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Hadoryu · 04-10-2006, 10:49 AM

Ah, that's pretty complex, yeah. I suppose I was pretty unclear with what I meant or I simply didn't put it in the proper way. What I mean was not so much that the exact mechanics are like D&D (apart from the 1/20 chance for critical success/failure) but rather that attacking consists of applying modifiers to a roll and looking for the highest damaging combination of such to apply to the opponent. Eventually that limits your choice of techniques to two categories - effective and not so effective. Meaning often times you'll end up using the same attack against the same kind of opponent. The different ways to guard offset this by a decent amount, of course, but that doesn't broaden the selection too much.

I'll say again I really did like the combat system though, it was pretty fun.

This is a question that's been asked in the past. There are several points that differentiate the two and they're in favor of the manual combat system with scripting. I'll recount the ones I can remember:
A) You can never code a system to act as an automated combat system - the feedback you get isn't perfect, hence open to many shapes of interpretation. There's a lot of room to be creative there and those with a better understanding of the system will build scripts which are much more responsive than others.
B) An automated system will never give you the liberty of a system you scripted yourself. You have multiple options at every possible crossroad and they are differently viable in different contexts. The simplest example I can think of right now is that if fighting a class that can kill you at half mana, you'd want to keep mana above that border while letting health drop lower than that, but there's a class that can kill you at half health. You can't predict everything and the calls are a matter of sentient judgment. You can try and put a lot of intelligence in your scripted system, but it's your intelligence you're putting in there. The script will only work as well as you make it.
C) More often than not, there's no perfect solution. An automated system can't make the decision for you because it might actually a bad decision in your own biased point of view and it might come into conflict with longer term strategy.

04-10-2006, 10:49 AM	#5
Hadoryu Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 102	Ah, that's pretty complex, yeah. I suppose I was pretty unclear with what I meant or I simply didn't put it in the proper way. What I mean was not so much that the exact mechanics are like D&D (apart from the 1/20 chance for critical success/failure) but rather that attacking consists of applying modifiers to a roll and looking for the highest damaging combination of such to apply to the opponent. Eventually that limits your choice of techniques to two categories - effective and not so effective. Meaning often times you'll end up using the same attack against the same kind of opponent. The different ways to guard offset this by a decent amount, of course, but that doesn't broaden the selection too much. I'll say again I really did like the combat system though, it was pretty fun. This is a question that's been asked in the past. There are several points that differentiate the two and they're in favor of the manual combat system with scripting. I'll recount the ones I can remember: A) You can never code a system to act as an automated combat system - the feedback you get isn't perfect, hence open to many shapes of interpretation. There's a lot of room to be creative there and those with a better understanding of the system will build scripts which are much more responsive than others. B) An automated system will never give you the liberty of a system you scripted yourself. You have multiple options at every possible crossroad and they are differently viable in different contexts. The simplest example I can think of right now is that if fighting a class that can kill you at half mana, you'd want to keep mana above that border while letting health drop lower than that, but there's a class that can kill you at half health. You can't predict everything and the calls are a matter of sentient judgment. You can try and put a lot of intelligence in your scripted system, but it's your intelligence you're putting in there. The script will only work as well as you make it. C) More often than not, there's no perfect solution. An automated system can't make the decision for you because it might actually a bad decision in your own biased point of view and it might come into conflict with longer term strategy.