Duke Patrick's Archery And Heavy Weapons Combat Rev 6

get it here:

http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/1139-duke-patricks-heavy-weapons-combat/

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3646


If you are upgrading from a previous revision of my mod, then you MUST do a SKYRIM CLEAN install! Read the Skyrim Clean install Read me file that comes with this mod for instructions.


This mod and all it's features is a port of my Oblivion mod. It is intended to be a melee combat simulator (as much as I can mod Skyrim to be anyway) based on my 30 years of medieval western heavy weapons (SCA tournament) fighting. I was King twice and hold the rank of Duke and Knight in the SCA.

see here: http://www.spookyfx.com/book/tromp.html

But this is also a work in progress! There are still many features needed to give all play styles more ways to fight. Some features will not be possible until SKSE allows it. This will not stop me from working on the features I can do now.

I will avoid game-ish features and contrived game balance mechanics when I possibly can. Please do not ask me to include such features. And the PACE of the combat will possibly be slower than you are use to in games. But it will also be brutal and you will actually feel the weight in your attacks and blocks!


Real life SCA combat is wonderfully brutal, fascinatingly tactical and unbelievably FUN even if you lose the fight. There is no reason PC game combat cannot be the same way if it is designed to do so properly.


Below is only a brief list of the mod's features, refer to the ReadMe files for details.
(for all actors including the player except were noted.)


Some Of The New Archery Features:

Strength will be more important than marksman skill for RAW massive damage with arrows. If you are not strong enough to effectively draw a powerful bow you will not do as much damage as those that are. However marksmanship will prevent you from missing what you aim at. So you will hit your critical shots more often and not miss the target as often. If you have very poor marksmanship your arrows will not hit where you aim.

All actors can now run while drawing and shooting a bow. However your aim will be horribly affected unless your marksman skill is extremely high. Running is the worse movement. The moment after you fire a bow will add to your inaccuracy, each time you fire another shot too soon after the last one your aim gets progressively worse.

Crouching (sneak mode) will double your aim effectiveness.

Low stamina will be the worse thing for your aim.

When you are in 1st person and moving around while drawing your bow you will see bow sway.

Marksman skill will reduce the amount of visual bow sway you see in first person.

You will now have Locational hits with bows (and locational armor counts just like melee weapons).

A head shot to an actor with no helmet can be a kill in one shot even with a low end bow as long as you draw back arrow all the way first. However you will find that hitting the head in combat may not be so easy unless your target in close range.


New Archery Perks:

Vanilla Perk Name......New Name................New Effect (old effect no longer used)

Critical Shot............... Accuracy.................Increase arrow accuracy by 20%

Ranger......................Arrow To The Knee....If your aim is true (arrow shoots on the cross hair) and you hit the legs, only need 5% (instead of 20%) damage to trip and fall your target.

BullsEye....................BullsEye....................If your aim is true (arrow shoots on the cross hair) you hit the gaps in the armor (armor is ignored)!


Arrow To The Knee adds the opportunity to target the knee. "Targeting the knee" means you may hit the target legs with LESS damage but you will still make them trip and fall as long as you do at least 5% damage.

Normally to make the target trip and fall with a bow shot you must hit the legs and do 20% damage OR hit the legs while you are directly behind the target and in close range with 5% damage.

Bullseye only works if your arrow is shot on the cross hair. If your accuracy is bad from moving, low stamina or from a low marksman skill you will often not fire your arrow on the crosshair (you will miss).

My new archery perks can be combined to do devastating attacks. For example you can combine Accuracy, Bulls Eye and Arrow To The Knee together and you will not have to worry about multiple armored opponents overrunning you as you mow them down before they can reach you!





Smash of the Titians

Any actor can be bat around like a rag-doll if the other actor is much bigger and stronger. The weapon mass you block with and the weapon mass that is used to hit you are factors in this as well. So if you have a large male orc use a war hammer to smash a small female elf blocking with her shortsword she is going to get knock around the room.

But if that same orc is slapped by a dragon that orc is most likely going to fly across the battlefield.

Factors include: Weapons mass (modified by blocking skill), Strength (size of actors + 10% health), Stamina of the attacker
and Power Attack.




Dynamic Blocking Stamina Burn

Weapon mass used to attack is offset by the weapon mass used to block (and modified by blocking skill).
Top heavy weapons used to attack get a bonus.
Shields used to block get a bonus that is proportional to the size of the shield.
Attacker Strength divided by Defender Strength.
Doubled if it is a Power Attack



Dynamic Damage and Momentum Bonus.

Stamina now affects how much damage actors will do!
Rotational movement and Liner Movement in the direction of the attack will increase the damage done. (Coming in REV 6)



Locational Damage and Locational Armor

A power shot to a head that is not protected by armor can be a fatal one shot! A blow that does enough damage to the legs can trip your opponent.

Head shots give the most damage, the body does about half of the head and the legs/feet do the least amount of damage. However the locational damage multipliers are player configurable in the Configuration file or by the console.

So fights could be fast and brutal or go on for a long time depending on how well they block and what armor they are wearing versus what weapons you are using and where you hit them!





Configuration File
New file now comes in the mod zip package called: aadpCombat
Set all your preferences in this file.

To Run as a Batch File in Skyrim via the Console: Start up Skyrim. While in game, open the console (default key: ~ or `).

Type "bat aadpCombat", without quotes and the console will handle the rest!




Combat Endurance
This kind of combat is so physically intensive that sometimes the victor is not the most skilled, she or he may only be in much better condition than the loser. You can literally defeat your opponent by outlasting them as long as you make no mistakes in your defense. This fact will make building your stamina base up to high levels just as important as your health and skill.




NPC Can Fumble!
NPC might hit each other by accident if they miss hitting you and they are crowding in and around you.



Duke Patrick's Feint System!
Now you and the other actors can be tricked into opening your defense with true to life feinting mechanics that is part player skill and part actor skill!





Left Hand Weapon Attacks Are More Difficult To Defend Against!
Forget all the movie and game nonsense you have heard about Florentine style (two weapons) the real reason fighters used this style when it was their choice to do so (not just out of necessity in the fog of battle) was because it can confuse and mentally overwhelm the opponent adding effectiveness to the feints. When you or any actor attack with the left hand weapon this adds bonuses to your success to bypass their defense!



Increased Backwards Speed Plus Trip And Fall Risk
THIS IS NOT DONE WITH RANDOM DICE THROWS!
The falls result from running into objects in Skyrim!

This Trip and Fall feature can be adjusted or turned off in the console.



Bow Draw Stamina Consumption
Normal drawing of the bow now consumes stamina. This can be adjusted or turned off in the console.


Bow Dynamic Draw Time
The time it takes to fully draw the bow is derived form the bows base damage.


Bow Draw Dynamic Damage
If the archer does not fully draw the bow actors will not inflict full damage. As long as the archer fully draws back the bow they will do full damage
no matter how much stamina is left with when the arrow is released.



Attack Blocks!
If you attack with a normal or power attack while you have a melee weapon and while your opponents is attacking and you hit the weapon (aim at their arm) that is attacking you may be able to deflect their weapon attack.




Actors Show Pain
All actors react to getting hit! This is based on damage done not by a random dice throw! If the player or other actors are hit with only a little damage no pain reactions ("stagger") will trigger, but if hit with a lot of damage (20% of current health on each attack) actors will stagger.
This means anything that reduces the power of the attack (such as armor, magic or actor low stamina ...and more) could prevent the pain reaction.



Combat Pacing
The heaver your weapon the more stamina is consumed for attacks. The more damage that hits you the more stamina is consumed to block.

Block Skill will matter much more now to block damage. So although your shield and weapons can block a LOT more damage you sill not do so unless you have a LOT of skill.

Combat stamina auto regeneration rate is now very low! However you can FAST REST by not moving nor attacking nor blocking nor casting magic. This means you need to use footwork and timing (timing attacks and timing blocks) to get your stamina back up to good levels.

Actors must have 25% or more Stamina or they will not be able to do a power attack nor a bash attack.
Normal attacks cannot be done unless you have more than 10% stamina.

IF YOUR STAMINA IS ZERO YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FIGHT! A slight blur effect will nag you but you will also not be able to block!





Hand to hand now has a chance to block a melee weapon attack
If you have the Block skill, you can do close in grapple blocks that can even stop a war hammer by impeding the limbs that swing the weapon instead of taking the force of the weapon from the weapon's head straight into your arm.



Dynamic Weapon Speed
Actors (NPC and player) weapon speed slows way down when stamina is under %25. The start of the attack will be very slow as the actor struggle to engage the weapon. But it will swing at a normal speed. This is a big clue to the player that the other actor is in a depleted state of stanima.




Less "Arcade" Like Weapons Speeds
Weapons speeds (all weapons even from other mods) are now modified by weapon type. H2H and 2h blades (balanced) move a little faster than was in the vanilla game and all other weapons including the 2h top heavy weapons like a mace or axe move a little slower. This works for all weapons even from other mods. Weapon length will also effect the speed so longer weapons will tend to move slower than shorter weapons.



Normal Attacks Consume Stamina Depending On Their Type
In order of cost:
Fist
Dagger
Sword
2h sword, 1H Mace and Axe
2h Mace and Axe

Swinging Balanced weapons like blades will use much less stamina than when your weapon actually hits a target. For technical reasons this feature only works on living targets not things like trees.

Swinging without hitting a target with a Top Heavy weapon like a mace or axe will use much more stamina than when your weapon actually hits a target. For technical reasons this feature only works on living targets not things like trees.




Combat Geometry
Rear Flank attacks do extra damage and get bonuses to tripling and other critical hits.



More Realistic Attack Range
Melee combat range is set WAY down and now will play much more realistically and allow for more intuitive action.



Weapons Block Arrows
Swords and other weapons can now deflect arrows IF the arrow hits the weapon no perk needed!. (Player only for now.)



Shields Block Elemental Damage
The 90% elemental protection perk is automatic when you use a shield (Player only for now.)

Please note: Block Perk tree is rearranged. ( I plan to add to it in future revisions of this mod.)



No Auto Aim! (the attack magnetism)
Now attacks for all actors will miss more often making dodging a practical defense now.



Shields Feel More Realistic
Shield and weapons block a LOT more damage now, you will now actually feel a difference when you allow a weapon to hit or you succeed with a block.



THIS IS NOT THE READ ME FILE! YOU MUST READ THE READ ME FILE TO USE THIS MOD PROPERLY.

after updating to rev 6.0.1 and ride my horse, I get this message "Rider is Turning 0000101" every time my horse turn..

Fixing this now...

Up now, and If you are updating from REV 6 you need not do a clean install.

I have a program that I set up today to test for debug messages in my scripts, I will run this now JUST TO BE SURE....

OK, NO DEBUG MESSAGES IN REV 6.0.2... guaranteed!
Except for the ones that are intended.

That last message was a test to be sure you did not get any rotational momentum on the horse (only liner, you would only get like .01% even if I allowed it because of the slow turn).

I forgot about it once I found the issue with the 3rd person arrows hitting under the cross hair....

O am very tired, got to go to bed, someone please try out the rotational 360 momentum attacks (not on a horse) and let me know how fun the are to do...

thanks again man..I Appreciate all your hard work..
(can't play Skyrim without this mod)

Wow. This mod sounds incredible. OK, so give me the ups and downs of it. Cause it sounds too good to be true! How is this better or worse than Duel or Skyre, etc? And thanks for your hard work.

Say Duke, what do you think of http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang?ref=home_popular? Found it on kickstarter just when I was thinking how your ideas about gaming combat would be something worth kickstarting (i kid you not).

In simple terms, Dual = Improved Vanilla Combat, Duke's = Completely new features and way more realistic gameplay, I personally can't stand Duel and I haven't tried Skyre since it conflicts with too many other mods I have installed.

Just tried them... and it's very hard to land an attack when doing so lol, very disorienting to me so I don't try to fight that way most of the time. I do like running past my enemies and striking though... gives me a good momentum bonus but its pretty risky.

thanks for that fantastic mod !

work very well for me
i hate horses anyway, so i fight on foot

Greetings,

hope my english is good enough to descripe my experience with your mod.

At first, i already played Oblivion with all of your mods and i am used
to onehitkills from arrwos and surrounding opponents even at high level.

I played under many circumstances.

Game difficulty set down to adept.
Character 70+ many mods active.
New installation of Skyrim and new Charakter with 1.6 no other mods.
Your savegame and skyrim.ini settings for camera in a new installation of Skyrim with 1.6 no other mods.
Last update of SKSE is installed.

I tested your Charakter in the first bandit hideout at the mountain by riverwood.
Unchanged. Then with Shild and helmet. Then i edited Lifepoints and Stamina to 1000.
Then i toggled god mode on.

All results were the same (even with high lvl char).

I had to deavtivate Smash of the Titans. Even set to 0.1 kicks me up to the sky.
While opponents got fast attack speed mine takes up to 2 seconds before the strike is unleashed.
Every strike i do burns my stamina completly.
Every block i take burns my stamina completly, even if its set to 1000.
After my stamina is 0 every following hit on me is deadly even with a raised up shield.
Arrows kills me always instantly even with 100% stamina and raised up shield
Every attack is handled as a powerattack and makes me stumbleing.
So i am almost the whole time of the combat on me knees even if i am fighting someone half of my size.
Often i die without to recognize the strike that hit me.
That happens also with godmode on.



So i edited my lifepoints and stamina to 20.000 for the next attemps.
I can block 3 hits from low lvl bandits before my stamina is down to 0.
They can still kill me with one single strike.

Then i set the damage multis for head shot, body shot and legshot to 0.1 by still
having 20.000 HP and Stamina. Crit leg shot trip set to 0.
Now the taken damage feels like vanilla damage. An single opponent has to hit me about 5 to 6 times to kill me while i have to hit the enemy 3 to 4 times.
Considering i still have a pool of 20.000 Lifepoints with a dmg multi set to 0.1 lets me guess the multis like 2.0 doenst adding double damage to HP and Stamina but 200 time more.
Atleast this would explane why everything (damage, smash and tripping) is so overextreme.

I got the same results with a level 71 charakter on low lvl bandits.
I got low chances to survive a low lvl enemy.


Before patch 1.6 i used "Duke Patrick's Heavy Weapons version 2.6" because any newer version already caused these problems.



Sorry i cant give you more details.
Combat in TES without your mods feels so boring and is way too easy and ends in a mindless slashing. Unfortunalety its unplayable for me at the moment.

I strongly suspect you have a conflict that you do not know about as you are the only one with this FUBAR issue as you have described.

I am very very sorry, I do not know what else to tell you except you may want to delete Skyrim completely from your PC and reinstall skyrim from scratch, and ONLY allow my mod and SKSE in your skyrim directory, do not touch your skyrim directory with ANY other 3rd part program nor any other mods.

Use only defaults for everything, do not make any changes to any ini or my configuration files (just to test). Erroneously editing a integer as a float can cause such problems.

Also, if you are making changes to your stats on the fly via the console or using god mode while my mod is loaded this will hurt the scripts calculations in the same way running the mod while in the tutorial will.

DO NOT USE GOD MODE! And only make such changes to stats in the console while my mod is NOT loaded. AND do not use unrealistic high stats like 2000 stamina or health or you will see "supernatural" effects like a instant kill with one h2h punch.

Coming soon, REV 6.2 new Blocking Perks to replace the ones that became standard combat features:

OnGuard FastRest: You learn techniques with balance and leverage so that the blocking mass of the weapon or shield is divided by 2 in the fast rest calculations. So if you have this perk, your fast rest while blocking with a sword will be about as fast as it would be while blocking with a dagger.

Shield Eclipse : Use your shield to blind the opponent’s view of your weapon. (shield size / your size scale) = bonus to feints for (Stamina % * 4) seconds after you hold your shield up while facing your opponent on center. So a Med round shield for a scale one NPC actor would be about 15% and a Large shield would be about 20%. Thus, this perk is good if you like to use larger shields.


Shield hook: Using surprise and leverage techniques instead of strength, you do a bash while your target is blocking and you get a 20% increase to your
feint attack for (Stamina % * 4) seconds after you trigger this whether or not the shield
bash staggers the target. So this is good if you like to use smaller shields or you are
using weapons to block or just cannot stagger with your bash for what ever reasons.

Needs a bit more testing but i guess i found the problem.
I kept a complete untouched installation of skyrim on my external harddrive and tried your savegame without any other edits to any ini or mod or char.
It worked as intented and the way i want to to play skyrim.
Because i am annoyed of getting killed by Dread Overlords with a single blow in game difficult "master" i usual set my char to essential.
"Setessential 7 1"
Thats making almost every hit on me a killmove or powerful push away.
I dunno if thats the only incompatible component.
I will try any further with my original char and essential off.

I will be working a little on the script for long range targeting. While tweaking it I discovered that it sometimes will call a head shot when it should not.

Now I KNEW that before hence my warning about this having some flaws, but now I know why it is happening (well sort of, the arrow is not always tracked properly but I do not know why the arrow is not detected "sometimes") and I am trying to find a way to make it better.

Anyway while I was watching my player actor getting shot repeatedly by a bandit archer I walked towards him to cloes the distance and watch my debug messages for clues.

He backed up into a DITCH and fell in! (My backwards running tripping feature doing its work.) I about laughed my backside off. He did not just "fall in" but his arms flailed around and I swear I saw a look of surprise on his face! It may just be that his expression went neutral from being thrown into the havok system and combined with my imagination and sleepy eyes...but it WAS very funny.

But then I noticed something strange, he was not getting up.

HE DIED FROM THE FALL? I do not know why, I did not include any damage as part of my script to handle this only that actors would trip instead of "jump down" in such circumstances. This kind of freaked me out, some how the game must have detected the actor was in the havok falling state and then triggered the games "falling damage" script? The ditch must have been just deep enough (about 15 or 20 feet deep) to kill him.

wow....that was so cool....

Oh my! Mr. Duke, I'm so curious to learn more about this feature! Is there any documentation that details this further? Especially the Locational Armor!

Good day!

First of all: thank you for your great work and all the time you take to keep this project of yours moving ahead, so that all of us can enjoy it.

And then, i got a question. I got the feeling that the "Dynamic Weapon Speed" feature does not work properly in my case - moreso, it does apply on a random basis.
Some attacks get triggered instant, like in vanilla combat system. Other attacks show the behaviour you describe when having < 25% endurance - they need a long time at the beginning of the strike itself.
On the other hand, I do not feel a significant reduction in attack speed at the opening of the attack when actually having < 25% endurance.
All "tested" on a lvl 1 char with a 2 handed iron sword.

Do you have any clues? Thanks for answer

Attack speed is dynamic and will fluctuate a great deal based on factors that include:


Movement direction (Moving backwards will start slow then get faster if you move far enough.)

Amalgamation Stage (the next attack in a non-stop series of attacks will be a little faster than the first, so try to do 2 blow combinations when you can especially with slow heavy weapons!)

Return phase (Slower for top heavy weapons.)

Swing phase (Often the fastest.)

Wind-up phase (Often the slowest.)

Stamina (Effects the wind up stage a lot and the return stage a little and the swing stage sometimes if you are really low.)

External Forces (Such as frost magic attacks or perks)

Game and mod Bugs (There is a serious game bug when combining magic slow down speeds. This is in the known issues read me file. And my mod still has a bug that happens sometimes were the weapon attacks so fast you cannot even see the swing you only hear the hit and see blood.)


Other factors that do not typically fluctuate but do effect speed:
Race modifiers
Weapon type
Still unidentified game factors
Attack type

So yes, once you start combining all the above, each attack is going to be a little different.


Another thing to keep in mind is that the health and stamina bar (and probably the magic bar as well but I do not know that first hand) are NOT ACCURATE!
They are like a car gas gauge and "float" around a lot so they are only an "indication" not a precise measurement of your stats millisecond to millisecond .

Thanks for your answer

One thing that does really irritate me (and it may be the source of my occasional “swing too fast to see the attack” bug) is that the game only checks all the game conditions once each second.

This means you could be swinging at an improper speed for as much as 1000 milliseconds before it changes to the proper speed depending on when the conditions change and at what point in the one second loop you happen to be in at the time.

1000 milliseconds is about how long it takes a baseball to drop 40 inches!

To solve this I think I can move all the condition checking from the magic effect conditions tab to a script instead. This way I can set the script to check at 0.1 seconds cycle (100 MS). But then this means adding one more constantly running script to each actor in combat. And it seems wasteful when it CAN be done the other way.

But there is no way to force the game to check the conditions faster than 1 second loops unless I move it to a script.

I am of two mind on this, if I can get the new 20% script lag that came in with the new archery functions down again significantly to where it was before REV 6 I will move the weapon speed to a script if you guys feel the weapon speed control really needs it.

Is my mod too hard?

I want to take a break and "play" but all my time is spent working on the features. HOURS and HOURS so I do not get to play anymore, only do combat fight testing in various locations in the game.

The combat feels right (feels as similar as I can make it to real life combat) but in real life combat we die dozens of times a day in tournaments, practice days and in full scale wars. When we die there are people there to help you to learn WHY and learn what to do next time but there is no one to do that for you in this game.

For some reason this was not an issue in Oblivion, but in Skyrim it seems... this may be different.

What custom settings do you guys use, please post them ok?

"...I want to take a break and "play" but all my time is spent working on the features. .."
Slow down a bit please ( if you can ). Give some time for you to play, and for us to test .

I only playtest mods anymore it seems with soo many of them coming out lol, but combat actually feels more realistic in this mod vs Oblivion's. I'd say Faster Get Up and Faster Get Up from back are almost essential with this mod but even so many creatures can still kill easy enough.

I'd say combat is difficult but balanced, combined with ASIS the enemies are much smarter and with the other mods the game is just plainly more difficult but it is very enjoyable and I also have something that I don't in real life which is Magic so I mean whenever I can't beat someone with pure fighting I can always go make a poison or buff to get past a hardspot. I actually removed Deadly Dragons because dragons with this mod installed, dynamic injuries and the level unscaling mod are already way too challenging.

Mods I use to effect Combat:

Duke Patrick's Archery and Heavy Weapons Combat

ACE (Not the Melee or Archery Module Though, not sure how realistic it is but I like the different stances and crafting module)

More Dynamic Injuries (Adds Different types of injuries that take time and possibly medication to heal)

Skyrim Scaling Stopper + More Monster Mod (Makes enemies much tougher)

3x Stamina Regen + 3x Magicka Regen (Both don't really help that much, try it with my other mods listed here and you will see!)

Realistic Carry Weight (Lowers carry weight to around 100lbs but I also use Bandelers with realistic weight so I can get a little more with effort)

Seconded, your going to drive yourself crazy working like this! I know, I have gone crazy from overworking myself with something I like before, it led to me doing things like spending five seconds looking at some spilled salt angrily thinking "CTRL z, CTRL z, CTRL z, EDIT UNDO!!! EDIT UNDO!!!".

By the way I think my script lag is much better in this version with your INI tweak though I am having trouble getting consistent numbers since fraps messes with my preformance too much. From what I can tell though it seems like some killing blows take below a second to work.

As far as difficulty goes I think frost magic using mages are a little hard to deal with since they can keep your stamina down at 0. I can just stand next to them with nearly full health while they keep my stamina at 0 with a weak frost spell. Attacking a tough ice mage (I think it was a necromancer of some sort) was nearly impossible even though I am using Ultimate Follower Overhaul and had 2 followers with me. Since I'm also using ASIS I'm starting to wonder if I will need to play this like it's a low unit cap version of mount and blade. I could just run around with 5 archers and 5 foot soldiers (and maybe 5 NPCs I don't like as fodder) so that my foot soldiers can distract the mages while the archers shoot those smug looks off their faces. Actually that sounds pretty fun, I think I'm going to try that.

mmmmmm....so it looks like the "swing is too fast to even see the attack" bug may be in the game not necessarily in my mod:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1385457-conflict-or-bethesda/page__pid__21019359#entry21019359