Should combat mechanics be overhauled or tweaked?

[Thundercraft]

My biggest gripe with combat has to be how highly likely it is for a pawn to die from a single shot or blow. Aside from how unrealistic this seems and how difficult this makes it to capture raiders, this also makes it impossible for modders to create any sort of truly non-lethal weapons (such as tranquilizer darts or a taser, stun gun, or baton).

From this recent post in the Your Cheapest Ideas thread:

- Reduce the chance of raiders of insta dying.

I've read that projectiles are lethal about 50% of the time. Why should it be so high? I'm not the only one to think that the insta-death per shot should be drastically reduced. The only time a shot should mean instant death is in the unlikely event that it hits one of the two vital organs: the heart or brain. If given medical treatment, even a hit to the lung is survivable - unless the victim can't breathe or bleeds out (both of which the combat mechanics already simulates separately from insta-death shot lethality, anyway). If any other organ was hit, death would come more slowly. And perhaps an organ transplant (or artificial organ) could save them.

Make all body parts of the body less likely to be destroyed, it seems that they are made of paper... The torso (and internal organs) should be able to get hit more often while small parts like nose, ears, eyes, etc should have less chance to get hit.

I agree. Parts like nose, ears, and eyes are quite small. At range, a shooter would be hard pressed to hit them even if it was carefully aimed at. Them being shot off unintentionally during combat should be rare.

Also, limbs like arms, legs, hands and feet should not be so easily destroyed by a single gun shot.

I like the way these things are fixed in Combat Realism:

• Generally, limbs are tougher while organs are squishier and bleed much more. A rifle shot to an unprotected heart is lethal, but it does not send an arm flying. Only repeated hits or a high power round (.50cal, Lasgun, etc.) can destroy limbs.
• Internal body parts are significantly more likely to be hit. The human body is chock-full of vital organs and you are much more likely to hit one of them rather than this generic "torso" area that 80% of vanilla bullets would hit.
• Battle wounds cause more pain, more bleeding and more penalties overall.

That last part brings me to another big problem I have with the vanilla combat system:

Currently, the only way a pawn can fall unconscious is if their Consciousness stat falls extremely low. And about the only time a pawn goes into shock is if their pain reaches "extreme". (Or, perhaps, from extreme blood loss?) But these things seem to only occur if they're very close to death, if at all.

This makes it very unlikely to capture a particular raider as they will almost certainly die before falling unconscious or even go into shock.

In fact, it seems that the game is currently coded such that if the Consciousness stat falls to zero or below, that automatically means death. This seems silly: Loss of consciousness literally means that the victim has fainted or otherwise slipped into an unconscious state. It should not mean instant death.

In real life, melee punches have a good chance of knocking someone unconscious. And, unless a gun shot hits a vital organ or they bleed out, there's a good chance that the victim will go into shock before they die.

Also, it seems unrealistic that all raiders have the macabre grit of a fanatic or cultist. They seem 100% driven to fight until death rather than fail their raid or face capture.

Is there even a game mechanic that would allow them to flee in the face of overwhelming losses or debilitating injuries? Wouldn't at least some of them prefer to run away? Wouldn't some eventually surrender, throwing themselves at the mercy of the enemy in the hope that they might get medical treatment to live another day, perhaps in the hope to get sold back to their faction? Even slavery might be better than facing certain death.

Also, I want to point out the following from the Frequent Suggestions Topic:

Tactical combat - Tactical options from tactical games, such as prone, crawl, suppression, and automatic behaviors: aggressive, cautious, defensive.

Some of those would be useful, I think. It might make combat more interesting / varied. I could see how crawling should increase cover, even when there are no trees or walls to hide behind.

Finally, I want to suggest that RimWorld's combat mechanics include an option to make a called shot or otherwise target a specific limb or area. Why not allow pawns to target the head, at the cost of reduced accuracy? In theory, it might put the enemy (or beast) down faster. Or, in the case of weaponless melee, a hit to the head of targets should have a good chance of knocking them unconscious.

Alternatively, perhaps the goal is to shoot off a limb? Perhaps our colony recently developed prosthetic limbs/parts and the player is itching to try them out? Or, perhaps the doctor is begging for a chance to practice their seldom-used medical skills? Maybe we want to (literally) disarm them without killing? Maybe we want to harvest their organs?

Even with such improvements and even with the ability to make called shots, I'm not expecting RimWorld's combat mechanics to evolve into something like Kisat Dur (Dwarven martial arts). RimWorld is real-time and not turn-based, after all. But, with a bit of effort, combat could be so much more interesting.

Some may argue that such suggestions would require a lot of time and effort which could be spent on other parts of the game. However, a lot of these changes have already been implemented as part of Combat Realism, which I nominated to be included in the base game. It includes several other commonly-suggested changes, too, such as the need to use ammo.

[schizmo]

I don't know what is happening every time you play Rimworld, maybe you play with different settings or mods or something, but when I play it Raiders flee regularly. The moment you've eliminated 50% or more of the raid the remaining raiders turn tail and run, and the game notifies you that the raiding party is fleeing. As for consciousness, the stat is more related to a character's ability to stay conscious, not whether or not they've been knocked unconscious by a punch to the face. Things like extreme pain, radiation toxicity, heat stroke or hypothermia are all methods to drop a pawn unconscious prior to death (because usually the thing that makes them pass out is also about to kill them). As for shock, characters incapacitated in combat are almost ALWAYS in shock due to the trauma that caused them to become incapacitated, like blown off limbs or severe bleed rates. The only time in my experience that this doesn't happen is when an artificial limb is blown off (which experiences no pain) or perhaps a character with a pain stopper implant who doesn't feel pain but still cannot walk because they're missing a leg. Other than that, every combat incapacitated character should be in shock.

As for kill over incapacitation, the game is coded specifically to make incapacitation events happen less and less frequently the more colonists you have, it's done as a form of population control. (Similarly the more colonists you have the fewer random recruitment events you will see, and eventually they will stop all together.) And since Sharp damage is generally stronger than Blunt damage and guns are ranged Sharp damage weapons, they're inherently stronger and thus more likely to kill the enemy. If you want to beat someone into submission you have to use blunt melee weapons and even that will become less reliable once you start creeping near the population limit. Even with all this in mind you should still be able to incapacitate enemies with guns, so unless you've got some incredibly efficient killing machines or you're playing on a super easy difficulty where it's easy to kill everyone because they don't wear armor and have low HP to begin with, you should still have at least some chance to incapacitate.

Honestly it doesn't even sound like you're playing the same game. I've experienced none of what you're describing.

I will agree that instant kills should be limited to the destruction of things like hearts and brains, but asking for that to be the change will only make those injuries more common because the death rate isn't going to drop. It's a fundamental part of population control, which is a fundamental part of managing game difficulty, for this to change would alter the entire experience of the game from its core.

[Thundercraft]

First, thank you for replying.

I don't know what is happening every time you play Rimworld, maybe you play with different settings or mods or something, but when I play it Raiders flee regularly.

I do play with a lot of mods. Perhaps a few of them impact combat in some way. However, I probably should have stated that I am still pretty new to the game. Also, so far, the raids I've experienced have been small and don't last very long.

As for consciousness, the stat is more related to a character's ability to stay conscious, not whether or not they've been knocked unconscious by a punch to the face.

What I was complaining about was how it seems fatal when a pawn loses all capacity for consciousness. (See this wiki page on Health.)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what that means or how that works. But I was under the impression that this may be why a weapon modded specifically to decrease Consciousness is likely to kill instead of incapacitate. You can reduce their consciousness such that it becomes very low, at which point they will likely fall unconscious. However, this seems to be a tricky balancing act. If the weapon reduces their consciousness too far (such that they have none left), they seem to die instantly.

I've spent some time trying to mod such a weapon and it seems very difficult if not impossible. Others have tried, before me, and have come to same conclusion. Yes, there is a Tranq gun mod as well as mods that add a Stun gun or Baton. But none of them are entirely non-lethal. I say that, even taking into account how many attacks are lethal, regardless. I'm talking about testing those things statistically.

Things like extreme pain, radiation toxicity, heat stroke or hypothermia are all methods to drop a pawn unconscious prior to death (because usually the thing that makes them pass out is also about to kill them).

I was wondering if I could capture raiders by inducing a heat stroke or hypothermia... Good to know.

As for shock, characters incapacitated in combat are almost ALWAYS in shock due to the trauma that caused them to become incapacitated, like blown off limbs or severe bleed rates...

I believe that you misunderstood me. I was arguing that I did not think it should be necessary for a pawn to be subjected to extreme, near-death trauma before they would ever become incapacitated from shock. I think that there should be a decent, random chance for pawns to succumb to shock before they lose a limb and before their trauma reaches the near-death point.

Also, I was trying to point out how often it seems that a pawn will die without ever going into shock. But then, that may be my limited experience (with mods, at that).

Even with all this in mind you should still be able to incapacitate enemies with guns, so unless you've got some incredibly efficient killing machines or you're playing on a super easy difficulty where it's easy to kill everyone because they don't wear armor and have low HP to begin with, you should still have at least some chance to incapacitate.

As I said, I have not been playing for very long. And, until I feel more confident, I have been playing on the lower difficulties. So the raiders I've seen so far have been relative pushovers (though, sometimes with nasty weapons).

I was basing most of my experience with lethality on my testing of so-called "non-lethal" weapons. Even a tranq gun that does a mere 1 point of damage seemed lethal about 50% of the time, despite having the ability to knock them unconscious in 1 or 2 shots. And a stun gun (melee) was still often lethal, despite doing 0 points of damage. This did not seem to have much to do with how such weapons were coded so much as how the game was coded. What you've just told me about "kill over incapacitation" and "population control" seems to confirm that.

As for kill over incapacitation, the game is coded specifically to make incapacitation events happen less and less frequently the more colonists you have, it's done as a form of population control. (Similarly the more colonists you have the fewer random recruitment events you will see, and eventually they will stop all together.)

Wow! I did not know that. I do see the point. It would be bad to gain more and more recruits and convert more and more prisoners until it lags your computer and becomes a statistical nightmare to manage. And, yes, I see how population control is a matter of managing game difficulty and balance.

However, I feel that such a mechanism is going about population control in the wrong way. Instead, wouldn't it make more sense to make it impossible to recruit prisoners, no matter how good our negotiator / warden is?

Doing it that way, instead of by gradually increasing weapon lethality, would make it easier for players to capture raiders for the sole purpose of either harvesting organs or selling/releasing them back to their faction (or into slavery).

It's also a more realistic approach.

...asking for that to be the change will only make those injuries more common because the death rate isn't going to drop.

I'd rather see lethal brain and heart injuries so I'd at least know why they dropped dead from one or two shots.

I will agree that population control is necessary. But I disagree that decreasing the lethality of attacks would be an inherently bad idea. Changing the death rate would not impact population control if a different method was used for that.

[schizmo]

The trouble with being able to capture raiders when you've reached a population limit is that the game is also hard coded so the maximum recruitment difficulty is 99% so that it's never impossible to recruit someone, this way if you get unlucky with a difficult prisoner early in the game you're not entirely screwed by getting a series of impossible prisoners. This also allows players who are lucky enough to incapacitate a raider after they've hit the upper limit of their population cap to be able to recruit their prisoners EVENTUALLY (the caps are soft, technically it's unlimited it just gets substantially more difficult to increase population due to the death rate raising and recruit rate dropping)

Similarly if hard limits were imposed and recruitment was literally impossible, the player might not be aware and could waste valuable time and resources attempting to recruit without realizing their efforts were futile. Short of breaking the immersion and literally telling the player "you can no longer recruit any new colonists" there wouldn't be another way to let the player know that such limits existed or had been reached, which is one reason the current system of "hard but not impossible" is so useful. I do agree that it puts a strain on organ harvesting and surgery practice, though, but by this point in the game the player should be able to reasonably purchase organs for a stockpile.

[Lightzy]

It's the call-of-duty school of 'realism' there

Let me tell you the truth though dude, if you're HOLDING something, and a bullet hits the thing you're HOLDING, it can be enough to mangle your hand irrecoverably just from the impact, never mind the scattered shrapnel which can easily puncture your vital everythings.

Anyway I agree combat should be rehauled, if only because the starting rifle is the best gun in the game pretty much (based on availability also), but disagree with everything the OP posted.