Duke Patrick's Melee Combat No Recoil

(Based on my old SCA combat mod but bigger and MUCH better!)

Requirements: Oblivion Script Extender (OBSE) v20. NO BETAS


Previous thread: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1203840-relz-duke-patricks-melee-combat-no-recoil/



===============
History
===============

January 2006 first release of this mod.
This was the first real "Mod" I had ever made. I did a tiny bit of WAD authoring in the days of DOOM. And some Hex editing of other games. But the only other programming I have ever done was a very simple color basic language 4k game 30 years ago on a TRS80 PC. That modest work in color basic was the only way I was able to decipher the script language used in Oblivion today.


get it here:

http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/914-duke-patricks-melee-combat-no-recoil/


This mod includes:

- NO MORE BLOCK RECOIL! Staggering and recoil will happen from hits and other combat related reasons but no more "hobbled" attack combos! And being "paralyzed" (non-magical) will almost never happen!

- Dead bodies get bashed to the ground violently instead of floating down thru the air like a feather.

- Locational hits with critical damage (INI configurable)

- Location armor for the head, body and legs. Wearing a good helmet may be all you need!

- Blunt damage will be more effective against light armor.

- Both the player and the NPC can Bob and Weave to avoid attacks. You will consume fatigue based on encumbrance load.

- Enemy melee AI is greatly improved and will also watch for the player's "tells", but this also means you can "trick" them!

- AI settings have been overhauled to attack, block and move more deviously, dynamically and ruthlessly.

- You can now use actual real-life sword and shield feints to land your shots (such as the "rising snap"!)

- BOTH Passive and Active blocking!

- Weapon/shield size matters! Bigger weapons/shields give you more geometric protection. But they also take more fatigue to parry with! The bigger the weapon/shield relative to your body size, the better your passive block chance. The better your block skill, the better your chance to parry. Bigger heavy shields / weapons have the advantage to absorb more damage than lighter/smaller ones.

- Weapons stats are now much more realistic. Weapon hit range is based on the actual model length of the weapon in the game. No more 20 foot long short swords! War hammers do not swing quickly like they are made of plastic. Weapon damage stats are not dramatically cranked up, they are only balanced relativistically with the speed and range of the weapon. This is all done via scripts "on the fly" so even custom weapons from other mods are included.

- Draining your fatigue completely with button bashing will result in blurred vision! ( INI configurable for the ...er...casual players.)

- Defensive Geometry and great timing is now more important than great player speed and reflexes. The angle of attack is a little tighter, so Offensive Geometry is more important in landing a shot.

- Footwork and range games are now very important for blocks and attacks.

- H2H now includes grapple blocks and throws.

- Fighting Giants is now a very scary undertaking, sometimes the only way to live is to run away!

- Bottle necking overwhelming numbers (such as with doorways) and other such tricks MUST be done or you will die!

- Weapon speed (timing) vs damage is now the second most important tactical consideration. Heavy one-handed weapons take an eternity to hit, but they hit HARD!

- Power attacks now require good timing to land but they do more damage!

- WRAPS This is a shot where you stand very close and swing your weapon to wrap around your opponent's shield thus reducing the benefits of a large shield.

- Aiming under their weapon or shield gives a bonus to land your shot.

- If a feint works, the shield or weapon will move out of position right before the attack lands. What this does is give you a view of the opponent being OPEN for the shot as you land the blow!

- Results are based on the attributes, actions timing, conditions and dynamics of the combat not on simplistic dice rolls. This means you can eventually learn to take advantage of the subtle factors in combat and predict your opponent's action.

- All blunt weapons now have a good chance to stagger or even "push over" depending on how heavy the blunt weapon is and how strong the attacker is (modified by his fatigue) versus the target's strength.


- Armor is twice effective against Fist, Claws or teeth.


===============
1. DESCRIPTION
===============

This mod changes the combat to feel more like SCA combat, a worldwide historical organization that includes full armor, full speed and full contact western European medieval martial arts. (As much as I am able to do in an Oblivion mod.)

Please see my Web page: http://www.spookyfx.com/book/tromp.html

The mod is based on my 30 years of melee tournament and war experience. SCA wars consist, on a good day, of two teams of several thousand fighters all in one battlefield trying to knock each others' heads off with everything from short swords to 12 foot spears!


This mod is made to focus on the psychology and physics of melee combat.

Although I very much favor shield and sword, after finishing the mod and play testing it seems that lighter faster fighters (such as single sword fighters) more often "beats" heavy slow weapons and shield IF the light weapon's fighter was at the most extreme levels of skill in Weapons, Block, H2H, Strength, Agility, Speed and Fatigue. I had believed (wanted to anyway) that it would to be the other way around were an expert with a weapon and shield would beat an expert with say a bastard sword.

If you train your skills up around 75 or more in all the skills I just listed (and you earn them not just cheat your skills up in 15 minutes) you will probably then complain to me that combat is too easy when fighting against sword and shield man even if you only have a dagger.

You may ask "why would I need to earn them, why not just cheat them all up to 75?"

Because there is some player skill needed as well. You will need to learn how to use the mod features correctly. The only way to do this is to earn your skills in game by putting in the play time. This is the part that I hope will keep the player interested even once their character has reached master levels in all their skills.


Real Life Sword And Shield Combat : http://www.spookyfx.com/book/tromp.html

Repeat and continued from thread 1


My NEW low level PC was in an arena fight...

She is an incognito Royal Princess that came from a new "guild" you will find in my Hammerblade mod. She was not getting the real life or death type training from her father's battle instructors ( for obvious reasons ) that she wanted so she decided to go out on her own and do it herself in the real world.

Her block skill is still not at a high level and she is strong for a woman but still small, so the opponent (very large guy) was knocking her down with his battle axe in two hits (not dead, not even hurt that much but the impact sent her to the floor) if she just held up a static block. But the shield was too big to a lot of active parries (eats too much fatigue).

She was using a large shield and that helped, but she was too small and to not skilled with the shield to deflect that kind of raw power once the axe was up to speed on the leverage end of the axe shaft! Then I realized that she was not failing at the block, but only that the momentum force was overpowering her girth.

So I (she) ran in and did one good parry to get in close, then she threw down the shield and was able to grapple block his shoulder and hip to stay alive long enough to take his head off with her sword.

Even I am learning some new things in Oblivion combat strategy now...

name of ini file confusing - the old one said version 2 this one says version 1.

also - is it possible to turn off the skill training compensator? I've other mods and bashed patch can do that.

I made a clean save, updated to 2p3 and both my issues are gone. No stuck left hand and the Skeletons act as normal as well. Guess it might have been the script that stopped running - I'll keep it in debug mode.

I noticed that the default setting for Weapon damage Scale has been changed from .5 to 1 in the ini. With 1 I get c. 100% more damage on the weapons so it's quite a change from .5 (c. 50%). Anyway, this can of course be edited by the user.

Also, the ini says that "Default is 1 (this is the Oblivion vanilla setting)." Wouldn't that rather be 0? :unsure:

My current Lvl 25 char is actually a mage but she likes to use swords a lot. With vanilla it is quite easy as it doesn't matter if the AR comes from armor or spells/potions. So she can wear a robe/hood, buff up shield to AR 85, buff agility, strength etc. and actually be a better melee fighter than one using heavy armor as she has AR 85 while moving around freely, unencumbered by heavy equipment. Also, magical AR won't go down as AR on armor does when damaged. Anyway, DPMC seems to make this "exploit" a bit harder to use. Suddenly she is punished for not wearing a helmet etc. She will actually be cut down rather quickly even with AR 75 if not careful, at least with Weapon damage Scale at 1.

Set it to 5 (that is vanilla)




Edit: oh wait I see what you mean...er...yes I think I can make it so that if it is 0 it will turn off. This will be in the next update.

You:

I noticed that the default setting for Weapon damage Scale has been changed from .5 to 1 in the ini. With 1 I get c. 100% more damage on the weapons so it's quite a change from .5 (c. 50%). Anyway, this can of course be edited by the user.

Me:
setting to 1 means the recalculated damage is then multiplied by 1 before being "baked" onto the weapons for the game session.
Set it to .5 to divide in half. Set to 2 to double it.

You:
Also, the ini says that "Default is 1 (this is the Oblivion vanilla setting)." Wouldn't that rather be 0? :unsure:

Me:
No see above, but I should remove any mention of the Oblivion setting now because we are no longer adjusting the games setting, instead I do it in scripts. Using the game setting was also effected arrows so I had to change it.


You:
My current Lvl 25 char is actually a mage but she likes to use swords a lot. With vanilla it is quite easy as it doesn't matter if the AR comes from armor or spells/potions. So she can wear a robe/hood, buff up shield to AR 85, buff agility, strength etc. and actually be a better melee fighter than one using heavy armor as she has AR 85 while moving around freely, unencumbered by heavy equipment. Also, magical AR won't go down as AR on armor does when damaged. Anyway, DPMC seems to make this "exploit" a bit harder to use. Suddenly she is punished for not wearing a helmet etc. She will actually be cut down rather quickly even with AR 75 if not careful, at least with Weapon damage Scale at 1.


Me:
Concerning clothing with magic AR see my previous post. Concerning overall AR gained from magic spells, as I said this is not a magic mod. Magic "AR" is untouched, I do not effect it in any way by this melee mod. Magic AR still works in the game exactly as it did before. With the exception that now the MAX is 95 not 85. But out of curiosity, how would you propose I include magic AR for LOCATIONAL armor? Just divide it up evenly for each body location? By percent of coverage (like 10% for the head and 50% for the body?).....nevermind it is already getting too convoluted.

I don't think it's an issue, quite the opposite. DPMC seems to counter this vanilla "exploit" by making it pay to wear a helmet in melee and making it cost to don't wear one. Which is cool.

Thanks for clearing up how the the weapon damage scale is set up. Or rather clearing up my confusion perhaps.

I apologize for sounding short in my replay, it is a frustrating subject, (trying to balance magic from a melee mod without changing anything in the game's magic system.) My original version of this mods (years ago) had lots of magic changes to balance it with the melee combat...and I got lots of complaints from people (even very good friends) for doing so.



From my previous post about Enchanted clothing AR (posted again as a courtesy)

Any object that is in the slot that is hit (such as the body slot for a shirt or cuirass) that has an armor class set in the CS will be detected and included in the calculations.
I am using the OBSE command GetArmorAR.

If GetArmorAR detects enchantments then yes, if not no. You would need to ask the OBSE team about that one. I did not care enough either way to find out myself (because I can live with it working either way) and one way or the other would not have changed how I used it in my mod.

If it turns out this command will not detect the enchantment AR, but one of you guys wants that in my mod anyway, if you come up with a few lines of script to do it :

(find the AR enchantment number, something like [ Set TmpNumber to ItemREF.getEnchantmentAR ] and then I would use the TmpNumber in my calcs.)

I will put it in my mod and give you credit for your contribution.

Yeah in Vanilla oblivion it's pretty easy to max your AC without wearing armor just by enchanting 2 rings, a necklace and 1 or 2 pieces of clothing wit Shield effects (or just 3 jewelry and a good shield spell). It may not be consistent, but I kind of like how the locational damage system downgrades shield spells back down to a support role instead of being able to replace armor altogether.

And if you combine it with a mod like Fizzle that drastically amplifies spell casting penalties for wearing armor and holding shields and weapons while casting, choosing whether to wear armor if you are a wizard is actually a difficult choice with serious advantages and disadvantages to consider now. Wear armor and you won't be casting high level spells (or failing a lot when trying), but don't wear it and you'll be much more vulnerable to melee combat and shield spells won't fully cover for that deficiency. (It also, incidentally, makes light armor a very attractive choice for a wizard. It provides protection from locational damage and bite and claw attacks, and with Fizzle active only has half the spell casting penalty of heavy armor)

STOP THE PRESSES!!!!

Sorry it is ALREADY that way, has been from the first rev. Just set the skill training compensator to 0 (zero) to turn it off.

Like they said in the Prego spaghetti sauce commercials of the 80's

ITs in There! :hubbahubba:

Missed that so thanks for reposting it.



Thanks for the tip. I've been meaning to try out Fizzle but always forget about it.

BTW, I mentioned hits with a claymore going through enemies when close and when checking out this a bit more it seems DPMC is "physically" correct here. I always play in first person but when checking it out in 3:d person those hits are indeed "too close" - it would be the hands that would connect rather. So just a question of stepping back a bit, having an appropriate distance to the enemy...

I have been playing with my new PC all day, and I finally put my finger on an issue that has been bugging me.

The way the game is now you use as much fatigue cutting air as you do chopping into your opponent.

But in the real world when you throw a blow that only cuts air you lose less of your energy than when you hit something. Your "power" is transfer into you opponent when you land the shot, but not if you miss or they dodge or you purposely do not aim at anything solid, much of the momentum is "recycled" into the next shot by redirecting the weapon around and then back into the next attack.

The next rev will have this engineered into the calcs.

Hi Duke

Am looking to try something different and have applied this mod to a lvl 2 character whom I've been using to build up and test this installation.

I didn't create his stats with this mod in mind... a Breton with no focus on blocking (currently 11 Block skill) and wearing full iron armor/shield. This results in a very serious situation: trying to block a single attack from a mudcrab results in stamina being drained entirely :lmao: . I'm not complaining but sharing this observation as a FYI... I generally build combat focused characters who I imagine would deal with blocking a bit better. It seems that training will be very important with MCNR.

I should say I'm using the rev 2p3 with default ini.

Fighting rats with this mod is like fighting the evil white bunny from Monty Python and the Holy Grail