Combat System

A complex combat overhaul

Motivation: (you can skip this and jump to “Suggestions”)

Hello, this post is a result of a few hours long brainstorming with two of my friends, both (same as me) long term LOTR mc mod players (I played this mod for the first time in 1.5.2 era) and in this post I am trying to convey our made-up vision of combat (both PvE and PvP) in a rather concise and coherent way. I hope to spark up discussion about this topic, because the combat system is one of the core mechanics which kept us playing. I always liked the general idea of the combat system of Lotr mod (having attack cooldown even before vanilla), but I think it could be greatly expanded on the core of the system. Our main issue with the system is that after acquiring decent enough gear and playing at least a bit sensibly you almost cannot be killed by common PvE and therefore taking away some of the fun of the mod (example which comes to my mind, when you play on Hard difficulty and play with either unupgraded full mithril set or fully protection upgraded high elven set, Olog-Hai deals only one heart of damage, which when we take into account size of him and his hammer, it doesn’t seem very fitting). The other issue (which is closely tied to the first one) is that the time to kill for some enemies is just too long (yet again, an example: Uruk vs Lindon warrior on hard difficulty, both wielding swords, the exchange took around 15 hits on both sides before one of them fell, which in my mind is a bit excessive). Last thing I would like to add is that I am not a native English speaker (I come from Czechia), therefore I apologize for any mistakes and/or some awkward wording of my sentences. Also IMPORTANT suggested changes in values are related to 1.7.10 version of this mod because I am not so certain that all combat elements are properly ported yet (neither are all NPCs)

Suggestions:

In this section I will try to go through all combat elements, bring up my issue with them and suggest a suitable solution.

· Twohanding: There is no issue, but my systems count on players being able to twohand their weapons.If a weapon is held in right hand and there is nothing in the left hand, weapon is considered twohanded and its attacks will have higher damage and other properties on which I will elaborate further.

· Crossbows:

Issue: a player can hold a fully loaded hotbar of crossbows and achieve machine gun levels of firing speed.

Solution: have player get a small forced cooldown when switching to a crossbow (about 0,5 seconds) – if u have crossbow loaded in your hand, you can fire it instantly, but if u switch to it from a different item you will get a short animation, which would partially nerf this strategy.

· Bows: There is no issue, but it would be nice if we got two bow types, short bows and long bows, where short bows would be way faster but had inferior range and damage compared to longbows

· Ranged in general:

Issue: people can hold loaded bows (and crossbows, even though there it kind of makes sense) for infinite amount of time

Solution: have the crosshair get increasingly shaky after 3 seconds of holding a fully loaded ranged weapon, decreasing the accuracy of the weapon

· Shields:

This shield part may raise many eyebrows, but please read it through and judge it as a whole

Issue: shields may be held for infinite amount of time and block infinite amount of damage before breaking, often leading to a stalemate situation.

Solution:

The solution I suggest is rather complex (I split it into 3 main parts), therefore hope I won’t lose any readers here.

1) Firstly, I would introduce 3 classes of shields (definitely not saying every faction should have 3 shield models) small shields, medium shields and tower shields. Small shield properties: simply having the shield equiped shouldn't slow down the player and blocking should slow down the player by ~25%, but the shield should block ~50% of incoming damage at max (depending on material and modifiers used).Medium shield properties: simply having the shield equipped in either hand should slow down the player by 10% and blocking by 50% (not stacking multiplicatively, so if u block you get slowed down by 50%, not by 10% and then further 50% compared to normal walking speed) and block 75% of incoming damage at max (depending on material and modifiers used).Tower shield properties: having the shield equipped in either hand – 20% slowdown, blocking – 75% slowdown, block 100% of incoming damage at max (depending on material and modifiers used)

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2) Another part of the solution is changing the blocking mechanic: dependent on the shield class, each shield should have its “effective blocking window” and the %damage blocked should decrease over time to a set minimal value. You can imagine this as hidden stamina bar (or maybe we could get an actual HUD bar indicating your block effectives decreasing to inform people who would be unaware how the shields work in this mod). The timing for the shields I imagine somehow like this:

This is the order in which the arguments are mentioned -------------------

----- > [effective since] [effective blocking window] [end of decrementation] [min. blocking value]

Smallshield 0,15s 2s 6s 10%

Medium shield 0,25s 3s 8s 20%

Tower shield 0,4s 5s 12s 50%

How to interpret this list: small shield will start being effective 0.15s (3 ticks, vanilla shield is 5 ticks) after pressing block button, it will effectively block at its max blocking percentage for 3s, 3.15-6.15 the blocking percentage will decrease to its minimal blocking value and after 6.15 the shield will block at effectiveness of minimal blocking value.

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3) (DISCLAIMER: This is probably the most controversial part of this post)

Now we solved the shields being able to block infinite damage and made them more diverse. But what about guard breaking? In vanilla swords are rendered useless by the shield, leading to boring axe meta. This, in my eyes, is completely unacceptable. Therefore I suggest following: have each weapon get assigned its shield-damaging value and each shield how much it can withstand, if this threshold is exceeded the shield will be disabled just as in vanilla it would be by an axe hit. If weapon is twohanded, it shall deal double the value.

Suggested shield damaging values for weapon attacks:dagger: 2, shovel: 3, hoe: 3, spear: 4, throwing axe: 4, sword: 5, bow: max 5, polearm: 6, pickaxe: 6, axe: 6, club: 6, crossbow: 7, battleaxe: 8, warhammer: 9, warg: 12, troll: 15, olog-hai/mountain troll: 20, ent: 23, Balrog: 30, explosion: 8*explosion power

Shield stability: Small shields: 8-10, Medium shields: 16-19, Tower shields: 23-29

You could simplify this system by shields being able to block set amount of damage, but then you couldn’t make some lower damaging weapons more viable.

· Armors

Issue: most of the armors are not viable to wear other than for lore purposes, also armor is too strong overall (in vanilla it is nerfed in 1.9+ versions too)

Solution: Have heavier armors slow down entities wearing it but adding knockback resistance the heavier the armor gets. For both knockback resistance and speed decrease/increase, it should be split between the pieces the same way as protection of the armor set, e. g. if mordor armor set has 15 protection points and chestplate on its own 6, then the speed decrease and knockback resistance should be 6/15 of the value I shall present. I am evaluating knockback resistance on scale 0 to 1, where 1 is max knockback resistance and 0 is none. Also, to not make all the fights such a slugfest, decrease the armor efficiency by roughly 30%.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------Bronze: 10% speed decrease, 0.25 knockback resistance, mordor 25% speed decrease, 0.4 knockback resistance, gondor 20% 0.4, mithril 0% 0.25, galadhrim 10% 0.3, leather/fur 0% 0,dwarven 25% 0.5, Uruk 30% 0.45, rohirric 5% 0.2, wood-elven 10% 0.3, lindon 15% 0.35, black uruk 20% 0.4, gondolinian 10% 0.4, iron 25% 0.35… other armors could just copy these stats, cannot list them all... also notice that I made the armor of evil factions inferior to some of the good factions armor which otherwise share the same protection value, but my point of view is that e.g. orc factions' craftsmanship is crude and inferior to the more cilized factions, therefore the armor should be heavier while providing same defences.

· Weapons

There is no issue, but I will elaborate a bit on my twohanding ideas. As stated before, weapon is considered twohanded when being held in right hand with empty left hand. Weapon should deal double the shield damage and 1.2x more damage if twohanded. Also, if you wanted more diversity, you could introduce more weapon classes like greatswords, which would be just bigger slower swords with more reach and damage. (But I don’t know if it is lore-friendly, although I suppose so). Also, I have not thought about this in greater lengths, but it might be beneficial if all weapons across the board received a flat 10% increase in damage, because I feel like weapons should be more harmful against unarmored enemies and it would again help making the combat feel deadlier.

· Mounted combat

Issue: melee mounted is not very viable

Solution: have players get 1.1x - 1.2x more range when mounted on larger mobs like horses and wargs to compensate for being higher up and therefore not being able to reach (because of the way minecraft works, where it is beneficial to be lower in a fight).

· PvE rebalancing

Issue: some of the enemies are not deadly enough on hard difficulty

Solution: since I propose making the damage of weapons higher, I would also advocate for incrementing the damage of some enemies. When we look at vanilla, a piglin brute on hard difficulty can deal 19 damage in a single swing to an unarmored player. Why shouldn’t be Olog-hai also able to do that? I find it ridiculous that enemy as large as Olog needs co many swings to finish let’s say an elf. Therefore I suggest increasing damage of the following mobs (values are taken from hard difficulty)

Olog-hai current damage: 10, suggested: 19, Troll current damage: 7, suggested 12, Warg – ranges from 4 – 8, I suggest the damage ranges 7-11,melee Hill-troll attack: current 10 suggested 18, ranged Hill-troll attack: current 5, suggested 12, Ent current 11 suggested 21 (If I remember correctly ents are said to be of greater strength then Trolls), Balrog current 8, suggested 22, Mirkwood spiders: current (size dependent) 2,4,6, suggested: 2,5,9, Mordor spiders: current 4, 5, 7, suggested: 4,7,11, Bear: current: 6, suggested: 10, Wild boar current: 4, suggested: 7, Lion current: 6, suggested: 10, Scorpion current: 2,4,6, suggested: 2,5,9, Hill-troll chieftain melee current: 16, suggested: 24, ranged current: 8, suggested 12, Jump attack: current: 32, suggested: 32 (enough damage in my eyes), Mallorn ent: melee: 14, suggested: 24, Barrow-wights current: 11, suggested: 11, Crocodiles: current: 6, suggested:9, Halftroll warriors should receive 1.2x damage increase because of their size and because their normal variant without weapon deals more damage, and even though I can interpret is as a way of saying they are extremely primitive and cannot use weapons effectively, I think they should be at least as deadly as bare-fisted variant

Conclusion: This suggested system is trying to make combat more dangerous, fairer and more varied then it was before, and even though I don’t know if anyone will ever read this through let alone implement a similar system into the mod, but if someone does read this, I would be very happy to discuss weaknesses and strengths of the current system or this suggested system. My goal was to make the system which would still be beginner friendly but had a learning curve, where knowing all the background info is not necessary but may be beneficial to the seasoned players. Also I am well aware that the suggested changes in damage values etc. were not fully tested and are made based solely on my educated guess. This post took me around 4 hours to type and test. I am aware that this change of the system would take a long time to implement and it would be quite bothersome, also I know it would yet again break the compatibility with other mods, but I would like better LOTR mod as a standalone (because this mod doesnt need any other mods) rather than more compatible one. Cheers

Hey friends 😂😂.

I was just wondering if the war hammers and battle axes be single handed or two handed.

Also clearing to us if we can use a shield with them or not

Opinion.

As we already have throwing axes, it would so good if we could make these wepons two handed so they do godly damage but make you vulnerable too..

INTRODUCING:

• New special moves for different weapons(Dagger thrust,Pike damage,Hammer Smash,Axe Swing,Lance Strike).

• New Unit Commands(Rally Defence,Forward,Fall Back,Ride Forth,Feast).

• New weapons(Great Horn,Bottled mushroom extract).

• New npc techniques,buff,Ai,(Elves do jump attack,Hobbit stealth,Dwarves fire resistance,Troll upperthrow,Uruk Intimidation,Orcs throw head skulls,Ent appreciates planting).

• MORALE system

Introduction: Some of you can agree that sometimes fighting in vanilla minecraft is can be boring especially when you all do is just spamclick.Im glad that the mod offers some mechanics to make fighting interesting and balanced,like the melee reach and speed.But how about special moves?In the game we already have sword block,but how about more?Below is a list of my suggestions to make combat more fun,exciting and balanced as the same time.

Notice: If you notice a mistake from my grammars,please i ask for an apology and for your understanding,because im not a native english speaker.But i will try my best to explain my concepts.So please take a few minutes to read this......Arigatou!

SPECIAL MOVES

1.)Dagger Thrust

-similar ways to a vanilla trident enchanted with riptide.Difference is you can do this without the need of water.First,you need to hold a dagger.Second,hold the righclick button,and the dagger will charge showing some animations.Third,target the enemy and release it.It deals 2-4damage to the enemy.It also knockbacks the enemy 1block away.

To Balanced: To make this not to Op,it will drain your hunger or saturation bar faster.And will not work if your hunger bar is low.

2.)Pike deals damage while sneaking

-Im well aware that pike face forward while sneaking.But whats the point then if it deals no damage?I suggest it will deal 3-5damage if the enemy gets too closed at your front.It is connected with the "Rally Defence" command.

To Balanced:Idk if this will be overpowered,because it slows your movement making you vulnerable against range units. It will drain the pikedurabilty faster.

3.)Hammer Smash

-Special move exclusive for hammers or bludgeons.First,hold a hammer,then hold the right click button then you need to jump and release it while mid air.Make sure to jump and hit the enemy mid air to make sure you hit their heads.It will deal 6.5damage also gives nausea effect(3-5sec)making your enemies to stop moving and acting like a drunkard,spinning their heads.

To Balanced: takes a long time to charge.It also drain your hunger bar faster.Will not work if low hunger.

4.)Axe Wide Swing

-A move similar to vanilla "sword sweep" attack,but exclusive for axe's.Upon right clicking your battleaxe will swing wildly dealing 3-5damage to up to 3 enemies in your front.Making fighting with great swarm of enemies easily.

To Balanced: Slow,50-60attack speed.Drains your hunger slightly faster and will not work if you are low of hunger.

5.)Lance Strike

-Similar to "Pike Damage" but you can only do this while in mount.First,you need to hold continous the right click button while at mount and holding a lance,then it will make your lance to face forward.Then you can charge forward to your enemies dealing 4-7damage upon impact.

To Balanced: While holding the rightclick button while charging,you cant turn left or right your mount,only forward,limiting your movement.It also breaks your lance faster.

ARMY COMMANDS

1.)Rally Defence

Photo source:Pinterest,Dwarves shield wall-Hobbit Movie:Battle of Five Armies.

-Inspired by the phalanx of Spartans and other medieval war stuffs.What does it do?well as name suggest it acts as a defense tactic for a units wielding a pike and shield.Upon blowing the horn of command with "rally defense.This will make your units with pike and shields to form a horizontal line,making a defense,building their shields,and making their pikes to face forward.It will deal 3-5damage if the enemy gets too close to the pike reach.Making it pretty effective against enemy cavalry.

To balanced: I cant see that this will be too op,for its been used in real life battles,right?But to make the game fair it will have some dis-advantages.

- units vulnerable from the rear.

-if you are the enemy and you attack them from behind they will not attack back because they are similar to halted units,you only take damage by their pikes not through directly by their attacks.

-Although proven effective against cavalry its pretty useless against Rhino and Mumakil(not yet implemented) wriders,which will break their lines.

2.)Advance

-Command specially used for the movement of hired units.It will make your units to advance forward with a specific range.You can alter or set for how many blocks will they go forward.To be able to this you need to press rightclick button once with a horn of command at hand,which will show its GUI,there you can specifically set for how many blocks they will move,if you set 10 then they will move 10blocks forward,once you blew the horn.The max limit is 30blocks.And then you need to hold the rightclick to blow the horn and execute your command.It can also combine with the "rally defence" tactic causing your units to advanced while maintaining a defense line.

3.)Fall back

-Long i remember the time when onced i lead a great legions of 40gondorians,18elves,28dwarves,4hobbits through mordor by my quest to throw the golden ring on the peaks of mount doom.But it was a tragedy,for i have witness their fall,i witness all of them being slaughtered one by one by the orcs and olog hai.But i was able to proceed and complete my quest by the help of a warhorn.I cast the ring through the deeps of mount doom completing my long conquest,After the fall of my men i built a large great hall to honor their sacrifices,fighting valiantly,following me through their end.I blamed myself even now for their doom,for many silver coins has been wasted.Anyway,im sorry for wasting your time on that.So blowing the command with "Fall back" will cause your hired units to retreat which means they will stop from attacking the target enemy npc and they will run away from the enemy avoiding battle,similar behaviour to a villager while chasing by a zombie.But they will attack if the enemy gets too close.

4.)Ride Forth

-A command exclusive only for mounted units wielding a lance or spear.When you blow the horn of command with these action,this will cause for your mounted units to get ready for a charge,they will set their spears and lance at front forward.And then they will say and chant "Death!" "Death!!!" "Death!!!" over and over.Soon they will began to charge forward to break and crush the enemy lines dealing 7.5damage thru impact.Upon succesfully hitting a enemy thru impact they will change back to normal mode and attacks.

To Balanced: Idk if this is Op,but this can be a form of suicide attack specially when you are dealing with a large numbers of enemies.Rally Defence can counter this.

5.)Feast!

-Being a commander is no easy task,its not a joke.Its not only a privilege,its a responsibility.Real life commanders make sure they supply the needs of theirs soldiers,providing enough food and rest .Which is why i suggest a command called "feasting".

What does it do?When you blow the horn of command with these,it will cause for all of your hired units to eat a food and drink a beverage,acting like a rest command.And your hired units will say "Thank you,my lord Person" each unit will have their own speech bank to express their reaction.Example,Hobbits will say, "Hurray,finally time for a second breakfast/meal". and dwarf unit will say "Aye,long i crave for a salted porkchop",Uruks will say"Looks meat back on menu boys!",while the orc will say "Maggotly bread again?I already have these for 3 stinking days!!!".And sometimes a Rohan Shieldmaiden will goes near to a ranger unit and will say "Do you want to taste my stew?I cooked it" giving a mysterious stew to the ranger.The ranger will try to eat the stew but he will get a nausea effect making him to look like a drunk.But beware,sometimes a shieldmaiden will offer and give you her stew.Doing this command can be beneficial for it will boost the morale of a hired unit which we will talk about later.

WEAPONS

1.)Battle Horn

-Inspired from the Great Horn of Gondor, the horn of Boromir.In the books,he blew it while they are under attack in Moria,causing the orcs and even the balrog(Durins Bane) to pause in their advanced.Upon blowing this horn will strike fear causing your enemies to stop moving or run away from you for 6seconds.Pretty much useful when you find yourself being sorrounded by the enemies.

Crafting Recipe: Horn of the Kine of araw and 2silver ingots in a vanilla crafting.

To Balanced: Cooldown maybe?

2.)Bottled mushroom extract

-throwing this to your opponent gives them nausea(3-5seconds) making them acting like a drunkard,spinning their heads.

Crafting Recipe: Idk maybe a psychedelic mushroom aka magic mushrooms and a bottle in a crafting table.

To Balanced: Mushroom Rarity

NPC TECHNIQUES,BUFFS,MOVEMENTS,Ai

1.)Elves do jump attacks

- Elves are well known for their grace,agility and great skill in battle.As i recall vanilla wolfs do jump while attacking(idk if this feature is removed).So i suggest that elves sometimes or ocassionally do jump attacks while in melee.Dealing a critical damage,emmiting a critical particles.

2.)Hobbit Stealth

-Ow c'mon,Hobbits is the weakest race in the mod,with a low health.Being the smallest race is advantage for them, allowing them to hide easily.Even the other races sometimes didnt even notice the presence of hobbit in the area.Like example,Elrond's reaction when he sees Merry and Pippin coming out to join the fellowship in the Lord of the Rings:Fellowship Movie.According to his reaction,he sure looks no idea about the presence of the hobbits in the meeting.So i suggest in the mod,maybe hobbits can halve the sight range of the enemy upon them,making them less target.

3.)Dwarves Fire Resistance

-Aulë created the dwarves,design to be tough and resistant.They can even withstand the dragon fire attack,for their armor and natural fire resistance.So maybe the dwarves will be immune to fire or give them natural fire protection against fire.Or simply make them spawn naturally with a high fireprotection armor.

4.)Troll Upperthrow

-Similar to the Iron golem attack.Trolls can throw you upward.

5.)Uruk Intimidation

-Uruks bred to be a fearsome creature,striking fear to their enemy.In the movies at the siege of helms deep,i remembered the uruks making loud noise before the battle began,merely to intimidate their enemies.So in the mod maybe the Uruks will sometimes make a roar or a loud noise causing their enemy(even your own units)to flee or run from them by 5seconds.

6.)Orcs throw Skeleton Heads

-In the movie,in the siege of Minas Tirith,i remembered orcs throw heads to the gondorian guards maybe to scared them.So i suggest that ocassionally Orcs will throw skeleton skulls to their enemy.Upon hitting, their target will be stunned unable to move for 2-3seconds.

7.)Ent appreciates planting

-In the mod you'll lose alignment if you cut trees in Fangorn forest.Worst case scenario Ents will also attack you if they caught you lumbering their trees.Ents are tree herders they value the trees so if they will get mad at you if your are cut some trees then maybe they will thank you when they see you planting a tree in Fangorn.You will get +0.5 allignment per tree you planted and grow.This will be balanced because,the area in Fangorn is dense,so you need to find a open area to plant.Remember you will only gain alignment if a Ent saw you planting.

MORALE

-Introducing the Morale system for your hired units.

What does it do?

1.)Courage: The morale will determine for how brave your hired unit is.If your hired unit morale drops lower than 25,that unit will flee,when fighting a elite enemy units.

Example;

Good units: will flee from uruks,olog hai.

Evil units: will flee from Swan Knights and Hourns.

2.)Loyalty:Morale also determine for how a unit will follow your command.If the hired unit morale drops to 20,theres a 25%chance that they will not follow your "command or orders"if morale drops to 10 then 50%chance and 80%when it drops to 5 and 95%when morale drops to -5.They will also not desert you even you have -100allignment thru their factions.They will only desert you if their morale drops to -10.

HOW TO ACCESS

-Right click the hired unit then click the command button from there you can see the morale value of the unit,max value is 50.It can also decrease and increase.

Increase:To increase the morale value of the unit,you need to execute the "Feast" command which will boost their morale to its maximum value of 50.It also increase when levelling up.

Decrease: It will decrease naturally from time to time,maybe -15 a full day.So be wary and sure you execute the feast command even onced a day.It will also decrease if you attack their own kin or allies.Note that the units in the same chunk will the only ones affected by this.

Buffs: If the hired unit reaches 49-50 morale,it will powered them up, giving them 1attack damage and movement speed.

-I know some of you will say that this is lame or it will ruin the aspect of the game making it harder.But as a role player i propose this system to make the player responsible about their army.And to add realism,because real life warriors need a proper rest and a lot of courage to fight effectively and if they want to achieve victory.But for those who dont want these feature,you can disable it via configuration.

Well, i commend you for reaching this far.My list of suggestions ends here.I will be happy if some of this will be implemented but i will still, even if not.As a fellow coder or programmer,i commend and admire Mevans and the Mod team for their dedication,hardwork,,,,seriously they put their heart and soul to make this mod a masterpiece.If the mod team needs a little of my assistance,im happy to oblige.For i know how to code,and familiar with some computer languages such as c++ and java.

Last Questions

1.)What will happen if a half troll and a Uruk -hai crossbreed?

One Last Question

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WHERE WAS GONDOR WHEN WESTFOLD FELL?