Cataclysm-dda: Attacking small things is unreasonably difficult

[ghost]

With no encumbrance whatsoever, a sewer rat can take me from full health to dead if I try to spar with it enough. I will never hit the damn thing and it will slowly wear me down and kill me. I mean, it's easy enough to avoid, get it locked in a room, but come on. This is just silly. Back when I played CDDA a year ago this wasn't an issue, I imagine some new melee algorithm was put into place that makes small things way too difficult to hit.

In the IRC people recommended me I start a fire under it or something. Isn't resorting to that kind of silly?

[Zireael07]

What are your skills?

[ghost]

This is with 0 melee. But I mean, come on. It's a sewer rat.

[mugling]

Have you ever tried chasing a rat IRL?

[ghost]

Have you ever tried chasing a rat IRL?

This rat is chasing me!

[mugling]

Rats add an element of danger to basements for new players.

[ghost]

Rats add an element of danger to basements for new players.

I mean, am I crazy in thinking it's silly for an unskilled character to not be able to hit a sewer rat at all without resorting to gimmicks?

[ghost]

Let me put this another way. It is far easier to hit a sewer rat with a thrown object or a firearm than it is swinging something at it.

That's as if it was easier to kill a fly with a BB gun than a flyswatter!

[Zireael07]

If you have 0 melee skill, don't try to hit the rat, just get the heck out of there and go back once you have 6-7 melee. Or try throwing stuff at it. Rats are d*mn nimble IRL too, or so I heard.

[ghost]

Again, it's really silly that ranged would be more accurate than melee in this situation. It should be much harder to hit a small target with ranged than with melee, not easier.

[Zireael07]

... I think we're talking circles here. This belongs in the forum, not in GitHub issues if we're gonna have a long discussion.

[ghost]

I'm honestly surprised this is intended behavior.

[Rizoel95]

If we're not going to make rats and all that easier to bash, then, yeah; at least make it so it's not easier to hit them with throwing weapons with 0 throwing skill, or with a gun with 0 gun skills. Otherwise it doesn't make sense, especially if they're the one's trying to attack you. Not that this game is realistic or anything but still.

At least make is so all other types of attacks are as difficult to land on small creatures as melee attacks.

[Coolthulhu]

It's less about small things and more about dodge formula being bonkers.

[aeoo]

@Lady-Luck

I mean, am I crazy in thinking it's silly for an unskilled character to not be able to hit a sewer rat at all without resorting to gimmicks?

You're not crazy. This game is designed by a group of people and in that group there are one or two totally crazy people. I won't name any names, but I bet they'll know who they are just by reading this. For example, one of them said that if the day is cloudy enough, you cannot read any books in real life. Obviously he's not from planet Earth. And yet he's one of the people who designs this game. Ironically he's one of those "more realism is always better" people. So is it crazy? Yes, it is. Is it going to be fixed? There is a 50/50 chance.

The devs fix some nonsense and leave other nonsense standing. It is from what I can tell, 100% luck-based, and isn't based on any kind of rigorous and formalized game design philosophy. It depends more on if the dev had a good night's sleep or not, whether they had their coffee yet or not, etc. Maybe they'll listen. Maybe they won't. So it makes sense to note the issue as you have done, but now that your issue is in the pipe, don't think they'll jump to it right away simply because what you're saying is common sense, lol. :)

BTW, your issue was indirectly already addressed when there was a discussion about the dodge formula being "threshholdy" (I think that's a direct quote). I believe @Coolthulhu started the discussion and he's one of the core devs from what I know. He's certainly one with the most passion for the game (and all around good sense) and if he's not a core dev, he damn well should be.

So is there a dev who _probably_ agrees with you? Yes. Will this be fixed? Who knows.

[aeoo]

@Lady-Luck

Oh, one more thing. I want to make a _suggestion_ for you that I believe will improve your experience instantly, so that you don't have to wait for this to be fixed properly.

Unfortunately to follow my suggestion you'll have to set aside some degree of your pride.

During character creation choose "Freeform." Then select your scenario and starting background. Then leave all your starting stats at 8 (even though apparently you no longer have to do that with the STS, I still recommend it), then pick 12 points of negative traits and 12 points of positive traits, but avoid those negative traits which have been disabled. Last I checked there will be 2 of them, and I'll get to that in a second.

Then when it comes to skills, give yourself 3 points in dodge, melee and unarmed, and maybe 2-3 points in marksmanship/archery/throwing. Then give yourself between 3 and 5 points in the following: construction, fabrication, cooking, electronics, first-aid, survival, tailoring.

Rationale:

1. 2-3 points in basic combat is so that you have a decent experience. It won't enable you to tank a hulk, no, and it won't make you invincible or anything, but it will give you a basic level of competence in combat so that you don't start out worthless and you can proceed toward the fun part of the game, bypassing tedium of grinding and/or book reading.
2. 3-5 points construction, cooking, tailoring, etc. is because all those skills are easy to grind but annoying as hell. Fabrication and survival are particular easy to grind and you can go from 0 to 3 on the first day! But why should this 1st day be spent grinding? What a waste of my time (and I believe yours too, which is why I am typing this). Plus there isn't anything interesting going on when your skill level 1 or 0. It doesn't add any flavor to the game. There is no gameplay benefit of starting with cooking 0. It doesn't make anything more fun, and presumably you play games to have fun? I hope. There are no interesting decisions to be had with cooking at 0 except: grind the hell out of it, because you need a lot of things that show up with cooking 3-4 or so. Ditto most other skills. The only option to grinding is to find a book, but thanks to "realism" reading a book often takes literally about as much as 1 minute of real time even on a fast computer (I shudder to think playing this on something old). So you read a book and sit there twiddling your thumbs, staring at the screen, waiting for the game to simulate time progression. It's beyond idiotic. It's one thing to make game time pass, even 1 week of game time, but to force me, the player, to stare at an inactive screen waiting for the game to process something is nonsense. There is absolutely no reason for it to be that slow. But I digress. Suffice it to say: the books are not much better than grinding at low levels, and reading the books is annoying as hell because you start reading it and stare into the screen for a loooooong while, just waiting. There is no technical reason for it (no, it's not necessary to simulate every rat blow by blow while I am reading a book. instead calculate encounter chance based on what's around me, and roll the dice once for that chance. This is instant!). One standout is electronics. I am not sure if it's easy to grind electronics or not, but I take elec 4 because I want to start with the formulas for atomic gadgets, plus, electronics is #1 most important skill for installing bionics. Again, you don't want to postpone your bionics longer than necessary, so it's good to start with 4-5 points in electronics, first aid and mechanics. Mechanics is easy to grind from 2-3 onward, but from 0 to 2 it's nigh impossible. Another reason to short-circuit crap game design with a smart chargen decision.

But you can't play yet!

Before you do anything, go into options and turn off skill rust. It's under the debug menu. Skill rust contributes nothing to the experience. It's a poorly designed and 100% unrealistic feature, but I am willing to bet my thumbs that whoever put it in _thinks_ it's realistic. But it isn't. Some of the most vocal pro-realism people are not familiar with reality at all, it's crazy, but true. Often times "realism" means "hard/annoying for no reason." It has actually next to nothing to do with realism most of the time but this is how they sell you those annoyances. Calling unnecessarily and unrealistically hard game aspects "realistic" is just PR, nothing more. It plays off people's misguided and uninformed feelings that the world is a brutal and unforgiving place.

Now, because you've turned off skill rust, do not pick "forgetful" as your negative trait. Also do not pick "Squeamish" because that functionality has been moved into a mod, but they left the trait for it last I checked. Both "forgetful" and "squeamish" negative traits are cheap. Everything else is fair game.

Also to make my advice above work, you must remember 2 things when _creating the world_:

Make sure to select "More Survival Tools" mod, because it solves a lot of the early pain points in the game.

Make sure to select "Stats Through Skills" mod. It's essential. These two mods are mandatory, if you ask me. Everything else is take it or leave it.

I highly recommend turning off fungal monsters too. They add nothing to the game, but only make you hunt for more drugs for no good reason. It's stupid.

Also the option "mutate by radiation" (might not be the exact name) should be set to off. I'd turn off all mutations if I could, since they add nothing to the game. But the only thing I know how to turn off is mutation from radiation. Apparently some monsters can still mutate your character and there is nothing you can do unless you have end-game gear with strong environmental protections, which is absurd in so many ways. If you get mutated in the early, don't feel bad to use the wizard mode to simply turn them off.

Also season length 14 is too short. I recommend season length 30.

So, if you follow all this advice, you'll end up with a fun game almost no matter what. All the worst aspects of the game will be bypassed by starting in this way and you'll proceed straight toward the fun part. Mind you, this doesn't make you invincible!! You'll still die. But when you die using my recommended start, you'll probably think it was your fault and not game's fault and you can begin carefully plundering the cities right away instead of grinding in the forests before approaching the city.

Also, starting this way gives you a character, roughly str:9-10, dex:10-11, int:10-11, per:9, which is a surprisingly modest lay out of stats, which in some cases only differs from the default scenario by as few as 1 point! Because with the default start you can have 10, 10, 10, 8, and in many cases starting as I recommend gives you 10, 10, 10, 9, or 10, 10, 11, 9. So just because you splurge on the starting skills because of the STS' design you don't in fact get an insane amount of starting stats. So in many ways this is actually a more modest way to start than say the old Really Bad Day start!

Summary: CDDA is a mix of brilliance and insanity. It has many awesome decisions and some truly bad ones, but you can mitigate the worst aspects of the game if you know how to use all its starting options well.

[ghost]

Oh, I already play freeform, because I felt like it was better than trying to finagle points out of the drawback system by taking a bunch of minor stuff that doesn't really matter. Reminded me of back when I played White Wolf RPGs and everyone in the group did stuff like that to powergame their characters.

I honestly feel like the current trait system is very flawed and should be scrapped in favor of something that offers double-edged sword traits, rather than getting to cherrypick. For instance, an Agile trait, which makes you faster but also more fragile.

Thanks for all the advice.

[aeoo]

Oh, I already play freeform, because I felt like it was better than trying to finagle points out of the drawback system by taking a bunch of minor stuff that doesn't really matter

By the way, I start as I describe, but I still miss some rats and other small critters regularly. So don't think because you start with 3 in melee you'll hit every rat! I often have to hold the attack button for like 1 minute to get it to connect, but at least once 3 becomes 4 you'll be hitting rats almost every time or so... so the problem is much less severe that way. (I don't mean rats literally, but maybe some kinds of spiders, black or some other special rats, etc... common riff raff but not necessarily literally a "rat")

I honestly feel like the current trait system is very flawed and should be scrapped in favor of something that offers double-edged sword traits, rather than getting to cherrypick.

I don't agree. There is no need to force people to endure negative traits. This isn't masochism. It's a game! Remind yourself: it's a game. It's not punishment for having been bad in a previous life, lol. There is no reason to force people to play with even 1 negative trait. It should always be a choice. If you want to start with 100 positive traits and every bionic, you should be able to. They added bionic limits, but some pre-existing professions exceed those limits, lol.

[mugling]

It's less about small things and more about dodge formula being bonkers.

What is the status of your recent PR on this?

[Coolthulhu]

Didn't PR it yet, will try soon.

[ghost]

Didn't PR it yet, will try soon.

Please do!

[DangerNoodle]

I suspect that if an animal is actively attacking you, it should logically be easier to hit, unless it is given the hit and run flag. At least, for animals and other creatures that are relying on small size and speed to avoid being hit.

[Griffinhart]

So, where DND has Cats vs. Commoners, CDDA has Rats vs. Survivors, huh?

(Also, "cats vs. commoners" as an intentional design choice is, er... not very good, in my opinion. It's one thing to say "someone with 0 melee shouldn't be able to hit a rat", it's another thing to say "someone with 0 melee should _die_ to a rat".)

[ghost]

@Coolthulhu Any progress? Any time I run into a rat and have to kill it by throwing things at it I think of you. :p

[Coolthulhu]

Here's a draft: #18351

I would be a bad rat, rats aren't poisonous. You should think of me when looking at an angry wasp decimating a horde due to unbalanced hit chances.

[pisskop]

Slings work well for even the most unskilled.

[DangerNoodle]

Here's a draft: #18351

I would be a bad rat, rats aren't poisonous. You should think of me when looking at an angry wasp decimating a horde due to unbalanced hit chances.

Weren't normal vermin wasps unkillable hostiles when they were first added?

[Treah]

This becomes more apparent if you are super unlucky and come across a skeletal dog... They are crazy fast and damn near unhittable unless you have good skill in melee. I had a decent char with good gun skills die to one without landing a single blow (yes im aware guns dont do much for skeletal beings). I guess the flipside to that is they can't bash through windows. If your in the open tho your pretty screwed.

[Zilenan91]

skeletons aren't that dodgy, their niche is bullet dodging due to the bullets going through their bones. If you have 1 or 2 melee skill you can hit them pretty reliably right now even with not-so-great weapons.

[DangerNoodle]

I recall the problem generally is not skeletons, but skeletal dogs. Not sure if they have much in the way of dodging skill, but they do have their small size.

[Zilenan91]

that's just dogs in general. They're very difficult early on due to their dodginess but once you have melee skills that aren't zero you do fine against them. Most dogs are flat out worse than basic zombies past that point.

[DangerNoodle]

Makes sense. It might be more the small size dogs have in common plus their resistance of bullets, making them vulnerable only if you have a minimum of melee skill or a shotgun.

[latogato]

I glad it get a fix, it was a problem for a long time. I always threw my objects at small targets because of their impossible-to-hit dodge levels. Which is really unrealistic (and very irritating) because no healthy human ever lost a fight and get killed by a rat IRL. :)

[Coolthulhu]

The dodge formula got a big rework, closing.

[latogato]

Thank you! Time to visit that pesky cellar spiders again...

[pisskop]

its still more tha. possible to miss high Dodge cellar spiders with low skill. id pack a small pistol for them

[DangerNoodle]

I recently cleared a cellar spider basement while playing as a samurai, from the Medieval and Historic Content mod. At that point I still had the same melee skills the profession starts with (1 cutting and 2 melee).

Multiple hits were sustained, and it took repeated attempts to score hits on them. However, part of it may have been due to the 25 torso encumbrance of an o-yoroi plus backpack. However, due to the armor almost no damage was taken, aside from being repeatedly envenomed.