Experiment: Roundtime-based defense, no stance

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Rias
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Experiment: Roundtime-based defense, no stance

Post by Rias »

I'm trying something out here to make combat a little less fiddly (and non-combat actions less practical in the middle of combat).

1. The STANCE command has been disabled. It doesn't affect anything at the moment.
2. All attacks/maneuvers are considered at full offensive power. (Will add some sort of "spar" command in the future for intentionally pulling punches when sparring with partners)
3. Defenses are now based on roundtime. The more roundtime a character is in (max 5), the more variable their defense. This means timing is still important - you want to attack right after your enemy's own attack, so that A) their defenses will be at their lowest and B) you will hopefully be out of roundtime by the time they attack again, and therefore you will be at your best defense. This also means that if you happen to mistime something and an enemy manages to attack you before you're completely out of roundtime, you'll still have a good amount of your defense potential stacked in your favor if your roundtime is low. For instance, if you get caught when you're at only 1 second of roundtime, you'll still be at 80% full defense.

Hopefully this makes sense - please ask for clarification if it isn't clear. The overall idea is to keep timing important while removing the fiddly necessity of having to use/macro the STANCE command, as well as make it less viable to turtle up in stance defense and safely perform non-combat actions that shouldn't be practical in the middle of combat. Presumably if you're doing something taking up roundtime, it means you're distracted from focusing on defense or footwork and all that. This will apply more particularly to weapons like crossbows and firearms that take some time to load and prepare for each shot, as well as things like picking lockboxes or doing crafting processes "out in the field" where you may encounter hostiles. Don't let those baddies catch you with your pants down.

Careful out there!
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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