» Tue May 17, 2011 1:16 am So what is it?
This is my own attempt to distract the player from the stats and give Morrowind combat a more exciting and "realistic" feel that I think better reflects the experience of battle. Having a few years of experience in kenjutsu (a type of fencing), I've always felt that stat-based RPGish combat felt very empty and left much to be desired. While I like to exercise full creative control, I also recognize that I am playing a game in which my character's skills should reflect the outcome. I went to work on Realistic Combat, which allowed a more Oblivion-like combat system while still taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals invovled and leaving plenty of room for high-level actors to exert their advantageous stats on low-level actors. It simulates the ability to block with your weapon, a character's inertia during a leap or while running (charge!), and many other things.
We all know that Morrowind's animations just simply cannot compensate for the click-click-click dice-roll melee of vanilla MW. I want to push the player into a different mindset during melee, so that strategy and not boring animations occupy the mind while still allowing all your hard earned stats to make a difference. I understand that some people will enjoy the original style of combat better, but I also know that a (perhaps larger) majority of players want to see a change in the outdated click-fest.
So what are the features?
-100% hit chance. You will always hit whatever you're facing and within range to hit, and so will the enemy. This includes hand-to-hand and ranged weapons as well (which essentially makes a "true iron-sight" out of your crosshair).
-Effective attack distance and angle decrease. The angled field of attack has been sharply reduced to ensure that the player and NPCs must aim their strikes well. This also means that you and your enemy can both dodge attacks if timed correctly, which becomes a matter of practice. You must also get closer to land a hit; this can make the range difference between dagger and spear a matter of life or death.
-Running/jumping (for both the player and NPCs) will add an increase in attack damage to simulate inertia.
-Higher stakes combat. Attacks are much more devastating now with increased chance of critical. Some GMSTs have also been altered to increase the impact strength has on attack damage. Currently the forumla for damage in Morrowind is flawed--however, I believe a fix for this is soon to be in order and when that happens, this may make an positive impact on damage per hit. Also adding to the available tactics is that attacking twice in succession will result in massive damage - however, it will be difficult to do this while trying to block unless you take the offensive immediately and keep it.
-You can now block with your weapon, and so can NPCs. To simulate this, I have created two modes of combat with different advantages and disadvantages.
You default to offense mode. In offense mode, you retain 100% hit chance and the one-two combo hit damage increase.
If you sneak in combat, you enter defense mode. In defense mode, your character attempts to block all incoming attacks, but you lose the 100% hit chance and one-two combo hit damage increase.
When blocking, you will usually take no damage from enemy attack, and an accompanying "clang" sound will result instead, along with a slight flicker of light for added effect. However, this does not mean you can get away with blocking through an entire session of combat! If you make an attack and the enemy blocks it, you lose 5 fatigue, so the force of striking metal-to-metal still has a statistical impact on the battle. It costs more fatigue to block, and the amount it costs is dependent on the Block skill, the current Weapon skill, and the Agility stat. There is also a chance you can mess up your defense and take a lot of damage anyway (an accompanying scraping sound coupled with the loss of your health will be the indication). This could happen if the enemy's weapon and strength stats are much higher than your weapon and block stats, but the Sanctuary spell effect decreases the odds of this happening. All of this works in reverse too, because both the player and NPCs can enter defense mode, though there is no indication for an NPC, they block randomly depending on their stats. Also, there is a global counter for the amount of blocks the player has made successfully. When this reaches a certain number (which is scaled depending on your current block skill), you will gain a point in Block. This is to merge the Block skill into the new system.
-The coup de grace: if you force an NPC to the ground through fatigue, the next hit could be quite devastating! Seize the opportunity--arguably the two biggest factors in weapon-to-weapon combat is distance and timing, and I want to provide as many options as possible in working with these. You must be using a long weapon such as a longsword or spear for the killing blow to apply. You can do this with a knife if you sneak (or "defense mode" if you want to think of it that way--anyway you need to crouch down to reach them with a dagger). This works both ways, so if you continue to block until your fatigue dwindles and you collapse, you will be significantly weaker to attacks. This makes fatigue a much bigger part of battle, which is good because it discourages constant defense. The Sanctuary effect nulls this feature entirely, restoring some functionality to the spell.
-Archery overhaul. Pulling back the bowstring and holding will slowly drain fatigue. A different sound will accompany the shot, depending on how rapidly the bow is shot. Arrows will always hit whatever they come across, and so will thrown weapons, but it's possible to move out of the way if you see it coming.
--There any many new sounds to improve the atmosphere of combat. Randomized sounds occur during a strike against armor, a weapon swish, blocking an attack and failing a block. Bows now play different sounds and weapon draw sounds will change when in sneak mode. Sounds also change depending on what weapon you have equipped.
What is this compatible with?
It shouldn't be incompatible with anything but MWE blocking. Both mods have a different way of dealing with block that conflicts because of the block skill.
Will it unbalance my game?
Hard to tell now. Dice-rolled success and failure in combat has been reallocated from the hit/miss concept to the new system of features, and I've tried to ratio the NPC's level and skills with the outcome battle and so far results seem fairly realistic - a commoner might still present a challenge but isn't necessarily any better than you are. An Imperial guard will take a high level or fair amount of strategy to take down. I suppose statistically the win/lose ratio between different leveled NPCs stays the same, but what was impossible before is now just improbable with the right strategy.
Download
Currently v0.4
Obviously those who prefer original MW combat wont like this, but for those of us who have wanted this forever here it is: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LSX8FYSX
I find this plays very well with NPC Enhanced. Stay alert, know your "dodge" window, and if you can fall into the parry-cut-cut rhythm, you'll do quite well and have a lot of fun.
Known Issues / Still to come...
-One of the only problems I noticed with this mod is that it basically scraps the "agility" stat - I could factor it into places and fully intend to, but I haven't really done that so much yet as Realistic Combat is still missing some features I want. For the time being it's a sacrifice.
-Sometimes it takes awhile for the combat scripts to "kick in." Combat will always have 100% hit chance, but blocking and the different sounds/modes will not be available until the scripts attach themselves to hostile NPCs. So don't rely entirely on some of these features. This is the main caveat in my decision to make this mod function without 3rd party programs.
-This can only affect up to 5 NPCs at a time. This will change some day, but as long as the mod's in development it's a lot easier for me to work with just the 5 scripts. 5 should be plenty for a melee-fest anyways. As NPCs run away, die, or the cell changes, these scripts cancel or reallocate themselves to the next hostile actor.
-I want to apply penalties to the player for swinging a weapon while moving backwards, because in real fencing this allows the opponent a huge window to take advantage of the "inertia situation." The only problem is that I can't figure out how to detect what direction the player is stepping. I've tried a million times and it always comes out buggy.
-If I were ever able to detect what direction the player is stepping, I could add a whole bunch of "combat move" combos that could add some depth to combat--for instance, running forward with a spear attack should deal loads of damage, while walking backwards while trying to block with a dagger should be asking for a little penalty. Things like that.
-I haven't tested the Block skill raising with successful blocks. It supposedly works but I haven't seen any progress--working on this now.
-Blocking has this quick flicker of light for added effect if the enemy parries your blow--there's supposed to be an opposite darkening of one frame for blocking an attack, but this doesn't work at the moment and I might scrap the idea altogether.
After I finally get to testing and undoubtedly debugging some script changes I might give this a try. I'm working on a companion script with GCD-style leveling. So this should go along with it pretty well. ^^ 
