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About this mod
My own take on a system to attack specific parts of an enemy. Similar to the Locational Damage Mod by Kahmul but simpler, and more responsive.
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Foreword
A simple and responsive system to attack and damage specific parts of an enemy, with effects specific to the type of attack, the armor at the targeted location, the type of weapon used, and the body part attacked. Almost every single feature can be customized or disabled entirely, for preference or compatibility issues. My goal is to keep this simple, I could make the mod take into consideration a million variables and make it do a million different effects based on certain conditions and blah blah blah, but that is not the reason for this.
I made this to make Skyrim fun, what's not fun is trying to factor in a bunch of resistances into combat to make the player try to max out all of the relevant ones just to get a slightly small advantage, yuck, just yuck. This needs to be simple, it has to be, simple is fun, simple is fast, it does not require a great deal of research or math to get the most out of it, its simple, NO ARMOR == BAD, LIGHT == GOOD, HEAVY ARMOR == BEST.
The focus of this mod is to improve MELEE COMBAT, this isn't about archery, this isn't about magic (although both actually do cause the same effects as melee weapons. I suppose you could use a lightning bolt to shoot a sword out of someones hand, but that wasn't the point XD). Without further ranting...
In your mod menu it will be called S.L.D.S.
How Does it Work?
I'm glad you asked. Basically it works by drawing a 2-dimensional triangle between the player and NPC, or NPC to NPC. To do this it checks the angle up/down you are looking at, where the target is around you and which direction the target is facing and which direction you are facing. By comparing these values it can determine which arm you hit, or the chest or the back. The head and legs was the tricky part, thats where the 2-Dimensional triangle comes in. Essentially the triangle is drawn based on several parameters, such as distance between you and the enemy in 2D dimensions and the difference in elevation between you and the target. Then by comparing the hypotenuse of this triangle against two values which are the cutoff points where you are no longer looking at the torso, but rather the head or the legs, it is possible to determine where the hit occurred on the target. These cutoff points are the hypotenuses of two different triangles that...you know what it works. most of the time the scripts aren't doing anything, there is no polling, and even the cloaking effect to distribute the scripts is optimized to only run for 1 second every 5 seconds, since there is no reason for the mod to be checking around the player every single second. It sounds complicated, it's actually very little math, and more checking if the numbers generated are between a certain range of values. Most of the heavy lifting is handled in OnHit Events though I tried to keep as much out of the OnHit events as I could and instead some values that dont change are initialized when the script activates for the sake of performance. There are several other things I can do to enhance the performance, for instance I'm fairly certain I could cut the script load in half were I so inclined, there are reasons I didn't but I don't want to get into that here. I could also make it so the scripts only run between the player and enemies targeting the player, this way if you had a massive battle with 40 to 80 enemies all fighting this mod wouldnt contribute to the lag. Again, with some feedback I will make adjustments, but since this mod will likely not make the hot files, I doubt very many people will see it. If you would like to see the source to make your own changes I may share with you, but if you upload it as your own work so help me I will come crashing down on you like the sword of damocles looming on high.
TL;DR
MATH, TRIANGLES, FEEDBACK PLZZZZZ
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Features
Four Different Body Zones:
- Head
- Legs
- Right Arm
- Left Arm
- I have excluded the body as a hit zone, its the sturdiest area and the most well armored, may add something like stamina damage in the future.
Features with a * next to them can be toggled on and off, features with a ** can be configured or disabled altogether.
- Body Zones can be attacked from any angle, around the enemy.
- Specific Effects for hitting each zone.
- Enemy reactions based on armor worn, enemy level, character level, and player actions, other variables.
- MCM customizable
- Works with Ranged weapons as well as magic.
- Adds a simple weapon parry thats more efficient than my other mod Weapon Parry Standalone but has the same features.*
- Allows you adjust the stamina recovery for you and enemies.**
- Adds a stagger mechanic that makes every hit cause a short stagger.*
- Adds effects and detriments based on hit zones.
- Adds stamina damage to regular attacks, but does not modify the vanilla power attack stamina damage, enemies stamina is damaged by half of what the player's stamina is per attack.**
- Adds a Punishment effect to the player for getting hit while targeting the legs or head of an enemy. This is to make things a little more equal for the enemies since they cannot target your head or legs and those areas could potentially cause stagger-lock. This increases the amount of damage that you sustain, the logic is that since you were busy looking at their head or legs you are more susceptible to attacks from the arms of the enemy.*
- Makes the delay before stamina starts recovering configurable.**
- Blocking a power attack with Zero Stamina, this count for weapon parrying as well as shield blocking.*
- Attack speed slows down some with depleted Stamina. This goes for the player and enemies.*
- BackStabs instantly kill!*
Effects Against Enemies
Hitting the zones added by the mod have their own effects associated with them. This is not a damage mod, this does not change Skyrim settings (although it can) the point of this mod is to give you incentive to actually AIM WHEN YOU FIGHT instead of just swinging until the enemy is dead. It will punish you for not blocking, it will make you dodge attacks, it will make you wait patiently for an opening to attack...let's move on.
Head Zone: Causes a very short stagger effect for hitting this zone, wearing armor decreases the odds of this type of stagger based on the armor worn, light vs heavy, armor types DO NOT MATTER to this mod. Daedric and Iron have same benefits, Skyrim is too magical, armor is armor. More effects to come to this zone. Hitting some one in the Head Zone from behind can knock their helmet off! Backstab instant-kills basically disables this since you will...well, instantly kill them with a killmove given that the conditions for it is met.
Right Arm:Causes lowered attack and attack speed, again several variables go into whether or not this effect happens. Hitting the right arm also gives the chance to disarm the enemy.
Left Arm:Causes lowered attack damage and lowered chance of criticals, also attacking this arm can make the enemy drop their sword or shield or torch or whatever they have equipped in that hand.
Legs: Causes decreased movement speed and longer staggers, ultimately can knock someone right off of their feet if you attack their legs enough.
Based on demand I will add more effects, change existing ones, so put in your two cents.
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Effects Against Player
The Player is, of course, affected by this system as well but since enemies can't look at the different parts of your body and decide to attack them their system is different. They can only hit your arms, left or right, based on which limb is facing them. They can disarm both of your arms and cause similar effects to the player that the player can cause to them.
Basically:
1. Enemies can disarm anything in equipped in either hand of the player, the frequency of this is determined by several factors, can be adjusted to an extent from the mod menu. If its happening too much you can make it happen less often or more often. Plus you can receive detrimental effects such as decreased actor values like the effects enemies experience.
2. When the Player waits any equipment lost during battle but not picked up after word will be found and laid out in front of you. The logic is that the hour(s) you waited, you were searching for you equipment, I may just add a windowed prompt to search for lost equipment when you press the wait key.
Recommended Mods:
Melee Range Fix - the mod was designed with correct melee range values, and to make sure everything is accurate as possible, I recommend this mod.
Any combat mod will work - disable any features that seem like they do the same thing or very similar things for compatibility, I personally recommend, Action Combat, Ultimate Combat, or Deadly Combat, again disable overlapping features.
Enhanced Camera - Great mod, and was used when I designed, adjusted and play tested the mod, to ensure accuracy I recommend this mod.
Pseudo Parry Animations - Makes weapon parry look great!
Upgrading from a Previous Version:
I recommend saving in an interior location with no other NPCs in it, like a cleared dungeon and saving, exit that game, and uninstall the mod. Then open your game and save again. Exit the game. Then using the Skyrim Script Cleaner
click FixScriptInstances, Delete All#, Clean Other, Del.Broken Archives, after selecting your save file, and save those changes. Then install the new version and start your game, after sorting with LOOT.
Incompatibilities:
Any mod that drastically alters the height/camera position of the player, or the height of humanoid NPCs could cause inaccuracies with the system, the odds are that it wouldn't but it still could, so I am putting this warning label on the mod, before people complain its broke because their character is knee-high and it cant accurately tell where you are hitting.