Question regarding disguises

[Zervostyrd]

Maybe you could loot cloth, leather and mail, but to get your hands on plate you would have to order one made for you by a blacksmith...

As for a chainmail, as long as it's long enough and wide enough for you to get in, you can always wear it (if it's too big just put on some leather straps! ).. Cloths and Leather works as long as they aren't too small...

Not necissarily a bad idea. But I do wonder when Elric says "a bad fitting plate is a hinderence".

Does he refer to a plate armor made for a 1.75m tall guy with a 0.85m(completley figurative numbers) in circut around the chest. Would fit poorly to man that is 1.85m and has a chest circut of 92.5cm?
-in which case you can assume that a smith do tailor armors for a rich fellow, but keeps a stock of "generic meussurments" plate that doesn't give you a perfect fit, but it's fairly cheap. Though it serves the purpose well enough.

Or does he refer to a plate armor made for the first guy, would still fit poorly if the other guy was 1.78 and have a chest circut off 87.5cm?
-In which case the smith might have to make a mold of everyone that wants a plate armor.

IF anything you should be able to loot the plate, take it to a good blacksmith and say "I want an armor in this exact style, but tailored to fit me!".

But on the other hand, IMO everything should fit, (well If we must, take away plate) otherwise, I as the worst case of hoarder will suffer! IMMENSLY!! Just imagine you adapt the armor a bit with adding new pieces, stretch it, become used to it, cut away excess chains... etc...

 

[fluffydino2000]

Let me refer you to this thread @Tessaya, it has a lot of discussion about things like improving/repairing equipment. The readjusting idea is a pretty decent one, but it'd have to balanced so that when trying to get temporary equipment after death you aren't limited in what you can effectively use. It also has to have a significant enough effect that it isn't pointless whilst also not being so effective it's mandatory.

 

[Komuflage]

Imo a mix is the best idea.

If your character is similar to size to the enemy you want to take armour from, then it will just fit with no problem.

But if you're a Tall Skinny guy, the chest piece from a Short Muscular guy won't fit.

Balanced correctly, this shouldn't be an immersion braker, nor do you have to get to a smith each time you loot a new armour piece.

 

[fluffydino2000]

Well the problem with that is that it means in character creation, average is ideal. But if it always needed a little re-adjustment, it wouldn't be such an issue. If it didn't actually impact on the armours performance that much, you'd rarely actually re-fit any armour.

 

[Zervostyrd]

But if you're a Tall Skinny guy, the chest piece from a Short Muscular guy won't fit.

but..but...but.. If I want to play a 'roid pumping 2.16m tall brute (without brainz) then I probably would see very few armors that would fit me and hence the most economically thing to do would be playing the "average" size...

with other words, in terms of what armors you could normally pick up and wear, you'd be "handicaped" for having a character of a more "uncommon" size. Which is fine IRL 'cause life is slap in the face 9/10 times and you get what you were born with, but in a game where you can actually choose your attributes, the size you really want, might not be a smart choice...

Edit: I got "ninjad"

 

[BrecMadak]

That's all that comes to mind at the moment. To help make SG very open (and replayable), I would love for detailed disguise and infiltration mechanics to be implemented. Not as a top priority, but hopefully at some point in the future

What others factors should be taken into account?

Nope, I'd want it to be handled as top priority as engine allows, since it has great potentials like letting the player in numerous amounts of different plays on each time. So it wouldn't be smart to ignore this great potential feature which would increase replayability dramatically.

And I'm strictly against any safe predictions and wins ( like get a hood and there you passed unnoticed) sounds quite stupid. It would pull a lot more attention compared to ones that does not try to hide a face.

Remember even in Arcanum, we had 3 different type of sized armours in addition to gender one back in 2001.

And there just should not be 'always' possibility to pass a guard, no matter how hard you try to disguise.

Nice catch Though i still wonder if disguises are "binary" (so you either are disguised and won't be recognised or you aren't and they will see through it) or if it is a more fluent transition - a % based chance that the disguise works depending on multiple parameters (which sounds far more realistic IMHO and should be doable from a programmer standpoint). I guess it'll be the latter (or at least i hope so )

This line reminds me Hitman series, of corpse I'd expect a lot more advanced system from BM honestly, only then it would make sense in terms of taking advantages of the used engine.

 

[Komuflage]

but..but...but.. If I want to play a 'roid pumping 2.16m tall brute (without brainz) then I probably would see very few armors that would fit me and hence the most economically thing to do would be playing the "average" size...

with other words, in terms of what armors you could normally pick up and wear, you'd be "handicaped" for having a character of a more "uncommon" size. Which is fine IRL 'cause life is slap in the face 9/10 times and you get what you were born with, but in a game where you can actually choose your attributes, the size you really want, might not be a smart choice...

Edit: I got "ninjad"

Oh. Well to me that's not a problem, I actually encourage it.
If you're a 2.16M tall brute, then you're going to hit very hard, but will have a harder time finding armours.
So it balances it out.

Also you can already chose how muscular you want to be, hence, going muscular Max, should "always" be more beneficial. That doesn't mean that every1 is going down that road.

The fact that the game is physics based, and that we can change the physic of our characters gets me exited, no more will character creation be pointless. Something I've missed from older titles.

In fallout, you could chose whatever you wanted to be smart or dumb, and whatever you chose had quite a big impact on the game. This also made it more re-playable.

This also mean, that to some extend you can alter the difficulty of the game, which also, is something I don't mind at all, rather I like that idea.

 

[Zervostyrd]

Oh. Well to me that's not a problem, I actually encourage it.
If you're a 2.16M tall brute, then you're going to hit very hard, but will have a harder time finding armours.
So it balances it out.

Also you can already chose how muscular you want to be, hence, going muscular Max, should "always" be more beneficial. That doesn't mean that every1 is going down that road.

But if you go the exact opposite way then? a 1.50m tall and skinny("smaller" than average)? Of course you may have a different combat style using such a character, but hey, nothing IMO should hinder you from putting on a full plate.

In this scenario you're sort off handicaped x2

A compromise I could settle for though would be that you've got no more than 3 categories of sizes (Small, Average, Large) goverend by the height. Disregarding muscular mass in order to simplify stuff.

My take anyway

 

[Komuflage]

A compromise I could settle for though would be that you've got no more than 3 categories of sizes (Small, Average, Large) goverend by the height. Disregarding muscular mass in order to simplify stuff.

Isn't that somewhat of what I propose? That "If your character is similar to size to the enemy you want to take armour from, then it will just fit with no problem.

But if you're a Tall Skinny guy, the chest piece from a Short Muscular guy won't fit."

 

[Zervostyrd]

well I did say disregarding the muscular part, but hey, I always cave in discussions

 

[Komuflage]

well I did say disregarding the muscular part, but hey, I always cave in discussions

Close enough eh?

You can always disregard the muscular part, or you could make it like the size, so that there will be 3 stages of muscularity. Just like the 3 stages of height.

If the size and muscularity are the same the armour would fit perfectly, if it would be slightly wrong, you can wear it with a small penalty, and if it's completely of, then you cant wear it.

But if you go the exact opposite way then? a 1.50m tall and skinny("smaller" than average)? Of course you may have a different combat style using such a character, but hey, nothing IMO should hinder you from putting on a full plate.

In this scenario you're sort off handicaped x2

Yes, this is somewhat true, a short and skinny character must likely wont swing as hard, but will be more agile, hence he might fit better for a rouge type of character.

You could as well make a 1.3M beefy character, and run around with full plate and a battle axe.
("Typical rpg Dwarf") I still think that character customization should have a real effect on gameplay, and it's true, that some combinations will be less effective at specific areas compared to other combinations, but again, I don't see that as a bad thing. There will be pros and cons with every options.

 

[fluffydino2000]

I think the thing to balance here is whether or not it actually adds anything to have random armours fit and not fit your character. To me, it'd make more sense if all armours that aren't fitted to you have some kind of small penalty (to movement or something). That way, character creation isn't swayed in any way and fitting armour serves more as an improvement than a removal of a detrimental effect.

 

[Empire²]

I confess, I have to agree with fluffydino here. Having to refit armour at a blacksmith doesn't sound incredibly appealing to me. I mean, it's an interesting concept and a realistic feature, but not something that would fit in a game very well.

What fluffy also said, which I liked a lot, is movement penalties. Not massive ones, considering the characters aren't that varied in size and shape to allow for a big gap, but at least slightly noticeable ones.

A regular iron cuirass you bought or crafted yourself would have a movement penalty of 5. Your size, for the sake of not making this too complicated, is C3. The scale of different sizes go from A to F, with subsizes for the width of your shoulders and thickness of your arms (muscularity, for short) going from 1 to 5. Every grade you divert from C adds 2 points to your movement penalty, and 1 point for every grade diverted from the number 3.

Sui Generis is a game about planning your attack just as much as executing it cleanly. Having to delay a quest because the armour you looted of off a patrolling bandit scout was not your size would really ruin your day (Much like the bandit's.). I appreciate preparation in RPGs, but having to reassess and probably reinvent your entire approach to a tense and dangerous mission because of a partially randomly generated NPC is a bit far-fetched.

Keep the ideas rolling though, there is always something salvageable out of a good discussion

 

[cosmo bozo]

Refitting armours would kind of spoil the whole disguise mechanic anyway, no one would do it if you had to go back to the blacksmith to alter the armour you just stole, and the element of surprise would be gone even if you did

 

[Komuflage]

I confess, I have to agree with fluffydino here. Having to refit armour at a blacksmith doesn't sound incredibly appealing to me. I mean, it's an interesting concept and a realistic feature, but not something that would fit in a game very well.

I don't want to be a total D***head, but wasn't it Fluffy who came up with the idea of refitting? Post #12 and #19.

 

[Zervostyrd]

I don't want to be a total D***head, but wasn't it Fluffy who came up with the idea of refitting? Post #12 and #19.

mmm yea, sort off, but he never advocated it to be mandatory nor did he do a U turn and he said from the very beginning that it would pose a balance problem... and it was really you and I who spun off with it..

@Empire²:

I appreciate preparation in RPGs, but having to reassess and probably reinvent your entire approach to a tense and dangerous mission because of a partially randomly generated NPC is a bit far-fetched.

I agree that it would be tedious. But for the record: The first casulty of war is the truth, the second is the plan. The same story goes for any mission; IF something can go wrong, IT WILL! -Murphys law always applies..

 

[Empire²]

I don't want to be a total D***head, but wasn't it Fluffy who came up with the idea of refitting? Post #12 and #19.

TOO LATE! jk

I said "here", with which I meant to imply that I agreed with that single post, rather than the ones on the previous page.

 

[fluffydino2000]

Yeah, when I came up with the idea, I just posted it, I hadn't really thought of my views on it properly. If I hadn't considered it when writing the post I probably would've made another thread.

But, I still think it's a cool idea, but just one that requires keeping in check. Not every game mechanic has to be constantly considered. I'm currently thinking that this would be an alternative to getting custom made equipment. With both situations, you are committing to the armour. You don't want to lose it, that's what makes the mechanic in my opinion. It's the idea that random loot you find should always be imperfect in my opinion. Not bad, just never (or not often) perfect. For that, you should have to put in some work.

It goes back to the discussion in the Item Durability and Repair thread. The possibility to find unsharpened swords or rusty armour. The idea that your loot can be improved by restoration. The readjusting/refitting mechanic fits in nicely. As long as it never feels mandatory.