Arthanor's hammer fix

[Arthanor]

Hello fellow Piratez!

I'm sure you all know the hammer well, and either love it because it is so reliable, or dislike it because it "breaks" melee weapons by being so reliable. I know Dioxine has planned to nerf it in the next release, but I'm not sure what he intends. In the meantime, I decided that I'd take a stab (or a..? smash?) at it.

Basically, I am using the functionality of OXCE to define a melee attack with different attributes for a ranged weapon. The hammer (and pickaxe), keep their snap shot, except that now it only deals damage to tiles and items. It causes no health/stun/armor/wounds on hitting units. So it is only useful for smashing through terrain. So that makes it useless for actual melee fighting, obviously.

To go along with for that, the hammer and pickaxe now gain a melee attack, which means you can now hit in diagonals! And it uses melee skill properly to calculate the chance to hit, and it trains melee skill on hits now instead of firing accuracy.

The only downsides are:
1 - You will miss a lot more: That's the point, since 100% reliable snapshots were too much. For the hammer, the calculation is now, as was in the mod for the accuracy that never really mattered:

0.6 * (melee/2 + 50)

so at 100 melee, you have 60% chance to hit, at 50% melee, 45% to hit, at 0 melee, you have 30%. That's a quite significant nerf hit wise, and it would probably make sense to increase the base accuracy (accuracyMelee in the mod), to something like 75.

2 - You can't use it to clear elevators anymore

3 - You can't use it to finish off unconscious aliens

Obviously, these are downsides of all melee weapons, and it exchange we get a melee weapon that behaves like one, but can also destroy walls.

Let me know what you think.

Also, since I finally looked into the OXCE modding stuff (and what marvellous customization options there are.. well done Yankes!), this opens up the possibility of an upgrade for the hammer: The thunder hammer

[Solarius Scorch]

Frankly, I haven't checked it out yet, but from the description it sounds rather confusing. Would people even understand why their attacks cause no damage?

But primarily, I don't really understand the assumption that the hammer is overpowered. I don't think it's even very good, much less overpowered; it is slow and requires plenty of stamina, and you often end up unable to use it. I'm not saying it's a bad weapon, it's excellent in specific situations, but I find it way too specialized to be useful on a large scale; I only have one hammer per team and having more is not something that'd interest me. So I can't really see the point of nerfing it.

[Arthanor]

Snapshot destroys terrain
Hit to hit people

That seems pretty simple to me.. but a tweak of the hammer's article could make sense.

To me, the hammer is both too good and too bad. It's too good at hitting and needs high damage to make sense, so it ends up being either op or too slow and heavy to be worth it. As the hammer is in Piratez, I don't use it at all because I dislike the slowness and the shooting mechanic of it. But I love the idea of a heavy melee weapon that can damage terrain.

The only way to fix it I can see is to make it be able to miss, which this does. Admittedly, the numbers here make it miss too often. But, once it hits and misses properly, we can look into the stamina/tu costs so it can be usable.

I'm thinking something like 75 accuracy, 0.5 melee + 0.2 str + 50 for skill, same damage as now, keep the TU cost the same but decrease the stamina cost a bit.

[niculinux]

Thanks Artanhor! I actually think it should not be difficult go finish off aliens, as they are lying defenceless on the graund, for the rest thumbs up!!

[Solarius Scorch]

Hmm... OK, I guess I'll think seriously about it. Thanks, Arthanor

[Arthanor]

Thanks Artanhor! I actually think it should not be difficult go finish off aliens, as they are lying defenceless on the graund, for the rest thumbs up!!

That's actually not a bad idea.. If the snapshot did a fraction (10-20%?) of the damage but ignored armor, then it could be able to finish off dying aliens, without the snapshot being close taking over as an actual fighting option despite always hitting.

[Arthanor]

Well, I started working on a thunder hammer addition, as an upgrade, but ran into some problem:

Is it even possible to have an explosive (as in creating an actual blast) melee attack? My current attempt crashes the game..

Also, even though I restricted the blast radius, the explosion animation for the snapshot part is still huge, which makes it look stupid. :/

I've attached what I have so far, in case someone is interested in taking a look. (Try it in a new battle, it is not integrated in Piratez yet)

[Yankes]

Well, I started working on a thunder hammer addition, as an upgrade, but ran into some problem:

Is it even possible to have an explosive (as in creating an actual blast) melee attack? My current attempt crashes the game..

Also, even though I restricted the blast radius, the explosion animation for the snapshot part is still huge, which makes it look stupid. :/

I've attached what I have so far, in case someone is interested in taking a look. (Try it in a new battle, it is not integrated in Piratez yet)

Nope, melee have fixed 0 radius. And for explosion if you want smaller then you should change it to different graphic.

[Arthanor]

hum.. oh well.. There goes the thunder hammer with area damage idea I had.. too bad.

[Yankes]

You can made AoE when you throw it. Using it close combat would be counter productive if it blast you too

[Dioxine]

I actually considered Thunder Hammer as a Range 1 or 2 weapon, which does produce a nice HE blast. The trick? You research it after researching a superheavy armor that can take that blast without any damage. With 60% HE res, it'd have to have lowest armor value of around 80 to easily tank even Power 100 Thunder Hammer. The armor will be basically an upgrade to Loader, and despite being super-armored, it still won't allow you to tank Plasma Rifle or Heavy Laser without the risk of heavy damage.

[Arthanor]

Yeah, playing around with HE damage resist you can create a combo that would work. I just wanted to create something that works with normal juggernaut (=60 under armor). What I did is set a really high damage dropoff, so even one tile away from ground zero, it can't do more than 60 damage. The desired effect is just a nice animation, some terrain damage and, maybe, if two enemies sit next to each other, some damage on the other one.

But I am very set on melee weapons working as melee weapons, with terrain damaging snapshots if relevant. In fact, one could use the same idea I used here for the hammer to make a thunder hammer as a powerful melee weapon and a no health damage terrain destroying blast. It's just too bad the melee doesn't have a blast as well.

[Dioxine]

Uhm, no offence, but melee + blast makes no sense. If it's a blast, you hit with 100% accuracy no matter what. So the whole concept of melee attack makes no sense if you have a blast weapon.

As for the hammer... You've found a nice a way of circumventing game limitations, however, it is too gamey for me to accept into the mod. A hammer attack that is harmless to enemies is just... well, the very epitome of counter-intuitive. With all its failings, I prefer to stay with the the current 'magical hammer' for now.

[Arthanor]

None taken. We all have different views of what does or doesn't make sense. To me the magic hammer is worst than an attack that deals damage only to terrain. That attack just represents a "smash attack" that would have no chance to hit an active target but has the force to destroy terrain. It seems rather obvious that you wouldn't fight someone the same way you smash a wall even if you had the same weapon.

As for melee blasts, look in 40k: the thunder hammer releases the power of its field on impact. If you didn't hit your target, then it didn't release the field so there is no blast. It would be stupid of the wielder to strike the floor after missing their target as that wastes the hammer's impact on the floor instead of the victim. Since the field is an added bonus to the hammer hit to make it hurt even more and not the attack itself, it wouldnt hurt much either.

But hey, this is the beauty of mods I can mod your mod to make it more like I like and you can mod my mod to put it in your mod if I ever come up with something interesting to you!

[Brian]

I see that Yankes is here.  What if OXCE allowed weapons to rename their attacks?  So you open the hammer and see "Smash Terrain, Hit, Throw" instead of "Snap Shot, Hit, Throw".  It could also be useful for weapons like the electro whip (very short range "Snap Shot") or Black Powder Bomb (throwing weapon implemented as a firing weapon).

Code: [Select]

  - type: STR_HAMMER
    textSnap: STR_TERRAIN_ATTACK
    ...
  - type: STR_WHIP
    textSnap: STR_WHIP_SHOT