Doctor Archive

*** Some of this may not be news, I'm not familiar with what information is not already available. This information largely comes from Dave White, one of the main devs on the combat system. Originally posted on Core Systems forum, but reposted here since I'm a Fencer myself***

"You will not ever be able to kill yourself"

Here's why: There will now be ability point pools available for Health Action and Mind. These pools are constrained by the maximum size of the corresponding HAM pool (including wounds/buffs) but do not take damage from incoming attacks.Instead, points are only drainable from these pools through the use of specials.

Ability point pools will drain much faster (i.e. costs of specials increased) but will regen much faster as well. The same secondary stats will affect ability pool drain/regen as affect the HAM drain/regen. Ability point pools can not be used to incap/kill a player.

"Nobody will attack specific pools."

Further explanation revealed this is sort of true. Professions will still keep torso/health, leg/action and head/mind shots. However, these shots have a substantially decreased accuracy modifier and are not guaranteed to hit the pool targetted, though they are likely to. All three pools will be healable, though he specifically noted that this might NOT be through stimpacks by a Medic. For those who would argue that this is status quo due to Combat Medic healing, the words he used at one point were "we need to make mind damage healable" - which presumably means he doesn't consider it effectively healable now.

"Slow weapons will be slow even when used by masters, just not as slow as when used by novices."

All weapon speed calaculations are being redone. In fact, the existing speed formulas are being tossed out entirely.

Not all players will move at the same speed. An example given was if someone has a rifle equipped that "he's gonna have to put it away to move at full speed".

Equipping and unequippingweapons and armorwill now enter the combat queue so that they do not happen instantaneously. The possibility of additional delay on these actions was mentioned but details were not given.

One special mentioned was the ability to stand after a knockdown at a significant ability point cost. Another was a melee rifelman tactic. It is unclear whether these are examples of what will be in the system or just what MIGHT be in the system.