Discussion about archery, and sniping people

[Sarge]

I stopped reading midway through page 2 (by then I had already endured a page of crap) so forgive me it this thread made sense at some stage from then and I missed it.

My 2 cents, I support the OP's suggestion and the coup de gras or equivilant concious decision to deliver a killing blow.

I also, however agree with one part of what Painhertz' is eluding to in his special way, there is a problem with the long term viability of archery in my experience. More progressive factions can rather easily render an archer completely useless with superior armour. The only way a specialist archer (ranger) could improve his odds (yes, I'm expecting that stating full martial would be obvious) of penetrating armor and making a hit is to drop his own armor for buff gear and every somewhat experienced player knows that is suicide in a half decent fight. Some balancing is required here, either by pure algorithm or by additional items as suggested by Painhertz.

The addition of LoS would ofc be fantastic, but I remember it being discussed at length and if memory serves me correctly, Loftar commented that the coding would be immense and that he would only reconsider the addition if/when they do a complete revamp of the game.

[dragonxkai]

If Jackard wants a deathblow mechanic, then it has to be based on 'advantage'. When advantage is == 5, a special attack move is available for UA and Melee.
Disembowel | -12IP | =>5 Advantage | UA 0.80x > Target's HHP | You punch their guts so hard that you made a hole through them.
Decapitate | -16IP | =>5 Advantage | Melee 1.25x > Target's HHP | You swing your weapon so hard that you lopped off their head.

It becomes easier to pull off a deathblow if their HHP is lower. Melee makes it easier to pull off a deathblow compared to Unarmed.
Not sure if these stats work though.

Archery

As for archery. Increasing aim speed to allow rapid hits, but lowering the potential damage is a better alternative. Make archery a focus for destroying enemy armors, rather than one shot killing them.

Because if you are gonna aim a bow at a target 50 meters away (about 30 tiles), you're not gonna take 1 minute to get a decent gauge right?
Even if someone is very very bad at handling a bow, it doesn't take them 1 whole minute to aim a bow at something in front of them right?

This makes slings and bows a bit more handy, but at the same time not a killing choice when in close combat.

So an idea:
Aim speed = base speed of 8% per second over the distance of 10 tiles (being closer dramatically increases aim speed up to 16% / second), reduced by the distance to the opponent (minimum of 3% / sec at 20 tiles). Aim speed is separated into tiers based on the weapon used. If the target moves the aim drops dramatically, if the target is more than 40 tiles away (outside view range) it maxes at 50% aim gauge.

Marksmanship doesn't increase aim speed, but does determine the training to use said weapon's aim speed, quality of the weapon increases the requirement to use it's speed.
You will aim decent on a low q weapon, but if your MM doesn't match up to a q40 weapon, you will see the aim speeds reduced. Lower quality weapons will have less base armor penetration damage (see below)

Marksmanship also allows your weapon quality to inflict that much in value, in armor damage. A q40 bow with 20 mm means you will only do 20 armor damage to a enemy's armor, rather than 40.
Bonus armor damage is based on your MM alone, is based on the sqrt of MM rounded down. 40 MM = +6 bonus armor damage.

EDIT: A improvement to make different weapon type to inflict more armor damage, Sling inflicts sqrt(MM) * 1, Bow is *2, and Ranger bow is *3.
This means if you have access to a ranger bow, you can damage the opponent's armor pretty well at higher quality bows.

So Q40 Bow (not including ammo quality) and 40 MM allows you to inflict 52 armor damage (sqrt(MM) *2)! Btw the base damage if you do hit a target still applies, but should have reduced base damage since you can break armors now.
Armor damage bypasses the armor defense points, and always whittle the armor's hp down.

This mean whilst a walking tank won't take any real SHP damage, his armor will surely be weaken with every consecutive hits.

Whilst everyone likes to become a walking tank, taking lots of arrows will inevitably turn your armor into swiss cheese!

New shoot skill
Snipe - It drains stamina over time when you use snipe to shoot, it has a lower base aim speed than shoot, but rather than having MM determine the armor penetration, it determines the bonus critical hit damage done.

Sniping is half as fast as Shooting. They both are shooting a stone or arrow, but with Snipe you are aiming for their head to deal immense damage through armor.

If the target wears a helmet, then Snipe will cause you to only calculate the helmet's stats versus your attack, not their entire armor set.
But because it's a lot harder to land a hit with Snipe, a low level players will rarely even one shot someone close up with it, based on the low MM value and weapon quality.

If you used Snipe against a opponent's helmet with 25/25, and your weapon's base damage is higher, after taking reduced damage from that calculation, it also adds in bonus critical damage based on your MM, making high level MM insanely deadly if they land a headshot.

So:
25/25 Armor points with 100 Armor HP. Helmet only.
If your snipe does 100 solid damage with 25 in bonus crit damage, the armor ignores 25 of the 100 damage, rendering it to 75.
75 damage is reduced to 50, but also dealing -25 hp to the helmet's hp, to 75 HP.
50 Raw damage is given + 25 Critical damage.
The target takes 75 SHP damage.

If you were to use Shoot instead of Snipe, and the target also had leather armor and leather pants, your damage will be reduced to a minimum and the target will not take any shp damage, although his armor will be damaged by the shoot mechanic's armor damage.

Of course it's SHP damage first, so you'll knock them unconscious first, but Snipe has a perk to inflict higher HHP damage than normal shooting and life and death belief do affect this.

If you seriously want Snipe to be a action that instant kills in a specific situation, a optional idea:
- If the target's HHP is less than your MM stat sqrt * weapon tier, a hit with Snipe will disregard the armor point on the helmet, or the damage the shot will do, and will instantly kill the target. So if their HHP is less than 12 (sqrt(40 MM) * 2) and you have 40 MM with a bow, snipe will instant kill them.
- If you consider the OP-ness of snipe, a Ranger bow has 3x the effect so at 40MM it's 18 HHP being the limit. If a player achieves 200 MM, they would only need the target to be under 42 HHP to kill via Snipe with a ranger bow. The question is how does one hit MM in the 200-300s?

You learn Sniping/Snipe via Ranging. You learn Shoot via Hunting.

[Jackard]

If Jackard wants a deathblow mechanic, then it has to be based on 'advantage'. When advantage is == 5, a special attack move is available for UA and Melee.
Disembowel | -12IP | =>5 Advantage | UA 0.80x > Target's HHP | You punch their guts so hard that you made a hole through them.
Decapitate | -16IP | =>5 Advantage | Melee 1.25x > Target's HHP | You swing your weapon so hard that you lopped off their head.

It becomes easier to pull off a deathblow if their HHP is lower. Melee makes it easier to pull off a deathblow compared to Unarmed.
Not sure if these stats work though.

A special attack is not the intent here. It is to add a timed melee execution mechanic for KOed players, a Coup de Grace.

(this combined with the removal of trad/change)

[AnnaC]

Especially considering a potential one hit kill mechanic, from practically infinite range, through walls, is batshit retarded in a permadeath game. Disallowing ranged attacks to target KO'd hearthlings would still theoretically allow archers to kill off weakened and wounded enemies in the field, and they can still knock enemy infrantry down, so it wouldn't disrupt their pvp abilities any, it would just alleviate the complete lack of defense walls provide from archery (better than adding line of sight, which would hamper defensive support fire just as much as it would surprise sniping).

[Skorm]

Or just make it a " bows do 5x damage to armor( so archers are now armor breakers)" and bam, they have a real use now

[AnnaC]

Why should a weapon that otherwise has no consideration or mechanics involved with the combat system have so much power in PvP? Especially when it doesn't even cause aggro until the first shot is already resolved? Ranged combat shouldn't be all that prominent in PvP in it's current state. Maybe if it had it's own set of stances and multiple types of shot, then perhaps it could be more integrated into combat. As it is now it works relatively fine for it's purpose: distraction and support fire (and deadly fire if the enemy is wounded/weak/unarmoured), from a protected location.

[dragonxkai]

Or just make it a " bows do 5x damage to armor( so archers are now armor breakers)" and bam, they have a real use now

That's what I was posting about.
Arrows poses no threat to a well armored target, but highly trained archers aims for the neck/head, which can knock off a helmet or pierce through it.


If you want additional ranged attacks, you can have:
Crippling shot - Aims at the Target's legs, to calculate the armor of their legs, if it does shp damage, the target is debuffed to a crawl speed for 10 seconds.

BTW, it works on animals too! But arrows only... Stone hitting their legs only stops them for a second.

We DO need metal arrows though...

Actually the simplest fix to archery without changing the system is adding metal arrows which specialize in piercing armors.

1 nugget = 1 arrowhead.

[Jackard]

Why should a weapon that otherwise has no consideration or mechanics involved with the combat system have so much power in PvP? Especially when it doesn't even cause aggro until the first shot is already resolved? Ranged combat shouldn't be all that prominent in PvP in it's current state. Maybe if it had it's own set of stances and multiple types of shot, then perhaps it could be more integrated into combat. As it is now it works relatively fine for it's purpose: distraction and support fire (and deadly fire if the enemy is wounded/weak/unarmoured), from a protected location.

Don't forget auto-aggroing random scrubs wandering through the woods.

[dragonxkai]

What about making sqrt(agi * dex) be the aim speed modifier instead of mm?
Sqrt(10*10) = 10 mm aim speed.
There does need to be a cap or limit so...
The MME is still there.
Sling 1x
Bow 2x
Ranger Bow 4x

So sqrt(agi*Dex)/(Mme 1:2:4)
10 / 1 = sling speed
10 / 2 = bow
10 / 4 = ranger

Have mm play a role instead into armor penetration.
Sqrt(weapon q * ammo q * mm)/3
Sqrt(10*10*10)/3 = 31.62 / 3 = 10.5 bonus armor penetration.

Q10 sling = 60 DMG, calculates armor damage first then calculates shoot DMG against armor.

Armor HP -10 ahp then -x DMG after armor reduction.

[SuperNoob]

I'd rather see some sort of line of sight thing for walls(make wall slits a thing if you want to see out, but you can be shot through those), that way you don't have to worry about all the other buffs/debuffs for archery.

another thing I'd like to see would be bodkins(a type of arrow with a heavy shaft and square tapered point(pyramid)). these would have some armor penetration making archery a viable combat skill. I'm not saying ignore armore 100%, but if you can punch a guy in steel plate and have 30% of the damage still hit them(and not break your hand), a bodkin should do 50% armor penetration easilly. could be made same way as current arrows, just use either nuggets from either any hard metal(making them good early mid game) or steel(which would take longer and force them later into mid game for quality to be worth using)