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combat
This is supposed to be an introduction to combat. Please direct your
criticism, suggestions and of course praise to me :-)
Berengar
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As you might have noticed by seeing other people fight, fighting can be an
art. And as with all arts, mastering it can be quite difficult. This text
should give an introduction on how to use the different combat related
commands and (hopefully) provide a bit of help in mastering the art of
combat.
First, what are these combat related commands? The first and foremost that
comes to mind is "attack" and its synomym "kill", of course. These commands
are used to (surprise :-) start a fight, attack a new enemy in the middle
of a fight or use a special attack right now.
But you don't have to type in every attack and defense you want to use: If
you are fighting, you attack and defend automatically; this works even if
you lose your link. Defending is completely automatic at the moment, you
react to an attack using the best defensive move you know. Right now there
is no way to configure how you defend, but this may change in future. As
for attacking, there are several commands to change the way you fight: The
first is "aim". With this command, you can select targets you want to hit
in fighting. Some examples:
> aim at head, arms, torso
Ok.
You will now aim at head, arms and torso of your enemies.
> aim high
Ok.
You will aim high, that is at locations at about the same height as your
head. Of course, if you are a dwarf or a hobbit and fighting against a
troll, "aim high" may simply mean you will try to hit the troll's knees...
On the other hand, "aim at head" won't do you any good in this situation if
you don't have a bow or a sling or are good at throwing. With a sword or an
axe, you just can't reach the troll's head and just waste your time trying.
The second and most powerful command for configuring your personal fighting
style is "coptions". There isn't much you can't do with coptions, but there
is a price to pay for that versatility: It's a rather complex command and
may take a bit of time to understand fully. In short, you can use the
coptions command to assign so called "priority levels" to weapons, and you
can assign priorities to individual attacks for every weapon. The priority
level determines how often you will use a certain weapon (or class of
weapons), and the attack priority determines how often you will use a
certain attack with this weapon. These values are used to calculate
probabilities for every attack you know with every weapon you wield, and
these probabilities are used in fighting. You can use the coptions command
to get your current attack settings.
Ok, you want some live after all this rather dry and theoretical stuff.
Let's have a look at a few examples:
> coptions
______________________________________________________________________
Your current attack settings are:
Unarmed : kick (50%) punch (50%)
______________________________________________________________________
This shows that you are unarmed and will use the attacks "kick" and
"punch". Probabilities are 50% for each, so you will use your feet and
hands (or claws :-) each for about half of your attacks. Now wield a weapon:
> wield rapier
You wield the rapier in your right hand.
> coptions
______________________________________________________________________
Your current attack settings are:
Unarmed : kick (4%) punch (4%)
Rapier (right hand) : swing (16%) stab (16%) fast swing (16%)
force swing (16%) fast stab (14%)
force stab (14%)
______________________________________________________________________
As you see, you will now use your rapier most of the time. Only eight
percent of your attacks are still unarmed, using your feet and your free
left hand. The remaining 92% are distributed more or less evenly between
the different rapier attacks. Now let's wield a dagger as well:
> wield dagger
You wield the dagger in your left hand.
> coptions
______________________________________________________________________
Your current attack settings are:
Unarmed : kick (2%)
Rapier (right hand) : swing (8%) stab (8%) fast swing (8%)
force swing (8%) fast stab (8%)
force stab (8%)
Dagger (left hand) : swing (10%) stab (8%) fast swing (8%)
force swing (8%) fast stab (8%)
force stab (8%)
______________________________________________________________________
As you see, you will now fight with both dagger and sword, using all
attacks with about equal probability. Ocasionally you will still kick, but
you won't use your fists any more - not surprising, since you have weapons
in both hands.
OK, fine so far, but you wanted to use the dagger mainly for defense and
your rapier for attacking. That's where another form of the coptions
command comes in: You can use "coptions profile" or "coptions set" to query
and set your fighting style. So, let's have a look at your current fighting
profile:
> coptions profile
_________________________________________________________________
Saved combat profiles: None
Your saved attack priorities are:
Unarmed : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
Weapon : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
_________________________________________________________________
This tells us that there is nothing special right now. You haven't saved
any special profiles, you will fight unarmed and with any weapon with
default settings. So, how to change this so that you don't use the dagger
for attack any more? That's what the 'level' in this list is for: It sets your
preferences for a certain weapon or weapon class. Its use is quite simple:
The higher the level, the more you prefer this weapon class. The default
levels are 10 for weapons and 1 for unarmed, so you will by default prefer
fighting with a weapon over fighting unarmed.
OK, enough theory for now, let's go and make the rapier your preferred
weapon for attack:
> coptions set rapier level 50
Ok.
> coptions profile
_________________________________________________________________
Saved combat profiles: None
Your saved attack priorities are:
Rapier : Level 50, use any known attack with equal
priority
Unarmed : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
Weapon : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
_________________________________________________________________
OK, you have a level set for the rapier. Now how does it affect your
current fighting?
> coptions
_________________________________________________________________
Your current attack settings are:
Dagger (left hand) : swing (6%) stab (2%) fast swing (2%)
force swing (2%) fast stab (2%) force
stab (2%)
Rapier (right hand) : swing (18%) stab (16%) fast swing
(18%) force swing (16%) fast stab
(16%) force stab (16%)
_________________________________________________________________
As you see, the rapier is now your preferred weapon. But you will still use
the dagger for attacking (all in all about 16% of the attacks), and setting
the level for rapier to a value as high as 50 forced out the unarmed
attacks. Let's try again, but this time reset the rapier level to default
and lower the level for dagger:
> coptions set rapier level default
Ok.
> coptions set dagger level 0
Ok.
> coptions profile
_________________________________________________________________
Saved combat profiles: None
Your saved attack priorities are:
Dagger : Not used for attacking
Unarmed : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
Weapon : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
_________________________________________________________________
> coptions
_________________________________________________________________
Your current attack settings are:
Unarmed : kick (4%)
Rapier (right hand) : swing (16%) stab (16%) fast swing
(16%) force swing (16%) fast stab
(16%) force stab (16%)
_________________________________________________________________
OK, looks good: "coptions profile" tells us that you won't use the dagger
for attack any more, and "coptions" confirms this. As you see, there is no
line in "coptions profile" for rapier any more. That's because weapon
classes are shown only if you have settings for them. The only classes that
are always shown are "unarmed" and "weapon". But there's one additional
problem: You will use any attack of the rapier with about equal probability,
specifically, you will swing the rapier about half of the time. Now,
swinging a rapier is not terribly effective, it would be better to stab
only. No problem, there's another combat option for it:
> coptions set rapier use stab 100
Ok.
> coptions profile
_________________________________________________________________
Saved combat profiles: None
Your saved attack priorities are:
Dagger : Not used for attacking
Rapier : Default level, 'stab': 100%
Unarmed : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
Weapon : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
_________________________________________________________________
> coptions
_________________________________________________________________
Your current attack settings are:
Unarmed : kick (4%)
Rapier (right hand) : stab (96%)
_________________________________________________________________
Fine, now you will only "stab" with a rapier. But what if you want to use
mainly stab, but not exclusively? No problem: You can assign up to 100
points to attacks for every weapon. If you don't assign all 100 points, the
rest is (more or less) evenly distributed between all attacks you haven't
mentioned. In practice:
> coptions set rapier use stab 75
Ok.
> coptions profile
_________________________________________________________________
Saved combat profiles: None
Your saved attack priorities are:
Dagger : Not used for attacking
Rapier : Default level, 'stab': 75%, other attacks: 25%
Unarmed : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
Weapon : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
_________________________________________________________________
As you see, you will use "stab" about three quarters of the time, the
remaining time is split between all other attacks you know with a rapier.
So far so good, the only thing missing is a means to completely turn off a
certain attack. That's possible too, of course:
> coptions set rapier use swing 0
Ok.
> coptions profile
_________________________________________________________________
Saved combat profiles: None
Your saved attack priorities are:
Dagger : Not used for attacking
Rapier : Default level, 'swing': off, 'stab': 75%, other
attacks: 25%
Unarmed : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
Weapon : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
_________________________________________________________________
We're nearly through with this short introduction to combat, just a few
more simple things you can do with coptions. First the explanation for the
first line you've seen in every "coptions profile" command above: You can
save and load different combat profiles. The syntax for this is (surprise
again) "coptions save" and "coptions load". Example:
> coptions save normal fighting
Ok.
> coptions reset
Ok.
> coptions profile
_________________________________________________________________
Saved combat profiles: 'normal fighting'
Your saved attack priorities are:
Unarmed : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
Weapon : Default level, use any known attack with equal
priority
_________________________________________________________________
As you see, there is a stored combat profile named 'normal fighting' now.
The "coptions reset" command in the above example does just that: Reset the
combat profile to default settings. You can activate a stored profile with
"coptions load", so
> coptions load normal fighting
Ok.
restores your saved combat settings. Just one more command and we're
through: "coptions delete" removes a saved profile. And as a little bonus
for reading through all of this, here are the commands to build a combat
profile to defend only:
> coptions reset
Ok.
> coptions set weapon level 0
Ok.
> coptions set unarmed level 0
Ok.
> coptions save defend only
Ok.
If you know by now what these commands do, you're ready to go out and hone
your fighting skills and maybe in time develop your own, unmistakable,
personal fighting style.
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