LOL Someone else had the same idea as me!

Haha I find it awesome and hilarious. Ninja stuff indeed

Anywho, Plutoman said http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1317388-wiprelz-pise-plutos-improved-skyrim-experience/page__view__findpost__p__19835583, Duke, that he could probably help

Rev 3



Get it here:

http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/1066-duke-patricks-combattweaks/


For a limited time it is also available here:

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3646



There is a choice of 3 esp files. ONLY USE ONE. I would prefer you use the 4 foot range file. But if you have issues were the giants do not seem to make contact with their attacks, then use the 5 foot range or as a last resort the 6 foot range.

At the preferred 4 foot range combat will play much more realistically and allow for more to real life tactics and more intuitive action. But for some players the giants may only hit you (make contact) about 50% of the time.

However a 6 foot range for combat will result in weapon hits that look like they should not reach you and it will make dodging attacks (opponents missing ) much harder as well as other range game mechanic issues such as attackers hitting you while they are behind other actors.

Once the CK is available and I can solve this issue via scripting I will not offer multiple esp (with the same name) like this as it is more difficult to maintain and can result in mistakes.

I'm unable to give companions commands from range using any version of the Rev 3 esp. I had this problem with the Rev 2 esp also. Loading last via bashed patch.

The file you posted on Nexus only contains a single esp btw.

Hi Duke,

In Vanilla Skyrim, weapon speed when doing normal attacks with 1-handed weapons is really fast IMO. As a result, timing your blocks becomes very difficult (it's possible when fighting draugrs but not so possible when dealing with NPCs)
Could it be feasible, with the available tools, to decrease the speed of such attacks?

Downloading now. Thanks for the Nexus mirror, btw.

there are some good ideas here.

spooky, one of the most important things i think a combat mod shoud do is incorporate staggering by normal attacks.
with these ideas by "tiny lampe' timestamp" this is possible.

here are issues that will rise from staggering by normal attacks:
1) if the staggering is too long than it's possible to stagger an enemy indefinitly until he's dead.
2) if the staggering is really short than it will allow the AI to block before the next attack and prevent indefinit staggering loop, BUT certian enemies and creature can not block or block rarely. can only be semi-resolved by increasing the chance of the AI to block if hit (increasing chance with every hit to allow 1 or 2 hits but low chances for more than that), but it won't solve the issue with enemies that can't block (dual wielders, magic users and creatures).
3) staggering can be short enough to allow the enemy NPC to attack his attack before the player can execute the second attack and stagger again. this can be a problem since the staggering will be SO short that it won't matter or be noticed enough.

these reasons make me believe that "tiny lampe' timestamp" has a point.
however i think that if every attack causes a fixed stamina percentage (1h attack - 22%, 2h attack - 32%, 1h power attack - 35%, 2h power attack - 45%) than the higher the stamina the more it will stagger but if there is not enough stamina to unleash a full attack (say about 30 stamina point. not 30%) than attacks with lowe stamina will cause slightly less damage but NO STAGGER.

this will allow attacking an enemy and immediately switching to another enemy - fighting multiple enemies by staggering them with normal attacks yet always being unable to unleash more than 4 or 5 attacks before the attacks stop staggering.

this will also allow dual wielders to stagger their enemies with their attacks. maybe duel wielders drain less stamina when attacking to compensate.


one of the things i like about your mod, spooky, is that blocking with weapons and shield is more effective as preventing damage, but there is still one issue - there is no advantage to fighting with a 1h weapon and NO SHIELD. i think that when there is no shield to block than there bound to be advantages - it's less tiring to fight without a heavy plank of whatever on the other hand. this should result in less stamina loss with every hit and maybe more damage or speed with the 1h weapon. maybe a 20% increase in both? maybe it's too much.

also i think that blocking with a shield should cover about 120 degrees angle in front of the player, blocking with 2h weapon less and blocking with 1h weapon should be just as it is now. just my opinion.

what do you think, spooky?

This.

I had a similar idea; it goes like this:

If the amount of fatigue you spend on an attack is higher than the amount of fatigue left on the opponent, then the opponent is staggered by the attack. The bigger the difference between these two numbers, the longer the stagger. Even knock downs should be possible if you invest a lot of fatigue in your attack and your opponent is very fatigated.

Now, the idea above means that any attack can potentially stagger (or worse).

This tweak should be complemented with the idea of tying fatigue regen to health. By doing that, the weaker an opponent is (less health), the more vulnerable he will be to being staggered/knocked down by any attack (which IMO makes sense).

This is a possibility. Now, there another thing that could be done: attacks, normal or not, ALWAYS stagger. To balance this, we have the tweak I proposed by which it's impossible to do more than 3 regular attacks (or 1 regular + 1 power) without running out of fatigue. This means that the player would like to keep hitting an staggered opponent but he has to stop or else he will collapse on the floor due to exhaustion (and if than happens, he would be completely vulnerable).

This alternative system also makes sense because, even though 1 vs 1 fights would be quite easy, fights very seldom are 1 vs 1. Indeed; if you are fighting against 3-4 bandits/draugrs/whatever, you want each of your hits to be a staggering one so that you can have a crowd control mechanism. And staggering is such mechanism.

while i like the idea of stamina differences between combatants i also think it might be an issue.
basically trying to balance combat according to levels of characteristics (amount of health or stamina or character's health) means that there is a very big inconsistency in how the combat works. i think that if the combat system is deep and fun it should be so across the board.
comparing the player's levels to the enemies will result in combat that is fun against specific enemies and really dull against others.

while in reality an exhaustion is a huge factor, in reality you cant really handle more than one enemy at a time, combat lasts maybe 10 seconds and not more and there are a lot less encounters with enemies. this isnt reality but a game so the logic should be a little different.

however, tiny lampe, if staggering IS constant and only once in a while an exhausted enemy will be knowed down to his knees due to the player having much more stamina than the enemy than that sounds cool. i think that enemies with a low health (under 15%) should be more susceptible to power-attacks and be knocked down if hit, but staggering should have a consistent rules.

this is why i believe the result of staggering should be dependent on player's input and not levels most of the time.

for example:

1) bash an idle enemy very short stagger. room for maybe one attack or less. it's more of a visual feedback. power bash will stagger more.

2) bash an enemy as he is blocking - medium stagger. bashing is a means to break the enemy's defense as well as power attacks.

3) bash an enemy during his attack is like a parry - longest stagger. rewarding good timing on the player's behalf.

4) blocking just as the enemy swings - short stagger. no health lost at all and smaller stamina cost than a bash but shorter stagger.

5) hitting an enemy while he is attacking or idle - short to medium stagger, depending on the players stamina level as suggested by tiny lampe and me earlier.

6) hitting an enemy while he is power attacking - no stagger but reduction of incoming damage. less reduction than the preferable block. an attack shouldnt be an easy way to defeat power attacks IMO.

7) blocking a normal attack - no stagger. tiny stamina cost for shields. more stamina used by blocking with weapons.

8) blocking a power attack - takes 50% damage and stagger. not recommended. power attacks should be bashed.


if the above is implemented than the player always knows what he needs to do and what the result will be so he can play accordingly. the constant result rewards good timing and skillful play. the player can develop tactics like - block, see incoming attack and bash, power attack. for example. if the player barely knows how his reactions will result than there are barely any tactics.
i do like the idea that a fresh enemy staggers less, though. just a question of how to make is so the lesser NPCs are not a cakewalk.

As stated before this is a work in progress and this INI tweak mod is only the first few baby steps toward my next mod

"Duke Patrick's Combat Overhaul"


On staggering and blocking: easy way to answer all of the last few posts is to point you to my Oblivion melee combat mod. Once I CAN (when the CK is out and the script extender includes all the commands I need) most of what I did in my Oblivion mod will also be done here.

It all works as intended (more or less) in my Oblivion combat mod.

HERE:
http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/914-duke-patricks-melee-combat-no-recoil/

Hey, I am not just banging rocks together!


The following are future Skyrim features from my Oblivion Melee Combat mod depending on when the Skyrim script extender (and or the CK) allows for it:



===============
DESCRIPTION
===============

This mod changes the combat to feel more like SCA combat, a worldwide historical organization that includes full armor, full speed and full contact western European medieval martial arts. (As much as I am able to do in an Oblivion mod.)

Please see my Web page: http://www.spookyfx.com/book/tromp.html

The mod is based on my 30 years of melee tournament and war experience. SCA wars consist, on a good day, of two teams of several thousand fighters all in one battlefield trying to knock each others' heads off with everything from short swords to 12 foot spears!


This mod is made to focus on the psychology and physics of melee combat.

Although I very much favor shield and sword, after finishing the mod and play testing it seems that lighter faster fighters (such as single sword fighters) more often "beats" heavy slow weapons and shield IF the light weapon's fighter was at the most extreme levels of skill in Weapons, Block, H2H, Strength, Agility, Speed and Fatigue. I had believed (wanted to anyway) that it would to be the other way around were an expert with a weapon and shield would beat an expert with say a bastard sword.

If you train your skills up around 75 or more in all the skills I just listed (and you earn them not just cheat your skills up in 15 minutes) you will probably then complain to me that combat is too easy when fighting against sword and shield man even if you only have a dagger.

You may ask "why would I need to earn them, why not just cheat them all up to 75?"

Because there is some player skill needed as well. You will need to learn how to use the mod features correctly. The only way to do this is to earn your skills in game by putting in the play time. This is the part that I hope will keep the player interested even once their character has reached master levels in all their skills.

(Blue means I have this now in the Tweak mod OR it was put into skyrim by the DEV. Yellow means it is partially done already in the tweak mod)

This mod includes:

- NO MORE BLOCK RECOIL! Staggering and recoil will happen from hits, "short shots" and other combat related reasons but no more "hobbled" attack combos! And being paralyzed (none magical) will almost never happen!

- Dead bodies get bashed to the ground violently instead of floating down thru the air like a feather.

- Extra Momentum adds extra damage (such as running downhill at your opponent).

- Locational hits with critical damage (INCLUDES REAR ATTACKS THAT DO MORE DAMAGE!)

- Location armor for the head, body and legs. Wearing a good helmet may be all you need!

- Blunt damage will be more effective against light armor.

- Both the player and the NPC can Bob and Weave to avoid attacks. You will consume fatigue based on encumbrance load.

- Enemy melee AI is greatly improved and will also watch for the player's "tells", but this also means you can "trick" them!

- AI settings have been overhauled to attack, block and move more deviously, dynamically and ruthlessly.

- You can now use actual real-life sword and shield feints to land your shots (such as the "rising snap"!)

- BOTH Passive and Active blocking!

- Weapon/shield size matters! Bigger weapons/shields give you more geometric protection. But they also take more fatigue to parry with! The bigger the weapon/shield relative to your body size, the better your passive block chance. The better your block skill, the better your chance to parry. Bigger heavy shields / weapons have the advantage to absorb more damage than lighter/smaller ones.

- Weapons stats are now much more realistic. Weapon hit range is based on the actual model length of the weapon in the game. No more 20 foot long short swords! War hammers do not swing quickly like they are made of plastic. Weapon damage stats are not dramatically cranked up, they are only balanced relativistically with the speed and range of the weapon. This is all done via scripts "on the fly" so even custom weapons from other mods are included.

- Draining your fatigue completely with button bashing will result in blurred vision! ( INI configurable for the ...er...casual players.)

- Defensive Geometry and great timing is now more important than great player speed and reflexes. The angle of attack is a little tighter, so Offensive Geometry is more important in landing a shot.

- Footwork and range games are now very important for blocks and attacks.

- H2H now includes grapple blocks and throws.

- Fighting Giants is now a very scary undertaking, sometimes the only way to live is to run away! (see the crash course document for more tips on combat.)

- Bottle necking overwhelming numbers (such as with doorways) and other such tricks MUST be done or you will die!

- Weapon speed (timing) vs damage is now the second most important tactical consideration. Heavy one-handed weapons take an eternity to hit, but they hit HARD!

- Power attacks now require good timing to land but they do more damage!

- Wrap Shots This is a shot where you stand very close and swing your weapon to wrap around your opponent's shield thus reducing the benefits of a large shield.

- Short Shots This happens when you hit at the center of gravity on your weapon producing attacks that hit like a mace even if you are using a sword.


- Aiming under their weapon or shield gives a bonus to land your shot.


- If a feint works, the shield or weapon will move out of position right before the attack lands. This gives you a view of the opponent being OPEN for the shot as you land the blow instead of your weapon just "passing through" the shield as if the shield was made from smoke.


- In general "results" in this mod are based on the attributes, actions timing, conditions and dynamics of the combat not on simplistic dice rolls. This means you can eventually learn to take advantage of the subtle factors in combat and predict your opponent's action.


- All blunt weapons now have a good chance to stagger or even "push over" depending on how heavy the blunt weapon is and how strong the attacker is (modified by his fatigue) versus the target's strength.


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

- Swinging your blunt weapon will use much more fatigue than when your weapon actually hits a target. For technical reasons this feature only works on living targets not things like trees.


- Blunt weapons have an advantage to absorbed force while blocking do to the nature of their mass.


- Top heavy Blunt weapons and short shots are now more visceral with a feeling of weight and force.


- Armor is much more effective against fist, claws and teeth type attacks.


-Kick Bash And Shield Bash (the normal shield bash in the game that auto triggers is removed. Now it is manually triggered.)


-Khajiits can now inflict more H2H damage.


-Florentine weapons (dual swords) as it "should be done" in medieval combat games.


-NPC may sometimes hit each other by accident in crowded combat!

I am unable to duplicate your issue.

Just tested this 2 minutes ago: I activated Lydia and selected the "I need you to do something" from her drop down menu and pointed to flowers that were more than 20 feet away and she picked them a I requested.

And no one else has reported this either, but I will keep my eye on this as Lydia is my constant companion.

In your case try looking for a conflicting mod in your load order.

Hey Duke does
"All blunt weapons now have a good chance to stagger or even "push over" depending on how heavy the blunt weapon is and how strong the attacker is (modified by his fatigue) versus the target's strength."
mean 2h axes won't have the stagger capability of a one handed mace?

Also what do you think of blunt/piercing/slashing resistances of armor (or specific enemies) to give even more weapon/armor tactical choices?

Hey I'm using this mod (it's the last in the load order) and I was wondering... is it normal for a newly made character to have all of it's stamina depleted from one power attack with a one-handed weapon? This seems kind of odd. Even when I add more stamina, all of it gets depleted.

ummm huh? I will assume you are talking about Skyrim not Oblivion, er... well actually in both cases, Skyrim AND Oblivion (per my mods) the blunt weapons ( A bad name for the category of top heavy weapons where you hit your target with the center of gravity of your weapon and not the upper NOID sometimes called the center of repercussion or the "sweet spot". ) all have the same "stagger capability" based on the opponents and the attackers weight and strength, momentum and some other factors.

So YES, using my Oblivion mod 2 handed axe "could" stagger the same as a 1 handed mace. And I intend this to be the same in Skyrim once I have the CK. The big problem for me will be the new skyrim categories for the weapons. I hate them. Oblivion's categories while badly named were much more more realistic and USABLE. The way they have it now I will NOT be able to use them (the skyrim weapon categories) for my scripts. I will have to find some other ways to detect if the weapon is a top heavy or not using some other methods. That has me very worried as many weapons have no indication at all such as say...an 1h axe called "HeadEater" As it is now (in skyrim) it is in the "blade" category I will have no way to know it is a top heavy weapon so as to give it the stagger scripts.

I am praying that there will be more in the CK that I can use to detect weapons types.







mmmm.... was it you who asked me this same question in my Oblivion Melee combat thread ....no? Maybe it was not you but others have. The answer is the same here in skyrim as it was in oblivion. I would absolutely love to do that but there is no reliable way to detect a thrust or any other "individual" TYPE attack action other than detecting if it was a quick attack or power attack.

Unfortunately there is no difference in the basic game settings for a 1 handed weapon or H2H or a 2 handed war hammer or what ever, they ALL use the same base stamina cost for an attack.

This will changes once I have the CK.

I just now (in rev 3.1 not yet uploaded) raised the combat stamina regeneration rate to 1 from .75 (vanilla is .5). But even that is not enough. They way it will work in my mod once I have the CK is that if you stand still and do not attack or defend then the stanima will raise up extremely fast. This works great in my Oblivion mod to encourage the player to back off periodicity in combat and contributes a heck of a lot to the strategy of footwork and defense.

I don't think it was me. I haven't tested other weapon types apart from the 2H axe and hammer so I guess I assumed that slashing/piercing/blunt could be generally classified into swords & axes/ arrows and daggers / maces and hammers.

In your OB mod, a character's strength matters. How do you plan to implement your formulas in Skyrim without the old attributes? One thought I had was to make current stamina affect stagger so a tired character is more likely to stagger. Would also help prevent button mashing if doing so makes staggering more likely.

Ah, Duke, my question was -- with your mod installed, is it normal for a power attack (be it with a one handed or two handed weapon) to totally drain 100% of the stamina of a newly made character? Because this is what I'm observing and it feels odd to me.

Right, if the strength attribute is NOT hidden in the game someplace I will be forced to either use stamina or create my own strength attribute via scripting.

But in my mod (eventually) Stamina will have a huge effect all all aspects of combat anyway.

The mod setting 2x normal. So if you have very little Stamina then yes naturally it could.

My low level (Mod testing warrior) drains 90% with a swing of his 2h axe, so he only does this when the time is right in combat, and instead uses a lot of attacks that are not power attacks.

My game PC (now level 49 with 400 stamina) only drains about 20% on each power attack. Regeneration for stamina is also higher now in combat but needs to be even more so (under certain circumstances) and will be once I can fix this with scripts. This way you will be able to learn and use a RHYTHM to your combat rather than just button mash.

Follow up on my reply about weapons types:

The new SkyEdit version will now allow me to edit damage for weapons. So I will be doing that and releasing an update. The new weapons damage will mean that you should be able to kill with a steel sword in about 3 quick hits plus 1 power hit that are NOT blocked. This will be a lot of work as there are a LOT of weapons tabs so I do not know when I will have this done.

Some good news is that the weapons seem to have a table that indicates the TYPE of weapon it is, and that should work for my scripts. YES!!!

what about using carry capacity so that potions of strength up your damage?

Excellent! I saw the new SkyEdit and was thinking the same but I forgot to say here.

I don't know about the 3 quick hits plus 1 power attack kill. That's the way I prefer it of course but enemy HP seems to have such a big range that unless they're tweaked, the low level NPCs will die ridiculously easily to 1 hit with any weapon with the increased damage (and a lot of them do already). But it will at least make it easier to take out those damn mages whom, for some reason, Beth decided should be tankier than bandit bosses.

EDIT: re Strength, I hope its done in a way that OB mods adjusted attributes based off skill. Ex: STR = (0.4 one hand Skill) + (0.6 two hand skill)

mmmmm.... yeah, changing the weapons damage now would probably be too extreme without all the other changes I need to make using the CK.

Besides, I really do not want to make weapons "hit hard" via the weapon stats. Doing it that way means new weapons from mods will not be compatible. I would really rather do this via scripting.

I have spent the last 2 hours examining the game components and I am sad to say there does not seem to be a hidden strength actor value. Bethesda really did remove it as an actor value as far as I can tell from looking at all the actor values thru the SkyEditor. Hopefully there will be some information about the size of actors that I can use instead. Probably there is, I say this because of the marksman perk that states it can stagger "all but the largest opponents".

er... I am not sure if I like that or not (using carry capacity) as it is directly linked to stamina.
Linking carry capacity to stamina was another unfortunate design decision in my opinion.

But maybe I should piggy back off the so called "strength potions" to increase other aspects of combat as you are suggesting.

I do not understand what you are saying here, please elaborate.