Ranged Hunting
I was hoping for Starmourn we could see more adjacent room fighting in hunting. For some reason, in my mind, I was praying that the things we fought would have the ability to shoot blasters at us from another room and we could fire back at them while hiding behind cover. Maybe stick my head out from cover and lob a grenade but my cover gets blown apart and I shoulder rolled behind another. Sadly, my fantasy of this happening has been crushed...repeatedly.
At this point, taking cover is absolutely useless in hunting. Every denizen I've fought has been melee even though there are obscene amounts of props to hide behind in every room. Instead, we get punished for hiding behind cover by taking more melee damage as well as being knocked out from cover if we got hit with a melee attack. At this point, there isn't even a need to take cover and the whole concept is just pointless due to penalties and lack of ranged denizens to fight. (Hopefully, I just missed these and there are some out there)
Instead of making ranged attacks not work against mobs, my suggestion is to allow ranged attacks to work but it should be dependant on whether the denizen in question has the capability to attack in ranged or melee. If they cannot attack you in melee then allow them to walk over to your room and attack you and if they can attack in range allow them to take cover and start a shootout with you. Maybe even add a feature that if they start to think it's a losing battle they run or suicide attack you in melee range. Attacking from the sky becomes a problem though and those denizens who have no range capabilities should just flat out run away from you.
Adding to possible scenarios that folks could abuse or that just would be cool.
Drawing singular aggro abuse: You shouldn't be able to shoot one denizen in a room filled with their allies. If you engage in a shootout they should be able to all shoot at you or they all come storming into the room if they can't shoot back.
Anyways, I hope this suggestion gets a good looking. Tell me what you guys, ladies, and non-binaries think?
**edited for grammar**
At this point, taking cover is absolutely useless in hunting. Every denizen I've fought has been melee even though there are obscene amounts of props to hide behind in every room. Instead, we get punished for hiding behind cover by taking more melee damage as well as being knocked out from cover if we got hit with a melee attack. At this point, there isn't even a need to take cover and the whole concept is just pointless due to penalties and lack of ranged denizens to fight. (Hopefully, I just missed these and there are some out there)
Instead of making ranged attacks not work against mobs, my suggestion is to allow ranged attacks to work but it should be dependant on whether the denizen in question has the capability to attack in ranged or melee. If they cannot attack you in melee then allow them to walk over to your room and attack you and if they can attack in range allow them to take cover and start a shootout with you. Maybe even add a feature that if they start to think it's a losing battle they run or suicide attack you in melee range. Attacking from the sky becomes a problem though and those denizens who have no range capabilities should just flat out run away from you.
Adding to possible scenarios that folks could abuse or that just would be cool.
Drawing singular aggro abuse: You shouldn't be able to shoot one denizen in a room filled with their allies. If you engage in a shootout they should be able to all shoot at you or they all come storming into the room if they can't shoot back.
Anyways, I hope this suggestion gets a good looking. Tell me what you guys, ladies, and non-binaries think?
**edited for grammar**
(Scatterhome): You say, "Do you like things up your ass? Is your record clean? Are you looking for a job in the near future but not right now? Smuggle drugs for Solus and get stuffed across the galaxy."
4
Comments
I think the only way that works, though, is if ranged attacks aggro everything in the room. Otherwise it's just free pickin's on everything ever.
Also, I've noticed as well that mobs are exclusively melee, even when they seem to have a ranged weapon (such as with the gang members in Haven's Oldtown). Doesn't make too much sense. I'm not so sure about fighting in adjacent rooms, but you'd think they could have a shoot out in the same room with both the player and mob using props for cover and so on.
At least, until I destroy all the props with fulmination that is.
When a mob gets hit with a ranged attack, it'll try to take cover immediately (thereby protecting it from more ranged attacks) or, depending on its personality/strength/etc., it'll charge the room that the attack came from in order to start busting heads. The only exception is if they get stunned or incapacitated from the ranged attack, making them unable to do either, but even then they'll do one or the other as soon as they're able (e.g. if you shoot them in the head with an arrow, they're stunned for ~a second before they can take action).
So rather than being able to spam LOB from Improvisation for risk-free hunting, this would mean that you'd get maybe one cheap shot before the mobs dove for cover, rendering further bombs moot, or you'd have to suddenly deal with a very pissed off baddie ready to very literally interpret your battlecry of "Let's show them what we're made of!"
Possibly, afflictions could affect likelihood of instant retaliation (similar to how stuns/incapacitations from OtherMUD keep all mobs from reacting with literally-inhuman reflexes to any given situation) - that is, you throw a piercer bomb first to give an affliction, then that opens you up to one more easy bomb from the next room over before vengeance comes thundering in. I dunno, I'm more of an ideas guy.
Edit for clarity:
Presently scoundrels can just sit in one room and LOB improvisation bombs at mobs in adjacent rooms to damage them at 0 risk to themselves. I don't think this was intended and so I'm throwing in my 2 cents on what could be done about it.
Believe me, as a Scoundrel myself, a greedy little part of me LOVES this little loophole, but I feel so filthy every time I do it, so I've made an ISSUE of it.
Perhaps it can be made so that melee characters must either destroy the cover, or go behind the cover themselves to get full damage on a scoundrel. This way shoulder roll will actually have a point other than looking really cool.
TLDR, make cover actually mean something in bashing, and make it the scoundrel's primary way of protecting themselves with only being able to use light armor.