Ranged combat

For combat stuff that doesn't fit into any of the other forums.
TheCacklackian
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Ranged combat

Post by TheCacklackian »

So ranged combat seems a little gimped in that circle/feint both rely primarily on melee combat for defense rolls. This combined with the fact that breaking ranged position seems to be incredibly easy (as in most the time I've been attacked it's pushed me into position engage.) This means that against most melee enemies you're automatically at a balance disadvantage. Given that balance also can only really be lost in a fight unless you use circle, another melee based move that you are highly likely to fail unless you've invested into melee combat. This problem only grows as you become more adept in ranged combat, making you take on higher melee fighters to gain exp via, and since ranged fighters have no way to really keep range, or to gain back balance, it makes combat against melee fighters unbalanced(mind the pun).

As it is, in order to be an affective ranged fighter, you have to invest into both ranged combat and melee combat, even if you want nothing to do with the latter of the two. I have a couple of suggestions that could help with this, though they're by no means perfect, nor would all of them work together

When making a defense roll for feint or circle, allow the game to select the higher of either ranged or melee combat skill for the roll. Eg if you have 100 melee combat and 400 ranged combat, your roll would be based on ranged combat.

Allow ranged fighters to circle effectively without needing high melee combat. I don't believe ranged fighters should be able to feint at all however. Alternatively, let us get back balance faster when in position ranged

Make position ranged harder to break, and don't allow feint/circle to work on people who are in position ranged. As is, position ranged is broken extremely easily, i'm unsure what rolls factor into breaking position as I do not believe there's a helpfile on it yet, but against a target with similar level skills (albiet it was still an unfair fight for the reasons above), it didn't even seem like position ranged mattered. I'd go in, fend off maybe one attack via quarterstaff, then be forced into engage. More often than not it skipped the fending off, and simply pushed me into engage. And going back into position ranged while in combat puts you in roundtime.

All in all, the point I'm trying to bring up is that ranged combat doesn't seem effective without melee combat skill, which seems to defeat the purpose of it. I'm not suggesting we make ranged stronger than melee, just that we make it viable without having to exit the room and return over and over again because of being unbalanced, and out of position.

Edit: I really hope this doesn't come across as complaining, more so just what I have experienced in the subject.
Edit 2:I should clarify my character I play ranged on is a warlock, and thus does not seem to have access to 'aim shot' or anything of that nature, however this means they are not a 'combat guild'.
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Rias
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Re: Ranged combat

Post by Rias »

I think I want to add in some ranged-specific balance moves, rather than make the existing melee-centered ones work for ranged. I figure ranged combat will be mostly about setting up your own attacks, rather than unbalancing an enemy. Seems like if you're keeping at range, you're not going to have a lot of influence over your target's balance - you're just trying to keep your distance from them.

Oh, on the subject of position avoid/ranged/engage - those don't actually do anything. Whoops. It's a vestigial system at this point. I'll probably bring it back in some form, but for now it has no actual effect.

But yeah, ranged combat is definitely less polished than melee. It needs some work for sure.
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Lexx416
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Re: Ranged combat

Post by Lexx416 »

Is it intentional that the Ranged Combat skill not increase when hunting game, by the way? I was able to get my skill up to 75 initially when I first started training ranged combat, but 75 isn't enough to come close to reliably hitting coyote, and can barely passably reliably hit fox.
"You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods... Remnants of an older time they be, living few and secretly, wild and wary as beasts."
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Irylia
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Re: Ranged combat

Post by Irylia »

I saw someone had posted in chat about ranged combat being a bit of a challenge to level. Based on my limited experience with it I would have to agree. Granted, my characters that I tried ranged with have very low skill and that probably affects things greatly, but the fact that it's so tricky to level makes testing at higher skill levels hard. Anyway, I wanted to poke at this thread a little to see if anyone has any other ideas that might make ranged a bit easier. I'm not the best with combat or combat suggestions so hearing from others would be great.

Observations:
My personal concerns with ranged are lack of practice gains and how easy it is for mobs to 1) spot you from hiding or 2) get in close to attack which then causes other issues not usually associated with the concept of *range*. As was previously stated - melee seems far more fleshed out and levels very quickly.

When attacking from hiding, hurling something like a spear and landing a successful hit seems to be a lot more effective than using a bow and arrow. I'm not sure if there is anything mechanically different when using hurl vs fire vs cast, or if it's an issue of crit rate difference on different weapons, or the fact it's a massive spear vs a tiny arrow, or minimum damage differences etc. Regardless hurling, when it hits, seems to hit very hard compared to other ranged attacks.

There are currently two abilities (at least that I'm aware of) people can use to benefit their ranged attacks and both require or are far more useful with use of stealth - which can be limiting: Aim Shot and Stalk.

Potential abilities or changes:

Suggestion - Maybe a really simple fix could be a temporary adjustment to how much practice gain you get from a successful strike. I'd also like to introduce the concept of "cover" to make non-stealth ranged combat easier to manage.

Ability - Keep your distance: Since it seems like stances aren't coming back anytime soon, there should be a way for ranged characters to stay away temporarily and not have to deal with defending themselves immediately. I think some kind of passive knowledge of where to position yourself so that you can fire or cast from a distance would be great. So the ability would be something like - a passive chance in wilderness/outdoor/indoor (in certain situations like large caves or w/e) areas to maintain enough starting distance from your opponent that it takes them ## seconds to engage from on foot or ## seconds to engage while mounted (ideally at least 2-3 rounds worth of distance for someone on foot to catch up to you). Being guarded by someone who uses melee attacks will break this ability as you're assumed to be in melee range at that point, but if someone guards and doesn't melee attack, this applies.

Ability - Take Cover: When combating ranged opponents and not hidden, the ability to use your environment to increase your defense roll by finding cover to fire from. If your character is being guarded by another character, you can use them as cover when other cover is unavailable or when fighting even melee opponents. Allows characters to use Aim Shot more easily while out of hiding.

Ability - Silent Stalker: While wilderness and urban stealth focus on using a specific surrounding to improve your stealth. this ability would take into account a character's movement training and ability to maintain silence. Reduces risk gain moving from room to room when using the STALK option and increases stealth roll success rate overall.

Ability - Trick Shot: Gives ranged users a chance to Armor Chink and increases critical hit rate on unarmored opponents. Requires player to use Aim Shot first.

Ability - Advanced Trick Shot - Allows ranged users to ricochet specific weapon types to increase their ability to land critical hits and ignore "cover" of ranged opponents.

Ability - Marksman: Some kind of bonus to Aim Shot - maybe reducing the RT involved so players can feel safer using it if prey is particularly observant and searching constantly.

Apologies if any of these are already in or have been suggested and I just haven't seen them somewhere. I hope at least some of them get some development ideas flowing.
Agelity
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Re: Ranged combat

Post by Agelity »

Hi, it was me who mentioned the leveling struggles! At least in my instance I'm attempting to level the ranged skill with a Primalist, who doesn't have much for offensive capability outside of what's available to all. I mostly wanted to improve my ability to hunt wild game, and after a certain point you can't gain ranged skill from it so off to fight other creatures I went.

Around the 120 skill level (where I'm at now), there are a few options for gaining practice skill:
  • Mossy Shamblers - Doesn't provide much xp or skill practice, but they're easy to kill. Still VERY slow leveling since not all seem to grant xp + skill (not very high skill).
  • Bog Bodies - Great area for stealth, doesn't provide much for skill increase though for those that do provide it. The 100% effective mesmerize effect does also cause some (many) personal headaches when they start spamming that (is that intended?), but otherwise a good area to practice for a lower skill level than where I'm at... as long as you don't mind occasionally being stun-locked upon breaking stealth.
  • Undead in the coastal cliffs - Either the ghouls or seamen, probably the best bet for leveling ranged vs enemies at this skill level, but doesn't provide much skill gain per kill despite a pretty close fight skillwise. Not sure how much having armor has hurt me here, despite armor use being about equal to my encumbrance penalty roll (135 v 140), but my accuracy is fairly poor even from stealth with aimed shot. Not having armor leads to other issues, such as me making a long run back from Shadgard to recover items from my corpse. Either way, the fights tend to be kinda lengthy due to accuracy issues, but probably my current best bet until I can hit 150+ skill (estimate).
  • Infested Marauders - Not worth fighting as a non-warrior (unless you're a decently-skilled adventurer or warlock, due to offensive spell capabilities). For others they feel more like a hard counter; shields block ranged shots EXTREMELY well, even from stealth with higher starting balance, and between feint, circle, tackle, and dirtkick there aren't many options to handle melee without watching your own balance drop like a rock (a missed tackle from them is a larger drop in balance than a single circle can gain it back, and that's before factoring in their own circle/feinting capabilities). Assuming a successful circle on cooldown, they'll still likely win out. Guerrilla-style hit-and-run tactics might be the best bet here with ranged (bring a lot of arrows/bolts), but that's quite the lengthy and difficult fight for what might end up being a 0.15-0.2 practice increase (basing values off of the ghouls, I gave up trying against the marauders). Fun to fight on my warrior when they were at that skill range; non-warriors that I didn't mention above are probably best to skip this area entirely if they want to increase their offensive combat skills.
In the cases for all, I found that the best strategy I had was to start off the fight by trying to land a ranged shot of any type before switching to melee (around the same skill level) to finish things off. Stealth, aim shot, fire, repeat until a hit lands and then switch to melee. If I miss the first couple of shots I generally walk into another room, hide again when able, and try again. Solo ranged combat out of stealth isn't effective unless the enemy is currently prone and/or staggered, which I can't do with my current specialization unless I manage to luckily fire a heavier-damaging shot into their knee caps <insert Skyrim joke here>.

To note, I've also been using a longbow, which I may put aside from now to try out a shortbow or flatbow instead. I'm not sure whether it'll improve accuracy, and I know damage will be lower, but less roundtime per shot may help somewhat.

AS AN ASIDE, I do like those suggestions to add a bit more dynamic gameplay to ranged combat. If enemies can be killed quicker it may make the current skill increase rate more palatable, whether that's via better accuracy-granting bonuses or something else, but ranged combat is often pretty arduous for anything within a comparable skill level so the current skill increase feels very underwhelming for what are often some of the lengthier fights I've experienced in game.
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Rias
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Re: Ranged combat

Post by Rias »

To start: Ranged combat development is undeniably lagging behind development of melee, and needs some work. So thanks for providing feedback!
I saw someone had posted in chat about ranged combat being a bit of a challenge to level.
I'll take this moment to remind everyone that I'm rarely present in the chat channels (hence that annoying disclaimer that pops up the first time you use them each session), so please please please provide feedback and suggestions here on the BBS if you want things to change. #OOC is a good place to discuss the game with other players in realtime and flesh out ideas with them, but if the feedback and suggestions don't eventualy make their way here to the BBS, chances are I'm not going to see them.
lack of practice gains
They should be the same as melee: that is, per enemy defeated. If ranged takes overall longer than melee per defeat I can adjust it up a little for ranged, but I'd like additional feedback on it first (and I'll try it out myself a bit as a non-GM character).
how easy it is for mobs to 1) spot you from hiding
I'll play with and look at the numbers for detection, but while we're on the subject I want people to keep in mind that while ranged sniping at an enemy multiple times from hiding is possible, regularly getting through encounters entirely from stealth should never be an expectation. Snipers should enjoy that leading shot to start the fight, and potentially addtional shots before being discovered, but should never assume any encounter is going to be completed entirely from stealth. Bouts of luck that result in one-shot kills or an entire encounter of shots from stealth start to finish should be appreciated as just that - bouts of good luck. But every fighter, ranged or otherwise, should be prepared for when they get pulled into the open for a fight, whether that's falling back to melee, using some non-stealth ranged tactics, or escaping and retreating to set themselves up for a followup ambush.
get in close to attack which then causes other issues not usually associated with the concept of *range*.
Can you be more specific on what those issues not usually associated with "range" are?

Regarding damage:

Most hurled weapons get a significant boost to damage because they are large, heavy, and meant to be thrown once per encounter. My vision for them was always something like: Lead off by throwing a spear or a couple javelins from your pole harness, then switch to something else, whether that be large quantities of rapidly-thrown smaller thrown weapons like throwing knives or throwing axes, or just switching to melee. If people are throwing large thrown weapons like spears over and over again for every attack, that's its own issue to be addressed, because their damage is indeed rather insane.

Hurled weapon issues aside though, ranged weapons in general are actually at the top of the damage-dealing food chain: Longbows have a higher damage factor than poleaxes, and flatbows are comparable with glaives - so, comparing favorably to the big melee twohanders. And then crossbows are significantly higher than both (though require extra fiddling, like taking extra time and actions to cock and load them). Ranged weapons do have some balancing factors such as ammo requirements, some of them needing to be fired exclusively at Ranged position, and most doing Pierce damage (outside special circumstances like Quivering Bowstrings) which is resisted more than some other damage types. But when it comes to damage dealt per attack, I would argue that ranged weapons in general are sitting very, very pretty up at the top of the hill.
I'd also like to introduce the concept of "cover" to make non-stealth ranged combat easier to manage.
I think this could be really cool. I'll see what I can come up with, but some specific suggestions would be most welcome.
Ability - Keep your distance
I want to introduce something like this in the Guerilla Tactics ability.
Ability - Take Cover
Very cool.
Ability - Silent Stalker
I could see something like this available to Nightblades and the to-be-added ranged Warrior class. And possibly Rangers.
Ability - Trick Shot
Same as above.
Ability - Advanced Trick Shot
Maybe only applies to round metal shields?
Ability - Marksman
Hmm, having a quickened Aimed Shot might be cool as an ability on a cooldown, or a channeled one. Or maybe both!
Agelity wrote: I mostly wanted to improve my ability to hunt wild game, and after a certain point you can't gain ranged skill from it so off to fight other creatures I went.
Is the issue that the wild game stopped being enough of a challenge to grant gains? An additional solution might be for me to add some trickier wild game that's harder to hit.
The 100% effective [bog body] mesmerize effect ... when they start spamming that (is that intended?)
It shouldn't be 100% effect nor spammed, so I'll take a look at both. I want it to be a pain when it happens, but I don't want it to be a constant thing.
Infested Marauders - Not worth fighting as a non-warrior
I think I'm actually okay with this, as I do want there to be some foes where it feels like a dedicated, trained warrior type is required to handle the situation. Though that does make me feel that I should put in some kind of alternative for those who aren't.
Stealth, aim shot, fire
Don't forget to STALK the target for extra defense pushdown with stealth attacks! (See recent article on stalking: https://cogg.contrarium.net/wiki/index.php/Stalk)

==========

Thank you both for your feedback. Again, I know ranged is in kind of a weird place right now and needs some work, so getting player feedback is immensely helpful in that regard. And I'm going to roll up an archer now to get a more real experience with the system.

Any additional suggestions and feedback would be greatly appreciated! Even if you don't have a ranged character yourself, share any off-the-cuff ideas you might have. Whether it's tinkering with the current system, or more radical changes.
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Agelity
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Re: Ranged combat

Post by Agelity »

Rias wrote: But when it comes to damage dealt per attack, I would argue that ranged weapons in general are sitting very, very pretty up at the top of the hill.
I think in my instance it's more an accuracy thing. Whiffing a shot with a longbow or shortbow is going to result in 0 damage regardless (and perhaps a colorful word or two from the player), and leaves me hoping my roundtime expires before they find me so I can reset or get another desperation shot off. Sounds like I need to be using STALK more, so I'll play around with that later to see how much it helps.
Rias wrote: Is the issue that the wild game stopped being enough of a challenge to grant gains? An additional solution might be for me to add some trickier wild game that's harder to hit.
That'd be awesome! And yes, at least from what I've personally encountered. Not sure what's currently out there for additional game options or what the general tracking/stealth requirements would be (guess I can dump more into those skills next), but so far I haven't found much to hunt that allows skill gain for ranged attack at this skill level, hence me trying to fight enemies probably best left to the combat pros. For other hunters out there, have you noticed any better areas for this?
Rias wrote:
Infested Marauders - Not worth fighting as a non-warrior
I think I'm actually okay with this, as I do want there to be some foes where it feels like a dedicated, trained warrior type is required to handle the situation. Though that does make me feel that I should put in some kind of alternative for those who aren't.
I'm actually quite okay having certain enemies be more for warrior-types than not (I feel like I've also expressed similarly before)! I think my biggest issue was lack of current options to raise the skill for non-warriors; my Duelist, in contrast to my Primalist, has had a much easier time leveling ranged (though still a little slower to raise than melee for obvious reason) by virtue of having access to some warrior-specific abilities and combat prowess.
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Irylia
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Re: Ranged combat

Post by Irylia »

Can you be more specific on what those issues not usually associated with "range" are?
I was mostly thinking about the fact that you're then in close combat and it's harder to do things like disengage, re-hide, fire a weapon, or stay generally back away from aggressive mobs and their wickedly woe-inducing weapons. Those things are what make it "ranged" combat and are negated when enemies are in your face all the time and you have no abilities to keep away or disengage easily.
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Irylia
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Re: Ranged combat

Post by Irylia »

Agelity wrote: Tue Aug 18, 2020 2:24 pm
Rias wrote: But when it comes to damage dealt per attack, I would argue that ranged weapons in general are sitting very, very pretty up at the top of the hill.
I think in my instance it's more an accuracy thing. Whiffing a shot with a longbow or shortbow is going to result in 0 damage regardless (and perhaps a colorful word or two from the player), and leaves me hoping my roundtime expires before they find me so I can reset or get another desperation shot off. Sounds like I need to be using STALK more, so I'll play around with that later to see how much it helps.
This is pretty much what I was talking about too. The rolls don't get to be where they need to be in order to see that kind of damage or, like Agelity said, you miss your shot and end up praying you're not found so you can try again. I think in both our cases we didn't understand fully how STALK works so maybe that will be the key for now.
Navi
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Re: Ranged combat

Post by Navi »

I have one word that would solve the ranged issues people are having in regards to fair fights and the like. Traps. Don't really have anything to add for the skill combat, as I never needed to go above 100 to kill things like the infested marauders. Snaring traps that you could lure foes into that you could prepare ahead of time would be enough to keep them at bay, kill their balance, and make shots easier to land, while also giving you time to set yourself up, be it stealth, or escaping melee. Lockblade traps would be good too I suppose, but snare traps would probably be easier to use and make, working well off of the bushcraft skill. Speaking of, traps if it ever becomes a skill, would do well being based off of bushcrafting, rather than being its own skill. Hope that helps.
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