Long time since I posted here. Funny how life gets in the way of pass times and you find yourself doing something totally diffrent. Anyways, onward with the topic at hand!
Sorry for the long post. I tend to be verbose these days it seems.
I've recently rekindled my interest in MUD coding/design and have a few concepts I need input from others on, starting with a new armor system for a SmaugFUSS 1.9 system. I will outline my idea of the hit system somewhat as well so any obvious flaws can be noted.
My current plan is this: If a player succedes in an attack, then we go through the defensive skill list (dodge, parry, ect), then we get into armor. I plan on eliminating the current armor system entirely for 2 reasons:
1) I find it kludgy. You either hit or you don't makes little sense to me, since armor protects you from a hit, not totally removing it from the equation.
2) Limiting. I've seen MUDs that reached the max armor level and went well beyond (-300 being the effective limit while armor levels reaching into the lower -1000s). Something to try and future-proof this to avoid this issue would be preferable.
This said, I want to have armor reduce incoming damage by a specific factor based on the armor and weapon. An example would be Chain Mail. Chain Mail provides good protection against slashing weapons, but a little less against peircing (arrows, spears) depending on quality (butted ring, welded, riveted). Because it is flexible, however, it offers little to no protection against a blunt weapon (warhammer), and hence will reduce incoming damage from these weapons by nearly zero. Upon a critial hit, said armor would take damage to its durability and things would move on.
Onto a better example. Player A is wearing Plate Armor over Chain over Leather over Padded Armor. This provides alot of protection (mostly from the Plate armor and Padded, which in this case I will say offers some minor protection once damage is transmitted through), but weights alot. This weight will slow the player down considerably, meaning they will be hit more often but will take (significantly) less damage than someone else. It may also affect their ability to hit or make numerous attacks. Player B however has two weapons, a mace and a sword and wears no more than leather armor and a chain shirt. When Player B attacks Player A and hits with his sword, the plate armors high defense virtually eliminates all damage done, resulting in a useless hit. However if the mace strikes for X damage, exceeding the Plate Armor's defense, 1 point is taken from durability and the remaining damage transmits through (here the padded reduces damage because it is simply padding. Neither the Chain nor Leather offer any real defense in this case).
Now, as the Plate wears away during a fight Player B has an increased chance to critial against that layer of armor (transmite damage entirely through to the next layer).
Now from the other end, if Player A weilds a sword and a mace and strikes as Player B, the sword due to its lighter weight, strikes more often but deals little damage through to Player B, whereas the mace strikes less often (again, due to weight). Player B, in this case, is relying upon his defensive skills as his means of defense instead of heavy armor. Each blow deals more damage per hit, but the number of hits that will lands will be reduced.
My main question here is; Is there a major flaw in how I am thinking of handling armor? I'm planning on tossing armor into a Lua table (table in a table, to be precise), so seeing what is under what should be simple enough. |
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