NewCombatSystemUpdatesArchive

I'm leaving this content here mostly for posterity. Hopefully it will provide some insight into future MUSHers as to how and why the new combat system behaves in certain ways. This is a snapshot from the "development" releases starting in late December, 2008.

All posts are by Hazard.

= Wednesday, Dec 23rd = Twpage 22:04, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Bumped up ALL defense modifiers (thanks Blitzwing) -- this is an experiment for now but I hope it works out well!
 * Re-arranged Freebie/Global attacks. (Thanks Blitzwing)
 * LEVEL 1 Laser is now "Disruptor"
 * LEVEL 2 Blaster is now "Laser"
 * Fixed a bug with !syscheck when someone had 0 base armor
 * AIM:
 * You can do it on someone without waiting for the COMBAT flag now
 * If you try to transform or change your defense level it will give you a warning and tell you to use !aim/off
 * added !aim/off
 * ANALYZE:
 * You can do it on someone without waiting for the COMBAT flag now
 * Damage bonus is now dependent on analyzer's offensive bonus (defense level)
 * also bumped up the base damage bonus
 * !REST is now !PASS
 * PASS will recharge more energon when you are risking an offensive bonus (e.g. you don't get as much from !passing while PROTECTED)
 * Got rid of the !start command because it is stupid and unnecessary
 * Fixed a bug with self-repair (Thanks Cate)
 * COMBINERS:
 * When you merge you get the COMBAT flag
 * People inside the combiner object are not COMBAT-OK (no attacking, passing, etc)
 * COMBAT flags will NOT time out while inside the combiner object
 * SO CLOSE! Thanks everyone :)

= Wednesday, Dec 17th = Twpage 22:37, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * EXO SUITS
 * You should be able to use exo suits with the new system. You will have to get a ROYAL to +cg/loadobj the suit and refactor. Or maybe Scrapper can help me figure out if we can get away with just refactoring the parents and go from there.
 * new !PILOT command
 * If you are in an exo-suit you will take some END damage when it gets hit, but no stat damage
 * !rebuild should work appropriately on exo-suits
 * You cannot pilot an exo while you or it has stat damage
 * You cannot pilot an exo while you or it have the COMBAT flag
 * New !START admin-type command
 * Available to any admin or anyone with the COMBAT_INIT flag which any roy can set on any player that is responsible
 * This will keep people from energon-twinking (e.g. coming to battle with overcharged energon)
 * This will set everyone's COMBAT flag off the bat (so you can !analyze or !aim at them straight away)
 * This does a few other things too -- clear out data from old fights (same thing that happens when your COMBAT flag clears)

= Monday, Dec 15th = Twpage 22:36, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Lowered RECOIL and OUCH self-damage
 * Removed the ARMOROP command/ability (for now)
 * Modified !AIM:
 * Now takes a specific target
 * Unable to change defense level while AIMING
 * New VEHICLE species
 * Rebuild only works on vehicles
 * !PATCH only works on Transformers
 * Merged !pull and !attack: new syntax is !attack/ =
 * COMBAT flag time-out is 3 hours

= Thursday, Dec 11th = Twpage 23:15, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * !patch is now available to people with the REPAIR abiity
 * It will cost the patcher some energon
 * Combatants can only be patched once per fight (wears off when the combat flag does)
 * !armorop is now covered by the REPAIR ability
 * The CONSTRUCTION ability is back (was renamed to Engineering but it is back to Construction)
 * Construction-types can !rebuild vehicles
 * Vehicles (Exos, tanks, jets, shuttles) in general NEED testing
 * Added an admin version of the !limits command
 * Replaced FIXME junkion ability:
 * !junkdive only works on the Planet Junk
 * Junkions can be !patched in infinite amount of times
 * Added HEAL ability and !HEAL command -- works on squishies
 * You can no longer !repair yourself. You can !patch yourself though.

= Wednesday, Dec 10th = Twpage 23:08, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed !repair
 * Should correctly have crappy people without the ability fail a lot
 * Should correctly repair systems damage depending on the repairer's TECH
 * Made !repair temporarily ignore time limits for testing purposes
 * !selfhurt does stat damage now
 * Increased the amount of stat damage from attacks
 * Fixed !sneak and !cloak 'I found you!' difficulty (harder)
 * When you SNEAK or CLOAK your defense-level will automatically be set to Hidden
 * If you try to transform while CLOAKED or SNEAKING you will get an error if your altmode doesn't also have those abilities.
 * If you are CLOAKED or SNEAKING, you will automatically !retreat from all parting shots (thanks Red and Blitz)
 * COMBAT flag now uses the Time Tracker so you can look at it via !limits and clear it for testing purposes
 * DEMOLITIONS and ARMOR-OP now are both limited (via Time Tracker)

= Monday, Dec 8th =
 * COMBINER OVERHAUL:
 * Combiners now auto-dissolve when they get below 33% Endurance
 * Team member damage distribution is now much nastier after a combiner dissolve
 * Team member damage from combiner dissolve now affects all modes
 * Combiners can still merge if active players are OOC -- this will just set their IC Location
 * When combiners dissolve all active players IC Locations are set to the dissolved room
 * Combiners will now distribute VELOCITY damage as well
 * Stat damage now affects all modes during normal combat
 * Removed the PHOTON damage-type if you have it you need to adjust
 * Added new CORE attribute: SPECIES with appropriate restrictions
 * CRIPPLE and BLIND will now @remit messages to the whole room
 * Added functions so Scrapper could set up +POT to work with TACS
 * Added the PISTOL Freebie
 * Added a new command: !limits -- this will show you any current 'time out' limits you are waiting on (see below)
 * Added REFUEL ability and command
 * !refuel =
 * this works in COMBAT but has a time limit
 * Added RESUPPLY ability and !reload command
 * !reload
 * Overhauled REPAIR command
 * People without REPAIR ability can still !repair
 * If they are smart enough and technical enough they will succeed in repairing your END
 * If they suck, nothing will happen and you wasted a repair
 * If they REALLY suck, they will do some more damage
 * People WITH Repair ability can also fix some stat damage, depending on their TECH
 * Revive is stupid and I hate it and it is not porting over to the new system
 * Added a Time Tracker function -- keeps track of when you are repaired, refueled, reloaded, etc
 * You can hack it temporarily by using a few commands, check the @desc
 * Added an All-Purpose Gumbi Medic that does: repairing, refueling, reloading
 * Holy shit you guys, seriously :(

= Thursday, Dec 4th =
 * Mmmm... COMBAT SPAM. Type '@set me=COMBAT_SPAM' to enable the following features:
 * Notifies you of how much energon you spent
 * Gives you the 'real' details of any attack against you
 * Other ideas (or existing messages that should be moved to spam-only) please let me know!
 * New 'fake name' argument for !attack, !pull, !miss:
 * Syntax is: !attack = [=Fake Name]
 * Fake Name will override the attack's "real" name and also any !attackname you have set for a Global freebie attack.
 * Fixed the bug with energon that popped up when I fixed something earlier this week
 * REPEAT energon cost is set at 12. I think this is the last change for REPEAT. Yaaaaaaaaaay!

= Wednesday, Dec 3rd =
 * New effect: OUCH -- attack damages you when you hit something (like current RAM) -- used for 'Ram' and 'Throw' globals.
 * RECOIL effect -- attack damages you whether you hit or not. Used for something like an artillary cannon or shoulder-rifle with a KICK to it.
 * REPEAT effect -- Now does the appropriate amount of damage for each additional repeating-damage
 * New self-hurt messages for RECOIL and OUCH

= Tuesday, Dec 2nd =
 * Various bug fixes thanks to Blitzwing & Cate:
 * Off-Guard level should be more penalizing now
 * No more self-repeating damage (this is a really annoying code issue and really I think most people would be immune to their own repeats anyways)
 * REPEAT now does the following follow-up attacks: LEVEL 2 + LEVEL 1 + LEVEL 0/CLEARED.
 * This is regardless of the rank of the original attack so that it is easier to price
 * When you !pull an attack to 0 damage, it should charge (or pay) the correct amount of energon
 * When you !pull an attack to 0 damage, it will still do any effects
 * Attack effects cost more energon (in general)
 * Removed the EVADE defense-level/feature for now. I will implement this in the future.

= Monday, Dec 1st =
 * LINKED AMMO -- If a character has AMMO attacks with the same AMMO_TYPE (e.g. "missiles") they will decrement together. So, you can use this to have an attack in two different modes that use the same ammunition.
 * Combiners - !merge and !dissolve should be working.
 * Despite the one-line of text this actually took me a good two days of coding :(

= Monday, Nov 24th = Twpage 21:39, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * New command: !CANCEL see related +help file
 * !attacks and !attacklist are updated. Displays energon costs and shows cancelled effects if any
 * Fixed a bug where attack effects went through a forcefield
 * Fixed a weird bug where Energy_Sword and Sonics were refactored as level 5 instead of level 4 (Thanks Cate)
 * Attacks below or equal to level 2 will no longer show up when you refactor. They are replaced by !globals. So, laser, smash, slash, sword, etc will no longer appear.
 * All other attacks should show up at their expected attack levels (e.g. electric = 4, axe = 3)
 * Fixed a bug where people couldn't add more than 10 attacks (Thanks Scrapper)
 * Fixed a bug when deleting attacks using the CharGen Machine (Thanks Scrapper)
 * Fixed !attacks and !attacklist so that attacks are always displayed in order for use when modifying, adding, or deleting attacks with the CGM.

= Sunday, Nov 23rd = Twpage 21:39, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Damage should be fixed and tweaked to its (near) final stage

= Tuesday, Nov 18th = Twpage 02:49, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * ammo gets used up whether you hit or miss
 * area-attack damage increased
 * Inspire COU bonus made more dependent on LDR (still a bit of randomness)
 * Inspire doesn't do anything to energon. It is energon-neutral. As are most abilities (for now)
 * All mode-specific stats should get the standard +3 bump when you refactor (due to the change from 6->57~66 in the old system to 6->60~69 in the new one)

= Sunday, Nov 15th = Twpage 22:29, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * No more extra energon cost for multiple Damage Types (thanks Cate)
 * Added !attackcosts: displays energon costs for each attack
 * Damage OVERHAUL:
 * Overall new damage structure
 * Area-Effect damages boosted greatly (also modified energon consumption)

= Saturday, Nov 14th = Twpage 23:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Energon Attack Effect costs:
 * Attack effects now have an impact on how costly an attack will be
 * Added Energon Costs for the following attack effects: repeat, stun, cripple, blind, corrupt, shatter, disintegrate, and confuse effects
 * Re-did energon costs for Overpowered and Efficient effects

= Thursday, Nov 13th =
 * Fixed a bug: now !PULL attacks will cost the right amount of energon (thanks Scrapper)
 * You can no longer !transform while STUNNED
 * Added the !BOMB command for the DEMOLITIONS ability. See +help !bomb right now you can make as many as you want. That will change soon.
 * ALL offensive/defensive bonuses are now fixed and should be much more noticable. Please test this!! The following things should've been affected:
 * Defense Levels (actually changed last week)
 * Bonuses/penalties from: Crackshot (!aim), Cripple, Blind, Accurate, Inaccurate, (maybe some others?)
 * The !Analyze command (SCOUT ability) has been modified to differentiate it from !aim (CRACKSHOT): if you have analyzed someone you will get a DAMAGE bonus next time you hit them and not a TO-HIT bonus. You can still 'give' analysis data to someone else as per the +help !analyze file.

= Sunday, Nov 9th = Twpage 23:55, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Armor modifications are complete. YOU WILL NEED TO REFACTOR YOURSELF.
 * The Combiner-Busting effect is now BREAKUP
 * Rejiggered the DISINTEGRATE effect -- this is an uber-effect that really does a number on armor
 * Added the SHATTER effect -- this is a lower-key version of disintegrate: damages armor
 * Changed how ARMOR-OP ability works: Will always lower AGL and Increase ARMOR. However, armor increase is dependent on the TECH of the engineer doing it
 * The WARP ability/defense-level is now EVADE and bugs have been fixed. Because really I think Skywarp is special. :)
 * !PULL will now notify in the attack message saying how much the attack was pulled by. e.g. if you !pull/3 a level 5 attack it will say [Pulled -2]
 * Defense Levels have been significantly overhauled. Bonuses and penalties are now FIXED and should be much more noticable. This also goes for the HIDDEN and OFF-GUARD specialty levels. Let me know how these "feel".

= Saturday, Nov 8th = Twpage 23:44, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Modes have a new field: TYPE. This is analogous to the 'mode name' for the current system. So, Blitzwing's Mode 2 TYPE is simply "Jet". His Mode 2 NAME is whatever he wants it to be: "MiG-25 Foxbat"
 * Mode TYPE shows up on !profile, !syscheck, etc instead of NAME
 * Ammo now works PER ATTACK. New field names are listed on +cg/list attack
 * If attack has ammunition (AMMO Effect), it will display current amounts on !attacklist and !attacks
 * !help files for !retreat, !pull, and !miss
 * Added the TEMPORARY !reload command -- in the future this will be done by a gumbimedic-type drone.
 * Added the !selfhurt command... because I could?
 * Protection levels are now PER MODE, you will need to re-set yourselves with the CharGen Machine
 * In case I didn't mention: ARMOR is now a 0-100 stat like everything else. You will need to refactor yourself or set it manually. A standard 4 armor is now 50.

= Sunday, Nov 2nd = Twpage 18:48, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Added the !retreat command. Works just like the current one. EXCEPT BETTER! (No seriously it is the same thing)
 * "Velocity Boost" is now in affect for dodging. Blitzwing has already covered this quite thouroughly so I won't go into details.
 * The FEAR effect works differently now. It will actually -lower- your courage. Sort of the opposite of the !INSPIRE ability.
 * Related to the above, COU now shows up on !syscheck as it is a combat stat whose value can now change during combat.
 * Armor is now a 0-100 stat. Still working out the kinks on this one (why armor is currently disabled)
 * Fixed a bug where you could not get your !sneak/on
 * Rejiggered defense levels -- 'guarded' has replaced 'covered'. hopefully this is less ambiguous
 * Added the 'Warp' Defense Level -- not totally sure what I am going to do with this ability just yet but it was fun to code so.. whatever!

= Sunday, Sept 14th =
 * Fixed REFACTOR to use your old "+attacknames" in alt-modes. Previously it was doing this only for Mode 1. Thanks to Durango for pointing this out.
 * Someone asked how the COMBAT flag works. Whenever you attack (or get attacked) by someone other than yourself and not in a training room you will get the COMBAT flag. While you have this flag, you can't do stuff like get repaired. If you DON'T have the flag you can't do stuff like: top off your energon using !rest repeatedly or building up a whole database of !analyze data on a bunch of idling people. Eventually, the COMBAT flag wears off. Currently the timeout is something like 10 minutes, but when we "go live" this will be more like an hour or two. Hope that helps!
 * Tweaked REPEATING attacks. Damage reductions on the "repeating" attacks should be much more apparent. Could still get changed in the future.
 * Fixed Redshift's awesome SELF-REPEATING bug where if you hit yourself with a REPEAT attack none of your subsequent attacks would do any damage. Kudos to Redshift for really digging into that one. If you hit yourself with a REPEAT attack you will basically get damaged twice. First from the attack damage, and second from the first "wave" of repeating damage.
 * Added the INSPIRE ability. Check out the +help file. More abilities (Demolitions and a few surprises) to come in the next few days.
 * AIM and ANALYZE do in fact give bonuses but they are way too small. Going to fix this in the morning.

Twpage 01:40, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

= Sunday, Sept 7th More Updates =
 * Fixed GRAB to actually do zero damage now. Actually this was a bug with ALL level-0 attacks.
 * Fixed the ENERGON exploit. If your energon is ABOVE your base level (50 for most people) when your first COMBAT flag is added you will be reset to your base level. Same thing happens when your COMBAT flag wears off.
 * In the "real" system, training rooms will not allow players to use any exploits using the COMBAT flag. In theory the training room will just take a 'snapshot' of your systems before you walk in and set them back when you walk out, all flags & damage included. So, (in theory) there won't be an exploit there.
 * You shouldn't be able to use anything to go over your upper bound (150% of your base/MAX energon) via FEED or DRAIN or !rest or !attack now.
 * Shockwave can just have different base energon so no need for a special case there.
 * A note on things like DRAIN and FEED and well, most attack effects. Since these effects have a FIXED cost, they in turn have a FIXED return. So a level 5 DRAIN does as much energon damage as a level 3 DRAIN because it costs the same to add the DRAIN effect to both attacks. This also goes for stuff like WILD and BACKFIRE. There is no need to test relative levels, it will be the same!

Twpage 21:48, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

= Sunday, Sept 7th Updates =
 * Fixed the !global RAM attack to use the correct name (RAM). So !attack =ram should work now.
 * I mentioned before about the training drone size problem. Hopefully that explains the weird STR/FRP discrepancies. Let me know if that is not the case.
 * On Armor levels: Photon pointed out that armor doesn't seem as powerful as before. This is not technically a bug, but the armor levels are something I'm messing with. In the old system armor was sort of non-linear (e.g. the difference between 2 and 3 was bigger than between 1 and 2, etc) and I'd like to fix that somewhat. I'm realizing now that I probably can't do that using the same scale we have now, so ARMOR might end up as a standard stat, using values from 0 to 100 like Strength, Accuracy, etc. Also relates to the Disintegrate special effect. Thanks to Redshift and Photon for talking to me about this one.
 * Photon asked if Energon is supposed to go over the maximum: yes! You can actually go quite a bit over your starting 50 ENERGON level. Think of 50 as the base value. If you use lots of heavy attacks, it will go down quite quickly. If you use lots of freebies and/or the !rest command, you can actually build up quite a large energon reserve to spend on heavier attacks later.
 * At the prodding of several persons I added a +cg/unload command for the CharGen Machine.
 * DRAIN does indeed take a fixed amount of Energon. But that is all it does. If you have an attack that actually sucks energon from someone to yourself you need the FEED effect. If that is confusing let me know and I can rename them appropriately.
 * Wild/Confuse/Backfire: These are currently set as VERY HIGH probability events. In the real system, they probably won't happen as often! (Except maybe CONFUSE since it is meant as a penalty). These are just simple probabilities, so any streaking is pure random chance. Also it isn't based on accuracy or anything. Since there is just a fixed cost for each of these effects it wouldn't make sense, IMO.
 * Fixed WILD. If an attack goes wild (as the result of the attacker being CONFUSED or the attack has the WILD effect) it will select a random person in the room that is in the same faction and "COMBAT-OK". This includes yourself.

Twpage 20:37, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

= Tuesday, Sept 2nd Updates = A couple of things:
 * REPEAT attacks work a little differently in the new system. If you are hit with a repeating attack you will take damage for the next three ROUNDS. e.g. every time you attack for the next three turns you will take a decreasing amount of damage.
 * When you REFACTOR, the system will just naively name your attacks after any custom +attacknames you have set from the old system. If you don't have any attackname, it will just call the attack "Electricity" or "Rocket", etc.
 * The training drone didn't have his SIZE set properly, so MELEE attacks were doing way too much damage. Fixed now.
 * Fixed the Autobot Defense Turret so it won't run out of ENERGON.
 * !MISS should now miss correctly. All the time. (that was embarassing)
 * The CharGen Machine will only allow you to REFACTOR once. It will give you a helpful error message if you try to do it again before WIPING the previous stats.
 * Set up a new combat tester bboard (29)

Twpage 00:32, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

= Friday, August 29th Afternoon Updates = You only need to use '+cg/init' OR '+cg/refactor' on a character, not both. Also, these commands are only suitable for a character that has literally NO stats. If you already have new combat system stats, and you want to basically start over from nothing, use '+cg/reset'. Then go on to re-init or re-refactor from there.

Also don't forget '+cg/stamp' to set your changes after you make them on the CharGen Machine!

Twpage 17:17, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

= Friday, August 29th AM Updates = Howdy! I'm going to use this as a forum to keep all of the various combat testers up to date on what I have fixed and/or added to the system. As it stands this is still technically a beta version so I have a few more non-essential features to add. So, if you see bugs on these don't @mail me just yet, thanks!

Features I'm Working on:
 * Damage randomization (easier to test without this anyways)
 * Self-healing (just !reset yourself or have someone !repair you)
 * [Hidden] tags on people that are sneaking or cloaked in the room
 * Commands to actually take control of Capture Points