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Unarmed unplayable due to shredding clothing rapidly

Open anoobindisguise opened this issue 2 months ago • 5 comments

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently, if you fight unarmed, your character will uncontrollably headbutt, kick and knee/elbow enemies, which very quickly obliterates anything worn on those locations. You'll destroy your shoes, your baseball cap, headlamp, jeans, etc, just by attacking. This is especially bad with full body gear, for example the activity suit, since the entire thing gets ruined by kicking.

Solution you would like.

The problem is twofold. One, you should not be headbutting enemies unprompted, period. Kicking is also probably something you shouldn't do unless your martial art or mutations specify it. Unarmed should be attacks with your fists, and not every part of your body. Second, clothing is massively too vulnerable to damage when used as part of an attack vector. This is harder to quantify though.

Describe alternatives you have considered.

Just forcing the player to use their fists so you can at least control the damage to a pair of brass knuckles or whatever would be a big improvement over the current state of affairs.

Additional context

No response

anoobindisguise avatar Nov 17 '25 02:11 anoobindisguise

Last time this came up I found that combat boots survived about a thousand kicks. A thousand.

You absolutely have to quantify it and explain why it's a problem if you want to be taken seriously.

I expect that full-body melee contact does lead to significant damage to regular or even "tough" clothing.

RenechCDDA avatar Nov 17 '25 02:11 RenechCDDA

Last time this came up I found that combat boots survived about a thousand kicks. A thousand.

You absolutely have to quantify it and explain why it's a problem if you want to be taken seriously.

I expect that full-body melee contact does lead to significant damage to regular or even "tough" clothing.

I found a pair of jeans got shredded in about 15 minutes. Sneakers lasted about 30 minutes. I don't know exactly how many attacks that is. Regardless, the issue remains that you attack with random body parts uncontrollably, which is an undeniable issue outside of the debatable durability of footwear.

anoobindisguise avatar Nov 17 '25 02:11 anoobindisguise

Jeans standing up to 15 minutes of full-body melee contact sounds excessively long. As anyone who's tried to rip their own jeans knows, it's really not that hard to tear them by hand once you've got a single loose thread.

If you're hitting someone with your shin with enough force to kill them, I expect your jeans to 'disassemble themselves' pretty damn fast.

Regardless, the issue remains that you attack with random body parts uncontrollably, which is an undeniable issue outside of the debatable durability of footwear.

Nope, that is how it's intended and desired to work. Melee combat gets messy - extremely messy. And if you're unarmed? With zero distance between yourself and the thing trying to kill you? It's going to get frantic. You're going to punch, kick, twirl, do literally whatever to not die.

The 'solution' is not to fight undead monsters with your bare hands. There are many things around which can be used as improvised weapons. You should use them.

RenechCDDA avatar Nov 17 '25 02:11 RenechCDDA

Last time this came up I found that combat boots survived about a thousand kicks. A thousand. You absolutely have to quantify it and explain why it's a problem if you want to be taken seriously. I expect that full-body melee contact does lead to significant damage to regular or even "tough" clothing.

I found a pair of jeans got shredded in about 15 minutes. Sneakers lasted about 30 minutes. I don't know exactly how many attacks that is. Regardless, the issue remains that you attack with random body parts uncontrollably, which is an undeniable issue outside of the debatable durability of footwear.

You really should try to quantify what you're talking about. There is room for agreement between "clothes break too fast" and "clothes shouldn't last long in combat". If combat boots last 1000 kicks and hiking boots last 5 kicks, maybe there IS an issue! But we need some numbers and then some rationale as to why those numbers are unreasonable or what would make more sense. Minutes of what? Minutes of kicking a tree? Or minutes of sporadic conbat? You really ahould be more specifc, paint a picture with some data instead of asking others to gather it for you. It's annoying to be asked to go the extra mile, just to understand what someone's preferences are.

I've done taekwando since i was a kid. Doboks can last years of kicking heavy bags. But kicking trees wore one out very quickly. Clothes dont usually get too damaged if force is merely compressive, but if there is shearing, sliding force they abrade quickly. So the expectation of how the clothes are being damaged needs to be rational. Using your arm or leg clothes to block shoukd shred them quickly. Kicking hard and rough creatures should wear them out. Getting them covered with viscera they arent meant to absorb it's gonna wreck them. Running shoes made of foam and plastic can lose chunks quickly when hit at the wrong angle but last hundreds of miles on a treadmill.

But still there may be cases where they are breaking absurdly fast, but its hard to help if you dont provide data.

Consoleable avatar Nov 17 '25 02:11 Consoleable

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions. Please do not bump or comment on this issue unless you are actively working on it. Stale issues, and stale issues that are closed are still considered.

github-actions[bot] avatar Dec 02 '25 07:12 github-actions[bot]