Balancing Magic and Tech for my Mod

Greetings, everyone.

I am looking for opinions on my plan to balance magic and technology in my forthcoming mod for Arcanum.

(Before anyone asks, I won't be saying a single word about plot until it is released. I may look for more gameplay suggestions, though.)

Please read all the way through the list before replying, as all points are dependent upon each other.

1. Game to be played in real-time.
2. There will be NO items that increase fatigue (arcane staves, etc.)
3. Most guns will do the same damage, and it will be a very large amount.
4. The difference in guns will be accuracy and speed. Most guns will be very, very slow. As in, so slow that after you fired you'd want to switch to a melee weapon.
5. Bows will all have the same range. Different bows will have different rates of fire and damage. Bows will always be inferior to guns on overall damage. Many bows will have high strength requirements.

I intend for these points to have the following consequences.

1. Mages will now be properly limited by their fatigue. If a player truly wants to be a pure mage and go around fireflashing everything to death, it will take some serious CP investment into constitution and fatigue.
2. All players will need some skill in melee and dodge, as combat will frequently close to close range. Consequently, monsters will be designed with this in mind so as not to be too easy.
3. The goal with guns is to simulate an American Revolution / French Musketeer level of technology. It'd be a "fire one shot and give 'em the steel, boys!" sort of thing. Thus, if you were attacked by, for example, two Brute Fangs, you could kill one with one shot and then finish the other off with your sword/axe/hammer/fish.
4. Bow users have an inherent advantage over gun users, as they get to put points into dex rather than perception. To balance that, bows will be shorter ranged and require higher strength than guns. Historically, the gun replaced the bow not because it was better, but because it was much easier to turn a peasant into a musketman than a bowman. The best bows will be comparable with the best guns/best magic, just different.

Comments? Thoughts?

(Message to the Mods: Please don't move me to the modding forum! It's dark in there, and I don't want to be eaten by a grue.)

Peace,
Luck

 

The crossbow started replacing the bow & long bow due to the low training time. The gun, far more expensive to build, & and only little more dufficult to learn than the crossbow, overtook it due to the terror effect & penetration.

Early on an arquibus volley could clear a path through a battlefield without hitting anything. Smoke, FIRE, THUNDER, EEEEEK! What they did hit, got a hole in it.

When crossbows were the most common ranged weapon, the armor just got heavier. As the gun took over, the armor melted away.

Now that I am done with my minor nit pick, are you going to change the costuming back a century or so as well?

 

The crossbow was not adopted by several civilizations that came to use the musket. Thus, while the change may have gone bow -> crossbow -> arquebus -> musket in some places, the universal trend can be abstracted to bow -> musket.

Not that this has anything to do with what I'm asking...

No, that's not required. Arcanum used Early Victorian clothing with Late Victorian weapons anyway.

Do you have a comment on the combat modifications I proposed?

Luck

 

Actually, the bows only COMPLETELY replaced guns very late in history. The last use of bows in combat was in 1812, during the battle of Leipzig. Bows had a lot of advantages over the first firearms, including longer effective range and less dependance on weather. The only real advantages of the firearms were easier aiming and the ability to keep the weapons loaded and ready to shoot for as long as it was necessery.

 

... which, I think, is exactly what I wrote.

I thank you guys for the bumps, but how about some thoughts about the topic at hand?

Luck

 

Not really, I would have to play it to see how it balanced. Puting the tech back a few years, & limiting the FT boosters might be a good thing, but it is hard to play an intelectual excersize.

Many of the bows in the game have an MSR in the 10 - 12 range. Bows should have differing ranges, speeds & damage. Front loading guns should also, but all should be much slower than the bow. The eaisest way to nerf bows would to change the perk for Expert training.

By the way, welcome aboard. :wavey:

 

Because (to my knowledge) you can't have the range of a bow vary with the user's strength, the only way to make that work is to have the bows have the same range.

I guess it makes more sense if I say "all bows with the same required strength have the same range".

... and thanks, it's good to be here.

Luck

 

My only comment would be to say that, personally, I don't use the realtime combat option. There are too many items and/or spells to use for this to be an effective option, as I see it; and in larger parties, with many followers, attempting to make sense out of the mess of tangled bodies and bizarre actions that my AI-driven people make is more than enough reason to stick with turn-based combat. Good luck with your porposed mod, though.

 

Actually, when I played Arcanum I always used turn-based too, as it feels more like Fallout. The problem is that the game doesn't enter turn-based combat until

A. You press the combat key, or
B. Someone starts actively beating on you.

This is especially annoying for ranged characters in random encounters.

I had the thought that I could give every critter a 0 damage ranged attack, so that as soon as they aggro on you they'd hit you for 0 damage. Hopefully that would kick the game into combat mode. I haven't tested that, though, so don't hold me to it.

Luck

 

Well no. The English Longbow had the greatest range in its day, but the composite bow as used by the mongols had a higher draw weight & more penetration. The limiting factors seem to be in the aerodynamics of the bow limbs & the arrow. The 39" clothyard shaft shed less speed due to its leingth, & the loooong draw of the English longbow (to the breast rather than to the cheek) gave it a more gradual acceleration.

But, in general, the higher the draw weight, the more range.

 

That was a very roundabout way of agreeing with me.

Luck

 

I've found that even though I pre-selected turn-based combat under Options before starting up a new game, I still had to go back in there again once the game was in progress, and choose turn-based one more time.

However, it does seem odd that as soon as you enter combat, all your opponents get first-round initiative. If I'm quick to hit the spacebar, as you suggest, I can sometimes grab it, but not always.

 

I guess my goal could be restated as follows:

I want to make it obvious when something attacks the Player. Considering the full range of effects and animations you've seen in the game, what would you consider a effective attention-getter to notify the player to enter turn-based combat?

I could ping the player character 3 times with the harm spell effect (just the effect, it wouldn't do any damage) for sort of a "red alert!" feel.

Any suggestions?

Luck

 

Well, yours would work -- so long as you use a different sound effect. I'd be scared ****less if I heard harm go off three times in rapid succession -- maybe some kind of alarm whoop would be good.

 

Whenever a creature enters view, a message could pop up about how your spidey sense is tingling. :lol:

 

Whoa.... I guess that would be the simple way.

Heh, I didn't think of that.

Not spidey-sense, of course, but "A creature approaches!" sort of thing.

Thanks Blinky.

Luck

 

Whenever a creature enters view, a message could pop up about how your spidey sense is tingling. :lol:

 

You already said that once! Why say it again?

 

I've been over-engineering my approach to bows.

Considering that both apprentice and expert give bow speed upgrades, the solution would be to just make bows slow.

Quite slow. Thus, only when you hit bow expert will you be firing at a respectable rate (faster than guns, but less than the blur of standard Arcanum. My first character was a bow user, and it really ruined the game by making it waaaaay too easy.)

Essentially, bows will only be intended to be used by Elves in my mod. Elves have a major cultural problem with guns. There will still be tech bows for the tech elf player, but everyone else will want to choose guns.

Comments are, as always, welcome.

Luck

 

I like the idea of race linked weapons, but if only Elves can shoot bows, that means my dwarves won't be able to use my favourite Pyro bow! Not fair!

Guns seem to be a human invention (even the Wheel Clan, the heart of the Dwarven clans, has no gunsmith). The use of guns could be reserved for the "city races- humans, half-elves, dwarves, halflings.

The Elves would never use or wear anything technological, out of their natural contempt to technology as such. They would also not use any weapons that require raw physical strength rather than skill- maces, axes and two-handed swords of all shapes and sizes.

Dwarves are people who are born with tech aptitude. It would be reasonable for them all to have a magic allergy. Also, it is possible that of all melee weapons the dwarves have only truly mastered their traditional weapon- the axe, which is why they refuse to use swords and daggers.