How far could we go with Tactical Combat?

ArchivedUser

From first impressions, combat looks like it will have the traditional:

1. Line of Sight
2. Range
3. Single Target Attacks
4. AOE 
5. Combination triggers for specials

What I would really like to see is another level of dynamic:

For General Combat

1. Cover influence line of sight; ie small barricade/ rocks can used as still be fired over, tall object not
2. Terrain height influence range: fire at range from higher terrain, you increase range ie hill, castle wall
3. Smoke bombs / Mist spells for cover
4. Prone position for concealment / cover in low level vegetation

For Sieges

• NPC placement choice by Clan leaders that purchase NPC for battle
• Barricade placement (hard to distruct)
• Mini Guard tower placement

Any thoughts?

ArchivedUser

Ideas sound good.

I'm only afraid of how hard this would be to implement, and how stressful would this be on the system to make all the calculations later on, specially in mass PvP battles accounting for all these details.

If this wouldn't cause too much stress on the server / clients and if some of these things wouldn't be to costly to implement, I'm all up for it.

ArchivedUser

As far as I understand LoS and collision are currently present. To the extent that will be used is yet to be seen. 

The prone position idea is pretty cool

the smoke idea works pretty well but I would say only a few classes get them. 

Terrain height could be tricky depending on the targeting system. From what we have seen it's a tab target system with directional abilities. Without being able to physically look up or down I don't see it working successfully. 

Edit:
Sorry I didn't read that properly. The distance change would be awesome and give you reason to move and position strategically. 

ArchivedUser

Gothix said:

Ideas sound good.

I'm only afraid of how hard this would be to implement, and how stressful would this be on the system to make all the calculations later on, specially in mass PvP battles accounting for all these details.

If this wouldn't cause too much stress on the server / clients and if some of these things wouldn't be to costly to implement, I'm all up for it.

I believe that both Age of Conan, and Lineage 2 had increased accuracy with elevation

Elder Scrolls Online had a physics engine that allowed catapults that, by default of their physics, increased range by elevation

Agree that calculating on the fly may increase system calculations.

Also believe, as a generalization to all the current design work, that restricting system capability to a recent computing power limits for a game that will release in a few years time and hopefully be active for a further 5-10 years would be a serious shortfall for game longevity.

ArchivedUser

after playing divinity original sin all week, I can say tactical combat is great in games like these, but it may be hard to use with the shire amount of data need to run

ArchivedUser

If only there was a system that naturally allows this...if only.

ArchivedUser

Almost sounds like MWO... but honestly some of it could port to this. Just not magic missiles... they are magic after all. 

ArchivedUser

Changing skills depending on height is a easy thing.
WC3 even had accuracy measuring depending on height between units.
(And if you dont know there could be alot of units in wc3)
If its range or accuracy doesnt really matter, both are just simple parameters.
The game was released in 2002.
So as long as our computers can run 17+ year old game mechanics we're generaly good to go...
Actualy my calculator could handle that mechanic in realtime. As its a simple formula like increase range by x for delta (player height, target height). with x beeing some simple convergent function.

@AkaBear

AkaBear said:

For General Combat

1. Cover influence line of sight; ie small barricade/ rocks can used as still be fired over, tall object not

I'd like to see that expanded into reduced dmg income depending on the cover size/type thats close to you and between you and the attacker.
If a enemy shoots a huge fireball at you and you hide behind a small box, youd still get some (lower) dmg. That makes more sense than 'he cant shoot at me because im behind a box that only covers half my body'

ArchivedUser

After seeing what was done in Foxhole with tactical combat and ability to place defensible objects as part of defence strategy, I thought how much more castle sieges could be if another layer of play was added..

Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0w97Qdf8L0

ArchivedUser

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@AkaBear

AkaBear said:

For General Combat

1. Cover influence line of sight; ie small barricade/ rocks can used as still be fired over, tall object not

I'd like to see that expanded into reduced dmg income depending on the cover size/type thats close to you and between you and the attacker.
If a enemy shoots a huge fireball at you and you hide behind a small box, youd still get some (lower) dmg. That makes more sense than 'he cant shoot at me because im behind a box that only covers half my body'

Agree! Wonderful idea!

ArchivedUser

@AkaBear
The idea of foxhole in ashes siege battles would be truly amazing!
But it would require some fundamental changes like way longer siege durations.
So playing a guard or surprise attacks can be a thing.

And there need to be political interactions between the node leaders to  declare war or form alliances (with a small maximal number of allies a node can have).
That couldn't really work on guild level because there would be too many too small factions and too less nodes to attack/defend.

Taking the funding into consideration, maybe they could add something fleshed out in a future expansion?