ai fighting

[kaizerkat]

Does anyone know how to make the AI more tough in a sword fight.?What i mean is, when i am fighting against other characters.It seems too easy when it's one on one or even two on one and i'm the one. The only time i get overwhelmed is when i get ganged on,( 3 or more guys).

 

[morgan terror]

i consider fighting like that quite possible for a good swordfighter, actually, which you could assume the player to be. but you should know that enemy skill goes up with the difficulty level. 2 on 1 is quite hard on the third level if they've got pierce-heavy weapons, sometimes even on second difficulty.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I've had an idea for a long time, namely to make a block only effective for a few seconds after pressing Ctrl.
That way you wouldn't have an infinite block and you'd have to time your blocks and strikes better.
Still, I'm not at all sure how we can make 1-on-1 fights harder. It's mainly group fights that get difficult.

 

[Black Bart]

hand to hand combat is very much second rate to ships combat in the game in general sadly. I like that idea Pieter, to limit the time the 'block' move is effective for, might be one of the easier(ha!) ways to make combat harder.

Having said that the difficulty level does make a huge difference(maybe not in skills of your opponant, but they are much more deadly at higher levels), going from Adventurer to Swashbuckler means that as a low level character you will find it hard(well i do), although it is true that is often when it is 3 vs 1 or 4 vs 1 etc.

hmm. I've been making notes around the weapons, and that has sort of evolved into adding some extra stats to them, a 'cutting' as well as the current 'piercing' stat and a 'deflect' to go alongside the current 'block'. The aim here is to make a better variety of weapons for all the ones we have, and the loose idea is to have 'Cutting' weapons(like axes) have the counter to them as the 'Block' defensive stat. 'Piercing' weapons(like rapiers/daggers/dirks/shorter stabbing blades etc) will have the 'Deflect' stat as the defensive counter stat.

Our range of weapons is currently excellent, but i see in the stats and the scale of difference in the stats, that we are pushing the balance envelope here. So for example:

A 'Dagger' might look like 'piercing 20%', 'block 3%', 'cutting 10%', 'deflection 5%'
A 'Sabre' might look like 'piercing 5%', 'block 10%', 'cutting 20%', 'deflection 10%'
A 'Cutless' might look like 'piercing 13%', 'block 10%', 'cutting 13%', 'deflection 5%'
An 'Arabic Schimiter' might look like 'piercing 2%', 'block 15%', 'cutting 30%', 'deflection 15%'

etc. So you can match all the blades attributes up much better than the simpler system we inherited from PotC, and balance out the top end weapons a little better. This won't make the physical action of combat harder or more complex, but it would provide a harder melee in general as your weapon won't simply have one block value, it will be better or worse depending on the blade it is matched against.

(EDIT) Probably on balance, looking at how combat works in the game, it would be best if each value had a value, so no 0% stats, just very low ones for the blades less suited to that particular offensive or defensive use. 'Something' in hand is better than nothing when in melee

Something like that combined with Pieters shorter block mod would improve the combat and make it a little more varied and difficult, so requiring more skill from the player and a bit more involvement.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Sounds complicated, but cool. I once tried to get that shorter block mod to work, but didn't manage at the time.
Still, I reckon it should be possible. NO idea when I might find another chance at trying though.