Combat Options

[octopusfluff]

I know the U7 combat has come up quite a few times, although I wasn't able to quickly locate any general purpose combat threads in my half-hearted attempt to research before posting.

Functionally speaking, U7 is decently well balanced that you don't /need/ much in the way of combat strategy to get through the game, and you can actually avoid a large number of the fights.. But the -ability- to implement basic tactical options would be nice. The fact that you can now pause combat is a huge boost, but there isn't an effective way to control or even direct your party members at present.

Turn-based combat is the one option people have wanted before, but that's a rather extensive changeset, and unless I've missed something (entirely possible; I show up from lurking once a year or two) that hasn't really gone anywhere.

So I was wondering if it might be possible for someone to implement some form of simplistic waypoints for the party members. An object that you can drop, even while combat is paused, that will cause a companion to move towards that object. One approach would be to put something in the status bar that you could click on to spawn a waypoint object for a specific party member, drop it somewhere, and they'll move towards it. This would let you have pretty discrete control over how your party members are distributed.

I'm not sure how invasive to the engine this would be, but I think it would go a long way to resolving a lot of the complaints I have with how U7 combat unfolds. There's probably ways to streamline or extend the concept, but I just wanted to get it out before I forgot about it and vanished again for another year.

Thoughts?

[drcode]

Not a bad idea. There's already a feature that lets you set who a party member should attack, though I'm not sure if it's documented anywhere. With combat paused, you left-click the party member, and then I think you ctrl-left-click on the NPC to have him attack. Perhaps if you click on a location instead of an NPC, the party member could walk there.

[Dominus]

http://exult.info/docs.php#combat_gump

[drcode]

Whoops! Guess I should read the documentation more often:-)

[octopusfluff]

The reason I suggested an object was so that there was a visible indication of where a party member was headed. If you have six party members and are facing a swarm of something, remembering who's headed where after the third pause could be tricky.

That, and I like draggable stuff. They're fun.

It might also be interesting to provide some sort of visual indication of who the target of a party member is, although I'm not sure how that could be done sensibly.

Perhaps something like a colored number on the ground to show a 'waypoint' of that member of the party, and a different colored number over the head of an enemy to show a target? i.e. if Iolo's the second member of your party, maybe a blue 2 on the ground behind the wizard, who has a red 2 over his head to show he's the target? (I'm not crazy enough to suggest the target # be draggable, tho)

The line of thinking also suggests a possible configuration option: show waypoints/targets always, never, or only while paused. Maybe with an optional keybinding to cycle between them.

This level of control and feedback would make it feasible to do useful formations, and make it easier to ensure that your ranged party members are shooting at the targets, and not at your party.

[marzo]

make it easier to ensure that your ranged party members are shooting at the targets, and not at your party.

Not that this ever happens in Exult...

[octopusfluff]

I'm honestly unsure.
Is that sarcasm, or do combat projectiles work differently in Exult? I was so trained not to use ranged weapons from original U7, that I haven't really tried them in Exult.

[marzo]

Projectiles do work differently in Exult. You can give triple crossbows with normal arrows to all party members and the only ones dying will be your foes.