Build The Skill/Remake

From WeaselWiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Firearms Skill

Determines basic competence in the operation of firearms.

Combat Flow - Aiming and Firing

Handling your firearm comes in two distinct "modes": Neutral Mode and Aimed Mode, differentiated by whether the player is holding the Aim button. In Neutral mode, the player's movement speed is normal; they may walk and run unimpeded. In Aim mode, the player is readying the weapon to fire.

Neutral Mode

  • Player's walk and run speed is 100% of normal.
  • Pressing Fire discharges the weapon in roughly the direction they are facing, with a proportional accuracy penalty based on how fast they are moving. The player will generally not hit anything directly in front of them while running unless Firearms Skill has been sufficiently raised.
    • In Neutral Mode, the fire button is understood to be "jerked" instead of carefully squeezed, resulting in poor accuracy. This is primarily meant for "panic fire."
    • I may toy with the idea of making a very unskilled shooter (i.e. 0-10% Firearms Skill) have a very small chance of shooting themselves for minor damage if running while trying to shoot.

Aimed Mode

  • Player's speed limited to walking unless Firearms Skill is sufficiently raised.
  • Weapon aim starts out with maximum possible accuracy penalty (depicted by weapon shaking), and gradually narrows down. At low skills, the minimum penalty is still not perfectly dead-on, but would be sufficient to hit a target 20 feet away most of the time.
    • Accuracy penalty will also affect damage variance. If the shot is not sufficiently aimed, the chance of the shot dealing less damage will be higher. If the shot is aimed to the maximum possible level, there is a chance of bonus damage.
  • Speed of aim-narrowing, maximum and minimum penalties are all affected by Firearms Skill.
  • In Aimed Mode, the Fire button is understood to be squeezed carefully, and must be held for a time in order to fire the weapon. This will take roughly 1.5 seconds at lowest Firearms skill, and is among the last things to be improved as skill reaches 100%.

Combat Flow - Reloading

Reloading the weapon is both manual and automatic. In the vein of Receiver, actions needed to reload the weapon require distinct button presses, but the player may hold the Reload key to automate this. The idea is that the player may interrupt the reloading process halfway through the "checklist" in order to switch weapons or otherwise do something else with their hands.

The ammo pool

For magazine-fed weapons, the ammo pool is only as large as the number of magazines you've found. When you start the game, you have two: one in the weapon, and one off-hand. (Roger starts with three because he's luckier.) You can only carry as much ammo as will fit in the magazine; enemies can be looted for loose ammo (usually not much), and ammo boxes (which remain where they are and are not carried) will fill everything you're carrying. For single-shell weapons like the shotgun and grenade launcher, the ammo pool is as much as will fit in your pocket; a fairly generous amount, but it can't be expanded unless you find a satchel (which also increase how many mags you can carry).

Magazine-fed weapons

  • Pressing Reload the first time will eject the magazine from the current weapon.
    • Because it has a magazine release switch right by the trigger guard, this is fastest with the Berducci XP4 handgun.
    • The SMG's magazine does not have a quick-eject switch, and is located away from its foregrip, so this may take unskilled users longer.
  • Reloading a second time initiates the process of finding a replacement magazine in the player's inventory and inserting it. This is all technically rolled into one action for gameplay purposes.
    • The "finding" process initially takes much longer than the insertion process, but is among the first things to noticeably speed up with skill increases.
  • Reloading a third time chambers a round.
    • The Berducci can do this from an empty-reload in two ways; the player character will rack the slide at lower skill levels (which initially has a chance of taking longer as the player's grip on the slide may slip). Past a certain skill level, the player begins using the slide-release lever instead.
    • Since the SMG fires from an open bolt like a Sten or Sterling, there is only one way to prepare it to fire from an empty reload: pulling the charging handle. The difference is that at lower skill levels, the player will grip the weapon by its foregrip and use the firing hand to pull it, which has a "transition" time (proportional to skill level) as the player has to take their hand away from the trigger. Past a certain skill level, the player instead develops a habit of moving the support hand from the freshly-loaded magazine to the charging handle and then pulling it in a smooth motion.

Pump-action and single-shot weapons

  • For the Shotgun, Reload is used to pump in the next shell. The pump on the UAC-issued shotguns is notoriously stiff and hard to move for novice shooters, so it may take a split-second of holding Reload in order to pump. Unlike Hideous Destructor, however, it is not necessary to continue holding Reload once the pump animation has begun.
  • If the weapon has already chambered a round, Reload inserts a shell. At low skill levels, the player has a noticeable delay between a press of Reload and loading the shell - this "finding" time gets quicker as the player's Firearms Skill increases.
    • Past certain skill levels, the player grabs multiple shells per "find" and loads them in sequence. The "finding" time is not extended for this; it just needs to happen less often.
    • Past certain skill levels, the shotgun "gains" an extra shell of capacity as the player character learns how to combat-load the weapon. Since it is Ithaca-style bottom-ejecting, this entails fully loading the tube, pumping a round, and then inserting one more shell. The "one more shell" will not be loaded if the player's skill is too low; this is understood as the player character simply not knowing that any more ammunition will fit.
  • For the Grenade Launcher, the first press of Reload slides open the breech, ejecting the used shell in the process.
  • A second press initiates the "finding" process for a replacement grenade and inserts it, closing the breech in the process.
    • The Grenade Launcher is a comparatively simple weapon to load and fire, but the process of "finding" a shell takes longer than with other weapons.
    • At especially low skill levels, the player character may accidentally drop the shell in the process of closing the breech. This is not demonstrated by the shell actually leaving the inventory and appearing on the floor; it just means the player has to hit Reload again to "find" another.

Medical Skill

Reflects the player character's ability to heal themselves. Over time, this results in a boost to damage reduction as well as time reduction for administering doses of medicine, and the effectiveness of said medicine.

  • It is generally understood that, in the 22nd century, medicine is still administered via hypodermic needle. This does require the user to be able to find and correctly insert the needle into a vein, so the effectiveness of the same amount of dosage very much depends on how good the user is at doing so. It would also explain why it takes longer to administer a dose if the user is unskilled.
  • I may see about making Medical Skills also increase the amount of medical supplies that can be carried - not from an actual capacity point of view, but to emphasize that it'll be more effective with more skill.
  • In the proof-of-concept build, the Medical Supplies were a separate weapon. They might be moved to an off-hand button.

Athletics Skill

Affects the player's stamina while running, as well as the damage, cooldown, and push-back of melee attacks.

Melee Attacks

Melee is not generally intended for killing - it is meant to knock enemies down to buy time to get away.

  • Pressing Melee swings an attack in the direction the player is facing. From the start, this comes out fast with little delay between pushing the button and connecting the hit.
  • At first, a melee attack will result in a cooldown of roughly 2 seconds between uses, more if the attack has missed. During this cooldown, the player may not attempt to melee, or aim their weapon.
    • Firing a weapon in Neutral Mode during melee cooldown is possible but is subject to the same penalties as running.
  • At low Athletics levels, enemies may not always be knocked down by melee.

Skill Books

Skill books replace certain upgrade items throughout the game (generally backpacks). Each skill has three levels of book associated to it, and each level, once read, gives both a +10 to all skill checks permanently, but enables access to the next level of book. The books must be read in order, however, as skipping ahead will simply leave your character confused and frustrated.

Characters' starting perks take the place of the first level of skill book. For example, Walt has no need to read the level 1 medical skill book.

Skill books also effectively act as cap increases. I'll say skills can only reach up to 70 naturally; the final 30 levels come from the books.