Maybe it just needs to be stronger. What is the Point of splitting it into another 3 stats?

Interesting.

Isn’t this how it’s supposed to work already though? I thought the idea was that the attacker rolled a number between 0 and his attack value, and the defender rolled between 0 and his defence value, and the latter number was subtracted from the former to give the final damage value. Of course, in there as well is a bunch of arcane chicanery involving multiple dice for squads and a normal distribution for the random number generator, but I thought this was the broad idea, and this was the basis of my topic last week.

If the attack and defence numbers are not about calculating and reducing damage, then what are they for? To hit and miss? Isn’t that what accuracy and dodge are for?

Someone really needs to come forward and spell this out in a sticky. Otherwise we can’t have a sensible conversation about the combat system.

So, what you’re saying is that attack and defence values DO determine damage, just in a different, more convoluted way? Seems pretty crummy to me. But regardless, it does prove what I was saying: there’s no point adding damage reduction for armour, because that is what it does already.

To my mind, the easiest way would be to roll within the attack value and subtract the defence from the result to calculate damage. That is much more straightforward and goes along with brad’s policy of making game mechanics transparent: the sort of thing that could be done on a table top. This method also has the advantage of telling the player who they can hurt and who they can’t: it would be impossible to damage anyone with a defence equal to or greater than your attack value.

Of course, this would require attack and defence values to be reset completely (so that the above scenario would rarely ocurr), but I think most people want that to happen anway.

Problem is, boosting armour would always cause tons of stuff to clink off to no damage attacks, and this system would be terribly hard to use and balance at the same time, the reason I proposed the other way is it leaves space for armour to be efficient against 50 damage attacks, but letting 20 damage attacks still deal some damage, while rubbing off the smallest of attacks.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Oh yes, that system is almost certainly better. I just thought mine would be more likely to be accepted at this late stage of development, as it works within the existing "1 defence value, 1 attack value" system. Your system would mean displaying the properties of armour in a new way, as everyone would have 2 armour stats (a% and a reduction) and I'm not sure how it would work with the multi-piece armour system in the game at the moment.

Personally I quite like the idea of some units being unable to (or struggling to) damage certain units. It can add depth and strategy to know that you're better off using your spearmen to counter the wolves and using your catapult and champions to deal with the dragon.

But all of these systems, even mine, can be made to work if thy are designed from the top down. You choose your system, you set some example stats that work and then work out the technologies and traits to get there.

Using my system as an example:

Low Level Soldier: 20 Attack 5 Defence

High Level Soldier: 30 Attack 15 Defence

Low Level Monster: 25 Attack 10 Defence

High Level Monster: 40 Attack 20 Defence

The problem is that the units, techs and traits never seem to be designed like this. The designers just seem to say "well, the ogre had 20 attack, so the dragon should have 60" or "let's give him +5 attack if he picks this trait, wouldn't that be neat?" without any sense of where all these little decisions end up leaving us, or how the how a midgame champions compares to a midgame monster and midgame units with midgame technologies, or if they even expect all these elements to reach "midgame" at the same time.