In this update we see some fixes, a QoL addition but perhaps most importantly some adjustments for Damage calculations to Ranged Combat.
When a Ranged Attack is carried out and a projectile travels through 3D space and hit an opponent, the intended target or someone else, damage is not just allocated to whatever is the damage set for the projectile from a specific weapon. Instead a D100 is rolled to determine what kind of hit it is. Depending on the Attackers Skill-level and the hit units Dodge skill-level, we get the dice-roll needed for the hit to be considered a 'Full Hit' - applying the full damage of the projectile. The amount needed to roll is a direct ratio based on the values, so if an attacker has a Skill Value of 75 and the hit unit has a Dodge Skill Value of 45, the 'Full Hit' chance would be (75 / (75 + 45)) * 100 = 62.5 ('62) or below on a D100. This is what is called as the Success value.
The base chance to get a critical is the chance for a 'Full Hit' divided by 10. So an un-adjusted roll of less than 62.5 / 10 = 6.25 ('6) would be a 'Critical Hit', giving a +50% Damage for the hit. But also note that Luck impacts the chance to get a Critical Hit. For example an operator having a Luck of 12 will have a 20% bonus to the chance, 6.25 + (12 / 10)% = 7.5 to roll. The opposite is also true, an Operator or Monster with a very low Luck value gets penalized by having less of a chance in rolling a Critical Hit. Please note that no matter how low the skill-level or Luck value, a roll of 1 on a D100 is always considered a Critical Hit.
A roll attempt failing to score under a Success value (i.e. perhaps a roll of 87 in this scenario), will be a 'Partial Hit'. It still does damage, but on a gliding scale, based on attackers Luck versus defenders Luck. The damage-range for normal projectiles (not magic based), is from 50% up to 100% of the projectiles set damage. The calculations to determine the actual damage is a Luck-ratio where the final value determines the mid-point in a simplified pseudo-Gaussian distribution. So an attackers luck being 12 (higher than normal) hitting a monster with a low amount of luck such as 6, gives ((12 / (12 + 4)) * 50) + 50 = 83.33~ % as the median point of damage. That means if we rolled 1 million partial hits we could be expecting the average damage we saw to be this percentage of the projectiles damage for this kind of hits. The actual math and technique on how these rolls are performed to actually achieve this distribution would take up too space here to go over, but it hopefully gives a slight insight into the attempt to allow Luck for both Attacker and Defender to impact the damage being taken.
Next step will be to also introduce this weighted distribution of damage to Close Combat attacks for glancing/partial hits. It is currently using the old approach of a linear distribution of 50% to 100% damage of the weapons potential damage.
A Quality of Life addition is to now be able to directly issue an Interact Order without having to click the Interact Order button, if hovering the mouse cursor over an Interact Actor. The mouse cursor will change to indicate this fact and a left click, as if already having clicked the button first, will issue it. Moving the cursor away from the actor resets it to normal move-selection behavior.
Full Changelog
* Added ability to issue Interact Order by directly clicking relevant item while still having Actions Points left
* Added new dice-roll for damage allocations using Attacker and Defender Luck to adjust median of distribution
* Added a new Operator Selected Highlight
* Adjusted Ranged Attacks now use Dodge as the defending skill affecting projectile damage distribution
* Adjusted the minimum Tick-count remaining to issue a Look and Interact order from 60 and 95 to 10
* Fixed issue where queuing both a Move and Interact Order in the same Round carried over the wrong start-position to the next one
* Fixed animation issue that could be seen while ending a Move Order and transitioning to an Interact or Look order that has a move-component before reaching final tile