Addressing taunting 'cheese' methods.

[Kekspar]

First off I am not a programmer, I do not know the work required to tweak and change combat mechanics. Secondly my understanding of the game comes purely from observation, I don't know the actual AI behavior apart from what the game reveals by itself.

The deeper I've explored and progressed into the mechanics of Kenshi the more pleasantly surprised how well involved the combat system works. I've noticed that as your party becomes more powerful the more intricate and clever tactics you can use in battle. Notably two features open up many exciting possibilities in making tactical maneuvers that add quite a lot to the game: taunting and single unit targeting.

These features allow you to 'micro' your units beyond the simple "round up your guys and bum rush them". For instance you can set your tougher tankier characters to taunt while your more DPS oriented characters pick off priority or vulnerable targets at your command.

But I digress.

I have noticed it is easy to exploit the taunt mechanics, however purely anecdotal (Perhaps it is intended). Simply setting one or more guys to taunt and have them run around the battlefield keeping 90% of the enemy party in running limbo you can pick of massive parties one at a time.

In my own opinion I find this to drain some of the challenge and reward from taking on a much larger party with fewer numbers, and ultimately the game in its entirety.

I understand its likely that some people might disagree with me but I think its something worth re-balancing given the time. Now that I have addressed the issue I have a solution to propose.

The complicated way would be to adjust the AI to account for when they are being 'cheesed' and switch targets based on their analysis of what is going on around them.

The more simple solution (at least as far as I know) would be to only have the taunt mechanic in an 'active' state while the unit is engaged in battle (as in, not running). The problem that creates is as soon as you give your tank a move order it could possibly mess up the flow of combat, so to counteract this allow the taunting state to remain active for a brief duration after the taunting character is given a move order, so as to not break the continuity of battle.

If anyone has more insight on this topic I'd be pleased to hear it, also if this topic already exists and I've missed it in the search I'd also appreciate being directed to that.

Thank-you for reading!

[Tolwrath]

This tactic is possible in a great many games. Even planescape: torment let's you use Mort's litany of curses and then run a circle around your archers. The real trick is to just not use that tactic. Just take pride in the knowledge that you fought your battles out the hard way, instead of using a cheap gimmick.

Now obviously, having someone taunt, but not attack should lower their (for lack of a better word, I'll use an old WoW term) threat over time, so that more enemies go attack the rest of your group. But but sometimes tactics like this need to be able to work. Sometimes a person might get really pissed by a taunt and spend the rest of the battle trying to kill that one person. I know I've lost PvP matches in MMOs because I spent the whole match trying to chase someone who was barely even attacking, just running around the whole time. Haven't you?