Throwing weapons

[Enaragon]

Since range combat is more or less ineffective in this game, I've always wondered if there was a way make it viable without making it broken. What if we had throwing weapons in the game? Like javelins, daggers, darts, etc?

How it would work:

If shooter and the opponent is standing still, loading speed of aim bar would be 2.4x that of a sling

If shooter is standing still and opponent is moving, loading speed of aim bar would be 0.5x that of sling

If both are moving, loading speed of aim bar would be 0.25x that of sling.

However, if opponent moves sqroot((perception*marksmanship)/300) tiles away from the shooter, the aim bar is reset.

All other ranged mechanics stay the same. What this allows is for ranged focused players to hold off and stall close combat players and even beat them if they lead them on a long enough chase. However, the ranged player is still bound by inventory (suppose each throwing knife takes up 2 spaces of the inv. so there's only so much he can hold) and furthermore attack bar is reset and defense bar is cut by 10 percent per throw. This means that should the melee player catch up, the ranged player is very vulnerable. Also, the actual throw will take 1 second for the shooter to execute said action (thereby freezing mid run), so the melee player can catch up eventually.

Not to mention, if the melee player manages to get a hit in on a shooter whose aim bar is still up (which would remain up for 2 seconds after a throw has been executed), it would be treated as if the shooter was running.

And depending on the items thrown, the base damage could be higher (javelins probably would have the highest damage but take up the most inventory slots).

I don't know how balanced this would be, or how good of a suggestion this would be (probably is a stupid one) but I don't know, just flame me. I'll expect it.

EDIT: Also damage of thrown weapons are half that of a sling.

[LadyV]

Im all for variety, even in weapon types. Ranged combat is not broken however. Armor is over powered when arrows can not even touch it in most cases. Metal tip arrows and in your suggestion thrown weapons should cause penetration damage to solve this.

As or tactics i prefer to leave that to the player. If you can out maneuver your opponent then by all means get an advantage. aim focus and speed should be best set by the devs.

[Enaragon]

Well, what if thrown weapons had up to 30% armor penetration depending on the strength of each player? Maybe the formula would be something like (str*perc*marksmanship)^(1/3) up to a cap of 30 for percent armor penetration? It'd be different from crossbows or bows because thrown weapons can be, well, thrown with the strength of someone who can bash down wooden fortresses with their bare hands.

[NOOBY93]

If you're gonna put a cap on armor penetration, you shouldn't do it with the stats of only the attacker because that way leveling some stats beyond a number is worthless. The better thing to do would be to make another "delta" between some of the stats from attacker and defender, just like the pie slice of the track depends on both the tracker and the criminal.

[LadyV]

Penetration would have to depend on the weapon. Javelins if thrown do a lot of damage but less to metal armors as you can not achieve as much speed as say a arrow or bolt. Pure missle weapons like arrows and bolts would do highest penetration simply due to power and speed. Darts would for the most part ignore armor since their size allows direct attack of non covered areas. Daggers not so much useful vs armor as a thrown weapon more so as a close combat weapon.

How much penetration? Again I prefer the devs to set specifics because they are more likely to fairly balance it.

[Enaragon]

I think that up to a close enough distance thrown weapons should have a 100% chance of striking if the aim bar is yellow or above. Ofc, like mentioned before, if an opponent gets up to a close enough distance and hit you with the aim bar still up, they can hit you for full damage, but it is a trade off. It would be an extremely risky thing to do as well, since thrown weapons deal half the damage than you would from a sling, so if an opponent lands a hit it would be far more devastating, and since throwing a weapon halts your movement for a second, pulling off consecutive point blank shots without the opponent catching up would be really difficult. However, I also think that at this close distance darts should have 50% armor penetration, because like Lady V said, they can hit the weak points in between the armor (at such a close distance it should be possible to aim accurately at joints).

I think the distance where such point blank shots is possible should be ((perception*marksmanship*dexterity)/100)^(1/5). Assuming one has 500 perc, mm and dexterity, this close distance thing could happen within 16 tiles (quite a distance) but reaching this level would be hella difficult. I understand that at higher levels with this implementation, an individual could defend against village rammers easily since 2.4x sling loading speed along with this close distance feature could easily whittle down an opponent's health in the blink of an eye. So my take on this is, this should be done at 0.25x damage if it is shot through palisade or brick walls.

I don't really know if this is overpowered or not, but there you guys go.