[A17] VE-CO. Vanilla Friendly Combat Overhaul - Updated to A17

[Madman666]

Every time a wound is sealed it stops bleeding immediately, which add hours. Have you played with mods or are these theories?

"Kiting a Thrumbo called a cheese? Wow. I thought feeding it with beer and then slaughtering called cheese or building it up in a box while it sleeps and starving it to death called cheese."

And please explain how would it change difficulty. With kiting you take zero damage. Without kiting you take zero damage. It's already broken in vanilla, unless I increase speed of animals or give them guns so you can't do it.

Yes patching up a wound prolongs estimated lifetime of wounded. So you suggest patching up one wound so that person doesn't die, then switching to next wounded before he dies, patching up his 1 wound again so he won't die, while you switch to next one which is on the verge of death? Micromanagement hell I call it.

"And please explain how would it change difficulty"
Here you go - Thrumbo runs faster than colonists, so because its hard to bring it down it usually still gets a hit or two off, unless you're unloading on it with like 12 guys as the same time with good automatic weapons. With pain doubled it'll drop before it can do anything at all even if you shoot it with 3 guys and standard weapons.

And no - I admit I haven't tested your mods enough to call it more than theories and I judge by vanilla standart bleeding and tending mechanics. But three shots from survival rifle or two from charge lance killing a person in ~1.9-2 hours? I can tell thats too harsh even before I actually get to it.

[Aristocat]

Every time a wound is sealed it stops bleeding immediately, which add hours. Have you played with mods or are these theories?

"Kiting a Thrumbo called a cheese? Wow. I thought feeding it with beer and then slaughtering called cheese or building it up in a box while it sleeps and starving it to death called cheese."

And please explain how would it change difficulty. With kiting you take zero damage. Without kiting you take zero damage. It's already broken in vanilla, unless I increase speed of animals or give them guns so you can't do it.

Yes patching up a wound prolongs estimated lifetime of wounded. So you suggest patching up one wound so that person doesn't die, then switching to next wounded before he dies, patching up his 1 wound again so he won't die, while you switch to next one which is on the verge of death? Micromanagement hell I call it.

"And please explain how would it change difficulty"
Here you go - Thrumbo runs faster than colonists, so because its hard to bring it down it usually still gets a hit or two off, unless you're unloading on it with like 12 guys as the same time with good automatic weapons. With pain doubled it'll drop before it can do anything at all even if you shoot it with 3 guys and standard weapons.

And no - I admit I haven't tested your mods enough to call it more than theories and I judge by vanilla standart bleeding and tending mechanics. But three shots from survival rifle or two from charge lance killing a person in ~1.9-2 hours? I can tell thats too harsh even before I actually get to it.

Okay, I just had a quite trouble make everyone survive from bleeding because I had to attack a siege from the opposite of map and stupid game don't allows you treat human in the ground which oddly able to do to animals.

Treating time itself doesn't consume much time, maybe 30 minutes to treat 4 wounds even with 5 level doctor, the problem is travel time.

I think prisoner bleed death make mod balanced because increased pain means they are more likely incapped. I just had 5 raiders downed which I could only capture two because not enough colonists to carry them.

Otherwise? I think it's fairly balanced, although I might reduce bleeding a bit, 300% to maybe 200% or 250%.

Do note that you don't even have to use blood and pain mod.

And as for thrumbo I don't think you can kill them with standard weapons unless you use shoot-and-pop-in cheese. Even with twice more pain it take dozens of shot to take them down, and even if you do able to do it, it's RNG based event and you might even not see them so it's not really broken. And even if say it's REALLY broken, you can do it doesn't mean you must do it. Also do note that pain in the legs doesn't mean they are slowed down, this mod doesn't increase damage.

[Madman666]

Its actually my bad - it was bouncing around in my brain that fights actually happen quite a lot in far away spots and actually delivering a person in time on maps more than default size can be problematic, but I somehow got glued to tending speed and such. You still can just place a sleeping spot and treat a person on point if your doc is a part of strike team, but treat quality will be guaranteed crap, which will lead to scar hell. And also its unfortunately can't be done to prisoners, as they require enclosed room with a sleeping spot, which is too bad (you can still arrange it to have "shelters" close to map borders, but thats... just feels wrong).

I'll play around with your mods, but I think playing with toughened bodies but without bleed rate will be way to unbalanced to even consider a run.

Thrumbo can be kited even with standart weapons without door pop-in\out tactics if you manage its aggro by making it switch from one pawn to another that is closer at the moment (and it will switch to closest target often), changing its path and wasting time being shot by two others. That does feel exploity, but I don't think anything can be done, that won't screw up animal combat AI completely.

What I suggest for you to try doing - play around with sieges on ludeonicrous maps (biggest) - see what kind of bleed rate allows you just barely make it in time to save someone badly wounded if you don't waste time on useless crap and if you have couple of trained fast dogs on stand by with your strike team. That should be the goal - you'll be able to save a person if you don't derp, but otherwise you'll pay for your inattention with your trained colonist.

[Aristocat]

Released an easy version that reduces bleed rate 3 times to 2 times.

TIP : If you want to get prisoners without easy mod don't use guns, explosives, and stabby weapons. Instead, use scratch, burn, crush or blunts. scratch and crush still cause bleeding but it's less than half of bullet wounds and stabby.

I don't know where the arrows falls but I think they cause less bleed as well.

[Madman666]

Released an easy version that reduces bleed rate 3 times to 2 times.

TIP : If you want to get prisoners without easy mod don't use guns, explosives, and stabby weapons. Instead, use scratch, burn, crush or blunts. scratch and crush still cause bleeding but it's less than half of bullet wounds and stabby.

I don't know where the arrows falls but I think they cause less bleed as well.

Bow and arrow causes cuts (strangely enough not shots) and they bleed as hell. So yeah for prisoners blunt is all the way... Won't be easy though, because they always outnumber you and can bruise you to knock out as easy as you can them.

[Aristocat]

Bow and arrow causes cuts (strangely enough not shots) and they bleed as hell. So yeah for prisoners blunt is all the way... Won't be easy though, because they always outnumber you and can bruise you to knock out as easy as you can them.

Cuts still cause 25% less bleed than gunshots. Vanilla 0.04 for gunshots 0.03 for cuts, with mod 0.12 for gunshots and 0.09 for cuts. Enough to add few more hours.

I think I'm actually getting too many prisoners. I'm now selling them, it's nice roleplaying.

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[Aristocat]

Okay, I'm going to separate bleed part. So if anyone doesn't want bleed you can get only pains. I found mod still quite hard without bleeding, because although colonists will more likely survive it doesn't mean you can fight with all of your colonists downed, and without field treating it's kind of frustrating really.

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One thing about animals : They survive better, but they still lose body parts kind of too easily. If anyone want I'm going to make Tougher Animals. It will be compatible with adogsaid but I wish this mod would make adogsaid almost unnecessary.

I will not touch small critters like rats or bunny though, I'm going to buff bigger creatures like bears, wolves, and panthers to almost impossible to lose body parts.

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If I can I think I'm going to make personal shield tougher, make it regenerate extremely slowly but has around ten times health.

Better qualitied melee weapons : Make higher quality melee weapons reduce the cooldown of attack and increase damage. I found melee weapons deal ridiculously low DPS while fighting infest.

Any thoughts?

[Hans Lemurson]

This get away from vanilla, but wouldn't the best way to deal with blood loss in emergency situations be blood transfusions?  Wouldn't close their wounds or staunch the flow, but refills their precious bodily fluids so that they can stay among the living a little longer.

[Aristocat]

This get away from vanilla, but wouldn't the best way to deal with blood loss in emergency situations be blood transfusions?  Wouldn't close their wounds or staunch the flow, but refills their precious bodily fluids so that they can stay among the living a little longer.

Because it would be hard to code. If someone can make field treating and slower blood regenerate with blood transfusions would make nice realism mod.

[Madman666]

You are kidding right? 10 times tougher shield? If you get a "shield wave" of trasher melees you're done for! If you get like 5-10 of them they already swarm you even if you have turrets and now you want to make them invulnerable to ranged fire? Is that to inspire people to use melee more? No, thanks, being melee when ratio friend to enemy is 1:3 1:5? Nope.

[Aristocat]

You are kidding right? 10 times tougher shield? If you get a "shield wave" of trasher melees you're done for! If you get like 5-10 of them they already swarm you even if you have turrets and now you want to make them invulnerable to ranged fire? Is that to inspire people to use melee more? No, thanks, being melee when ratio friend to enemy is 1:3 1:5? Nope.

I was actually thinking about an upgraded version of personal shield so not really accessed by the raider, with around power armor level of research requirement + rare resource like gold. With separate release from VE-CO. That mod would be kind of like super-awesome-melee modpack.

Also, I was thinking making big creatures like wolves and bears nearly invincible(but still vulnerable to bleeding and pain) would be awesome, but I wonder if that would be balanced...

To make melee more viable we need medivel shield mod from skullywag in my opinion. Melee skill in general are just utterly lackluster in vanilla.

Also I think I can use MAI mod to make scythers and centipedes craftable, obviously should be separated release.

[Madman666]

Why so centered on melee? Melee mostly sucks, even high melee skill doesn't do much. In my opinion melee needs like complete and utter overhaul from skills (different things like dodge, counters, blocks, grazes, knockdowns for animals - pounces, - its too primitive right now, it adds just hit chance which is quite high anyway). Its sucks mostly because you're always outnumbered and with current melee system a godlike 20 lvl figher can easily lose just by RNG to a complete novice, so its not viable at all. The only way melee is useful is if you have a bunch of enemies with ranged weapons, that you can instantly force into melee, while your guys have proper melee weapons, giving you advantage (that still can be negated if enemies heavily outnumber you).

Those advanced shields... well they can be useful to equip on a "bullet sponge" colonist to redirect fire, but I doubt people will actually switch to melee. Too many enemies to deal with, while the danger is too high. Losing limbs in melee is too easy.

How exactly are you plan to make wolves and bears invincible? Right now if you send someone to hunt in winter on the other end of the map and a hungry wolf decides to hunt him - in 90% of times he'll be dead, because wolves pretty much can't be defeated with bare fists and hunter always have ranged weapon. And you don't get the notification until wolf is already tearing him apart. Making them even more powerful can have... unwanted side effects. I am all up for diversifying melee combat and increasing combat pets usefulness, but I can't imagine it without incorporating a whole new melee system with mentioned things like pounces, deadly bear hugs, dodges and etc... I'd really like to have that, but that would probably require either insanely advanced coding expertise for a modder or for big T to make it himself.

If you can make mech available for use for colony defense - well that would be nothing short of a miracle - people are drooling all over mechanoids lately and I am too. But MAI just uses "reskinned" colonist entity - it still needs rest (instead of charge), it still bleeds, has a mood (which is buffed +100 by adroid trait) and etc... Its a solution and its better than nothing, but I can't see them as anything more that a colonist with a slightly different sprite. I don't think you can bypass those limitations easily until big T opens up more game's resources in xml.

[XeoNovaDan]

Yeah, the brawler trait is effectively useless as it stands. This is supposed to be addressed next alpha though...

[Madman666]

Yeah, the brawler trait is effectively useless as it stands. This is supposed to be addressed next alpha though...

I really hope you are right. I highly doubt, T will overhaul melee system as a whole though... Its a lot of stuff to add and he himself said, that A17 will be a refining patch-build.

[XeoNovaDan]

Yeah, slight tweaking to at least make melee SEEM more worthwhile is one thing... a complete overhaul is another

I think it'll be a while though, if you look at the poll.