Devlog and Combat Roadmap (Patreon)

Hey guys, so quick dev log update: we're working on the Brothel expansion now, finishing up the arousal indicator animations and additional cock-types, and then we're taking a swing at the combat mechanics, revisiting how "defense" works.   While this is mostly focused on how physical, swing-a-weapon type combat works, it has an important tie-in to the sex combat - mainly that arousing your opponent and getting them to fuck you or grapple you when you're on the ground instead of hitting you is going to become much, much more worthwhile, as is tiring them out through ejaculation.

The long and short of it is that using a skill that leaves you with lowered guard (so little ability to parry, block, or evade) or even no defense (no ability to parry, block, or evade) will make your opponent's attack much more effective.  This means that getting hit, for instance, while resting on the ground will be considerably more devastating than it is now.  Other skills will also have less than effective guard or none, and some skill, like the current Assault, will lower the opponent's effective guard, as will counterattacks.

This has the nice double effect of streamlining block/parry/evasion so that they each provide something similar while keeping their intrinsic differences in tact, and also really encourage play that's more varied and avoids one of my favorite tactics (which is raaaaaaaaAAGGGGGGHHHHHH! -> fall over -> repeat), which can be dull and repetitive.  

This is going to accompany a few other changes that will round this out - changes to how stability works, also to encourage more varied attacking, and to compensate we'll be adding or replacing some skills that are currently attacks with skills that change stances and have non-attack effects, most of which will still have the defensive parameters so that switching stances isn't punishing.

We'll also see the introduction of the concept of "damage reduction" which will only come from magic items for the PC and may occur on enemies naturally, and somewhat rarely (the thick skin of an ogre).  I'm putting this here mainly to say that we'll have effectively finalized how damage can be reduced and de-mystify it, and that includes the following:

• The defensive parameters of your opponent's skill (and we'll probably show the possible outcomes if your opponent has more or less of a "defensive" skill that they use, for predictive accuracy).  This will lower skill power, which will lower damage, bleed, armor sundering, force (the thing that causes enemy instability).  In other words, this directly weakens the opponent's skill.
• The armor piece that you hit with a strike.  This will lower skill damage and prevent bleed, but the armor obviously takes the armor sundering damage and the force is still applied, and certain skill effects will be reduced by armor as well.  
• Damage reduction.  This will ONLY lower skill damage.

So, then, what the opponent does is the a large component of how effective an attack is, what they're wearing determines whether they eat any resulting damage/bleed, and some enemies will take reduced physical damage no matter what.  

Even shorter: block/parry/evade is your friend.  Armor is also your friend.

We're also going to try and completely overhaul the combat log so that it better presents what happens as a result of attack rounds, including visual indicators instead of just text and a division by skill/affected party.  We do plan on doing a full overhaul of the battle UI at some point, but we still have a few battle subsystems to complete, and we want to see where those land before we redesign the UI.

From a battle perspective, once we complete this round of changes, we'll be working on Ranged Combat, and then changes to spells (as well as some interesting new spell effects, like hypnosis and paralysis), as well as companion involvement in combat.  Once all that is done, in addition to surprise attacks, we'll do our first major balance overhaul, which will finally include the introduction of the remaining advanced stances:

Stonewall, Berserker, Focus, Haymaker to join Counter and Blitz as the six advanced stances, accompanying the three basic stances and the various positional, grapple, sex stances, casting stances, and the seduction stances.   \o/