though.

Locking it out is mostly there to prevent annoyance in players and AI. It could be allowed, with an almost insignificant change of success and with a very small effectiveness rating, if it just tells you that you really can't do it all that well.

[Mephansteras]

We're getting past the 'small suggestion' stage and into a full blown discussion here, folk. Let's try reviving one of the older combat threads, like this one or this one. No need to clutter up this thread too much when a lot of this has probably already been discussed to some extent.

[Neonivek]

We're getting past the 'small suggestion' stage and into a full blown discussion here, folk. Let's try reviving one of the older combat threads, like this one or this one. No need to clutter up this thread too much when a lot of this has probably already been discussed to some extent.

Nothing wrong with a discussion as long as it doesn't take over the thread.

[Aqizzar]

It has taken over the thread.  Most of the last 40ish posts are at least partially arguing over the definition of flails/morningstars and the merits of flashy fighting styles and the ability to use such.  The former is barely meaningful in Dwarf Fortress terms and Toady has said as much, and the later is a completely tangential discussion Toady has certainly said he won't be dealing with any time soon.

I know talking about actual features naturally leads to extrapolation, but especially when it gets to combat minutiae everyone thinks they're an expert on, it goes flying off for a couple pages into these arguments that prove nothing and have nothing to do with the devlog.  The Suggestions area exists for a reason.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

This is not Dwarf Flynntress.

I laughed so very hard.

[Igfig]

It seems to me that the distinction between a weapon on a chain and one on a stick has something to do with the velocity modifier (in the raws, at least).  The chain lets you build up more momentum with each attack, at the cost of a slower attack speed (it takes time to build that momentum) and a bit less accuracy (it's hard to change direction in mid-swing).

To me, it looks like the way combat damage is figured is roughly weight x velocity / striking area, which is then modified by skill rolls that determine what you hit and with what fraction of the striking area.  With an edged weapon, you then use the penetration size to find out how deep it goes.

That means you could model a spiked flail (or a morningstar on a chain, or whatever) by, say:

Code: [Select]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_BALL_CHAIN_SPIKED]
[NAME:ball on a chain:balls on chains]
[ADJ:spiked]
[WEIGHT:50]
[SKILL:MACE]
[TWO_HANDED:47500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:42500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:4]
[ATTACK:EDGE:10:500:bash:bashes:NO_SUB:2500]
That is, an edged weapon with a high weight (heavy ball), high velocity (on a chain), small striking area (spikes) and small penetration size (little spikes).  Unfortunately I don't think there's any way to make a weapon attack slower except to make it heavier.


Okay?  It doesn't matter what the actual names for things are.  You don't kill people with names.  We have numbers.  Numbers are what you kill people with.