Ultima Online
This is how Ultima Online handles combat calculations: http://uo.stratics.com/content/arms-armor/combat.php
Length of Attacks
Theory:
We want attack speed to depend on 1) weapon speed and 2) dexterity so that positive weapon speeds and dexterities contribute positively to the speed of attack (or negatively to the length of the attack)
(i use the words positively and negatively not mathematically, but from player's perspective)
1) weapon speed
if there's not a system for weapon speed, you could simply make it
inversely proportional to weight so that:
ws = c/w , where c is some constant (generally 1)
so bigger weighted weapons would be slower.
This might also need to be augmented by strength, so that heavier weapons are faster in the hands of stronger peoples.
perhaps:
ws = c*s/w where s is strength and w is weight of weapon, c a constant
2) dexterity
assuming a player with better dexterity will have a quicker swing,
dexterities contribution could simply be the players dexterity multiplied by
an arbitrary constant:
b*d (b constant)
Swinging Speed
swinging speed, denoted SS can then be equated to 1) and 2) by
SS = c*s/w + b*d
where c and b are constants that can be adjusted to balanced between strength-based characters and dexterity-based characters
Length of Attack
L = 1/SS
so that the Length of time is infinite when chracters have 0 swinging speed.
-Zao
- The problem with these formulas is that they would cause a huge difference between the combat behavior of low-level and high-level characters. A character with 100 in both strength and dexterity would have a swinging speed that would allow it to attack 10 times as often as a character with 10 in both attributes. With these formulas it would be impossible to balance the attack speed in a way that it wouldn't be pure button-mashing for high-level chars or long waiting times for the next attack for a low-level char. To have a better control over the feel of the combat system the influence of attributes on the attack speed should be less strong. Personally I would in fact prefer when the attack speed would be a weapon constant.--Crush 05:21, 3 November 2007 (CET)
