Duck and Cover

Having recently read A Clockwork Orange I thought, "Hmmm...y'know, that's one thing the Wastes are devoid of: boots for stompin' innocent folks' guts out!"

So while I'm in my sprite-making frenzy I cranked out an appropriate sprite and set up an entity. Yes, it's possible to have boots as a weapon for unarmed combat. All you have to do is make sure you set the "Weapon Type" to "Unarmed" and make sure that under "Mode" the Animation Name is set to "Two". (Make sure you get that first bit right. I couldn't get my precious boots to work until I figured out that "None" wasn't the appropriate setting.

The boots will work in either item slot, just like a PowerFist can be used to punch from either slot. (Just in case some of you were wondering.)

Cheers,

OTB

OnTheBounce wrote:Having recently read A Clockwork Orange I thought, "Hmmm...y'know, that's one thing the Wastes are devoid of: boots for stompin' innocent folks' guts out!"

Hmm, envisions OTB striding across the wastes in a pair of steel capped, cherry red, 12 hole bother boots.

Always wondered why they never did any weapons to enhance the kick attacks, considering all the fairly useless unarmed weapons they put in the game.

requiem_for_a_starfury wrote:Hmm, envisions OTB striding across the wastes in a pair of steel capped, cherry red, 12 hole bother boots.

You have an accurate imagination, RfaSf! I used a picture of some 12-hole, cherry red Doctor Martens for the sprite. (As soon as I get it refined along w/some other colored versions I'll release these, too.)

requiem_for_a_starfury wrote:Always wondered why they never did any weapons to enhance the kick attacks, considering all the fairly useless unarmed weapons they put in the game.

I wondered the same thing myself. I wish there was some way of setting this up so that you could have them do double kick damage, or a bonus to damage rather than a damage range, but if there's a way, I haven't figured it out. Oh well, I suppose you could include different colored versions that did progressively more damage to keep them viable as the game progressed. Or maybe one would only include one very damaging version as a special/easter egg weapon like the Slugger was in FO2. (Which did a number on various and sundry cockroaches in a certain mission I played recently...)

OTB

OnTheBounce wrote:I wondered the same thing myself. I wish there was some way of setting this up so that you could have them do double kick damage, or a bonus to damage rather than a damage range, but if there's a way, I haven't figured it out. Oh well, I suppose you could include different colored versions that did progressively more damage to keep them viable as the game progressed. Or maybe one would only include one very damaging version as a special/easter egg weapon like the Slugger was in FO2. (Which did a number on various and sundry cockroaches in a certain mission I played recently...)

OTB

I suppose if you know where they are going to be found in the game you can set their damage range to be double of what the player's skill level will be at that point. They should still be viable for a fair portion of the game as the kick damage doesn't really progress that much IIRC.

requiem_for_a_starfury wrote:I suppose if you know where they are going to be found in the game you can set their damage range to be double of what the player's skill level will be at that point. They should still be viable for a fair portion of the game as the kick damage doesn't really progress that much IIRC.

I went and looked at the kick entities this morning for damage, crit chance, etc., and I noticed a whole bunch of odd things. For instance, one of the higher level kicks does energy damage-- which means that a catastrophic kill will cut the opponent in half -- while another has the sub-type set to Armor Piercing, also one of them uses a PunchGun light effect...erm...yeah, just what I wanted: an Unarmed specialist straight out of Fist of the Northstar...

Boy, this stuff is going to take some work...which can wait since all the missions I'm working on right now are centered on ranged combat.

OTB

OnTheBounce wrote:I went and looked at the kick entities this morning for damage, crit chance, etc., and I noticed a whole bunch of odd things. For instance, one of the higher level kicks does energy damage-- which means that a catastrophic kill will cut the opponent in half -- while another has the sub-type set to Armor Piercing, also one of them uses a PunchGun light effect

They probably were trying to sex them up a bit, to be honest the way the campaign is set up there's not much room for a H2H specialist once you get past the raiders and beastlords.

OnTheBounce wrote:...erm...yeah, just what I wanted: an Unarmed specialist straight out of Fist of the Northstar...

That reminds me I still haven't watched the live action version I taped early this year, damn I must remember to start labelling my tapes.

The way I see it, FOT only leaves room for two benefits of unarmed combat. Stealth kills is not one of them, although the double damage backstab perk would lend aid to it.

The two benefits being: 1. Save bullets by killing weaker enemies with melee attacks. and 2. Possibly more damage than ranged attacks.

So you might want to make sure that there are either plenty of weak melee enemies to kill, or that the attacks do far more damage than ranged weapons.

One must always think of the possible benefits an item will give the player, or make them if none exists.

requiem_for_a_starfury wrote:They probably were trying to sex them up a bit, to be honest the way the campaign is set up there's not much room for a H2H specialist once you get past the raiders and beastlords.

Yes, I understand that. However, I think they could have done something better than what they did. Then again that indictment also stands against FO2, also, since this is largely what FoT's system of HtH attacks is based on.

I was looking for my rulebook from T$R's Boot Hill Wild West RPG earlier. It had a lot of good, ol' fashioned cliff-hanger era titles for its brawling system. As soon as I find it I'm going to try and sketch out my revision of the unarmed attacks.

[TBC]-PaladinHeart wrote:The way I see it, FOT only leaves room for two benefits of unarmed combat. Stealth kills is not one of them, although the double damage backstab perk would lend aid to it.

The two benefits being: 1. Save bullets by killing weaker enemies with melee attacks. and 2. Possibly more damage than ranged attacks.

You forgot the third benefit: humor. In some of the early missions I sneak some characters up to the sleeping raiders, surround them, then have two or three characters literally kick the shit out of them.

Other than that my experience w/HtH combat in FoT is largely limited to the odd cockroach dispatched w/a Machete.

I'm not so much thinking about hamstringing Unarmed here, as much as I am simply revising things a bit to be more cliff-hanger-/pulp-esque rather than something out of an anime film. So no light effects for punches and no energy damage type, either...

One of the things that I think made HtH combat harder in the core campaign even early on was the saturation of the post apocalyptic battlefield w/automatic weapons. Why charge up to a Raider w/a Baseball Bat when you'd get off one, maybe two swings before he ripped a burst off into you at close range? That's something that's taken care of in IOOI. Since your "squad" starts w/only one SMG and ammo limits you to in its use and the enemies are similarly hamstrung w/logistical issues I was able to make some use of "Bubba", a grenadier who also used melee weapons.

Hmmm...tinker, tinker, tinker. Eventually we'll get it right, eh gentlemen?

OTB