22 November 2021 by jr101dallas
⇠ Back to PostsFunctional Wear
Armor is going to most likely be a thing. That means that I probably need to figure out what kinds of calculations it affects. Certainly the whole damage ablation effect and wear on the item is something that I’ll end up using. The idea of armor made of ice protecting a character from a blast of fire but being melted in the process is a fun topic. That example will have to wait for damage types, but the calculation concept can get started.
Also, armor might make a character overall harder to hit, literally or by effectively making a damaging blow difficult. Some kind of repulsor field might make aim have to be extremely precise. A displacement effect would affect aim by just making the character appear to be in a slightly different position than they really are. Both make landing a blow difficult. Armor that is very dense, hard, thick, or something similar, might not affect landing a blow at all, but hitting hard enough or doing enough damage to matter could be difficult.
Ablation Plan
The first part to tackle is reduction of damage. It should be pretty simple, maybe exactly the same as damage bonuses, only negative, except for the part where armor is on the defender, not on the offender.
That means that in addition to the int for damage bonus (penalty) on the item, I need to differentiate between the items and entities somehow or I sum the attacker’s weapon damage bonus and armor damage penalty into the attack attempt and then sum the defender’s weapon damage bonus and armor damage penalty when resolving the hit. No good there.
Wear Plan
I’m going to skip this idea for the moment. I’ll have to define what’s effectively BaseHealth and CurrentHealth for items to make it work. I’ll also have to implement the logic to cause wear when damage is done. And, I’ll have to figure out whether to make completely worn out items drop out of inventory (destroyed) or leave them there useless until they’re repaired. If it’s the latter, I also have to figure out how to make the item not apply bonuses while the item is supposed to be useless. I’ll get there eventually but not quite yet.
Aim Penalty Plan
This has a similar problem as the damage affecting numbers. Armor should help the defender and not the attacker, Weapon should help the attacker not the defender. Thinking about this; I’m wondering if different “damage types” might actually be a useful differentiator. Initially, I think not because it might mean a whole matrix of damage types, defensive fire damage, offensive cold damage. Just not making it a type and making it a different name will help keep things from being confusing.
At least I know my next steps.
tags: plan - item - defense