Shattered Kingdoms

Okay. So make rapid shot more effective by increasing speed further and costing less PE for shooting. Then make shooting cost five times as much as it does now.

A

5x on shooting? Jeeze, that's irrational. Firing four shots is not 5 times as draining as aiming four SKILLED sword strokes, much less four unskilled brute force slashes. And rapid shot only affects that LAST shot in the round, so costing less PE is not going to matter one bit. (at least, that's how I understand it)

I was saying modify Rapid Shot a bit, make it half the cost of shooting altogether. As well as adding more speed for extra attacks at no extra PE cost.

A

Increasing PE cost doesnt really solve the problem. Because as stated refresh potions/herbs just make the problem go away. I can count the times Ive run out of PE in PvP combat on one finger. That was more due to the fact I was fighting an elemental I couldnt hurt.

Bringing in shield block back into range combat. Decreases the effect of range combat, but only against what many consider the weaker combat style one hander and shield. Setting up a triangle between two handers < range < one hander and shield.
Adding in Cover command (or automatic in mood defensive) for taking cover behind people in your formation against range combat. Something like 33% of arrows end up on the front rank person 22% second rank person 50% the actual target (plus 22% if in only in second rank).
Then give back to scouts make rapid shot gives a bonus to get around shield block and the cover command similar chance as wild fighting slipping a parry.

meh.

Here's an idea. Mode shooting. Since there are different styles of shooting, why not give such a thing to scouts? I mean, sure, there's the rapid shot, but there's also that super zen shot that pierces armor and shields and bodies like mad. Give rapid shot the bonus to speed and add a penalty to damage/accuracy, make a "power shot", or something skill that decreases speed by half, but increases accuracy/damage, and bypasses shields as ranged combat does now.

With that, bring back shield blocking and covering against arrows.

Once again, an easy balance:

Remove skirmish from all but scouts.

Only scouts should skirmish.

You can also include all adventurer's, I guess, because that would make some sense.

I can make a perfectly legal in game alias to mimic skirmish. I can travel with a scout who is skirmishing read what he shoots and shoot the same thing. This solution doesnt fix the problem it just means more experienced people will spam more commands (which have no lag time) for the same end result. There is also people who might make a bot to try to get the edge in range combat and there is going to be very hard to ID a range combat bot over a good/quick player with alias.

Shoot has lag-time, just like any engage skill.

Skirmish does not.

In light of all these discussions about ranged combat, here is hoping Dulrik has made a giant mercenary, specialized in siege crossbow, and attacked another grandmaster character he spawns using skirmish.

Even if the victim runs away from wimpy setting, they still cannot escape the automatic homing ability of skirmish, and die in the subsequent rounds. It takes literally a few seconds to kill just about anyone, any formation.

So one of the perks SK boasts is rendered obsolete. And how much does all that damage cost the shooter? 1% of PE per round. Wow. Let SK be a MUD of ranged combat. Perhaps something is not working as intended...

Skirmish has lag time to turn it on but not to start shooting. Shooting at nothing has negligible lag time of any command same as trying to bash a target that is not there. If your actually shooting at someone then your lag time is relatively low the same using the Kill command if I am not mistaken. If you have a range weapon with more than one room range your foe isnt going to get anywhere near you before that lag ends.