Weapons

Next question, will there be a real difference between an axe, sword, and spear, or is it just aesthetics?

If it isn't aesthetics, won't there be a clear best weapon?

Personally, I'd almost rather it be aesthetics.

Well, it's possible (albiet difficult) to balance things so that there is no "best weapon".  Especially if there are only one or two weapon "types", with, say, axes, maces, broadsowrds, and war hammers all under the "heavy" class.

Another excellent question!

I'd certainly like to see each weapon have advantages and disadvantages.  Examples of such could include; production costs, attack power, speed, advantage vs target/armor type, disadvantage vs target/armor type, and so on.

If you do that, you get into AI issues, powergaming, and other factors.  Maybe weapons should be divided into class, with variety within the class.

Sword-type

Spear-type

Axe-type

Exotic-type

same with non-melee troops.

Do you think a paper rock scissors system would work here? I believe that's how GalCiv2 and Civ4 (to some extent) do it.

GC2 doesn't use a conventional rock-paper-scissors system in that different weapons are more or less the same. It's more like rock-rock-rock. Hiowever, a weapons tringle would be very, very good, if not particularly original.

heh, heh. anyone ever head of Tamren's "mechanics of warfare: Weapons"? great forum. And You're right Scoutdog, GC2 was more like rock-rock-rock except you had certain defenses that could reduce damage from a particular rock. red paper stops red rock, blue paper stops blue rock, etc etc (sorry for the ultra simplified rendition of game mechanics).

Personally, I think weapons shouldn't be just aesthetics...otherwise a unit of swordsmen could be just as effective in fighting cavalry as pikemen (pike as in a really long poleweapon...sorry, just being specific for the sake of preventing a long winded debate).

creating weapons types that have unique abilities and advantages is a good idea but in some cases limited. Case in point, take the sword, or blades, family (daggers, shortswords, broadswords, Zweihanders, etc etc) are aesthetically the same kind of weapon but in actual use they are as different as Great Dane is to a yuppy lap dog or a blood hound. You can't use a Claymore or a Zweihander (german for BIG F&%$ing Sword) the same way you would use a dagger. And don't get me started on the cost differences.

as far as I have found out Zweihanderen were created to fight mounted opponents..

Although the purpose of a weapon doesn't always match its actual use.... something like that actually seems like it would be good against, like, giant animals.

Ever heard of Fire Emblem?

arstal's  "Sword-type, Spear-type, Axe-type, Exotic-type"  is likely fine, except its missing "mace-type"  (morning stars and flails would be under this.  They are WAY too common to be "exotic", which I'd reserve for things like the Klingon Batleths, if you didn't include those as swords, which they often are)

There are many mix type weapons, like do you consider a halberd to be a spear or an axe?

At the same time, I'm not sure why we really need weapon types at all.   I certainly think that certain weapons should appear (swords, long swords, double-handed swords, one-handed axes, two-handed axes, maces, flails, spears, staves, ect.)  but they perhaps should not be catigorized so much.  At best I think they should be sorted by how they damage things (because a skeleton might not be damaged much by a stabbing weapon like a spear) or not at all.   Just let weapons be weapons!    

Perhaps only make minor catigorization to include some sort of balance (perhaps make a mace or flail do massive damage, but be inaccurate, or a staff do very little damage, but easily enchanted to help with spell casters are able to be used by "fist-i-cuff users" dispite not being directly related to punching people)

Agreed. As I mentioned in my mechanics of warfare thread, weapons need to be categorized by damage as well as shape. A morning star is a spiked mace, but it still does plenty of bludgeoning damage if the spikes fail to pierce something.

A pair of rapiers might both be piercing swords, but if one is bladed and the other is just a spike you have to differentiate between them. While that might seem to be a trivial detail it could affect combat in a variety of ways. A bladed rapier might not be able to cut very well, but it could still say... sever a bowstring.

or a vital artery

On zweihanders. From my understanding, Zweihanders were supposedly used as an anti-pike weapon on account its weight/mass ratio gave it the blungeoning power of an axe and thus could in theory smash through said pikemen ranks (Note: i'll admit that my sources claim there is little, if any, documented proof zweihanders were ever used in battle...albiet a corp of the landesnecht (think that's how its spelled) supposedly used it as a shock weapon).

I believe the modern notion is that they could have been used to hack the head off of the pike making it less dangerous. But since we were not there all we really know for certain is that it was a big ass sword. I suppose it could have been used against cavalry as well. If only to attack the horses legs.

That's getting too complicated for a game. Saying "swords behave differently from axes behave differently from bows" is one thing. Having 31 varieties of swords that all behave differently because you want to model the different kind of rapiers (and all the other varities of swords) is getting way beyond what non-hardcore players are going to want to deal with.

Not to mention the devleopment time to create all those weapons and balance them.

Or, for that matter, the processing power needed to handle all of that info in a battle with a few thousand individual units.

Wouldn't be a problem. See, even if you add 300 varieties of sword to the game they all share a very small pool of attributes. A sword can be either a cutting, slashing or piercing weapon. If it does more blunt damage than anything else what you have is a mace, not a sword. Its base type depends on what the weapon is designed to do. Cutting weapons can also slash and vice versa. A cutting or slashing sword can also pierce if it has a sharp tip (some don't). Piercing weapons can also slash if enough force is applied.

So getting back to the rapier example. The spike rapier is wholly specialized for piercing damage. You can't cut anything harder than jello with it but you can still slash up very weak materials. Just like how Zorro cuts his initial into the clothing of his opponents. The other rapier, the one with sharp edges is also a piercing weapon. It lacks the mass to cut very well but the sharp edge makes it much easier to slash things up.

When you implement both swords into a game you simple flip some switches and assign a few numerical scores to those set to "ON". Both of them have very high PIERCE scores. The bladed rapier has a higher SLASH score. And both weapon have a very tiny BLUNT score, if only because punching someone with a rapier in your hand adds a little weight. On paper the only difference between the two is that one does 40 more slashing damage than the other.

---

How this information figures into combat depends entirely on the scale of the fight. A one on one duel between you and another lone opponent will make heavy use of this detail. A battle between two armies totaling 50000 troops will not.

In that duel you might manage to slash your opponents neck. In a personal duel, the game is going to look at what your opponent is wearing there and calculate damage accordingly. Not simply dock him for 4 hitpoints of damage as it would in a large battle between armies. Its the difference between "Oh no Gimli's shield has a crack in it!" versus "I'll have that casualty report ready in a week"

If your opponent was wearing a +1 amulet of neck protection, neither rapier would be able to hurt him. But an attack to the neck damages everthing there, not just the body. If you were using the bladed rapier you just might be able to sever the chain of that amulet, negating his advantage for the next strike. If however your opponent is wearing heavy armour, that bladed rapier might not be strong enough to pierce his armour. In which case you would be better off with the other one instead.

The important point of all this is that the detail should be there. When and if you need to use it. Even the smallest advantage can make all the difference.

If you add 300 varities of swords, some developer has to sit there and create 300 varities of swords. In order to actually make 300 varities distinct, they need enough stats to differentiate them (and the other weapon types). There will need to be several sword models so they look different, otherwise people will complain about that. Someone will need to check that sword #247 didn't accidentally get scores that are too high and is thus clearly the strongest sword in the game.

On top of that, using a slash/pierce/etc model means everything needs to have stats to model its defenses against those types. That has to be conveyed somewhere in the UI. That's on top of any model to deal with things like ranged weapons, pikes vs mounted units, and so on.

Finally, some poor user who picks up the game is going to have sort through 300 swords to figure out what they want to put on their new unit.

This is WAY beyond practical levels. (And of course if it's not going to be a factor in a large fight anyway, then what's the point?)

edit - In response to the edit, modelling neck damage? I really doubt anybody has time to develop that type of thing and still get the game out in 2010.

Also, I fear that if they went down that route, when the game finally did come out it would be a titanic "virtual memory suck bomb" that would crash every non-supercomuter you played it on. Although of course, by the time the devs (and their descendants, most likely!) finish making 300 sowrds, 300 bows, 300 axes, etc., computers will probably have a couple googolbytes of virtual memory each

That argument won't fly in one regard. Stardocks intention as I understand it is to give us a system we can use to make "our" swords. Even if they include only 6 types at launch, those will mutate and evolve into thousands of unique examples within a week.

Not a problem. It is just a matter of defining your parameters. A sword can only have so many attributes. And if it deviates too far from the base pattern, it is no longer a sword. Basically the only two questions you need to ask are "How sharp?" and "what shape?".

Again, not a problem. Model me up a 4 foot longsword and give me some sliders that change the size and shape of the sword. Even if all I get is the ability to adjust length and width that is more than enough to turn that longsword into a hundred sword variants. And that is before you start adding things like ferrules, pinions, ricassos, basket hilts....

No sword can be overpowered unless you blatantly imbalance its stats. A rapier might do crazy piercing damage, but that took a lot of sacrifice in other areas. A rapier would never be able to effectively block a greatsword worthy of the name. But then a greatswords biggest disadvatage is its size and weight. Not tall and strong enough? Then you can't use one.

With player created content we would face the problem of moderating our own creations. But there will probably be some set of checks and balances that prevent you from simply upping the damage to 9000.

Not a problem. Galciv 2 has a weapon/armour system exactly like this. We would want a bit more complexity, but all you really need to know is rock beats scissors.

How is this bad? If you know what you need you can get it immediatly. If you don't know then you will have to examine everything anyway to see whats what.

Very large battles must be simplified. But that does not mean you can focus on the little details when and where they become important. In a one on duel it is very important to recognize that your halberd is 1 foot longer than your opponents. This gives you a bonus to reach, hitting power and a variety of other things.

Zoom out to a battle between 500 halberdiers and another 500 halberdiers. What does it matter than one side is using longer halberds? Not much, but when both sides charge each other the longer halberds are going to hit first. A trivial detail in the grand scheme of things, but in the right situation it can make all the difference.

Hundreds of games out there are advanced enough to recognize the effect of headshots. All you need is a second smaller hitbox placed slightly lower and there you go. Of course this assumes your game uses hitboxes in the first place. But even if your game revolves around dice rolls, all you need to do is add one more variable.

---

On a side note we have exaustively discussed these topics in the past. You might enjoy reading through these two posts I made a long time ago:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/329603

https://forums.elementalgame.com/330528

I keep saying that this whole argument is pretty much irrelevent. Even if you could make that many sowrds etc. (let's remember that you would need the same level of "density" for ALL types of weapon), running a simulation that intense would suck up an increadible amount of processing power and virtual memory, crashing the game on anything but the very fastest rigs.

If it uses hitboxes, I sort of agree with you. However, adding tons of hitboxes representing different parts the body is not totally trivial. It requires minimal work and dev time, but if you have massive-scale battles between thousands of units, keeping track of all that candrag down slower computers.

And if they go the route of dice roles, "all you need to do is add one more variable" is an egregious simplification. For one, all body parts that you want to have individual consideration would require a new variable; this would be easy to code and program - but it'd make combat really unpredictable and you'd lose all transparency.

You are still VASTLY overestimating the complexity of a system like this.

How many unique swords can you think of? And I mean really unique, that have features that are not shared with any other swords? You will not find many. Greatswords, longswords, short swords, broadswords, claymores, spatha, gladius... All of these are more or less the same sword. They all share the same shape, differing only in size. If you took all those variants listed above and used the Elemental item creator to make 5000 variantse. You could dump them all into the same battle and the computer wouldn't skip a beat. Each sword was created using the same basic building blocks. They have a handle and a blade. The only relevant information the computer needs to track is "how big?" and "how sharp?". 2 numbers is all you need.

Which is why we don't. Humans can only proccess so much information at one time. It is pointless to include any more information than we can handle. In a battle involving thousands of soldiers at once the only way we can take in the whole spectacle is a gods eye view from up above. When all of your soldiers look like ants what does it matter what happens to the individual? Lets say one soldier out of 5000 loses a finger. Even if the detail is there to model stuff like this, what does it matter? Are you going to notice from your seat int he clouds? Will it have any effect on your command decisions? Of course not. Hell if the computer even distracted you with such a trivial message you would probably say "who cares? let me know if he dies".

Its not impossible. Dwarf Fortress already models separate body layers such as skin and hair and bones. It tracks critical damage to internal organs as well. Now DF can get away with this because its ASCII graphics leave all of the processing muscle to crunch numbers for the game. In elemental there is no reason why you couldn't use a complex system like that. Just as long as the scale of the fight is small enough that the player can take it all in.

Yes, with seven swords and two variables a system like that would run fine. But you said 300 individual swords, and a highly complex defense system! Now, assuming that you, me, the devs, a fencing expert, or anyone else can even think of 300 different varieties of sword, their two variables would be compared against the vital-organ, armor, magic, and other states of thousands of soldiers, plus player commands, whatever magic is going on, a probably-huge TC AI, a full physics engine, and graphics. That level of detail miiight be doable on high-end rigs, but Joe The Gamer's computer would be QUITE unequipped to handle it.