Your Feature Request / Idea
I say "Great" but ultimately as usual, I've tried to make this as close to already ingame systems, with just tweaking some numbers and rewiring some things to work more logically and interestingly. Currently combat in the game is just... well you can see the number f threads on here asking for improvements, and i think this is the easiest and most effective way to do this. Figured i should make my own thread due to the fact my particular post might differ quite a lot from others on the subject.
1. Stats should only dictate damage dealt and damage received, for attack and defense respectively. Attack would increase the dino's damage when attacking, while defense would reduce it by a certain percentage.
2. Attacks should be more based on chance and should happen faster, with perhaps the only thing affecting their frequency being reaction speed, but im not 100% on that, even if it's logical. Reaction speed could also bolster defenses of dinos theoretically as they would be able to react to an attack and dodge it, so yeah, id say in general ignore genes and stats when dealing with frequency and chance of attacks, just tweak it to be faster, but perhaps reduce the overall damage dealt by a bit so you can actually spectate the combat even for very high damage participants.
3. Have some more randomness introduced to this. It would be amazing if the underdog suddenly comes back from the near defeat and just impales or slams or surprises the other combatant as it tries to lunge for the kill. It should happen rarely, but it would add a lot more spice to things. As it is things are dull and predictable.
4. Make dinos perform other things than attack. Things such as roaring to try and stand their ground (maybe even having the chance to send the other animal packing if the display is fierce enough, as actually happens with real life animals, which you can just make as a random chance to end the fight and cause the other combatant to flee like you have for the territorial displays. This would only work for things that make sense tho, a carno, cerato and any of the other dinos would not be able to intimidate a rex or a spino, but large armored herbivores like ankys, ceratopsids and stegosaurids can scare off attackers).
5. Additional animations for this goes without saying, they are absolutely needed, especially when it comes to kills. Having something like the animal dodging what was supposed to be a killing blow and delivering a hit, instead of just how it sits now is really dull. The same type of thing can be a killing blow instead.
6. No more 1% health. Calculate if the blow about to be delivered is going to be a killing blow and if so, play an execution animation outright. The 1% thing feels artificial and clunky and honestly it just wastes time and is terribly unexciting and takes you out, while youre just waiting for the damn thing to happen and there is no surprise to it at all.
These changes shouldn't be too hard to make, i think you have all the structure for everything already in the game, it will just take some tweaking, aside from adding more animations of course. But overall the effect would be massive, there would be excitement to fights, chance, randomness and surprise, and it wont be a prolonged or dull affair.
I say "Great" but ultimately as usual, I've tried to make this as close to already ingame systems, with just tweaking some numbers and rewiring some things to work more logically and interestingly. Currently combat in the game is just... well you can see the number f threads on here asking for improvements, and i think this is the easiest and most effective way to do this. Figured i should make my own thread due to the fact my particular post might differ quite a lot from others on the subject.
1. Stats should only dictate damage dealt and damage received, for attack and defense respectively. Attack would increase the dino's damage when attacking, while defense would reduce it by a certain percentage.
2. Attacks should be more based on chance and should happen faster, with perhaps the only thing affecting their frequency being reaction speed, but im not 100% on that, even if it's logical. Reaction speed could also bolster defenses of dinos theoretically as they would be able to react to an attack and dodge it, so yeah, id say in general ignore genes and stats when dealing with frequency and chance of attacks, just tweak it to be faster, but perhaps reduce the overall damage dealt by a bit so you can actually spectate the combat even for very high damage participants.
3. Have some more randomness introduced to this. It would be amazing if the underdog suddenly comes back from the near defeat and just impales or slams or surprises the other combatant as it tries to lunge for the kill. It should happen rarely, but it would add a lot more spice to things. As it is things are dull and predictable.
4. Make dinos perform other things than attack. Things such as roaring to try and stand their ground (maybe even having the chance to send the other animal packing if the display is fierce enough, as actually happens with real life animals, which you can just make as a random chance to end the fight and cause the other combatant to flee like you have for the territorial displays. This would only work for things that make sense tho, a carno, cerato and any of the other dinos would not be able to intimidate a rex or a spino, but large armored herbivores like ankys, ceratopsids and stegosaurids can scare off attackers).
5. Additional animations for this goes without saying, they are absolutely needed, especially when it comes to kills. Having something like the animal dodging what was supposed to be a killing blow and delivering a hit, instead of just how it sits now is really dull. The same type of thing can be a killing blow instead.
6. No more 1% health. Calculate if the blow about to be delivered is going to be a killing blow and if so, play an execution animation outright. The 1% thing feels artificial and clunky and honestly it just wastes time and is terribly unexciting and takes you out, while youre just waiting for the damn thing to happen and there is no surprise to it at all.
These changes shouldn't be too hard to make, i think you have all the structure for everything already in the game, it will just take some tweaking, aside from adding more animations of course. But overall the effect would be massive, there would be excitement to fights, chance, randomness and surprise, and it wont be a prolonged or dull affair.