Concerning Guns/Bows

[Neo Samurai]

Well, my passion to make my game has been rekindled. I haven't had this much flare in a while.

Anyway, I want to talk about guns and bows. In most RPGs that use these types of weapons, STR + ATK rating of weapon would be factored in like how many other weapons usually are.

I find this to be a bit strange. I mean, I don't think a person's physical strength would factor in to the damage caused by these weapons.

So, I've been thinking, instead, to use ACU (Accuracy) to determine the damage. It seems to make much more sense to me (If your aiming is good, you'll hit your target in a vital place, thus causing more damage).

Either that, or I would just have a default damage rating that wouldn't be factored into the character's stats [For ex. A gun has a damage rating of 12. When it hits a target, it will cause 12 damage (I'm doing what FF12 did and made it so DEF isn't factored in with guns)].

So what do you guys think would be a better idea? I kind of don't want to go in the direction of the traditional STR + ATK rating. Which do you think looks better?

Edit: After some thinking, I decided to have the static damage for the gun. Since it won't be counting DEF, it would be terribly broken if the damage was being factored by an interchangeable number.

As for bows, I'm going to use ACU since it won't have the same "Piercing" effect as guns.

I'm still interested in what you guys think of this, so let me know.

[Dungeon Warden]

I don't think Guns should do a straight 12 points (or whatever) since 1) accuracy has some effect (hitting a vital area will do more damage) and 2) guns would have a limited time when they are useful. That is, a 12 damage gun is great when the enemies have less then 24 HP but not so useful for high HP enemies. Maybe an additional random variable would be better. For example, 12 + 4 damage

I also feel that armor should have some effect. Soft armors (like leather) would be useless but hard armors (metal, shell, or scale) should have some effect (maybe 1/4 the normal protection). Magic should be fully effective (unless the bullets are magic piercing or something). Also a world with guns should also have some bullet resistant armors.

Of course, it would be easier to just do straight damage and not try to be realistic.

Your idea about bows sounds good to me.

[Neo Samurai]

dungeonwarden said:

I don't think Guns should do a straight 12 points (or whatever) since 1) accuracy has some effect (hitting a vital area will do more damage) and 2) guns would have a limited time when they are useful. That is, a 12 damage gun is great when the enemies have less then 24 HP but not so useful for high HP enemies. Maybe an additional random variable would be better. For example, 12 + 4 damage

I also feel that armor should have some effect. Soft armors (like leather) would be useless but hard armors (metal, shell, or scale) should have some effect (maybe 1/4 the normal protection). Magic should be fully effective (unless the bullets are magic piercing or something). Also a world with guns should also have some bullet resistant armors.

Of course, it would be easier to just do straight damage and not try to be realistic.

Your idea about bows sounds good to me.

I like your idea about softer armors causing more damage while harder armors and magic would make the damage less than usual. I was actually going to have enemies that would be resistant to gunfire (kind of like Flans from FF12).

Having a random variable altering the damage would be a wonderful idea as well. I guess ACU could still affect the amount of damage inflicted (but not as much so as bows, since it would make the damage pretty ridiculous. Perhaps 25-50% of ACU would be added to the damage).

Once again, DW, thank you for your help.

[raithwall]

Guns and Bows should be Agility based. Just copy the first part of the strength skill formula and have the first temp variable become agility instead of strength.

How to do Ammo: 1, make a variable that keeps track of how many arrows you have in the bag, it is increased when you buy arrows in your merchant script. 2, make a consume ammo script that checks and reduces this variable. 3, when battle is over remove all arrows and make a repeat branch add 1 arrow each time till you are left with as many arrows as the arrow variable is currently set to.

Ranged abilities you might like:

Quick Shot: a low damage shot with turn speed up, so it always goes first. Could add a small chance of lose turn on hit.

Aimed Shot: a powerful shot with turn speed down that always goes last. You could add a chance for death if boss flag isnt on.

Ricochet: Multiple battle turns, with random target, can also hit party, just give party some extra resistance to it.

Gatling: 1 battle turn for every 20 mana, consumes all mana. Random enemy targets.

[Neo Samurai]

No offense, but this question has already been answered.

It doesn't seem like it's serving any purpose just reviving it out of the blue.

[raithwall]

For you it is done, but what about someone who comes here for the first time, reads this thread to get ideas, and decides to change around his settings?

Each one of these threads is a veritible archive of ideas, a time capsule of problems and solutions, an epic struggle between man and machine. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about every post in these threads. Like this one and the one above it for instance.

[raithwall]

Actually my suggestion is wrong. For a weapon you'd be working with the battle formula, not the skill formula.

So if someone wanted to make a weapon agility based they would have to branch into the battle formula, sort the direct effect that deals with bows, subtract strength from attack, then add agility to attack.

[Neo Samurai]

May 7, 2008 16:56:13 GMT -5 raithwall said:

For you it is done, but what about someone who comes here for the first time, reads this thread to get ideas, and decides to change around his settings?

Each one of these threads is a veritible archive of ideas, a time capsule of problems and solutions, an epic struggle between man and machine. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about every post in these threads. Like this one and the one above it for instance.

I see.

I'm sorry if that post offended you in anyway. You're advice was pretty useful, man.

BTW, welcome to the board.

[raithwall]

NP - prior to reading this I hadn't given any thought to the fact strength increases attack with ranged weapons, which really doesn't make any sense. So I'm glad it made me think.

btw, which method did you finally settle on?

I'm not sure Im grasping the point of making accuracy contribute to damage, could it be you were trying to make a fixed damage thats impossible to increase?

Actually thats a good idea, being Agile wouldn't really increase ranged damage, it would increase accuracy and hit rate.

So I think what I'm ultimately going to do is remove strength from attack, and find some way to add a percentage of agility to the crit rate and hit rate, so that high Agility characters will crit and hit more often with ranged weapons.

[Neo Samurai]

Well, I explained above why I decided to use Accuracy in the damage formula. Since shooting in a critical position (such as the head or heart) would cause more damage (though it would actually kill a person in real life ), the better your accuracy is, the easier it would be to cause more damage.

However, now that I stop to think about it, it would make more sense if the whole accuracy formula was used in a critical hit formula (you get a critical hit when you shoot a vital organ, which would mean you'd have to be accurate).

I really haven't thought about this that much. It seemed all right to me a couple months ago. What do you think? Does what I mentioned above seem about right to you? I guess I should thank you for reviving this thread. You're making me think in ways I wasn't a couple months ago.

Edit:

Wait, did you think that ACU was a fixed rate? Maybe I wasn't clear that its a statistic that I added to the default formula that increases with the rest of your regular stats (STR, etc.). So, like STR, it would become higher as you leveled up.

[raithwall]

Oh, sorry I must have missed that. I'm confusing accuracy with the success rate of a direct effect. My bad.

If its your own custom stat then that changes everything.

Agility itself could be divided into many different stats:

dodge,
crit rating
hit rating
accuracy (ranged)
crit rating (ranged)
who goes first

maybe packing all that into a single stat is too good anyway


It would seem that accuracy should increase hit rate and crit rate. Unlike a thrown weapon the force at which the projectile is fired is determined by the gun or bow itself.

If you think about it, most or all other weapons start with a certain power and increase in strength relative to your strength and the enemies defenses.

It would interesting to have a weapon that starts out very powerful, but its hit rating is so bad that when you add up the overall damage in a battle the weaker weakens get more hits in.

But when accuracy is improved to the point that your ability to hit and crit is good it will still equal the consistent dps of a weapon with a lot of strength behind it and by the time the damage is actually getting low it will crit so much that it will make up for it.

Variety is a good thing. For example I have offhand weapons and 2-handed weapons in my game. 2-hand is done by using equip scripts in advanced items, and offhand is a directing illusion and an extra attack.

Most of the time offhand is the way to go, but then you find enemies with very high defense. In this situation a 2-handed weapon could be doing 50 damage per hit while the offhand weapon is giving you 2 attacks that are only doing 2-10 damage each.

[dailycolbert]

I think this is a good idea. I think I would do:

Attack - determines melee damage
Aim - determines projectile damage
Intelligence - determines magic damage
Defense - determines melee defense
Projectile Defense - determines projectile defense
Magic Defense - determines magic defense
Accuracy - accuracy of melee, projectile, and/or magic
Evasion - evasion of melee, projectile, and/or magic
Agility - turn order

And limiting oneself to only 5 statistics, I think I'd do:

STR - melee damage
ACU - melee accuracy, projectile damage
DEF - melee and projectile defense
AGI - turn order
INT - magic damage and magic defense

I think you should favor good gameplay mechanics over realism, but your ideas sound good for gameplay. Bottom line though, make sure no one statistic is more important than another and you'll have an easier time balancing the characters. gl

[raithwall]

Yeah, gameplay first for sure, but I do try to keep it real. I recently added a lot of new strategic abilities. For some characters I replaced defend with Guard:

Guard: lets say your healer almost died last round, and your pretty sure he/she will die the next round. Guard lets you take all damage that round in their place, if their targeted. Its also useful when reviving someone with 1 hp to protect them until healing arrives. Its done by changing the guarded members battle variable to = the member number of the member guarding them and then changing the member in the hp reducing script.

Defend: Defend wasnt very useful, especially with guard, but there was an old game called 7th Saga where you would always defend because your next attack gave you double damage. Well that was a bit too good, but I did set it up so that your next turn is 100% critical if the weapon is capable of a critical hit, and it hits that round

Heres an example of my current setup:
(renamed equipment slots to mainhand, offhand, head, chest, relic)

Combat styles of the Ninja class:

1. Extreme Melee: katana or claw, with offhand katana or claw: which is a single item that only works when the appropriate weapon is equiped. A new effects plays in directing at the same time, and damage is increased by 50-100% of the original damage. Knuckles: two-handed and double attack. Equip scripts remove the offhand items at the start of battle and prevent equipping during.
Nodachi: two-handed sword, with 60+ higher attack.

2. Shuriken style: Shuriken abilities were setup to increase in damage with agility, so the goal of this setup is to get the most agility. Katana and Claw both give agility, but offhand give nothing. So the leather gloves is used. Those have strength, agility, and defense. Here the throwing abilities are very strong, and when the agility is 150 above the enemy agility dodge is very high and switching between shuriken and best melee is switching one item.

3. Ninjutsu style: Dagger/Kunai and Sai. I decided to make the dagger an agility powered weapon, and gave the ninja 120% agility. The downside is the dagger and sai don't give you any agility and the only other source is relic. The dagger and the Sai both increase intellect which power magic damage, the sai increases attack and defense by more then the gloves. Nevertheless melee attack is still very high, and so is magic damage, but with this sytle the throwing abilities and dodge are weak.

4. Kamikaze style: based around the suicide ability which increases in damage relative to the difference between current hp and max hp. The Arise ability instantly revives the first person to die, so casting arise and then kamikaze is powerful, and the equipment focus is hp and mp. Arise is more useful as an emergency precaution, but this can deal some powerful damage.

You may think its easy to switch between styles, but a member can only carry 12 items and there are other things you need to have:

Elemental weapons: essential when fighting elementals.
Spirit weapons: only way to do any damage to ghosts.
Doomguard: protection from death magic.
Relic +50 to chosen stat: the usual equipment.

Its more important to be prepared for running into certain enemies then it is to constantly change your general combat style. And of course you need room for items that heal, revive, and cure status.

This example was the concerns of just one class. There are plenty of interesting styles for warriors, magic users, and healers too. I have put a lot of thought into making everything useful at something.

[dailycolbert]

Wow, that sounds very cool, Raithwall.