Hello! And what a great title... I saw that pop into my inbox and was like "what?! weird spam already?"
Then I read the contents and realized the title is perfect
.
This is a very important issue that requires an in-depth official response so you can all see what's up with this mechanic:
Part of the problem is a lack of immediate transparency in terms of the hit chance value.
It is a huge number of factors all rolled into one single value. You
can know all these factors, though--they are both explained in detail in the manual, and you can use the combat log for a breakdown during firefights. (That said, the breakdown uses the old method from the 7DRL and is pretty dense, to be honest. I've wanted to revamp that and make it much more useful.)
For convenience I've copied the current factors here:
* Base hit chance before any modification is 60%.
Volley Modifiers:
+3%/cell if range < 6
+2%/attacker tread slot
+attacker utility bonuses
+10% if attacker didn't move for the last 2 actions
+3% of defender heat (if heat positive)
+10%/+30% for large/huge targets
+10% if defender immobile
+5% w/robot analysis data
-1~15% if defender moved last action, where faster = harder to hit
-10% if attacker moved last action (ignored in melee combat)
-3% of attacker heat (if heat positive)
-10%/-30% for small/tiny targets
-10%/-5% if target is flying/hovering (and not overweight or in stasis)
-20% for each robot obstructing line of fire
-5% against Cogmind by robots for which have analysis data
-defender utility bonuses
Weapon-specific Modifiers:
+utility bonuses
-recoil (from other weapons)
-10% while system corrupted (corruption% chance/shot)
In summary, the idea is hit chance is a lot more than just "I'm an awesome robot dammit I should be able to hit anything I want." The player must realize all the different factors at play and use them to your advantage (or realize when you're at a disadvantage because of them!).
As part of that subgame,
many of Cogmind's utilities allow you to manipulate one or more of these factors in your favor!
So that's how it should be viewed from a realism standpoint. Now from a game design perspective, there are other explanations:
The primary one is game flow.
The dynamics would be completely different if we had higher hit chances across the board, resulting in a very different feel to the whole game. At the map design level you'd end up having to fight a lot more enemies (thereby leaving fewer opportunities for effective stealth), or enemies that would have to be much more resilient to compensate. At a single shot level we'd also lose a lot of the suspense created by misses!
I understand that it may feel annoying when you're right next to a robot and and can't
always hit it, but while being at close range offers a really nice boost to your accuracy, it can't be perfectly effective because the ultimate strategy would then become to just rush up and nail everything in the face. As is I think the values provide a good balance between "do I spend a few turns closing on the enemy to get a better shot, or do I hold out at a distance and take my chances based on my current loadout and abilities?"
Then there are all those other factors that feed into the system. If everyone could get to the mid-game more easily I might not need to say this, but you'll find that later on, if you really want to, you can build yourself to easily get over 90% hit chances against almost everything, regardless of distance or speed! Targeting computers
stack, and wait until you start getting the
better ones
. (There are
many other approaches, too, as you can imagine from all the parts. I've built Cogminds that could one-shot almost everything I met.)
So I think the system as it is works well with the idea that you can tweak whatever you want to improve that aspect of yourself, but that keeps you from improving in other areas. In short, you're not really good at
anything--it's what you decide to use that determines how effective you are in a given situation.
The main drawback to this system is more of a meta issue, as it's easy to misunderstand it, especially at the beginning.
What do you all think?
