###### tags: `Combat`, `Design Drafts`

# Combat Overhaul 4 - Stamina Buffer/Stamcrit Overhaul

which is a nicer way of saying redoing half of the system

## Disclaimer

**This is still somewhat of an early draft. NONE of this is happening until I refactor clickdelays as that's a higher priority issue. Feedback is welcomed.**

Optimally, **use the commenting feature for feedback and concerns**, but I suppose you can **ping me on discord** because honestly if I can't get you guys to comment on GitHub on PRs I'm not going to bother trying to get people to comment on hackmd with an even more hard to use discussion feature.

## Introduction

One of the biggest complaints about stamina combat was the stamina softcrit system in which people are prevented from attacking for a pretty large threshold before stamina critical (where the user is hard stunned) and stamina softcrit (where the user is only preventede from attacking or doing most "active" actions and getting off the ground), as well as the fact that attack stamina helped drive you towards stamina hardcrit.

Stamina softcrit was meant as a threshold where someone can still attempt to limp away from a conflict but not attack back. This has been frusturating for people.

**What this overhaul is aiming to do is decouple the action stamina system(the part of stamina combat where the user requires stamina to do actions) from the stamina damage system(a base type of damage for combat in the game that allows the nonlethal disabling of a combatant without causing damage that does not automatically heal over time)**, from being tied together using a buffer-on-top-of-damage to only being tied together by certain interactions between the **action buffer** and **stamina health**.

## Tl;dr of changes

- Stamina buffer/usage mostly separated from stamina health
- Long term stamina management of buffer --> short term
- Stamcrit overhauled
- Slowdown tweaking
- Combat mode tweaking
- Sprint buffer/sprint tweaking

## Combat Mode

Combat mode will prevent stamina health recovery but as before, not impede action/sprint buffer recovery.

**The design goal of combat mode will be shifted from both outgoing/incoming and all around debuffs when not on to being necessary for effective *defense* in combat.**

### Stats tweaking - SUBJECT TO CHANGE
- Not combat mode related, but being on the floor will reduce **outgoing** damage by 35% instead of 50% ~~but increase **incoming** damage by 10%.~~ **THIS IS ONLY APPLICABLE TO MELEE.**
- Not sure about this yet, actually. Might just keep it at 50% penalty on outgoing. The goal here is to make being on the floor penalized but not entirely kill your offensive output.
- Increasing incoming damage idea killed for now as it would make knockdown weapons even more powerful.
- Being out of combat mode will still increase incoming damage by +50%.
- Being out of combat mode reduces **outgoing** damage by -25% instead of -50%.
- EXPERIMENTAL: *Being **in** of combat mode will **!!increase!!w** **outgoing** damage against **simple mobs** by +15%, and the damage penalty against simplemobs for not being in combat mode will only be -15% instead of -25%*

In layman's terms:

Combat mode vs non combat mode player: +50% extra damage
Combat mode vs combat mode player: Normal damage/unchanged
Non combat mode player vs anyone: -25% less damage

On ground + non combat mode vs anyone: -whatever 0.25 * 0.35 in percent is oh wait it's -52% less damage yeah close enough don't get knocked down and keep combat mode on in melee.
On ground + combat mode vs anyone: -35%
Standing person with combat mode vs on ground combat mode: +0% (normal/unchanged)
Standing person without combat mode vs on ground combat mode: -25% less damage
On ground + combat mode vs standing person without combat mode: +97.5%!! extra damage - yeah turn on combat mode while being hit.

### Right click interaction lock
- A QoL tweak will be done to allow locking right mouse interaction to ON. This means even outside of combat mode you can use right click without the popup showing.

## Stamina Action Buffer

**Stamina buffer will be decoupled from stamina health.**
Instead of being something drawn from before you start taking stamina damage for attacking, this will be its own separate thing.

There's two options for this that I haven't decided yet, we'll likely try both depending on how this goes.
1. You will not be able to attack at all when it is out
2. You will be subject to penalty stamina threshold debuffs to things like attack speed and damage if you do not have enough for an action

The stamina buffer will be changed from a slow-charging long term thing to a fast-charging short term thing. This means that it is expect to charge in no more than 15-20 seconds **tops**, with potentially a switch to only charge it after a few seconds of not attacking. **This is subject to change.**

All actions that require stamina will drain from this.

### Interaction with stamina health -- READ THIS CAREFULLY. This is a crucial part of the system.

Yeah I lied about making it entirely separate.
**This is subject to change:**
Stamina buffer will be capped to a scaled % based on stamina health. This will likely only be done if I do not implement requiring not attacking for `x` seconds to regenerate it, OR, this will be done along with a "stamina buffer constantly regenerates up to `y` percent but needs a delay of not attacking to regenerate above that". Whatever, I'm sure we can make this works.
**This will also be capped.** At ~~soft stamcrit~~ penalty threshold, you'd have 25% or so of your maximum stamina buffer.

**Maybe this can replace penalty mechanics entirely**, making it so you can attack at full strength but your buffer is so small you can't do *much* with it.

## Sprint/Sprint Buffer

I don't know what to do with this. I don't like sprint in its current state as it makes getting away too easy. It'll still drain from primary stamina health instead of the new separate action buffer, and I'll likely instead address this with slowdown scaling changes.

~~do we even lose anything by killing sprint because /tg/ works out fine without it~~

**HEAVILY SUBJECT TO CHANGE.** Really not happy with how sprint works right now - it seems to negate low health slowdown entirely/to an unacceptable extent without having more penalties. **See slowdown changes for some additional information on sprint.**

## Stamina Health

I'd like to do some changes to how stamcrit and regeneration works for stamina health.

### Stamcrit changes - READ THIS CAREFULLY. This is a crucial part of the system.

### Soft stamcrit removal

Soft stamcrit is being fully overhauled.

Soft stamcrit vs hard stamcrit will be changed to a **penalty threshold** and a **stamcrit threshold.**

**Stamcrit threshold** is basically hard stamcrit: Can not move, can not act, fully incapacitated, considered a hard stun.
**Penalty threshold** is when you start to receive heavy penalties to combat. Melee weapons will do less damage (100% to 25% at right above hard stamcrit, higher dropoff at start of penalty threshold and low dropoff near hard stamcrit). **Below the penalty threshold, you will be unable to shove yourself off the ground instantly.**

**!!SEE STAMINA BUFFER SECTION, PENALTY THRESHOLD MIGHT JUST BE ROLLED INTO THAT INSTEAD OF A HARD THRESHOLD!!**

### Recovery from stamcrit

**Furthermore, there have been some concerns about how after recovering from stamcrit, you are still helpless in soft stamcrit.** While I'm somewhat content with the current system, optimally we'd be able to change that to make stamcrit not have the user be fully disabled after it's over, instead starting off again in a weakened, but still combat-capable state.

**I'd like to change stamcrit to last until you have 50% of your stamina health back.** This means that stamcrit is triggered at the regular threshold, but you will stay in it until 50% of your stamina health is back. You gain the increased regeneration stamcrit has until you fully drop out of stamina critical.
**Optimally this would be a 10-15 second hard stun on stamcrit assuming nothing else stuns you until you are back up to that threshold.** If it becomes too overpowered, it's always possible to debuff the user's stamina health or action regeneration for 10-15 seconds more after that, but I'm hoping this will be good enough.

### Values, subject to change
100 penalty threshold
140 stamcrit

Yes, those are the current soft/hardcrit values.

### Incoming damage auto-scaling
I'm also going to be taking a look into how incoming damage mitigation works.
So fun fact, if you take stamina damage, you start taking less and less damage for that limb as you are continuously damaged. This is to prevent stunlocks.

Current system works but might be adjusted to tie into the above, regarding stamcrit regeneration. Optimally we can toss this out entirely in favor of fast-regenerate-from-stamcrit, or only implement it for stamcrit

### Limbs

That said, I do not know what to do yet regarding limb disabling stamina damage. The scaling system also prevented permanent arm/leg locks with disablers, which I do not particularly like either, as arm/leg disables should be useful for short-term dibilitating effects in combat that can not be "locked in" using these weapons in long battles.

## Slowdown Changes

I'm not happy with the current slowdown scaling.
The aim would probably be small slowdown (6-7) at 50% health (around 2 disabler shots), major (2-3 tiles per second) slowdown at 25% health (around 3 disabler shots), and slowed to a crawl (1-2 tiles per second) at near-stamcrit/penalty rates.

### Sprint changes?

Here's ^ when I realized that sprint throws all those values out of wack and it'd be honestly nice to kill sprint but worst case sprint can be automatically scaled down or disabled at a certain threshold, **or be made to consume more stamina when you are slowed down** either from low physical or stamina health. Potentially could make sprint work on a per-second basis instead of per-tile basis, although that could bring its own set of issues.

## Footnote on Stamina Damaging Weapons

Not really any changes here. Weapons should only stagger (lock sprinting), drain stamina health, but for the most part should not impact a user's stamina action buffer. There are going to be exceptions made on a case by case basis but in general this is how it should go.

And, of course, weapons that do stamina damage should not do a great deal of physical damage at the same time. Stunbatons handle this well with the charge system (and 10 damage isn't that much anyways), this is just here as a note to keep in mind. **This goes doubly so if any weapon whatsoever also takes away from action stamina rather than just stamina health.**