Technical question: Cover and Concealment.

[Gregpooh]

Has anyone given any thought as to how you would implement modifiers for cover and concealment into the NWN engine? I know the concealment modifiers exist because many spell effects (Improved invis, ghost form) take advantage of them.

If you have one group of combatants standing atop a fortified wall, and another group standing out in the open, trading arrow volleys, the group on the wall should have an advantage. As far as I can tell, the normal NWN engine does not take this into account. Any ideas on how to apply those concealment modifiers to people fighting from prepared positions?

All the recent talk about improving defenses around Mirtho got me thinking about this, so I thought I'd throw it out there as a little mental exercise.

Have fun.

[Zombie]

In the example above the archers behind the wall have cover It would be painfull to take this into account in NWN. The quickest way I can think of doing it is place an effect on the wall giving everyone standing there an ac bonus

[Odin Hammersong]

In the example above the archers behind the wall have cover It would be painfull to take this into account in NWN. The quickest way I can think of doing it is place an effect on the wall giving everyone standing there an ac bonus

Yeah, either that or provide anyone "behind" the wall a certain percentage of concealment. Of course then you have to determine what "behind" the wall actually is.

I'm guessing this would be a fair amount of scripting work. Gregpooh, you are ALL over it!

http://www.nwnlexicon.com/

[Lord Droke]

My guess is Cover bonus's and Minus's would be rather diffacult to do in NWN. Morgan's idea would work with walls, or a DM could supply the bonus's and Minus's, since if your attacking a wal in a seige type situation there would probably be one involved. There are many things in the 3rd edition combat system that NWN just cant do, which is understandable since it is so diverse. Though not as technical as 2nd ed THACO system, it seems to cover a lot more possibilities. For example, cover varies 3/4, 9/10, 1/2, and 1/4 cover, all giveing different bonus's and minus's to both ends of the battle. It even gives cover bonus's for fireing into melee combat.

[DM D'Artagnan]

That's why you bring a catapault and sit back and rain fire on em! Conceal that!

[Public Enemy 1]

lets fix greater sancuary and improved invis so that when its cast npc's/pc's dont continue shooting/running after you first

[Lord Droke]

LOL, siege weapons, that would be a hoot

[DM D'Artagnan]

lets fix greater sancuary and improved invis so that when its cast npc's/pc's dont continue shooting/running after you first

Keep it down noob!

[NWDuneAuron]

Has anyone given any thought as to how you would implement modifiers for cover and concealment into the NWN engine? I know the concealment modifiers exist because many spell effects (Improved invis, ghost form) take advantage of them.

If you have one group of combatants standing atop a fortified wall, and another group standing out in the open, trading arrow volleys, the group on the wall should have an advantage. As far as I can tell, the normal NWN engine does not take this into account. Any ideas on how to apply those concealment modifiers to people fighting from prepared positions?

All the recent talk about improving defenses around Mirtho got me thinking about this, so I thought I'd throw it out there as a little mental exercise.

Have fun.

Yeah, have fun indeed. Go see what you can come up with with adding stuff to a 95% hard coded combat system..? .

[silverdragonams]

The first thing that comes to mind is to lay down a trigger behind the wall with a script that gives anyone within it an AC bonus. Although my experience with scripts on triggers is that they are buggy, unreliable and can possibly cause a lot of lag.

Of course if you are serious about this, and you really want Mirtho well defended then you need to start thinking about exactly what you want and how its going to be paid for.

I dont want to burst your bubble because IC'ly anything (within reason) is possible if you put in the effort and make friends with the right NPCs. But...you know that neat little well defended Fortress owned by the CO? Yeah. I think our total on that one so far has been something between 3 and 4 mil

[Public Enemy 1]

How would this be considered an AC bonus? It would have to be concealment % which could be given by touching a door to say go up on the archers post of a surounding wall/tower,and leaving that post click on the door that takes you down also removing the effect.Could use entropic shield/displacement/ghost spells as an effect say if there were high posts or lower to the ground ones. So maybe higher you go more concealment.As anyone knows thats been on a high post you have no sight of the enemy till they are right up to the wall.



And who you callin a NOOB D'art!

[LadyPhoenix77]

It would pretty much be as Public said, with the conceals. The hard part would come with getting everythign set up to be the right way, I can see a few problems in the suggestion that public makes, but something might be able to be done. Will have to look into it and see.

[Arkon]

This is unnecessary and not in the plans for the world.

There already exists this type of thing. It's called line of sight. If your character doesn't have line of sight, then you can't attack them with a direct spell or a ranged weapon.

So if you want to take advantage of cover, get behind it. If there is a wall between you and your opponent, they can't even shoot at you. Only AoEs work in those instances.

[Gregpooh]

This is unnecessary and not in the plans for the world.

There already exists this type of thing. It's called line of sight. If your character doesn't have line of sight, then you can't attack them with a direct spell or a ranged weapon.

So if you want to take advantage of cover, get behind it. If there is a wall between you and your opponent, they can't even shoot at you. Only AoEs work in those instances.

There's a big difference between not being able to see someone at all, and wanting to get into an adventageous position to fire at them while giving them less of a chance to hit you. Troops firing from prepared positions of cover have a huge advantage over thier opponents who do not. This is true in just about any era of warfare. Ask the French Knights at the battle of Asincourt, the British Soldiers at the Battle of New Orleans, or any soldier in WWI who had to leave his trench to charge across no man's land. But, you're a Marine, you know this already.

I didn't start this post with the idea of it being something that needed to go into Hala. The talk about fortifying places simply got me thinking about the Idea, and I wondered if anyone else out there had thought about it or had any ideas of how they might try to make the NWN engine do something like this. We're talking a purely hypothetical situation here, with no relation to the Hala PW.

[Lord Droke]

uh-oh, TAKE COVER!!*hides behind a rock with foot sticking out of left side*

[Arkon]

Hypothetically speaking, yes, it can be done, and it can be done fairly easily with a simple generic trigger and a script that gives a person standing on the area of the trigger a concealment bonus.

So yes, it's possible, but it would be horrendously time consuming to add those in to all the places it would be feasabile for it to be.

[Xanthalas]

I wonder though, someone with very high stealth ratings, manages to get his way to the tower walls, and sneaks up behind the guard, The effect would still be in place.... Oy the variables would kill ya!

[Gregpooh]

I wonder though, someone with very high stealth ratings, manages to get his way to the tower walls, and sneaks up behind the guard, The effect would still be in place.... Oy the variables would kill ya!

Yeah, that was my biggest concern with the idea of using a trigger or an aura effect or the like.

Still, they figured out how to do flanking. I wonder if cover was one of those features on the list, but they just ran out of time? Maybe we'll find out in NWN2

[NWDuneAuron]

Flanking is very easy to do. You have a function to check if you're the victim's current target before you attack. If no, you get flanking bonuses.

Cover is a lot harder, and a lot more subjective. I doubt it's in nwn2.

[Gregpooh]

Flanking is very easy to do. You have a function to check if you're the victim's current target before you attack. If no, you get flanking bonuses.

Cover is a lot harder, and a lot more subjective. I doubt it's in nwn2.

If you built the cover stats into certain objects when you created the game it could be done very similarly to what you describe above. Function to check if target is next to cover object, function to check if target and attacker are 'flanking' (ie on opposite sides of) cover object. Apply cover mod.