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Combat in RV is not just about arena duels. With the presence of NPC and other player combatants, often combat could involve many characters. Below you will find an explanation of the current plans for both combat and battles in Roma Victor. The specifics may well change over the course of development and you could have your own say in how things are developed simply by responding to the appropriate thread in the Features and Balance forums.
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Firstly it helps to understand a little about the way that Roma Victor's control system works. The escape key toggles between chat and navigation mode. In navigation mode, the keyboard controls your character's movements while the mouse controls where you're looking and some actions.
Also, it's a good idea to forget almost everything about other combat systems you may have experienced. For example, the reason hit points exist in RPG combat systems is to introduce chance and longevity to the activity. If the game simply said, "you see the monster, you're well-equipped and quite skilful so you kill it and move on" gameplay would suffer. Hit points and to-hit ratios etc. allow for player interaction (dice rolls and combat style decisions) and player satisfaction through longer fights.
So forget hit points altogether. Forget to-hit rolls and armour class ratings. Forget all that stuff. It'll help. In reality, the longevity in fights doesn't come from hitting someone for XX points of damage with your +1 longsword until all the XX's add up to their total health. In reality fights can be over quickly. In reality fights that last any decent amount of time are about wearing down your opponent's stamina (it's tiring stuff) or incapacitating them.
To illustrate the point we'll compare two combat examples:
Conventional RPG fight ...
Bandit hits you for XX points of damage.
You miss the bandit.
Bandit hits you for XX points of damage.
You hit the bandit for XX points of damage.
Bandit misses you.
You hit the bandit for XX points of damage.
The bandit dies.
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Real life fight ...
*Clank* as the bandit frantically blocks your sword with his shield.
*Smack* as your shield comes up under the bandit's chin. (That might do it - he's getting tired since you've both been fighting fiercely for several minutes and you're both slowing down.)
*Thunk* as the bandits poorly timed thrust misses introducing his hand to your helmet.
*Squelch* as your sword surprisingly slips through a gap in his lorica causing severe damage to the bandit's upper arm and causing him to collapse in a useless (probably screaming) heap.
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In Roma Victor, combat can be expected to have much more in common with the latter example.
Not a hit point in sight
It'll probably help if you take a look at the published screenshots for what follows. The screenshots mostly show first-person mode, which is the mode that you'll be using for combat.
Imagine a crosshair in the middle of the graphical view. There is one already in fact but it's going to remain invisible.
When you click your right mouse button in RV you apply whatever is in your character's right hand to whatever object your crosshair is over (range permitting etc.) If you happen to have a weapon in your right hand and the thing under your invisible crosshair is a part of a person or animal, then your character will swing your weapon at that particular part of that person or animal (again, so long as it's within range).
The type of swing can be altered by a simultaneous keypress - thrust, slash etc. Additionally, you can use whatever's in your left hand with the left mouse button.
It's pretty likely that you'll be using the keyboard to move at the same time since standing still isn't recommended in a RV fight - this makes aiming your invisible crosshair at someone's neck for that brief moment that it's vulnerable (since they'll be moving too) really quite tricky. When you do swing your weapon, your character's developed combat skills and the target's skills will be numerically tested against each other.
Incidentally it's highly unlikely that RedBedlam will ever share or discuss actual numbers about these systems (even with the GOCaT team) for fairly obvious reasons.
If your character's attack is successful then we test the weapon being wielded against the armour it's landed on - using some modifiers for your character's strength etc. Bear in mind that some weapons are more effective against some armours in certain situations. A leather sleeve may occasionally turn away a blade but it's not going to help much against a heavy warhammer being swung by a huge strong barbarian, for example.
If your attack is successful and it successfully penetrates the armour then damage will be done. Damage is location-based. You can disable or impair the function of someone's limbs, cause them to bleed profusely or kill them outright. Different types of weapons can do different types of damage.
Wounds affect your strength, abilities, mobility and all sorts of things. Don't expect a Roman merchant to serve you if you're bleeding all over the place – unless they're a physician of course.
All wounds can be treated by appropriately skilled characters. Apart from a graphical indication that something in some part of your body is wrong and a vague indicator of just how wrong things are, you won't have a terribly clear picture of exactly what's wrong with you until a healer diagnoses the details for you and hopefully gets to work fixing you up – this takes time however.
Here's the crucial bit
If RV combat was all about wiggling about and desperately repeat-clicking an opponent's face then it would get silly however sophisticated and realistic the armour/damage routine is.
The vital part in all this is of course timing. As I said earlier stamina is a big factor in real life combat.
From the published screenshot you may notice two liquid-meter-like indicators on the left of the interface. The blue one is currently called adrenalin and the red one is called vigour.
Whenever you do anything worthwhile including swing a weapon your character's vigour goes down a little. It recovers fairly slowly while your character is highly active and a bit quicker when not. Your adrenalin can only really be affected by something happening to you and usually (unlike the screenshots) it's low since it drops back down quite quickly.
If your vigour is below a certain threshold then there are some things you just can't do – like run fast for instance. Swinging weapons gets slower and harder too since you have to wait for your vigour to recover sufficiently to 'afford' the cost of the swing. When you're tired you'll have to decide between those energy-sapping heavy attacks or adopt a less draining style in the hopes that you can recover a bit.
Conversely, as your adrenalin rises you get faster and marginally stronger.
This arrangement has an interesting effect that is worth noting. If you creep up on someone and attack them, then you'll give them a healthy adrenalin boost just as you spend a good chunk of vigour attacking. The result is that the victim of the attack has a fight-or-flight option. If the victim simply leans on their run key then it's unlikely the attacker will be able to catch them (unless he has a mount or some fast friends waiting nearby). You may however choose to utilise your defender's advantage to the full and start swinging back in full force straight away. Indecision will be a problem – if you choose not to run immediately then you'll lose your adrenalin advantage and your opponent may well be able to cut you down as you run.
Incidentally, if you attack someone and there's a fair chance they knew it was coming (i.e. their character can see/hear you) then they get less of an adrenalin boost.
The rate at which vigour recovers is extremely important and although it won't vary hugely from player to player it's fair to say that the more physically developed characters will regain their vigour faster.
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The following features work all the time but their purpose is to support battles. Also bear in mind that these features are available to everyone – Barbarian or Roman so try not to think about cohorts or maniples too much.
In battles there are four types of participant: Skirmisher, Soldier, Commander and General.
Any player that just strolls into a battlefield could be considered a Skirmisher. People that just show up to fight and don't want to know about strategy/tactics will be Skirmishers.
As soon as a player selects a Commander they become a Soldier under the command of that Commander. Commanders are visually highlighted as such.
Commanders can very quickly issue fixed commands and assign a target to all the Soldiers under their command that are within range (shouting distance). When a target is assigned, every Soldier in the group sees that target highlighted. The brighter Commanders may try to spot enemy Commanders that they can point their unit at.
Commanders can also select a General. Unlike a Commander, a General can assign different targets to each of the Commanders under their command.
So as an example, a battle structure could look something like this on one side:
General Titus Flankus – player character Roman Legionary (Citizen class)
Commander Julius Beatus – player character Roman Legionary (Citizen class)
Ten Soldiers – mostly NPC's – all Roman Legionaries (Citizen class).
Commander (Lucius Overrunus – player character Roman Legionary (Citizen class)
Six Soldiers – one NPC and five player characters – all Roman Legionaries (Citizens).
Commander Arnal Routus – player character Roman Auxiliary (Slave class)
Eleven Soldiers – all player character Roman Auxiliaries (Slaves)
Twenty Skirmishers - player character Roman Auxiliaries (Slaves)
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In order for that battle structure to be set up, one of three players (Julius, Lucius and Arnal) must have been selected by various other players as their Commander. Those three players then selected Titus as their General. Also, twenty people showed up and didn't select a commander at all.
The idea of fixed cohorts, legions, regular armies and the like simply doesn't work in a virtual world where people don't literally sleep in the same barracks and may log on at different times.
The best we can do is keep the ranked structure of the Legion relatively historically authentic off the battlefield and allow some license for representational activity on the battlefield. Accordingly the battlefield ranks described above are entirely temporary and have nothing to do with any real rank that a player might hold within their Legion, for example.
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