---
# System prepended metadata

title: Melee combat revamp
tags: [Design, ' Combat']

---

---
tags: Design, Combat
title: Melee combat revamp
---
# Melee combat revamp
[toc]

# Maintainer Design Flows
:::warning
This section describes design flows that are meant to be upheld in the PR process. **PRs that go against this section are subject to closing.** Please do not edit this section unless you are a maintainer. Comments via sidebar are welcomed.
:::

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## Problem statement
Right now, melee combat does not seem like a good gameplay option, mostly it involves pixel hunting based clicking with the focus entirely around stunning your opponent or dealing as much damage with the biggest weapon you can find, and there's very little beyond that. Most of the different classes of melee weapons do not play any differently to each other, and only differ in amount of hand slots used or damage dealt (with the associated impact on wounding)

## Outcome desired
There are several specific classes of melee weapon, each with it's own tradeoffs, and a person will not simply pick the most damaging melee weapon, but might make more interesting decisions about what use in any given situation.

Melee stun combat is less of an I win situation, and batons are still useful but not the only solution that people will reach for in melee combat.

## Solution
Introduce the concepts of blocking, weapon swinging and attack patterns.

### Blocking
Blocking - Blocking is done by holding down space bar, and uses the item in your off hand as the blocking item. While holding down spacebar your stamina does not regenerate.

However when an attack hits you while you're blocking, that attack does not do any damage to your health, instead it takes that damage out of your total stamina instead.

Any secondary effects (such as a stun) the weapon might apply, are not applied (but may cause further stamina damage if deemed necessary for balance)

If your stamina reduces to zero, you stop blocking and are knocked down as normal.

While blocking, a shield icon appears above the users head, with the shield being filled from outline -> fully filled in based on the users current stamina

The ratio of stamina damage is based on the item in your offhand, a fork might suffice to block one single attack, but a shield will let you block quite a few.

### Weapon swinging
Weapons no longer hit the thing you click on when you click, instead they simply hit anything in all of their defined attack pattern squares at once in the direction you click towards (and are hence facing).


### Weapon patterns
Weapons can now strike in predefined patterns, for example:
an esword might cut across the 3 squares in front of the user.
A spear might strike the 2 square column in front of the user.
The axe or sledgehammer wielded 2 handed might strike a 6 square oblong in front of the user.
A desword might even strike the 7 squares around the front and sides of the user, leaving the one tile at the back exposed for safe attacking.
A simple knife however, might just strike the one square in front of the user.

These patterns define the class of the weapon and help distinguish different classes of melee weapons from each other.


## Unsolved questions

### Alternates
1) Weapon swing attacks also use some stamina if they hit someone who is blocking
2) While blocking you cannot activate your primary weapon/tool
3) While blocking stamina passively drains instead of just not regenerating
4) The shielding weapon also takes physical object damage from the act of blocking
5) Blocking ranged projectiles as well

### Other misc issues
What does a 3 tile or six tile swing look like when you're aiming diagonally, do we want to enable diagonal melee combat?

### Non goals
We don't want to remove stun combat, just reduce it's prevalance as the primary melee combat mode