We've made some updates to the way combat works from a posture perspective.
In the OLD days, you could change posture at will, with no delay. This led to people attacking in kamikaze, and going guarded to defend, then going kamikaze again, all in a single combat round. The fastest typer won.
Then we updated that to make posture changes took effect only after a combat round had passed. It was still possible to game this a bit though.
We've now made an update that does two things:
1. When you change posture, everyone see's that you're 'moving to a new posture' even before that posture takes effect. This lets people react to your shift, instead of guessing at it.
Zenigra begins repositioning himself into a more kamikaze stance.
Bob begins repositioning himself into a more guarded stance.
Then when the change takes effect you see the normal:
Bob backs and covers, defending himself.
2. Postures are a progression now. If you are offensive and you want to go guarded, you can still do 'posture guarded' but upon the next combat round you are going to be switched to 'neutral' and the round after that to 'defensive' and then after that, finally, to guarded.
Example:
Current Posture: offensive
posture guarded
Zenigra begins repositioning himself into a more guarded stance.
COMBAT ROUND
Zenigra attacks.
Zenigra holds his ground, weighing the situation. [shift to neutral]
COMBAT ROUND
Zenigra attacks.
Zenigra backs and covers, defending himself. [shift to defensive]
COMBAT ROUND
Zenigra attacks.
Zenigra backs off completely. [shift into guarded]
This adds a layer of strategy to combat that we didn't have before. It also prevents people from gaming the system by going from SUPER DEFENSE to SUPER OFFENSE right away.
It opens the door for us to do some interesting things with regards to the steps it takes to go from one posture to another (these aren't implemented and are just teasers of where we might take it):
* create cyberware that lets you change postures faster.
* allow weapon specialization to make switching postures faster.
* drugs allowing you to change posture faster
* MA specialization allowing you to change postures faster.
* Other things of that nature.
Even without those additions, Cerb and my testing found combat to be more fluid, easier to follow, and interesting.
It may take a bit of getting used to, so i recommend if you are a combat character you do some sparring practice (perhaps with the new spartek weapons) and get a feel for it. We wholly expect this to shift combat strategy a bit, especially for those of you who have been using the kamikaze/guarded combo to your immediate advantage.
For those of you unfamiliar with postures, 'help postures' and 'help advanced-combat' for more information on how these work. This is a great time to get more accustomed to this code. Postures help win battles!
If you encounter any bugs, please xhelp. This is new code and there could be edge cases we missed in our testing.
Questions?
-- S
