an idea an observation about range/power of sabers.

[Low Rent]

The way it is now each saber style has a specific range and power .

 

Light stance - short range- least amount of power.

Medium stance - medium range - average amount of power

Strong Stance - longer range- most amount of power.

 

This seems inherently backwards.

 

As you swing a saber, or a stick, or your fist etc. The power is dissapated the farther the swing has to travel. Reverse, this and the shorter the you have to swing (or the less you have to extend yourself to swing) the more power that will reach the target when it connects.

 

At the rate it is right now in game, a longer, slower swing is doing the most dammage when in essence the swing, upon reaching its target would have little power at all.

 

Conversely, the shorter swings are doing the least amount of damage.

 

 

Now of course I don't know what it takes to change something like that, so I won't really propose that something be done about it. It does however strike me as extremely odd that this is the case.

 

Low Rent

[panacea]

Yeah. Agreed. It IS backward, and it should be reversed, logically.

 

Is the game logical, though? NAH.

 

If a mod team reverses this at some point in the future, I'll probably try it. Otherwise, no loss, I'll play the game as-is.

[ACGe0rge]

I replyed to the copy of this post you made in the MP forum so I'll past my reply here as well

 

 

The speed factor is the real drawback to the more powerful swings. Strong stance can easily be countered with a faster stance if you know when to time your attack (as well as getting out of the way).

 

I also dissagree with you about why the stong stance should have a shorter range. IF you're chopping wood, the best way to get power is to stretch out your arms and take a long slow swing of the axe. It would take a lot more swings to get though a log if you kept your arms close to your body and made quick swings. If you were chopping vegetables, you would keep the knife close to your body and make quick chops. You could get more power if you made log chopping type swing but (beside making a mess) it would take a whole lot longer (and you dont need much power for vegetables).

 

I do have one problem with the ranges of the swings. Tehre have been a few occasions where (accoding to what I see on the screen) the saber only gets near me without actually hitting, but I still take damage or die. Fortunatelly, it's only happened a few times so i dont worry about it too much.

 

Those are my opinions anyway. Let me know what you think.

[Vestril]

I do have one problem with the ranges of the swings. Tehre have been a few occasions where (accoding to what I see on the screen) the saber only gets near me without actually hitting, but I still take damage or die. Fortunatelly, it's only happened a few times so i dont worry about it too much.

 

When that happens it's most likely due to lag, or one of those buggy instances where if you get withing a mile and a half of a dormant saber you get wailed upon...

[Canis_Aureus]

Originally posted by Low Rent

The way it is now each saber style has a specific range and power .

 

Light stance - short range- least amount of power.

Medium stance - medium range - average amount of power

Strong Stance - longer range- most amount of power.

 

This seems inherently backwards.

 

As you swing a saber, or a stick, or your fist etc. The power is dissapated the farther the swing has to travel. Reverse, this and the shorter the you have to swing (or the less you have to extend yourself to swing) the more power that will reach the target when it connects.

 

At the rate it is right now in game, a longer, slower swing is doing the most dammage when in essence the swing, upon reaching its target would have little power at all.

 

Conversely, the shorter swings are doing the least amount of damage.

 

 

Now of course I don't know what it takes to change something like that, so I won't really propose that something be done about it. It does however strike me as extremely odd that this is the case.

 

Low Rent

 

That isn't completely true. One of the defensive tactics in the martial arts I practice is to step towards your opponent as he strikes you (if he isn't trying to his your face). That way you interrupt his attack and let him hit you before his attack has any real power. An attack has an ideal point of impact where the power of the attack is greatest and this is also true in kendo. For a trained person what you're saying simply isn't true. Besides you cannot accelerate your arm/stick from 0 to top speed in no time! And power equals speed and mass. But as we all know the lightsaber has no mass... and it seems your forgot that fact.

 

Besides this is a game and if you had any understanding of gameplay you would see this as wrong:

 

Fast attack = greatest damage

Slow attack = lowest damage

 

If you can't see that the above is wrong then construct a lightsaber in real life and send a video of you proving your points to lucas art. Then we will have a realistic saber combat engine with crappy gameplay.

[RiverWalker]

and also comparing it to real swordfighting, or simulated real...

 

a short swing has no kinetic energy, and hardly hits at all, where a long, arcing swing can hit hella hard,

[obijonkenobi]

I dont think sabre fighting style would be the same as with regular swords as the only weight in a sabre would be the hilt... light doesnt have weight - not in the way we think of it at least.

 

But for the main question...

 

If the fastest swing was also the most damaging, and the slowest was the weakest... There would not be a balance in the GAMEPLAY of the sabre fighting. I think weapon balance is more important then realistic physics when it comes to games, dont you? (unless the entire game is based on realistic combat - which Starwars was never intended to be)

[obijonkenobi]

Of course in the movies the sabres act like the light parts have weight but thats because the behind-the-scenes production means they need to use rods instead of light so they can do the fights properly. It would be too hard to have the sabres "clash" instead of pass through each other if they didnt have the rods to keep them from passing through. And with anything physical there is inertia and kenetic energy and so forth involved effecting the motion of swings and weight to apply pressure with. With real sabres the light would have no weight so the only weight (like i said) is in the hilt. This would make it very hard compared to having a phyical blade, to push down on another sabre... So to fight with lightsabres you would find it alot differant to real world swordplay.

 

I have no point to this post I discovered right now...

 

I guess I am just saying lightsabre combat is very differant to swords of our world so you cant just apply the physics of swords to the physics of lightsabres.

 

(Oh and I am not a complete hyper die hard nerd... Just a part time nerd hehe)

[Chewie Bakker]

IF you're chopping wood, the best way to get power is to stretch out your arms and take a long slow swing of the axe.

 

Yes, torque is what what we're talking about here. What we're not doing, is factoring resistance.

 

I think the way that Jedi Outcast saber stances are justified is that in order to get the faster speed, the blows must be 'glancing' blows and therefore do less damage. Since the blade is receiving less resistance from the target, you are able to follow through and make more attacks in less time.

 

Strong stance would be applying all of your strength to the blow, not just cutting but cutting in half! To ensure that Strong stance wasn't an uber-stance they slowed down the swing speed.

 

Yellow stance is of course the happy medium.

 

[Low Rent]

I understand the wood chopping argument but the main difference in that is that all the weight is in the end of the axe as opposed to a light saber where the only weight is in the hilt.

 

I don't think the quickest attacks should have the most damage of course...thats extremeley unbalanced.

 

I do think the quickest attacks should have the most range. I would still have to hit you 3 times to equal 1 heavy hit.

 

I'm not saying it is unbalanced as it is. It just seems odd.

[ACGe0rge]

Originally posted by Low Rent

I understand the wood chopping argument but the main difference in that is that all the weight is in the end of the axe as opposed to a light saber where the only weight is in the hilt.

 

The weight on the end of the axe would make it harder to swing but wouldnt change the physics of it. You can replace the axe with a sword and it would still work out the wame way.

 

Originally posted by Low Rent

I do think the quickest attacks should have the most range. I would still have to hit you 3 times to equal 1 heavy hit.

 

I'm not saying it is unbalanced as it is. It just seems odd.

 

Here's another way to look at it. The more distance you cover with a swing, the more time it will take. Along with that, the more time a swing takes, the more time you have to build up power. The reverse is true for for a short distance swing.

 

I agree that in someways things dont make sense about the swings. Since we can assume that the lightsaber blade has no weight, then it really wouldnt make that much differece ho hard you were hit by it. It also wouldnt make a whole lot of sense to have a long recovery time with a lightsaber since there wouln't be any real inertia in a swing to recover from (due to the blade not having any weight). If anything, these things were put in the game based on fighing with actual swords to add some flavor to saber duels.

[enDless_Deliriu]

Most of the "inertia" type effect you get from lightsaber fighting I think is the body basically over compensating. It sees a blade, and can't really accept the fact that there is no weight, and so it swings and reacts as if there were.

 

It's in the books several times, that not knowing how to use a lightsaber was just as dangerous to the user as to the target, as the user was likely to overcompensate too much and chop their own foot off with the back swing or something.

 

As for the argument, I'm not sure where I stand. Good arguments on both sides.

[Jedi-Bert]

The strongest has the longest range, because in the short light stance, you knick them with the tip of your blade, while in the heavy, you stretch out to take a good meaty hunk out of them,

 

 

so my stance is basicaly that the range of the stances cause there to be more surface area of the saber to come into contact, thus causing more damage

 

besides, the range differences arent drastic.

[Demangel]

trust me on this, to be peasable as a weapon the way they are shown in the movies ETC, they would HAVE to have mass in the blade.

 

force power or not, a lightsiber is not a flashlight, if it was, even with the quick reflexes of the force, there would be no need whatsoever to swing with any force at all, thus you could theoretically twirl your wrist making dueling impossible, even for force reflexes.

 

I know this isn't real life, but we treat it as such enough that my statement is valid.

 

don't beleive me? go wave your flashlight or even a yard stick around, as fast as you can. What tactic seems to be the best? It's nothing like what you see in the movies I'll tell you that.

 

so don't tell me it's cuz of the props, think more scientifically.

 

In order for the lightsaber to work as I just psoted on another thread, it uses the same principle as a combination of the blaster, and the force field.

 

the blaster uses a small hollow sphere, filled with DENSE high energy plasma. without the plasma being dense, there is no way, i repeat NO way for the bolt to travel through space with any real speed.

 

there is no doubt that a light saber might be VERY light, but as a martial artist who taught for 7 years, I can tell you that a weapon sword like weapon that is balanced like a flashlight would be the most unpheasable weapon ever invented. even for a jedi...

 

thus the blade would be made up of a tub of force field, with Dense high energy plasma in it's core. this WOULD give it mass. and a balance, a wieght, and everything else.

 

the reality of the Light saber may just be theory, but the theory is sound. It is not a laser, or some other nonsense.

 

If you want a more detailed explaination of it, just ask me and I'll copy paste my orriginal post on the subject, or if you want to find it yourself it should be on page two of the Saber thread found here: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45021

 

I don't expect you to beleive me, or like this solution, but a lot do It also makes more sense for most people.

 

to say the wieght was a product of the fact that it's a prop would piss off some people who take SW too seriously, debating over what is so called "Canon" and what isn't. However those who feel what is shown in the movies is canon, would be more likely to agree with me than the "props" answer to the wieght question.

 

As for the speed issue? the first guy saying he is a martial artist pretty much summed it up correctly. In light saber fighting, like any bladed weapon fighting you need to put some speed behind the blow to increase hacking power, though that isn't exactly what creates the power behind the blow.

 

Thus I could argue it in two ways.

 

first Real power is not generated by the extension of the blow, any martial artist will tell you, the best strike is direct, without a big wind up or large swing. when using a Katana the arc of the swing is a bit less important that the proper cutting technique, in theory and practice you CAN cut through a 6 inch thick bamboo/straw pole by simply using proper cutting technique without swinging the blade much if at all!

 

When punching or kicking the most commonly powerful kick is the spinning back kick. (I am not talking best, just powerful here ok, so don't flame me on this guys heheh). the spinning back kick is not a wide arc at all, the person kicking pivots and then kicks out behind them in a fluid motion much like a side kick, which is the second most powerful.

 

In punching the most powerful punch would be a properly executed thrust punch, followed closely by a cran strike or hammer fist. the thrust punch is properly formed, by assumeing the right stance, then thrusting your punch straight to the target, developing the power of the strike with your full body, and not just your hips as some insist (but not putting your wieght into it, if you have taken a karate class you know what I mean probably if you went far enough)

 

all strikes however liek the one person said DO have a kind of sweet spot. when punching or using a weapon in a sense your point of aim is actually "THROUGH" the target, so to speak. In other words the thrust punch is most easily achieved by hitting about 2/3's of the way through the motion.

 

however as I said you do not need momentum to strike with force. One of my favorite lessons to people who come to me for training after studying boxing, is that lesson. they often use a wide haymaker style punch for thier power shot. I show them a mroe effective strike, by simply putting my palm about 1-4 inches from thier chest, and developeing power properly through my body (no it's not magic or the force heheh). when I hit them, if they arn't prepared, they can be knocked back 5 feet or more to the ground.

 

Thus in saber combat much like sword fighting a few kinds of strikes would be the most powerful. first the thrusts. a sword thrust is most likely to penetrate armor, for this reason, why do you think spears and arrows penetrate armor so well? they don't cut the armor, they are thrust through the armor peircing it.

 

A cut or hack works with a different principle. Since a saber need not be drawn through the target like a katana, as it cuts equaly as well simply by touching it to something with some pressure (requires a modicum of pressure due to the force fields effects.), hacking and slashing is the style used. thus the style would blend Both aspects of fighting with a katana (aido/Kendo/Kenjutsu), and perhapse braodsword styles (two handed ones, can be used one handed or two handed for those who don't know much).

 

thus In saber fighting in JO needs to be balanced. In real life the strong style would have a longer wind up but the speed of the blade in transit would be equal to the the other two styles if not a wee bit faster velocity wise, it would only apear slower due to the wider arc.

 

Light style would have little wind up before a strike, and would be used more like Aido.

 

Medium style would be a mix of course, and honestly would probably be the first style to be taught to someone, since the nuances of medium style are easier to grasp.

 

In reality strong style would be used much more rarely, due to the longer wind up and the loss of defense, at least the way it is shown.

 

think of this comparison. without armor, would you rather fight a guy using a katana with a Claymore, or no daichi (a No daichi is basically an oversized katana, or in other words, a claymore sized katana)? or a Katana? It's possible to do both, of course.

 

But Remember a claymore/nodaichi is a battlefield weapon, specifically made to be used in large scale battles. these often use long broad sweeping arcs to hit either multiple targets, or kill someone quickly in a charging manner OR penetrate armor due to the increased force. They are not anywhere near as useful in duels as much due to the low speed, and heavy wieght unless armor is worn.

 

This is why dueling developed it's own weapons so to speak. The fencing saber, a Rapier ETC.

 

A katana is probably the best all around weapon you can use if you know how to wield it properly, even against european heavy armor it still has an advantage in the skilled hands of a samuria (it's actually pretty easy with practice to cut the leather straps holding the armor together, or cutting into a joint).

 

A two handed broadsword is similar in that regard in that is a GREAT all around weapon.

 

I hope someone found this interesting

[Con. Snake]

You and your damned novels, err, posts.

[obijonkenobi]

I tried reading it all but its late here in my area of the world and it was so damn long! lol

 

I had a theory about having artificial weight in the "blade" but I am sure there is some official "internal schematic" showing this wont be right.

 

What if there was some sort of internal device which gives inertia to the hilt in a way to perfectly simulate weigh in the other end? With all disbeliefs we need to suspend in order to accept a lot of starwars technologies I dont think an artificial inertia device would be out of the question right?

[Demangel]

but seriously now.

 

I used to think of it with the inertial thing, and it is partially pheasable and possible int eh sw universe (or else how could they have ships traveling at any real speed inspace at all? without some sort of control over inertia you would never be able to pull off the high speed turns we see the fighters performing all the time for example, remember in sapce the speed is probably double that at least of modern supersonic fighter jets, and the pilots of those already have enough problems keeping consious ina turn, now lets go twice as fast at least heheh, well fuggeddaboudit, you'd die without some sort of advanced inertial dampening system)

 

Anyway that alone wouldn't quite do it since it would be nearly impossible to place a "Balanced" wieght effect in the blade, even in the SW universe. It would only make the saber handle heavy near the end where the beam comes out. good thinking on your part, but I think it fails in the end. think of this:

 

you have a sbaer, I have a saber. we both have the dampening field turned on... your just too good for me to beat like that so I turn that field off, and can now whip the saber around like a flashlight, you lose. Make sense?

 

So yeah again I think it would prbably done with Dense (heavy/massive) high energy plasma, which I am pretty sure is theoretically possible. It might not actually be plasma anymore at that point due to the density, but it can be as hot as it and have similar properties.

 

another thing to remember is that the force field could also keep the heat and light pouring out to a dull minimum, which is why the saber casts no light but glows, and generates no external heat (Ie you can hold it in front of you and not be burned. Plasma is like that to a degree in that unless you touch the plasma directly the heat energy disipates rapidly enough so that if you are within even a few inches of it, it shouldn't burn you... but I could be wrong on that one (any chemists/physicists with more booksmarts with me out there to help on that one?)

 

Ok end of my book

[ACGe0rge]

YOu all have come up with some very detailed arguments about theoretical physics and matrial arts technique. I ejoyed reading these posts even when they did get a little long winded

 

One think we have to keep in mind is that we are talking about a PC game and a Movie series. While some of the ideas presented are based on theoretical physics and possible future technology, most of it is pure fantasy. The space battles in the movies are based on how aircraft behave in an atmousphere, and a little on Naval combat. Most of what we see will never be possible in space. As for the lightsaber, it will never exist, and would behave completely different than the movies if it did exist.

 

The point is that I think you are being unreasonable if you want the game to be patched to make saber fighting more "realistic". I think the developers did a good job of creating saber technique for this game while keeping some realistic physics involved. Granted, the system isnt perfect but they had to keep in mind 2 things

 

1) Make a system that is simple and easy to learn for mass appeal. In other words, make it fun no matter who plays.

 

2)Make a system with some variety of styles, yet make each style have benefits and drawbacks to make them balaced.

 

I dont see a big need to tweak the strong style but woulnt mind if glancing blows were made a bit less lethal. IF anything, I think the light style may need some work since it is almost useless for saber duels. On the flip side, light is moer effective against weapon users so I would be fine if they left it alone.

 

As I said, I enjoyed all your arguments and think they make for a good debate about how the Star Wars Univverse would work in real life. I just dont think those arguments should be used to edit this game.

[Mr Tim]

Thanks for the great posts, Demangel

 

Having studied a bit of foil, sabre and kendo - it's great to see some perspective on swordfighting that includes such a wide range of references. Some posts I've read focus on one type of sword or style of 'fencing', but these were much better.

 

I think your point about no dachi/claymore vs katana, foil, rapier etc was very good - although when I thought about it, I realised that the lightsabre is both (so maybe like a katana then, according to your point about the katana's versatility): in the SW universe, the lightsabre is equally a duelling weapon as much as it is for versatile use in battlefields.

[Phoenix420]

Not sure what book it was (not NJO) but a lightsaber has something to make the blade feel weighted. can't remember specifically what though it's 3am here. hope that helps some.