Lead's combat overhaul ideas

[Leadpoisoning]

A few ideas of mine:

-Desperate blocking: When holding an object in your hands (IE, a toolbox), based on your intent you have a chance to protect yourself from an incoming melee attack by shoving the object between yourself and the incoming weapon. The chance is only calculated if you're facing the attacker. I would say make it a 20% chance to block on Disarm intent, maybe 25-30% with a weapon rather than just random junk, 10-15% on Harm, 5% on Help, and no chance to block on Grab. Optionally, an additional multiplier based on the relative sizes of the item you're blocking with and your attacker's weapon could be implemented (it's easier to parry a pen stab with a screwdriver than to maneuver a heavy toolbox to block the small, fast pen; likewise, blocking a toolbox swing with a pen will not stop the toolbox from hitting you). Block chances could also be modified by move speed: the more encumbered you are by armor or a heavy outfit, the more difficult it is to block incoming attacks.

-360-no-shit I missed: Accuracy penalty when shooting opposite the direction your character is facing. Give it say a 30% chance for your projectile to deviate by 1 tile laterally from your target for every 5 tiles it travels. The target tile for your projectile may be shifted one tile away north/south/east/west from your clicked target for every 5 tiles distance between you and the tile you clicked. At close range this will not be too bad, but it will make it harder to shoot people at long range while facing away from them.

-Run-and-gun nerf: Accuracy penalty when shooting while moving, say 50% chance of the same effect as shooting backwards.

-"Attack" hotkey: a key or key combo which when pressed will make you attack entities on the tile in front of your character with whatever you have in your active hand. This removes the fiddlyness of having to catch a shuffling assistant under your cursor to nail him with a stun baton. However, to balance this technique's advantage over traditional point-and-click attacks, if you swing at an empty tile you will be "off balance" and experience a delay before you can use the hotkey attack again. The length of the delay varies based on the size of the object you swing with, and is shorter for intended weapons and longer for improvised weapons. vetoed by Foos

Me, Mport, and Dr_Slaughter have been discussing some other ideas as well, like different levels of being stunned, and reducing the chances of being stunned, with the aim of making it so that melee combat isn't always decided in the first half-second of the fight based on who gets knocked down first and then murdered with no chance to stand up.

[Leadpoisoning]

Expanding on something I discussed with Slaughter and Mport earlier: stun levels.

Different stun sources (projectiles, stun batons, chemicals, melee attacks) have different levels of stunning power.

Characters have different levels of potential stunned-ness, from 0 to 4.

Level 0: No stun, normal movement
Level 1: Slightly stunned, causes reduced movement speed
Level 2: Moderately stunned, causes reduced movement speed and chance to drop held items
Level 3: Badly stunned, character falls down but is able to crawl along the floor very slowly, say a quarter of walk speed
Level 4: Fully stunned, totally paralyzed

The old "stuttering" speech filter would apply to levels 2 through 4. Crawling is something I want to add to reduce the "fuck this game" factor that sets in (for me at least) every time I get knocked down and forced to watch myself being beaten to death with literally no ability to act. Such a slow movement rate wouldn't make a huge difference in combat, and is unlikely to save you from an attacker, but it at least lets the person being robusted feel like they're still playing the game.

Stun level is calculated when a stun is applied based on these factors:
-Pre-existing level of stun (new stuns can be stacked with old stuns for a higher stun level)
-Energy protection value of equipment covering the targeted body part or, for melee weapons other than the stun baton, melee protection value*
-Power level of the stun source

Stun batons would have the highest base stun value, inflicting a level 4 stun on a character with no protective equipment on the first hit.

"Heavy" mounted flashes and the portable flasher rigs in the armory would also have a very high stun value, inflicting a level 3 stun on anyone with no protective eyewear. I would consider adding a level 1 (but non-stacking) stun effect to people standing directly adjacent to a powerful flash source even if they were wearing sunglasses; you would need a welding helmet/welding goggles to totally nullify the powerful flash.

Tasers and energy guns on "stun" would inflict a level 2 stun on the first shot or a level 3 stun on a headshot.

Things like beating someone over the head with an object would only be able to increment stun level by 1 unit at a time, so no more instantly knocking someone down with a toolbox and murdering them without them having any chance to fight back.

Stun level would decrease at a fixed rate of one level of stun per 'n' ticks. This opens up interesting possibilities like a mutation that increases stun recovery rate, say, "thickened myelin" or some such, or a drug that can be taken before hand to increase resistance to stunning and/or recovery rate.

_{*Currently many pieces of equipment have Energy protection values, however none of them are high enough to stop you from being floored by a taser shot. Current protection values have a small effect on how long the stun lasts. Old items like powered armor had very high protection levels that would let you continue moving at a reduced speed after being stunned.}

[konical]

Tasers and eguns have to stun people, otherwise security doesn't have shit to stop runners.

[Leadpoisoning]

You would be moving very slowly at level 2 stun, and a second shot would put the person on the floor.

[sinorath]

This is a really solid idea for combat, I support it!

[NotFoos]

I suggest allowing people in stage 3 stun to be able to drag themselves into disposals. This way they actually have a chance of escaping, but only if their captor is shitty enough and/or people come to help you or whatever.
Also i'm not sure how long it usually takes but the time to actually be disposed once in the disposals should be shortened imo.

[NotFoos]

Also, while in crawling mode or whatever you prefer to call it their sprite should, logically, be face down on the ground. This will also let people know which stun level they are at, face up would mean they are paralyzed, or maybe they could just stay face down in stage 4 i dunno.

Sorry for double post but I just had the idea.

EDIT: And now I see the edit button, will use that instead in the future... durrr