Home » MODDING HQ 1.13 » v1.13 Idea Incubation Lab » Melee combat thoughts (remarks and suggestions on melee combat)
| Melee combat thoughts[message #363004]
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Mon, 26 April 2021 09:00 
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 Shadooow |
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Messages:109
Registered:April 2009
Location: Czech Republic |
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Hi, after finishing a game where I played with 4 melee specialist (my IMP, Razor, Hector, Snake) I decided to discuss melee combat balance because during play I found number of smaller and bigger issues.
I won't talk about bugs here, I already posted fixes for most of them, but balancing. Before I start - I do realize that it is not realistic to go into gunfight wíth knife. That is not how it works and obviously melee mercs are not supposed to just run from one enemy to another in daylight and kill them easily. But this is a game that has ton of unrealisticism in it, hell even the main story "bunch of mercs liberating whole country from evil queen" is unrealistic. Game has this trait and therefore it should be worthwhile to use it. A lot of mercs has this trait too which makes them bad choice, if melee is not viable.
Now, how did I even made it work a bit. I started game at Experienced difficulty + very slow gun progress and lowest BR settings and I disabled the new enemy weapon choices from unstable (stupid feature imo that doesn't reflect difficulty and gun progress setting and completely removes pistols and shotguns from game as you won't see them, anyway). My IMP was Athletic+Melee+Stealthy and every melee merc was also Athletic (after I could afford Snake, till then I used Haywire, but absence of Athletic makes him weak).
Athletic is extremely important and not just for melee combat. We all know it is most overpowered trait and if you want to kill enemies with knife it is a must.
So this + fighting during night prefferably and removing enemies one by one. Walking around in stealth and then turning it off and run straight at the enemy with aim stab at neck and kill him. That kind of worked as long as enemies had mostly pistols (which under this setting is almost whole game). But there were many issues even under this situation.
So about the issues.
Dodge chance of enemy. Since enemies get random traits, enemies with Hand to Hand, Martial Artist or Melee are forcing reloads. Sometimes not even sending 2 mercs helps. Player does not know the enemy has this trait (I don't count debug level of ALT info as a valid method) and since they have the usual dodge animations he won't find immediately after missing the stab either. It is clear after 4th stab in row misses, but that is way too late. When they had pistols, it was still doable - they rarely killed my merc, later in game when they had ARs and MGs it became instant death.
Now I don't know exactly what should be done about this. Perhaps different dodging animation would help to realize after first stab, that you need to go for leg stabs or use pistol instead, and be able to continue without reaload. The bonuses to dodge might be too big as well, 60% for Martial Artist is really huge. From 20 enemies, there are always at least 3 who has one of the three traits gaining 30-60% dodge chance.
It also doesn't make a lot of sense to me that enemies can dodge so easily when they are holding sniper rifle, MG or even AR. I saw in code that this in past was the case and I think Seven changed it so the bonus appliest everytime. That is too good and doesn't make much sense. Holding a large rifle in both hand should impact one's close combat dodging abilities I believe.
Another thing is, that a lot of time you run towards enemy, you miss or rather he dodges because he is a martial artist and then, because he is holding assault rifle, next round he empties the clip into you from short distance where he has 99% chance to hit. Shouldn't be harder to hit someone who is literally on your body dodging left and right trying to stab you with large rifle? Currently assault rifles (at least under NCTH) solves every situation except when you lose the gun better than anything and this is one of the situations. Why would you use pistol or god forbid a knife when you basically cannot miss with autofire from body2body range? I realize, that this might prove too good for players since AI will probably not be able to run back a bit before shooting and they usually carry just one gun unlike player. But it is something to consider.
Aimed stab locations. There is no point aiming legs at all. Even with melee specialist, doing 6 damage surely must be a bug. It is not worth the increased chance to hit at all, especially because there are no other benefits of aiming the legs. You won't cause enemy any extra AP/energy loss, you won't make him unable to move. Totally pointless except if you want to roleplay the "senators killing Julius Cesar" in JA2. Also not much of a point not to make unaimed stab I would say, but the differences are extremely small and I don't have real data to prove my point. I end up in my gameplay to always aim at neck - that was 99% times oneshot, at least if I hit. If not I had second merc nearby who tried it again which usually worked. When not I let it go and either played with 2 heavy wounded mercs or replayed if one of them died.
Knife values balance. I think the values are so so. The only thing I would change is that I would add a CTH bonus or damage bonus or maybe a penalty when using katana/sabre in one hand. But just penalty might make it weaker than other options like Rambo Knife. I always worked with inventory in a way I had one hand free with knife, but it is actually not needed, CTHs are not affected by holding a bear in offhand at all (and that is probably okay for usual knives). Swords should also give a penalty to the defender to dodge, at least in a sword vs knife/nothing situation imo. You can't dodge that well against large blades unlike smaller knives.
Interrupts. Reason why melee falls off later in game hard. Once the elite units were more common I stopped running towards them because that gave them interrupt and started waiting with my melee specialist around corners countering possible enemy flank. I got interrupt, but because in either case, when interrupt happens enemy is 2 tiles away and you need to move 1 tile towards him, that gave him counter-interrupt and I ended up dead. Shooting with gun does not have this issue. I ended up using throwing knives with Razor to keep the roleplay running, or SMG into legs to make him collapse and then stab him into backs for the good feel. Again not sure what to do with this, but it is a problem.
(Almost) No AP penalty for enemy. Stabbing does not impact enemy AP/energy a lot (if at all, unsure). So many times I ran into situation where enemy survived my attack and he had 6~ hitpoints left, yet he was able to kill me in next round with autofire. Guns offer suppression mechanic, punches causes high energy loss, but regular knives seems to not do any of that (throwing knives actually do cause suppression). Suppression is obviously a bit nonsense, but "shock" mechanic would have imo. Of course this is highly related to the fact that when you are in RT and spot enemy and new round starts, all enemiest starts with 100 (possibly altered by energy unsure about that). So not even guns works well, you either kill him or he will shoot back no matter what. Still, something to consider.
Various.
1) Unlike guns CTH calculation does not include merc experience level. Considering this is used in pretty much everything else, I think exp level should be included in calculation.
2) CTH calculation might be bugged in case that dodging chance is much higher than hit chance. Look at this code "iChance = 67 + (iAttRating - iDefRating) / 3;", if I read it correctly, it means that if the initial chance after substracting iDefRating is negative, it gets higher after divided by 3. Whether it can actually happen I don't know though.
3) Game has two more knives that I could not find. Sam Garver's Knife and Letter Opener. Anyone knows where I can get them? Also steak knife is really great, but it seems it can only be acquired with recruiting Razor. It would be nice if he was pre-placed in one of the town buildings I think.
[Updated on: Mon, 26 April 2021 09:16] Report message to a moderator
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