Do we really need a combat overhaul? What are your opinions on it?

[LadyWYT]

14 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

To assess whether or not something is a good design, you have to know what it was designed to do. It would be silly to say a wine glass is poorly designed because it does not make a good tool for hammering nails into boards.

Or I mean...wine glasses and coffee cups both serve the same general purpose--drinking vessels. However, coffee cups probably aren't going to be the choice of drinkware when one hosts a banquet, same as wine glasses aren't the choice when drinking hot beverages.

[CastIronFabric]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

This is a strong statement, and, unfortunately, nowhere do you back it up.

To assess whether or not something is a good design, you have to know what it was designed to do. It would be silly to say a wine glass is poorly designed because it does not make a good tool for hammering nails into boards.

Rather than say it is poorly designed, it is more correct to say that's not how you would have designed it.

this is getting kinda circular.

'VS combat is complex'

'no its not'

'that is why it needs to be changed to be better..to be..more complex'

regardless of that circular logic, its really not complex and I vote that the team should focus on other things.

[Toroic]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

So maybe just give enemies damage resistance, depending on their tier, or overall type? For example, surface monsters should be easy to dispatch with most any weapon, but tier 2 monsters should require bronze equipment minimum before you can seriously deal with them. Tougher animals like bears and moose might be more resilient against stone weapons, which means a player will want to invest in metal weapons to deal with them more effectively. Players still have the option of using low tier weapons against high tier opponents, of course, since a stone weapon is better than nothing. But the idea is it'll be a less attractive choice to rely on the "cheap" route instead of investing a bit more into weaponry.

I'd be more inclined to leave this alone because the current state is that the damage the weapon says it does is the damage it deals to enemies, and enemies are already hp scaled to make the harder enemies harder.

This idea is good because it makes using higher tier weapons more rewarding and you don't need the current level of hp inflation on bosses and harder enemies to create a challenge.

There's obviously a desire for simplicity in combat from VS players (or perhaps there's survivorship bias here on the forums) so I am trying to be careful with deep mechanical changes that make damage calculations more complex.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Yeah, I can't really agree here when it comes to armor. Vintage Story has a lot more nuance when it comes to armor, since it matters what type you pick and what material you make it from. In Minecraft there is no reason not to obtain and wear the best armor(netherite) all the time.

What I would agree on though, is perhaps the stats need a bit more tuning in certain cases--plate armor is probably the worst offender there. I would also point out that there's a difference between how one equips themself for singleplayer versus multiplayer; in multiplayer it's a lot more viable to specialize for a particular role(plate for tanking, gambeson for even more accuracy for the ranged DPS).

There's also a case to be made for just picking a set you like and making it work, even if it doesn't have "the best" stats. Min-maxing will get the player the most bang for the buck in terms of cost versus performance, but also shoehorns the player into very specific choices, which isn't necessarily fun. Ideally, the player should be able to pick pretty much any option(of the appropriate tier for what they're dealing with) and be able to make it work easily enough. Some choices might be "subpar" to others if you crunch the numbers, but that doesn't mean they aren't viable or aren't fun.

There is more nuance in theory, but I'm not convinced about it in practice.

Players generally want a minimal penalty armor for around the base (leather, gambeson) during non-combat phases and a more serious protective armor option (typically iron or steel chain) when on away missions.

Improvised armor is a huge upgrade over nothing (though it gets shredded by wildlife due to tier) and copper and bronze armors are overall worse than gambeson, which generally is inexpensive due to a big flax farm being important for automation and also supplying a substantial amount of food.

Armors cheaper than chain don't make a lot of sense when an iron vein brings a player from nothing to abundance in terms of material, and both scale and plate scale more in tradeoffs than they do in additional protective capacity.

I love specialization within a group, but if two people in chain are cheaper and more effective than one in plate and one in chain, that is not much incentive to spend the extra resources and deal with the downsides for what is ultimately a worse option.

Players often are too obsessed with min-maxing for every small advantage, but I also believe that developers have a responsibility that if they're providing two options that there are mechanically supported reasons to choose both.  Not a player choosing (perhaps unintentionally) to make their situation more difficult.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

This I'm honestly not sure about. It would be interesting if they expanded on the idea, with a "rock, paper, scissors" style of balance when it comes to damage types. However, that kind of complexity might also be better suited for mods. Hard to say for sure. It could be something that gets fleshed out more in the future, or it could just be the lingering remnants of an early combat concept, that has since been discarded and not yet patched out.

I agree that complexity may be better suited to mods, as in Valheim for example while damage types are easy for players to understand and does promote weapon type diversity, you still end up with some "winning combinations" like bow and mace due to how enemy strengths and weaknesses line up.  Complexity has an inherent cost and if it is not paying off in terms of fun or immersion then all you're doing is increasing the learning curve.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Agree with the clubs bit, but I'm not sure about increasing melee damage across the board. To me, melee is already pretty strong, especially for specialists like Blackguard, so increasing the base damage by default only makes that class more of a monster than it is currently.

I am increasingly unconvinced that Blackguard is even average offensively, let alone "a monster" purely based on how much higher base damage is for ranged weapons.

A blackguard with an iron falx will deal 6.5 damage per hit (6.89 if using their unique shortsword).  Using a tin bronze spear they will deal 4.94 damage in melee, and 6.3 damage when throwing. With a longbow and iron arrows, 4.89.

A commoner with an iron falx will deal 5 damage.  Using tin bronze they will deal 3.8 and 7.5 damage.  With a longbow and iron arrows, 5.75.

A hunter with an iron falx will deal 4.25 damage.  Tin bronze, 3.23 and 9.  With a longbow and iron arrows, 6.9.  With their unique recurve, 7.2.

Given how fast you can throw spears in close to medium range, and how ranged weapons have substantially higher base damage then the melee weapons in the same metal tier, and with how easy it is to just backpedal and throw spears against a single target (like a bear or boar or wolf) I'm really not seeing where a blackguard is substantially out-damaging a commoner in any scenario.

Compared to a hunter, I think they get blown out of the water offensively despite both being combat focused classes.  Hunters are getting 6 damage spear throws basically from minutes after spawning.

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Now this one I can agree with; it's more intuitive, and Minecraft handles this kind of concept well. The one change I would include here, is that if you have a shield equipped, you shouldn't be allowed to use a bow unless you unequip the shield first. Or perhaps allow the player to fire the bow, but make that action take priority so that you cannot block while using a ranged weapon...in addition to penalizing accuracy if you're firing with a shield equipped. Given how bulky shields are, players really shouldn't be able to use them and bow effectively at the same time.

Agreed on all counts.

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I can agree with this one too, though I would note that the player should be actively blocking with the shield in order to fully block the incoming attack. I don't think I would apply quite the same logic to armor, as there should be at least a bit of damage leaking through. It should be possible to die to low tier damage even with good equipment; it shouldn't be likely, of course, but it should be possible if one gets careless.

What I would be proposing is that there is no passive block chance (not that 15% matters much currently anyway), and armor wouldn't change at all in terms of damage taken.  Armor is for passive mitigation, shields are for active mitigation and armor as a whole is effective at passive mitigation.

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I don't think I would reduce the penalty for all armor sets, as most feel pretty balanced in that regard; however, I do agree that once again plate is the worst offender here. The movement penalty for plate could be reduced quite a bit, while still keeping it balanced, due to the expense of obtaining it and the healing penalty it applies. 

Movement penalties are a tough thing to balance because speed inherently has defensive value (nothing is better than not getting hit to begin with), as does being able to heal faster.

Plate is trading mitigation (good defensively) for speed (bad defensively) and healing (bad defensively) and even with very good absorption numbers it can feel very fragile because against high tier enemies dodging is harder, active blocking barely mitigates the damage, and healing can quickly become very stressful because it takes so long to work.

One issue I see with the armor design currently is the only real levers that exist are cost, protection, and penalties.  Despite multiple types of penalties, they tend to all scale together and frankly with how large iron veins are, the cost really isn't relevant which just leaves you having your least penalties or most protection as options, and scale armor satisfies neither.

 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Honestly, could probably steal a page from the Age of Empires 2 playbook and tweak armor stats to accommodate something like this, without getting overly complex. Essentially, there were two different armor stats for units in AoE2--plain armor and pierce armor. Plain armor applied to attacks in general, and mitigated a certain amount of incoming damage. Pierce armor was similar, but applied specifically to ranged attacks, so you could have a unit that was highly resistant to ranged damage but susceptible to melee(huskarls are notorious for this). Of course, anything can die to ranged if you shoot it enough times, but the idea is that it's not efficient to do so.

In any case, when applied to VS armor, chainmail(for example) could have good stopping power against attacks in general while retaining good accuracy stats, making it a solid choice for ranged characters. However, it might not be very good against piercing attacks, which means it's not a great choice for melee when compared to plate, and leaved ranged characters vulnerable to bowtorn(or an enemy with a pierce attack specialized to close distances quickly). Plate, on the other hand, would be great against piercing and general damage types, but wouldn't be ideal for ranged characters due to the movement and accuracy penalties.

I like all those ideas, and they're a good way to create more niches for armor types, which is ultimately what I want.

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

This is a strong statement, and, unfortunately, nowhere do you back it up.

My posts are long enough already, and fully "backing up" my statement would require an essay at the end of what is already a post with a lot of positions.

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

To assess whether or not something is a good design, you have to know what it was designed to do. It would be silly to say a wine glass is poorly designed because it does not make a good tool for hammering nails into boards.

Determining design intent can be very difficult when dealing with subjective measures such as "Make something fun" or in the absence of direct statements from the designer.

What I find much more useful in terms of evaluating design quality is looking at player engagement and player sentiment.

Temporal Storms and random low temporal stability at the surface are two game systems with both negative player sentiment (both highly complained about, even from fans of the game) and low engagement (people afking/sleeping through temporal storms, and simply avoiding basing in places with low stability).

Of the two, low engagement is by far the biggest problem because it means you designed something that players don't want to play.  On a game level this is a flop with no players.  On a more granular level this is represented by development time that has either no contribution or negative contribution to the player experience (as players stumble into it once, go "that sucks" and avoid it from then on).

Combat in VS is probably the 3rd most complained about topic, an extensive overhaul is one of the most popular mods, and it is quite common for players to use pillars and pits to avoid combat.  New players definitely struggle in the early and midgame with how aggressive wildlife are and how copper armor was never really intended to be part of the progression.

I don't buy the argument that combat was just intended to be a simple, secondary part of the game because both of the story locations are exclusively focused on exploration and combat.  The formulas determining damage taken are not simple, the types of penalties armor applies are more complex than most voxel games.

My position is not "Bring Combat Overhaul into VS", my position is that the current state is too simple, too much equipment is of dubious value (clubs, shields, glider, most of the armor types), and we easily could bring more skill expression without making the game too complicated.

 

[Toroic]

1 hour ago, CastIronFabric said:

this is getting kinda circular.

'VS combat is complex'

'no its not'

'that is why it needs to be changed to be better..to be..more complex'

regardless of that circular logic, its really not complex and I vote that the team should focus on other things.

VS combat from the player in the moment perspective is too simple.  You spear spam or arrow spam difficult enemies to death, using your falx only for cleaning up weak enemies while progressing from improvised to gambeson to iron chain to steel chain armor.

VS combat in terms of damage calculation formulas against the player is too complex.  It's not intuitive to estimate how much damage you'll take from getting hit by an enemy that does X damage of Y tier.  This also makes deciding which armor is better against a certain enemy unintuitive (like my above example where gambeson is better vs double headed drifters than black bronze brigandine, but worse against surface drifters).  This mostly affects new players, as vets mostly just follow the improvised -> gambeson -> iron chain -> steel chain progression and don't bother with 80% of the armor types available because in addition to being overly complicated to compare, there's clear winners and losers with most of the armors being more expensive and less effective than chain.

Edited September 8, 2025 by Toroic

[LadyWYT]

14 minutes ago, Toroic said:

I am increasingly unconvinced that Blackguard is even average offensively, let alone "a monster" purely based on how much higher base damage is for ranged weapons.

A blackguard with an iron falx will deal 6.5 damage per hit (6.89 if using their unique shortsword).  Using a tin bronze spear they will deal 4.94 damage in melee, and 6.3 damage when throwing. With a longbow and iron arrows, 4.89.

A commoner with an iron falx will deal 5 damage.  Using tin bronze they will deal 3.8 and 7.5 damage.  With a longbow and iron arrows, 5.75.

A hunter with an iron falx will deal 4.25 damage.  Tin bronze, 3.23 and 9.  With a longbow and iron arrows, 6.9.  With their unique recurve, 7.2.

Given how fast you can throw spears in close to medium range, and how ranged weapons have substantially higher base damage then the melee weapons in the same metal tier, and with how easy it is to just backpedal and throw spears against a single target (like a bear or boar or wolf) I'm really not seeing where a blackguard is substantially out-damaging a commoner in any scenario.

Compared to a hunter, I think they get blown out of the water offensively despite both being combat focused classes.  Hunters are getting 6 damage spear throws basically from minutes after spawning.

I dunno, man, I'm still not sold on it  The numbers might technically be there, but I think it probably boils down to the individual player in question, and how well they can manage their class and equipment. Assuming that a Blackguard and Hunter have equal skill, and the absolute best equipment they can possibly have for their class(in terms of number crunching), the Hunter should win over the Blackguard assuming both have equal skill and the area is decent to fight in(that is, the Hunter can keep distance from the Blackguard). If the Hunter can't keep the distance, however, then I would expect the Hunter to get absolutely thrashed.

Of course, that could just be World of Warcraft experience talking on my part. I used to play death knight, and that class tended to be very durable and very capable of absolutely wrecking a target...provided the death knight could get close. Hunter was very good for sniping things at range, and was a class that was a pretty hard counter to death knights as a result...provided the hunter was able to use their abilities to keep the death knight at a distance. In the ideal scenario, the hunter wins every time, but in reality it depended heavily on which player used which abilities at which time.

For Vintage Story in particular though, I think most of the classes are balanced well enough, though Clockmaker could probably use a bit of love.

24 minutes ago, Toroic said:

What I would be proposing is that there is no passive block chance (not that 15% matters much currently anyway), and armor wouldn't change at all in terms of damage taken.  Armor is for passive mitigation, shields are for active mitigation and armor as a whole is effective at passive mitigation.

I would keep passive block protection--I think the main idea there is that the incoming shot hit the shield area, instead of your actual body. But you should still need to be facing the target for the passive block to take effect.

 

26 minutes ago, Toroic said:

Armors cheaper than chain don't make a lot of sense when an iron vein brings a player from nothing to abundance in terms of material, and both scale and plate scale more in tradeoffs than they do in additional protective capacity.

In my case, I opt for iron brigandine because I don't want to hammer out that many chains, even with a helve hammer. The material saved on it I can use for tools, or just shove into one of my refractories to turn into steel. Once I have steel, then I'll think about a set of chain, scale, or plate. Generally it's plate, just because that's what I like and it's very good for base defense in a temporal storm, but for actual adventuring chain is handier...especially for chapter 2.

That is just me though.

31 minutes ago, Toroic said:

Movement penalties are a tough thing to balance because speed inherently has defensive value (nothing is better than not getting hit to begin with), as does being able to heal faster.

Plate is trading mitigation (good defensively) for speed (bad defensively) and healing (bad defensively) and even with very good absorption numbers it can feel very fragile because against high tier enemies dodging is harder, active blocking barely mitigates the damage, and healing can quickly become very stressful because it takes so long to work.

One issue I see with the armor design currently is the only real levers that exist are cost, protection, and penalties.  Despite multiple types of penalties, they tend to all scale together and frankly with how large iron veins are, the cost really isn't relevant which just leaves you having your least penalties or most protection as options, and scale armor satisfies neither.

I've been thinking on this for a good chunk of the day, and I'm not sure that it's as much a numbers problem as it is a material cost issue. Low tier metal armors like copper and bronze seem sufficiently protective for their tier, but the amount of effort you'd have to sink into actually making one of those tier sets is very expensive for both material and labor cost, when compared to iron tier armors and above. If it were cheaper/easier to craft those armors then they might be a more attractive option, but as it stands now by the time you're finishing the crafting of one set, you've probably already got access to iron or enough flax for gambeson.

In which case, I wonder if it would work to split the chest and leg armor slots into two different slots, for a grand total of five armor slots instead of the three we have currently. Might look something like this:

Head: This slot is pretty much unchanged from what it is now. However, I would add an accuracy penalty to helmets that obstruct vision(plate helmets, Blackguard helmet, etc). 

Shoulders: This slot helps mitigate damage from hits to the head and torso areas. However, equipping armor in this slot will penalize accuracy and firing rate.

Torso: Functions pretty much the same as the chest slot does now, but these armor pieces will no longer impact accuracy or firing rate. This slot will affect movement speed.

Legs: Similar to the current legs slot, and like the torso slot will not impact fire rate or accuracy. It will affect movement speed.

Feet: Helps mitigate hits to the legs area. Doesn't penalize accuracy or fire rate, but will affect movement speed.

Overall, I'd expect a change like this to make a complete set of armor more expensive to craft and maintain. However, it would allow players to obtain some better pieces of protection earlier in the game for a more reasonable amount of materials and effort(such as a bronze chestplate). Likewise, it also allows players to specialize their gear a bit more. A melee specialist will probably opt for heavy armor in all slots in order to mitigate the most amount of damage, while a ranged specialist might opt for just a chestplate and helmet in order to maintain maximum mobility and shot effectiveness. An adventuring loadout might use heavy armor in the torso and head slots, while using lighter armor in the other slots to maintain more speed and a lower hunger rate.

I've also heard a status effect system floated, and having some basic negative effects that could occur from combat would also help flesh out armor choice a bit more. Wearing no armor leaves the player open to the entire range of injuries. Light armors like leather and gambeson might not be that protective, but they could be the difference between getting a major injury, or just suffering something minor. Heavier armors like scale and plate might render the player immune to most injuries, but won't stop the player from suffering bruises or broken bones. The injuries, of course, could penalize movement speed or health temporarily, and take a few days to actually heal(perhaps aided by herbal medicine)--the player can't just slap a few bandaids on and expect to be back in fighting shape. I've played with similar concepts in Skyrim, and while Skyrim is a different game, that kind of system did make armor choices a lot more interesting than just "pick whatever's the strongest in terms of numbers". Once I got to the better late game armors, injuries pretty much quit being a concern at all, outside of getting pummeled by something really strong.

[Bruno Willis]

I think combat is fine as is, although I'm sure there are rough spots which could do with a polish when their time comes.

I think there are a lot of people who think combat is boring because they've put on a bunch of heavy armor and now they can't dodge, all they can do is hit and get hit: that's not a game issue, that's a playstyle issue. Wear less armor, be more mobile: I really like the way the game handles armor for that reason - if you want challenging, complex combat, you can easily get it. If you want to play it safe and just get to the cave ruins and back alive, you can armor up and do that too. 

For people who are unsatisfied with the 'simple' combat, I would suggest changing up your playstyle and seeing what you enjoy most. Wearing lots of armor, or no armor + shield, or light armor, carrying a melee weapon and only one spear - don't optimize for efficient gameplay, optimize for fun gameplay. It is a game not a job. 

[Bruno Willis]

5 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

There's also a case to be made for just picking a set you like and making it work, even if it doesn't have "the best" stats. Min-maxing will get the player the most bang for the buck in terms of cost versus performance, but also shoehorns the player into very specific choices, which isn't necessarily fun. Ideally, the player should be able to pick pretty much any option(of the appropriate tier for what they're dealing with) and be able to make it work easily enough. Some choices might be "subpar" to others if you crunch the numbers, but that doesn't mean they aren't viable or aren't fun.

Yes! In my first world I took things slow and used what was available, and ended up with black-bronze plate (I had more gold and silver than tin). While the armor wasn't as good as I expected, it looked epic and expressed something about my local area (that there was a lot of gold and silver around). Of course, then I found iron.

I think the point of all the variation isn't to muddy the progression tree, it's to offer variety and different sorts of progression based on the availability of resources.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Bruno Willis said:

they've put on a bunch of heavy armor and now they can't dodge

It's not that one can't dodge while wearing heavy armor, because it's definitely possible. But the timing is a lot tighter in heavy armor than it is for lighter armors. 

 

1 hour ago, Bruno Willis said:

all they can do is hit and get hit: that's not a game issue, that's a playstyle issue. Wear less armor, be more mobile: I really like the way the game handles armor for that reason - if you want challenging, complex combat, you can easily get it. If you want to play it safe and just get to the cave ruins and back alive, you can armor up and do that too. 

Definitely agree here though, especially with the "hit and get hit" mentality. Even though heavy armor is good at soaking up damage, it's still a good idea for the user to dodge hits when possible, or otherwise block with a shield.

 

47 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

Yes! In my first world I took things slow and used what was available, and ended up with black-bronze plate (I had more gold and silver than tin). While the armor wasn't as good as I expected, it looked epic and expressed something about my local area (that there was a lot of gold and silver around). Of course, then I found iron.

Pretty much my experience as a new player as well. Some of the more experienced players that I had seen play argued against copper lamellar, improvised armors, and anything short of a bronze anvil, but I mean...I didn't have the experience or confidence required to skip that many steps or take that many risks and get away with it. Improvised armor helped keep me alive while I developed reflexes, and the copper lamellar was a big deal because it meant I could start fighting back against some enemies and actually live.

Plus I mean...given some of the stories I've seen, all that's really needed to defeat anything in the game is a handful of stone spears--no armor, no fancy weaponry. Of course, that's not what the average player is going to be capable of, or going to want to do.

[Toroic]

  

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

I dunno, man, I'm still not sold on it  The numbers might technically be there, but I think it probably boils down to the individual player in question, and how well they can manage their class and equipment. Assuming that a Blackguard and Hunter have equal skill, and the absolute best equipment they can possibly have for their class(in terms of number crunching), the Hunter should win over the Blackguard assuming both have equal skill and the area is decent to fight in(that is, the Hunter can keep distance from the Blackguard). If the Hunter can't keep the distance, however, then I would expect the Hunter to get absolutely thrashed.

Of course, that could just be World of Warcraft experience talking on my part. I used to play death knight, and that class tended to be very durable and very capable of absolutely wrecking a target...provided the death knight could get close. Hunter was very good for sniping things at range, and was a class that was a pretty hard counter to death knights as a result...provided the hunter was able to use their abilities to keep the death knight at a distance. In the ideal scenario, the hunter wins every time, but in reality it depended heavily on which player used which abilities at which time.

For Vintage Story in particular though, I think most of the classes are balanced well enough, though Clockmaker could probably use a bit of love.

Are you factoring in that hunter in chain moves at 101% speed, and blackguard in plate moves at 68.5% speed?  I don't think there's any practical scenario where they're not shoved in a tiny room together where blackguard closes the gap.

Unlike a death knight, there's a huge speed difference and blackguard doesn't have any gap closers.

I was mostly thinking about a pve perspective where hunter is throwing 9 damage spears and 7.2 damage arrows, and blackguard is dealing 6.9 per melee hit.

 

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

In my case, I opt for iron brigandine because I don't want to hammer out that many chains, even with a helve hammer. The material saved on it I can use for tools, or just shove into one of my refractories to turn into steel. Once I have steel, then I'll think about a set of chain, scale, or plate. Generally it's plate, just because that's what I like and it's very good for base defense in a temporal storm, but for actual adventuring chain is handier...especially for chapter 2.

That is just me though.

Skipping straight from brigandine to steel is definitely viable, though it does tie into what you say next.
 

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

I've been thinking on this for a good chunk of the day, and I'm not sure that it's as much a numbers problem as it is a material cost issue. Low tier metal armors like copper and bronze seem sufficiently protective for their tier, but the amount of effort you'd have to sink into actually making one of those tier sets is very expensive for both material and labor cost, when compared to iron tier armors and above. If it were cheaper/easier to craft those armors then they might be a more attractive option, but as it stands now by the time you're finishing the crafting of one set, you've probably already got access to iron or enough flax for gambeson.

In which case, I wonder if it would work to split the chest and leg armor slots into two different slots, for a grand total of five armor slots instead of the three we have currently. Might look something like this:

Head: This slot is pretty much unchanged from what it is now. However, I would add an accuracy penalty to helmets that obstruct vision(plate helmets, Blackguard helmet, etc). 

Shoulders: This slot helps mitigate damage from hits to the head and torso areas. However, equipping armor in this slot will penalize accuracy and firing rate.

Torso: Functions pretty much the same as the chest slot does now, but these armor pieces will no longer impact accuracy or firing rate. This slot will affect movement speed.

Legs: Similar to the current legs slot, and like the torso slot will not impact fire rate or accuracy. It will affect movement speed.

Feet: Helps mitigate hits to the legs area. Doesn't penalize accuracy or fire rate, but will affect movement speed.

Overall, I'd expect a change like this to make a complete set of armor more expensive to craft and maintain. However, it would allow players to obtain some better pieces of protection earlier in the game for a more reasonable amount of materials and effort(such as a bronze chestplate). Likewise, it also allows players to specialize their gear a bit more. A melee specialist will probably opt for heavy armor in all slots in order to mitigate the most amount of damage, while a ranged specialist might opt for just a chestplate and helmet in order to maintain maximum mobility and shot effectiveness. An adventuring loadout might use heavy armor in the torso and head slots, while using lighter armor in the other slots to maintain more speed and a lower hunger rate.

I've also heard a status effect system floated, and having some basic negative effects that could occur from combat would also help flesh out armor choice a bit more. Wearing no armor leaves the player open to the entire range of injuries. Light armors like leather and gambeson might not be that protective, but they could be the difference between getting a major injury, or just suffering something minor. Heavier armors like scale and plate might render the player immune to most injuries, but won't stop the player from suffering bruises or broken bones. The injuries, of course, could penalize movement speed or health temporarily, and take a few days to actually heal(perhaps aided by herbal medicine)--the player can't just slap a few bandaids on and expect to be back in fighting shape. I've played with similar concepts in Skyrim, and while Skyrim is a different game, that kind of system did make armor choices a lot more interesting than just "pick whatever's the strongest in terms of numbers". Once I got to the better late game armors, injuries pretty much quit being a concern at all, outside of getting pummeled by something really strong.

I think the cost issue very much comes down to how ore distribution works.

Copper veins are somewhat small though I wouldn't call it rare.  Tin is not usually found in huge amounts, though a little goes a decent way.  Iron though... once you find an iron vein you're set for the rest of the game.

 

1 hour ago, Bruno Willis said:

Yes! In my first world I took things slow and used what was available, and ended up with black-bronze plate (I had more gold and silver than tin). While the armor wasn't as good as I expected, it looked epic and expressed something about my local area (that there was a lot of gold and silver around). Of course, then I found iron.

I think the point of all the variation isn't to muddy the progression tree, it's to offer variety and different sorts of progression based on the availability of resources.

It would be really nice if that was the case, but the reality is that the gap between iron and pre-iron is enormous and iron isn't rare.  Because of how tiers work, armor below iron not only is not very protective against higher tier wildlife and rust monsters, but it also gets shredded by the extra durability damage.

 

1 hour ago, Bruno Willis said:

I think combat is fine as is, although I'm sure there are rough spots which could do with a polish when their time comes.

I think there are a lot of people who think combat is boring because they've put on a bunch of heavy armor and now they can't dodge, all they can do is hit and get hit: that's not a game issue, that's a playstyle issue. Wear less armor, be more mobile: I really like the way the game handles armor for that reason - if you want challenging, complex combat, you can easily get it. If you want to play it safe and just get to the cave ruins and back alive, you can armor up and do that too. 

For people who are unsatisfied with the 'simple' combat, I would suggest changing up your playstyle and seeing what you enjoy most. Wearing lots of armor, or no armor + shield, or light armor, carrying a melee weapon and only one spear - don't optimize for efficient gameplay, optimize for fun gameplay. It is a game not a job. 

 

There's really only two playstyles, and anything other than ranged early game is a lot of work to take a lot of hard to dodge damage.

The idea that lightly armored with range is the pro strat and blackguard + melee is the noob tank strat doesn't really work.  Blackguard has the weakest start of all the characters, and by the time someone gets to iron plate they really aren't a new player anymore.

I've played a lot of crafting survival games.  VS has some of the most interesting and immersive crafting, but also the most boring and one note combat of them all outside of boss fights.  Wildlife is very aggressive and VS is not really a "cozy crafting game" though you can definitely get into a flow state while crafting inside your base.

Right now I've been using mods to bridge the gap with combat overhaul and many of SaltyWater's movement mods, including the one that lets you do a directional dodge.  It's *way* more fun to be bobbing and weaving and parrying in melee combat than just running away and spamming spears at every enemy until they die, and vanilla just doesn't do melee combat well at all in terms of risk or reward.
 

[LadyWYT]

2 minutes ago, Toroic said:

Are you factoring in that hunter in chain moves at 101% speed, and blackguard in plate moves at 68.5% speed?  I don't think there's any practical scenario where they're not shoved in a tiny room together where blackguard closes the gap.

Unlike a death knight, there's a huge speed difference and blackguard doesn't have any gap closers.

I was mostly thinking about a pve perspective where hunter is throwing 9 damage spears and 7.2 damage arrows, and blackguard is dealing 6.9 per melee hit.

Well, WoW is a very different game too, and I will note that when I was playing, death knight didn't really have any good gap closers aside from the deathgrip ability, which was countered rather easily with a hunter's disengage and cheetah sprints. Pair that with hunters having a snare to slow down targets, and a freezing trap--the hunter should win.

I did factor in the movement speeds, though I made a point of saying optimal equipment for each class, based on number crunching for a reason. Or at least, that's what I was trying to get at. If you equip each class with the absolute best-in-slot items(which for numbers, may not actually be plate for Blackguard), the Hunter should be able to beat the Blackguard every time, assuming both players are equally skilled and there is enough space for the Hunter to move around easily. In tight quarters, or in rough terrain, the tables might be turned against the Hunter, depending on how well the Blackguard can navigate. Keeping in mind too, it's a lot more difficult to accurately shoot while on the run.

From the PvE perspective, it's a bit different, since enemies behave in predictable fashion, but I'm also not convinced that the difference in potential damage outputs is big enough to warrant buffing Blackguard, or melee in general. Not that I would mind a buff as a Blackguard main, mind you, but it is a very strong class already and making it even stronger would probably be a mistake. I also think what @Bruno Willis mentioned ties in here as well--it depends entirely on player preference. If someone wants to absolutely min-max the snot out of the game then they can crunch the numbers and go for whatever has the best readout. That doesn't mean it's going to be enjoyable every time though, or that the average player is going to enjoy that kind of min-maxing.

Of course, now you're making me want to build an arena and go pester my hunter friend into being a sparring partner...

[CastIronFabric]

16 hours ago, Toroic said:

VS combat from the player in the moment perspective is too simple.  You spear spam or arrow spam difficult enemies to death, using your falx only for cleaning up weak enemies while progressing from improvised to gambeson to iron chain to steel chain armor.

VS combat in terms of damage calculation formulas against the player is too complex.  It's not intuitive to estimate how much damage you'll take from getting hit by an enemy that does X damage of Y tier.  This also makes deciding which armor is better against a certain enemy unintuitive (like my above example where gambeson is better vs double headed drifters than black bronze brigandine, but worse against surface drifters).  This mostly affects new players, as vets mostly just follow the improvised -> gambeson -> iron chain -> steel chain progression and don't bother with 80% of the armor types available because in addition to being overly complicated to compare, there's clear winners and losers with most of the armors being more expensive and less effective than chain.

a few things

1. how do you know what the programming for combat is? have you been looking at the code?

2. as a player why would we care if the programming is complex or not, how would that be relevant to this conversation really? what does it matter to anyone other than the programmers if the code is 'intuitive' or not ?

 

if you are actually referring to the 'ruleset' and not the programming code specifically the question still applies, why mention it if it affects nobody.

 

[CastIronFabric]

15 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I dunno, man, I'm still not sold on it  The numbers might technically be there, but I think it probably boils down to the individual player in question, and how well they can manage their class and equipment. Assuming that a Blackguard and Hunter have equal skill, and the absolute best equipment they can possibly have for their class(in terms of number crunching), the Hunter should win over the Blackguard assuming both have equal skill and the area is decent to fight in(that is, the Hunter can keep distance from the Blackguard). If the Hunter can't keep the distance, however, then I would expect the Hunter to get absolutely thrashed.

Of course, that could just be World of Warcraft experience talking on my part. I used to play death knight, and that class tended to be very durable and very capable of absolutely wrecking a target...provided the death knight could get close. Hunter was very good for sniping things at range, and was a class that was a pretty hard counter to death knights as a result...provided the hunter was able to use their abilities to keep the death knight at a distance. In the ideal scenario, the hunter wins every time, but in reality it depended heavily on which player used which abilities at which time.

For Vintage Story in particular though, I think most of the classes are balanced well enough, though Clockmaker could probably use a bit of love.

I would keep passive block protection--I think the main idea there is that the incoming shot hit the shield area, instead of your actual body. But you should still need to be facing the target for the passive block to take effect.

 

In my case, I opt for iron brigandine because I don't want to hammer out that many chains, even with a helve hammer. The material saved on it I can use for tools, or just shove into one of my refractories to turn into steel. Once I have steel, then I'll think about a set of chain, scale, or plate. Generally it's plate, just because that's what I like and it's very good for base defense in a temporal storm, but for actual adventuring chain is handier...especially for chapter 2.

That is just me though.

I've been thinking on this for a good chunk of the day, and I'm not sure that it's as much a numbers problem as it is a material cost issue. Low tier metal armors like copper and bronze seem sufficiently protective for their tier, but the amount of effort you'd have to sink into actually making one of those tier sets is very expensive for both material and labor cost, when compared to iron tier armors and above. If it were cheaper/easier to craft those armors then they might be a more attractive option, but as it stands now by the time you're finishing the crafting of one set, you've probably already got access to iron or enough flax for gambeson.

In which case, I wonder if it would work to split the chest and leg armor slots into two different slots, for a grand total of five armor slots instead of the three we have currently. Might look something like this:

Head: This slot is pretty much unchanged from what it is now. However, I would add an accuracy penalty to helmets that obstruct vision(plate helmets, Blackguard helmet, etc). 

Shoulders: This slot helps mitigate damage from hits to the head and torso areas. However, equipping armor in this slot will penalize accuracy and firing rate.

Torso: Functions pretty much the same as the chest slot does now, but these armor pieces will no longer impact accuracy or firing rate. This slot will affect movement speed.

Legs: Similar to the current legs slot, and like the torso slot will not impact fire rate or accuracy. It will affect movement speed.

Feet: Helps mitigate hits to the legs area. Doesn't penalize accuracy or fire rate, but will affect movement speed.

Overall, I'd expect a change like this to make a complete set of armor more expensive to craft and maintain. However, it would allow players to obtain some better pieces of protection earlier in the game for a more reasonable amount of materials and effort(such as a bronze chestplate). Likewise, it also allows players to specialize their gear a bit more. A melee specialist will probably opt for heavy armor in all slots in order to mitigate the most amount of damage, while a ranged specialist might opt for just a chestplate and helmet in order to maintain maximum mobility and shot effectiveness. An adventuring loadout might use heavy armor in the torso and head slots, while using lighter armor in the other slots to maintain more speed and a lower hunger rate.

I've also heard a status effect system floated, and having some basic negative effects that could occur from combat would also help flesh out armor choice a bit more. Wearing no armor leaves the player open to the entire range of injuries. Light armors like leather and gambeson might not be that protective, but they could be the difference between getting a major injury, or just suffering something minor. Heavier armors like scale and plate might render the player immune to most injuries, but won't stop the player from suffering bruises or broken bones. The injuries, of course, could penalize movement speed or health temporarily, and take a few days to actually heal(perhaps aided by herbal medicine)--the player can't just slap a few bandaids on and expect to be back in fighting shape. I've played with similar concepts in Skyrim, and while Skyrim is a different game, that kind of system did make armor choices a lot more interesting than just "pick whatever's the strongest in terms of numbers". Once I got to the better late game armors, injuries pretty much quit being a concern at all, outside of getting pummeled by something really strong.

Wurm online.

I cant tell you all how many times I have either seen a mod that does what Wurm Online does or read a suggestion that is almost exactly the same as Wurm Online.

What is different here though is that in Wurm online you can get physical damage in those slots. So for example, if you get hit on the foot you will walk slower but you will not die quickly. However if you get a good hit to the chest, you will die quicker. There is a lot more aspects to it as well like healing, the quality of the heal, how soon you do it etc etc etc.

anyway, if people want to see a in depth system accross the board they should look into Wurm game mechanics

[Thorfinn]

13 hours ago, Toroic said:

vanilla just doesn't do melee combat well at all in terms of risk or reward.

This is the biggest piece of evidence to suggest they were not setting out to create just another "me, too" combat game. The rewards for combat could have been set higher, but were not. Why not? Look at all the effort that has gone into flowers and reef fish and butterflies and mushrooms. The diversity of deer-like species. The detail they put into just plain old grass. Or even automation.

Combat Overhaul exists to fill the niche of those who want a "me, too". Various loot drops to turn VS into a rogue-like. Salty's and lots of other movement mods for those who don't want the disadvantages cooked into the system.

Oh, and crude damage is not a good way to look at how combat works. First, because what's important is how many times it takes to put the foe down, because that affects how much damage you take. You need to do something a little more detailed -- how many attacks does the foe do in the time it takes to put him down. Hit boxes for melee tend to be a lot easier than missiles. You start not counting a third or more spears because they missed, and the numbers start changing. Second, because things like bowtorn love it when you stand at a distance. Maybe not the best of tactics. Unless you have some other weapon to switch to, pointed sticks do much less. And third, as a mostly flint spear chucking commoner, even late game, there are lots of instances where your spears are not recoverable in combat, at least not conveniently. The falx never has that problem, except for those of us who fat-finger "Q" before remembering to remap the controls again.

[LadyWYT]

27 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Second, because things like bowtorn love it when you stand at a distance. Maybe not the best of tactics. Unless you have some other weapon to switch to, pointed sticks do much less.

Don't forget the shivers too. They can close the distance quickly, and they like to skitter around their target, nipping from multiple angles. By the time the player has aimed a ranged weapon, the shiver has quite possibly already skittered behind them...not to mention that damage will jostle the player and help throw off aim.

32 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Oh, and crude damage is not a good way to look at how combat works. First, because what's important is how many times it takes to put the foe down, because that affects how much damage you take. You need to do something a little more detailed -- how many attacks does the foe do in the time it takes to put him down. Hit boxes for melee tend to be a lot easier than missiles. You start not counting a third or more spears because they missed, and the numbers start changing.

The other bit I'll add here, regarding how I usually look at the class balance: a Blackguard takes an extra shot to kill something at range but one less hit to kill something in melee, on average(compared to a class like Commoner). A Hunter will take one extra hit to kill something in melee, but one less shot to kill something at range. Comparing Hunter to Blackguard directly, the Hunter should be able to take about two less shots to kill something at range, but two more hits to kill something in melee.

In any case, it's not a big enough difference to make it impossible for either class to function normally in the game, and it feels a fair balance for classes that are the polar opposites of each other. As for which one is best to pick...really depends on what the player wants to do. Hunter tends to be a common pick, especially for new players, because it's easy to handle the drawbacks while the benefits are effective throughout the game. Blackguard is a less common choice for newer players given that it's a tough class to handle at the beginning of the game due to the drawbacks, while the benefits become much stronger in the late game.

And yeah, the missed shots are a huge factor when it comes to ranged damage. It doesn't matter how good the potential numbers are, if one can't actually achieve those numbers with any kind of consistency. I also suspect too, that if ranged damage were really that overpowered, the devs would have most likely smacked it with the nerf bat by now.

[Twad]

The five most important things combat need to improve imho are these:

That one is kind of a nitpick; Armor level system/armor piercing is unintuitive to me, i dislike it. Make it more obvious visually (enemy has armor, or not, fleshy texture has clear "quality" to it or whatever). With audio: If i strike an enemy with a weapon that doesnt pierce make it do a different sound (ex: messy plink) than normal (ex: penetrating shink) or something visual like dust/sparks/fluids flying off. Same logic when we get hit. Heck make the drifter laugh at my puny sword if i can't poke him good enough . Make the bad guy react different, flinch, groan more if i do pierce. I don't like trading blows after blow and the only thing that actually happen are invisible numbers changing 'till someone dies, its boring.

Hit detection. Unreliable. Too often i swing at a critter and its just doesn't connect, despite my weapon swing clearly making contact .  Also the opposite, i often get hit by attacks that did not remotely touch me. Those little drifters with arms the length of a broken pencil doing a puny jab can hit me really far.. sometimes (not all the time its weird), somehow. 

Better animations for baddies so they can telegraph their moves with clarity so we can react to them. Because frankly, the animations are really basic, many with nearly no wind-up and make the obligatory Kite In A Circle the only safe strategy. That and armor since late game enemy damage is harsh. 

Combat controls that include a basic block/parry/bash (i'm thinking something like the Vermintide/Darktide games here) with RMB/MMB or whatever, cuz afaik you can only block with a shield in your off-hand.. which also mean you can't have a lantern/torch, which mean fighting with a shield while spelunking isnt great as combat is nearly guaranteed down there.

Audio feedback: Every enemies in this game are far too quiet, from ninja bears and commando shivers. There's no walking sounds at all that arent the player's ( i think?). BAddies do their basic barks/moans/screeches infrequently and i don'T recall them doing a special bark when they aggro us (except bowthorn when they ready a shot). I think only wolves, bears and bowthorn have an audio cue when they attack (not that helpful with bears and wolves, if you hear it chances are you got hit already) . Of all of them wolves are "best" (still can be ninjas) as their random howls have long range to inform of their presence in the area. If VS could do even 10% of the audio feedback that the Tides games do (Fatshark did a SUPERB job with audio feedback, so good in VT2 that you can play with your eyes closed and still understand/react/fight to what's around you) it'd be a lot more enjoyable.

Mind, i like the game. Building is fun. Exploration is fun. Forging is a TON of fun. Chiseling and make bases pretty and functional is fun as hell.. but combat is also an important part of the game and its the weakest link in VS. Would simply like to see it be better.

[Bruno Willis]

1 hour ago, Twad said:

That one is kind of a nitpick; Armor level system/armor piercing is unintuitive to me, i dislike it. Make it more obvious visually (enemy has armor, or not, fleshy texture has clear "quality" to it or whatever). With audio: If i strike an enemy with a weapon that doesnt pierce make it do a different sound (ex: messy plink) than normal (ex: penetrating shink) or something visual like dust/sparks/fluids flying off. Same logic when we get hit. Heck make the drifter laugh at my puny sword if i can't poke him good enough . Make the bad guy react different, flinch, groan more if i do pierce. I don't like trading blows after blow and the only thing that actually happen are invisible numbers changing 'till someone dies, its boring.

Hit detection. Unreliable. Too often i swing at a critter and its just doesn't connect, despite my weapon swing clearly making contact .  Also the opposite, i often get hit by attacks that did not remotely touch me. Those little drifters with arms the length of a broken pencil doing a puny jab can hit me really far.. sometimes (not all the time its weird), somehow. 

Better animations for baddies so they can telegraph their moves with clarity so we can react to them. Because frankly, the animations are really basic, many with nearly no wind-up and make the obligatory Kite In A Circle the only safe strategy. That and armor since late game enemy damage is harsh. 

Welcome! Yeah, this is a side of the topic that gets not enough thought - not what the raw numbers of damage say or don't say, but what combat feels like. I'd love it if drifters mocked me when I missed.

I'd guess that the animation thing is probably something the devs work on as they go. If the way things looked and sounded was more intuitive and evocative, that would actually go a long way to improving combat, without needing to touch the "too hard" vs. "too easy" debate. 

I'd love it if drifters started "arguing" with each other while hitting each other, if you manage to get them fighting amongst themselves. It'd give them so much more character. I'd also love it if you could give drifters cooked food to give them a 1 min passive phase while they chomp it down. Just a bit more variation for escaping them - also for predator animals, I'd love it if they paused over their kills and had a good chomping session before moving on. It looks really odd when a bear is just charging from chicken to chicken, killing them all as if they'd just murdered his trauma recovery dog.

2 hours ago, Twad said:

Audio feedback: Every enemies in this game are far too quiet, from ninja bears and commando shivers. There's no walking sounds at all that arent the player's ( i think?). BAddies do their basic barks/moans/screeches infrequently and i don'T recall them doing a special bark when they aggro us (except bowthorn when they ready a shot). I think only wolves, bears and bowthorn have an audio cue when they attack (not that helpful with bears and wolves, if you hear it chances are you got hit already) . Of all of them wolves are "best" (still can be ninjas) as their random howls have long range to inform of their presence in the area. If VS could do even 10% of the audio feedback that the Tides games do (Fatshark did a SUPERB job with audio feedback, so good in VT2 that you can play with your eyes closed and still understand/react/fight to what's around you) it'd be a lot more enjoyable.

I don't know about this one. I feel like hunting animals are trying to be quiet, and I really dislike all the animals in the environment just making random noises at noting - it makes it really obvious that they're just chunks of code. It'd be cool if when one wolf howled, all the others in the local area would howl back, things like that, but I'd hate it if animals just made sounds so you could tell where they were. That'd feel like they're trying to jump in your cooking pot. Whether they're scared of you or stalking you, they don't want to be heard.

 

[LadyWYT]

30 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

I'd love it if drifters started "arguing" with each other while hitting each other, if you manage to get them fighting amongst themselves. It'd give them so much more character. I'd also love it if you could give drifters cooked food to give them a 1 min passive phase while they chomp it down. Just a bit more variation for escaping them - also for predator animals, I'd love it if they paused over their kills and had a good chomping session before moving on. It looks really odd when a bear is just charging from chicken to chicken, killing them all as if they'd just murdered his trauma recovery dog.

Honestly, I think this is the better route than having them mock the player for missing--have the drifters get frustrated when you manage to evade the rocks! They already have an animation where they appear to throw their...hands?...up in frustration, so it wouldn't necessarily require a new animation either. As for giving them food...I don't think rotbeasts actually eat anything, if they're even capable. The short story Ghosts suggests that they brutally maul specific targets and leave the mangled body behind. A temporal gear seems more like something that might distract them, or even start a fight between them, while also being a fair cost for providing such an advantage(because food is super cheap in comparison).

 

35 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

I don't know about this one. I feel like hunting animals are trying to be quiet, and I really dislike all the animals in the environment just making random noises at noting - it makes it really obvious that they're just chunks of code. It'd be cool if when one wolf howled, all the others in the local area would howl back, things like that, but I'd hate it if animals just made sounds so you could tell where they were. That'd feel like they're trying to jump in your cooking pot. Whether they're scared of you or stalking you, they don't want to be heard.

From a game balance standpoint, I think it's fair to have animals make occasional noise to alert players to their presence, with some animals being noisier than others. However, I think a fair counter to that is to have most animals actively try to keep their distance from the player, if possible. That way, the player has to actually hunt the animal in question, not just walk up to it and provoke a fight(this is how I get most of my meat as a Blackguard--walking up to pigs and rams and starting a fight). As for large predators like bears and wolves...according to the lore, predators are more aggressive for unknown reasons(presumably, a reaction to the catastrophic events of the past), but it would be a little more ideal to have them try to avoid or actively warn players away from their territory, and only attack if that space is disrespected. That behavior is already somewhat present in wolves, it seems, as I've had them give warning growls without attacking, or even sometimes growl and run away.

[Thorfinn]

18 hours ago, Twad said:

Better animations for baddies so they can telegraph their moves with clarity so we can react to them. Because frankly, the animations are really basic, many with nearly no wind-up and make the obligatory Kite In A Circle the only safe strategy. That and armor since late game enemy damage is harsh. 

They do telegraph their attacks. It's just that it's very fast -- usually about 1/2 of a second, some around 1/3 of a second. That's inside a lot of people's OODA, without a lot of practice. You have to learn to recognize the very beginning of the animation, and react then.

[Tabbot95]

On 9/8/2025 at 11:29 AM, CastIronFabric said:

I do not think the combat system in this game is complex if I understand you correctly. Not complex at all.

 

Regardless, although I was dead wrong about this when it comes to Space Engineers my prediction (maybe becasue I want it this way) is that this game will not try to be the next Mount and Blade but instead focus on building, traders, villagers, thirst mechanics, story (although I am not a fan of this either I think the developers are)

I feel like I'm the only one who remembers Mount and Blade as "off to Dorstaad to sell a boatload wine and wool for mead and amber, gotta dodge that sea raider ship, oh looks like it's got a smaller crew than me, and I've got a ship slot opened in my fleet, let's smash them and steal their ship to sell for profit in DOORSTAAD".. (this is only slightly different in slightly modified vanilla warband

 

 

also one of the most important things CO is missing is a lack of momentum/relative-speed bonus when it comes to attacks. from couched lances to braced pikes CO is lacking in that department when it would probably make things like bears and boars much less annoying to fight.

[Vahtapor Allconquer]

Guys, adding a realistic and immersive combat system doesnt diminish the sides of the game that reliy on homesteading or engineering etc. Therefore, I dont see a reason why somebody would be against combat overhaul just because they like focusing other aspects of Vintage Story. Let everybody focus on whatever they want and make all the systems of the game immersive and realistic. Personally, I hope to see Combat overhaul mod incorporated into game somehow. Also butchery as you dont need to do butchery grind, it would simply yield more resource if you choose the proper methods.

[CABLES]

A proper combat rework, in my mind, would require a few prerequisites to fit properly within Vintage Story. The one-dimensional combat feels like a symptom of placeholder systems that haven't been fleshed out enough, especially given that VS is intended to be more on the realistic side of things.

Personally, I want combat to be more dangerous, more difficult, and more granular. Here're my thoughts on what could change with that bias in mind:

1. Movement is too arcadey. Given that the player character lacks any momentum while moving, movement is generally low-commitment and doesn't require planning or care to execute. On top of that, being able to sprint omnidirectionally is definitely overpowered -- the player should not be able to moonwalk at Mach 1 while stabbing bears to death. Since movement is like this, combat feels too precise and not punishing enough. Adding in momentum to the player's movement would make combat more challenging and punish mistakes more greatly -- something that's definitely needed.
2. Healing and injuries aren't granular enough. Pressing right click on a bandage to heal is... fine, and the healing effectiveness system does help add an element of risk/reward to armor, but I would love to see a detailed system of wounds come to VS a la Project Zomboid. This would likely have to include an expansion of the locational damage/body part system to work right; i.e. leg injuries reduce movement speed, head injuries make you woozy, arm injuries make it harder to swing weapons and tools, etc. Having to deal with semi-random injuries on the fly during a combat situation would add yet another layer of complexity atop a movement rework to flesh out the combat experience.
3. Armor needs a polishing pass. In vanilla, plate and brigandine are noob traps. Brigandine feels like it's supposed to be a worse, less expensive alternative to plate, but iron and meteoric iron are so easy to come by compared to how tedious it is to make leather in bulk that the expense idea sort of goes out the window. Plate offers great protection, but the movement speed and hunger debuffs are severe enough to the point that plate ends up doing worse for me than scale or chainmail. It's generally better to retain movement speed via medium armor and defend yourself with a shield. The only times I break out the plate are during story quests and when I want to spend temporal storms outdoors. I'm not entirely certain how one would fix this, though. It's just a shame because both brig and plate are easily the prettiest armor currently available.
4. Enemies in general ought to be reworked. Not only do none of the mobs in ths game make footstep noises -- lack of audio feedback is my biggest pet peeve with VS -- but having only three common enemy types with minor variation is not especially engaging after a hundred hours or so. (That said, I love shivers. Even the surface ones creep me out. It rules!) I would love to see more enemy types and variants, more threatening surface mobs, and more opportunistic enemy AI that avoids a player with armor in good condition/high health and vice versa instead of fleeing randomly.

[QueenGeeBee]

I feel the way to improve combat is to just give players a larger variety of options. I am of the opinion that we probably don't need chivarly weapon attack orientations or special moves or any of that stuff, but if players just had a variety of tools to use then people might feel better about things overall.

I think we should take the already existing club weapon in the game, and allow the player to craft higher tier versions of them. The craft could require a pounding cap and nails/strips to get a kind of cudgel feel. It could apply a new status effect type, concussed, which would temporarily stun an enemy hit, then give them stun immunity based on their tier (with bosses having the longest stun immunity.) We already have scrap mace to fill the gap between wood clubs and bronze clubs from the pounding caps.

A spear nerf which i don't think is unreasonable, is to just cap the damage you can do with the spear throw, and give us steel spears. I want the higher durability of a poke weapon. I understand throwing spears is incredibly strong and a little problematic, so just don't make it scale past bronze (where we're currently at) or maybe even bump it down a bit to copper, idk. I just think its weird to not have the option to make a steel weapon because an aspect about it is way too strong. Id rather just nerf the super strong thing.

It would be cool to give slings a slight buff, so that people who like using them could carry them a bit further.
- Allow Malefactors to knap hard stones into sling bullets, increasing their damage to maybe bone arrow level. It would maintain the sling as being good for a wanderer/explorer playstyle, because you would still find lots of ammo in the world around you, but now you can take some time to make some slightly stronger bullets out of harder stone. They'll still get surpassed by bows and spears, but I think its good to give players more options to play with. Maybe let sling bullets apply concussed like spears, for a small ranged stun every once in awhile.

The injury system people are suggesting sounds like it could be cool too. Even if its simple as
Lower Body Injury - Movement speed penalty
Upper Body Injury - Attack / Equip speed penalty
And maybe some unique injury debuffs that require specific treatments to heal, like a damage over time bleed, bone fractures that require specific treatment and not just slapping honey'd bandages on, maybe infected wounds because I can only imagine how dirty the rotbeasts are.

[CastIronFabric]

21 hours ago, Vahtapor Allconquer said:

Guys, adding a realistic and immersive combat system doesnt diminish the sides of the game that reliy on homesteading or engineering etc. Therefore, I dont see a reason why somebody would be against combat overhaul just because they like focusing other aspects of Vintage Story. Let everybody focus on whatever they want and make all the systems of the game immersive and realistic. Personally, I hope to see Combat overhaul mod incorporated into game somehow. Also butchery as you dont need to do butchery grind, it would simply yield more resource if you choose the proper methods.

it absolutely positive could impact building.

If you cant run around the world looking for iron or even clay because you have to fight all the time it absolutely will affect building aspects of the game. You cant avoid combat in this game unless you turn hostility off completely

Edited December 19, 2025 by CastIronFabric

[Loosebearings]

31 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

If you cant run around the world looking for iron or even clay because you have to fight all the time it absolutely will affect building aspects of the game. You cant avoid combat in this game unless you turn hostility off completely

If you don't want to fight all the time then you can either just run away or not go out at night. Improving the combat would help other aspects of the game feel better too. Temporal Storms and caving could be more engaging if combat was less annoying.

 

Spoiler

I'm sure story bosses could be improved by an update to combat aswell, though I've only done the resonance archives and the eidolon wasn't neccessarily rewarding as the difficulty only comes from the inflated health pool and undodgable attacks, you just sit in a corner and hope you brought enough bandages inbetween attacks.

 

[CastIronFabric]

2 minutes ago, Loosebearings said:

If you don't want to fight all the time then you can either just run away or not go out at night. Improving the combat would help other aspects of the game feel better too. Temporal Storms and caving could be more engaging if combat was less annoying.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm sure story bosses could be improved by an update to combat aswell, though I've only done the resonance archives and the eidolon wasn't neccessarily rewarding as the difficulty only comes from the inflated health pool and undodgable attacks, you just sit in a corner and hope you brought enough bandages inbetween attacks.

 

I am not doing that. 

'just' not go out at night and stare at a wall for a few mins or run away every time you go out looking for clay?

no..combat changes affect all game play.. period. even if you turn off hostility completely depending on the combat changes it could affect your game play. Just getting sheep would involve using combat.

Edited December 19, 2025 by CastIronFabric