weapon "profiles" - penetration vs. stopping power etc.

[moriarty]

I think the different kinds of weapons and ammunition could do with a little more variability.

- traditional bullet weapons should be able to stun and throw back
conventional weapons that use bullets (at more-or-less high velocities) transfer a lot of kinetic energy to the target. this should be able to cause stun damage (even when not hitting the head). also, it should be possible to push the target back, perhaps only if a certain damage threshold is crossed? or, to account for strong and large units, if more than a certain percentage of maximum health has been exceeded?

- plasma weapons should cause fires
it's super-heated matter! 'nuff said! if an alien fires a large plasma through a wheat tile, the tile should be on fire afterward. this would cause nice little paths of destruction, even giving you a possibility to locate the alien

- laser weapons should penetrate
admittedly, this is debatable. if you argue that laser weapons use short laser pulses, they will only cause "simple" damage.
but if they use longer beams like the laser "bullet" sprite implies, they should be able to penetrate stuff - especially wooden walls and the like. we might even make it so that you cannot destroy objects with a laser (you would only burn holes through them, but wouldn't be able to destroy them entirely), but the beam passes through them, losing only a part of it's strength. it would add to the strategy part of the game, because you would need to bring other weapons if you want to shoot down walls, but could possibly kill enemies behind walls without them ever seeing you - if your laser is strong enough (Heavy Laser returns as a useful weapon...)

- explosions should push
the shockwave of an explosion should be able to move units and objects outward, if it doesn't destroy them.

- stun rod should cause damage. real damage.
the cattle prod should be able to electrocute units to death. and alien units should recover from stun damage more rapidly. catching aliens alive and keeping them alive-but-subdued should be made harder


effectively, I think we could do this with additional weapon damage variables:

"objectDamage" - a multiplier: after actual damage is determined, damage to objects is multiplied by this. 0 means "weapon doesn't damage objects", 0.1 means only 1/10th of damage is being done if the target being hit is an object and so on.

"damagePenetration" - a multiplier: bullet will continue with damage*damagePenetration strength after hitting whatever has been hit, if damage would have been sufficient to kill or destroy the target. shouldn't be 1 or above, to avoid weird effects. default (vanilla) behaviour is "0" - bullet stops (even if it was a large plasma blast that hit a wooden chair).

"kineticEffect" - a boolean: if "1", the game will check damage imparted vs. maximum health of target and see if the item/unit/object is being pushed away from point of origin (and, possibly, how far). or possibly even a multiplier, to tune this effect for different weapon types... shotgun comes to mind, with a lot of kinetic effect. Plasma, on the other hand, shouldn't have a kinetic effect - all it does is burn. extemely so, but no kinetic effect.

"burnEffect" - another boolean: if "1", bullet will cause incendiary damage to tiles it passes through



what do you think?

[Solarius Scorch]

THREADOMANCYYYYYY!!!

I think the different kinds of weapons and ammunition could do with a little more variability.

- traditional bullet weapons should be able to stun and throw back
conventional weapons that use bullets (at more-or-less high velocities) transfer a lot of kinetic energy to the target. this should be able to cause stun damage (even when not hitting the head). also, it should be possible to push the target back, perhaps only if a certain damage threshold is crossed? or, to account for strong and large units, if more than a certain percentage of maximum health has been exceeded?

That "transferring a lot of kinetic energy to the target" is pure Hollywood realism, which has absolutely nothing to do with real life. The pushing force of small arms fire is absolutely negligible, even if you use several SMGs at full auto at the same time. Yes, there is a little pushing, but far too little to matter.

However, additional stunning damage is IMHO a good idea, but it already seems implemented in X-Com. Would bullets have a bigger stunning effect than plasma? I'm not sure; after all, plasma does aggravating damage that is extremely painful, and therefore incapacitating.

- plasma weapons should cause fires
it's super-heated matter! 'nuff said! if an alien fires a large plasma through a wheat tile, the tile should be on fire afterward. this would cause nice little paths of destruction, even giving you a possibility to locate the alien

I like this one. It wouldn't affect the game much (except night missions maybe), but it would be very climatic. Still, it should be kept to the minimum, as the plasma bolt doesn't contain any burnable fuel (so it would only cause burning of flammable objects in the environment, and wouldn't work in alien bases for example).

- laser weapons should penetrate
admittedly, this is debatable. if you argue that laser weapons use short laser pulses, they will only cause "simple" damage.
but if they use longer beams like the laser "bullet" sprite implies, they should be able to penetrate stuff - especially wooden walls and the like. we might even make it so that you cannot destroy objects with a laser (you would only burn holes through them, but wouldn't be able to destroy them entirely), but the beam passes through them, losing only a part of it's strength. it would add to the strategy part of the game, because you would need to bring other weapons if you want to shoot down walls, but could possibly kill enemies behind walls without them ever seeing you - if your laser is strong enough (Heavy Laser returns as a useful weapon...)

As we both know, that would mean rebuilding the engine -and to a great extent, since penetration is a complex problem. For example, soft bush shouldn't stop bullets either.

The current system is simplified, but at least it's clear and easily understandable. It would be kind of a pain to learn what goes through what.

- explosions should push
the shockwave of an explosion should be able to move units and objects outward, if it doesn't destroy them.

Yes, agreed. Though it would probably require a bit more physics - Mutons should fly less than Sectoids, for example. I would really like to see a bit more of physics in Openxcom, grenades bouncing against the walls etc., but it's another complex problem that would have to be tackled in a complex way.

- stun rod should cause damage. real damage.
the cattle prod should be able to electrocute units to death. and alien units should recover from stun damage more rapidly. catching aliens alive and keeping them alive-but-subdued should be made harder

Oh star gods, yes. Well, maybe not faster stun recovery, because that would just make the game more anal, but electricity should indeed cause real damage on top of stun damage. I thought about this before, but I still can't decide if it should just be a second damage roll or some sort of a formula that kicks in if you do a certain level of stun damage to the enemy...