Movement, Pacing, and Wilderness Travel

Have a new general feature to suggest, or think one should be tweaked? Share your ideas here.
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Lexx416
Posts: 563
Joined: Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:14 pm

Movement, Pacing, and Wilderness Travel

Post by Lexx416 »

I'm afraid I don't know enough about the hard numbers for energy costs and Travel Time in the Wilderness (I was going to collect a bunch of data, but that was 3 months ago, and as a result this post hasn't gotten written), but this is a general idea that I've had floating around in my head for a while. This comes from a couple of different places, and some of these issues have been solved with the hard cap of the number of commands you can enter at one time, but as it currently stands you can zoom around places as quickly as you can type (if there's no environmental things like shallows), and it costs zero energy to do so. Horses also move very quickly in the wilderness, and it makes it very difficult to RP without using capture triggers to redirect IC things to a separate window.

I think it'd be nice if there was a system in the game that sets the PACE your character moves at. I would have there be between 3 and 5 "levels" of pace. The fastest pace should eat the most energy per movement in non-wilderness rooms (for arguments sake, let's say 5) , and the lowest pace should eat the lowest amount per movement (let's say 1 energy). This would mean that PCs that otherwise can exist in town without ever having to deal with food in a meaningful way (which IS possible, albeit perhaps very niche and boring) now expend a little energy, which means they'll be spending a bit more riln. This also means that people that do want to zoom around as fast as possible will have to end up paying a cost for it. Give an entity an amount of Travel Time based on their past (the slowest pace being 5 TT for arguments sake, and the fastest being 1 TT per movement).

I would also extend this system to both Mounts, and the Wilderness. Allow our PACE to also extend to Mounts (so riding around on a mount at pace 1 generates that same base TT in non-wilderness rooms, but perhaps doesn't eat energy, and vice versa for pace 5). And for the Wilderness, have each room have a minimum (based on environmental factors, with Roads being the fastest means of travel) amount of Travel Time similar to what it is now, but add on the Pace Travel Time. That way if you want to have a casual stroll with another PC and chat, or if you want to just casually ride along the road but not miss anything, you don't have to have the eyes of an eagle IRL to notice things (since it's easy to miss players, or new areas, or even Cool Story Clues left for us by GMs). Allow the Horse Speed stat to cut down on the base speed cost in a room if appropriate, but don't let it avoid the Pace speed penalty. Similarly, the energy costs of Pace would be in addition to a base cost to each wilderness room.

I'm not too keen on number crunching in general, and I don't really want this to feel punitive. Instead, I just think it'd be nice to have a bit more of a cost associated with movement and travel (which opens the door up in the future for COOL SPECIAL MOUNTS in the future, since the fastest horses already travel ridiculously quick - if I managed to RP my way into a Briarwood or a Fasa horse and I found out it was as fast as the horses you can commonly buy in game, that'd feel pretty bad), and to be able to use the auto-travel system while still RPing with folks (which is really where the seed of this idea came from).
"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."
tulpa
Posts: 118
Joined: Sat Sep 25, 2021 5:00 am

Re: Movement, Pacing, and Wilderness Travel

Post by tulpa »

At the moment, I expend I think -1 energy riding a league on a courser, without certain abilities factoring in. It takes me -5 energy to just mount the horse with 400 Riding.

The discrepancy makes me do a double take, but it's really immaterial. Once you have a mount of any kind, managing your food reserves is a trivial and inexpensive task. I'd love to be able to trot/canter/gallop with a horse capable of it, and to feel the impact. A trot perhaps making you more uncomfortable, reducing morale (especially if you're overburdened), but means you're travelling more efficiently, a gallop affecting energy loss and perhaps perception, a canter finding some middle-ground. Horse people will known how to define these different gaits better than I.
Dennis
Posts: 218
Joined: Mon Sep 11, 2017 10:46 am

Re: Movement, Pacing, and Wilderness Travel

Post by Dennis »

I know we've already had a person come in and complain that travel-time between rooms was an unnecessarily slow mechanic, but I also disagree with that person. So on that note...

The idea of horseback pacing can be approached in a few ways, depending on the level of realism and detail desired in COGG. One approach could be to further slow down wilderness travel and naturally allow for more interaction in a room, rather than just allowing vast stretches of wilderness to go by speedily. You can then implement a system where the player can choose the pace at which they ride their horse, which would make travel time more variable. These paces can range from a walk to a gallop, with each pace affecting the horse's speed and energy consumption.

You could make it so that you can set a PACE while travelling with a syntax like PACE WALK, PACE TROT, PACE CANTER, and PACE GALLOP.

A walk is a relaxed, steady pace that requires little energy from the horse, while a trot is faster and requires more energy, but is still sustainable for a longer period of time. A canter is even faster and requires more energy, but is still a sustainable pace for a shorter period of time. A gallop is the fastest pace, but requires a lot of energy and can typically only be sustained for a short burst of time.

Each pace could be associated with a certain energy cost for the horse, as well as a certain speed in the game world. For example, a walk might cost 1 energy per room, while a canter might cost 3 energy per room, and a gallop might cost 5 energy per room. The speed of the horse could be adjusted based on the pace chosen, with a gallop being the fastest and a walk being the slowest.

A character with low riding skill may only be able to maintain a gallop for a short period before their horse starts to tire, while a character with high riding skill may be able to maintain a gallop for longer periods without their horse tiring. A higher quality horse can also run for longer periods of time. Additionally, higher levels of riding skill could also reduce the energy cost of maintaining a certain pace, allowing characters with high riding skill to travel faster for longer periods while expending less energy.

This removes some of the RNG of riding, and encourages people to think carefully before they travel into the wilderness. It would also make a means to stretch out travel in the wilderness to make people work together on mundane things like travel.
"Always remember that we are a community before anything else. Before being a 'game' or a 'world' we are a bunch of folk who get together to have fun."
Gorth
Posts: 581
Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2021 11:53 am
Location: Michigan

Re: Movement, Pacing, and Wilderness Travel

Post by Gorth »

I made a post about this. i'm busy at the moment, but I'll paste viewtopic.php?t=1387&hilit=horse for note on my earlier ideas.
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