Don’t Just Stand There... Defend Yourself!

In the world of Fallen Earth, it’s all too easy to find yourself caught up in armed conflict, so it’s essential to be prepared. The game uses FPS combat that is backed up with RPG mechanics, which means that it combines a shooter-style aiming reticle with attacker and defender statistics in order to determine the results of combat. At its core, the combat system has three important elements: the reticle, hit calculation, and damage calculation. 

The Reticle

When you’re in Aim Mode, you’ll see a set of crosshairs at the center of the screen. That’s your targeting reticle, which is basically the sight you’ll use to aim every weapon in the game. To enter Aim Mode, hit the F2 key or click the middle mouse button. Reticle size matters—the smaller the reticle, the more accurate your attack will be. Remember, there is no aiming help here—no sticky targeting, no auto-aim—nothing but you, your weapon, and your target.

Hit Calculation

Once you have a target in your sights and you pull the trigger or swing your club, then the math and dice rolls begin. When you click your mouse, the system picks a random point inside your reticle for the attack. The higher your skill with the weapon and the slower you move, the tighter your grouping will be, making your attacks more accurate. The system checks the selected point to see if there’s a target there. If so, you score a hit. Otherwise, it’s Maggie’s Drawers—a swing and a miss.

Damage Calculation

If you hit, then the system compares your skill to the appropriate skill on the target: Dodge for a Pistol or Rifle attack, or Melee Defense for a melee-style attack. The defender’s skill can raise or lower damage amount and provides the chance for a critical hit. After that, the target’s armor, special abilities, mutations, and usable items come into play, which potentially mitigates the amount of damage done. Damage is also affected by where you hit the target. A shot to the head does more damage than a hit to the leg.

Weapons

There are three fundamental weapon classes in Fallen Earth, each with its own quirks. A rifle is a handy weapon to have in the desert. On an open plain where you can see for miles in any direction, the 100-meter range of the best rifles gives sharpshooters a distinct advantage. Characters armed with melee weapons or pistols will have to find a way to close the distance by using the terrain. On the other hand, the speed and devastating damage of a melee weapon gives brawlers the upper hand in close-quarters, urban environments, and in forests where the line-of-sight is limited. A character specialized with the rifle in this kind of situation will need to rely on special attacks or switch to another weapon. Pistols are a jack-of-all-trades that can be used both close-in and at range, but they aren’t as powerful as their specialized counterparts.

Special Abilities

All characters have a selection of special abilities that augment the basic FPS combat system. For instance, a character with a sufficiently high Pistol Skill can learn the Pistol Whip special ability to knock down an enemy during a close-quarters fight. Rifle experts have a similar ability, called Rifle Smash. Special attacks can increase damage, introduce status effects (like knockdown and stun), or even debuff an opponent’s abilities. Defensive special abilities like Armor Maintenance and Second Wind can boost your armor rating temporarily and increase your Stamina, respectively.

Hit Points and Healing

All characters finish the tutorial at level 2. Characters gain 5 hit points each time they level up, but this can be improved by as much as half if a character maxes out his or her Strength and Endurance attributes.

Players can heal one another and themselves in several ways. They can use First Aid Skills, like Stanch Wound and Heal Poison, to restore hit points and remove deleterious effects. These special abilities consume a quantity of stamina each time they’re used. Characters can also use medical items created by crafters in a similar fashion. Finally, Healing Mutations can relieve wounds and damaging effects, though using mutations costs the healer Gamma (and sometimes hit points) for the effort. Healing effects are stackable, so healers are free to combine any of these methods in order to keep a teammate (or themselves) alive.

Death

When a character’s hit points are reduced to zero, he or she is incapacitated for up to five minutes. During this time, a teammate may resuscitate him or her with an appropriate mutation ability or medical item; otherwise, he or she will automatically resurrect in the nearest LifeNet pod at the end of the wait. Of course, a quick trip to the LifeNet pod is available for anyone who doesn’t want to wait out the full five minutes.

When a character resurrects, he or she suffers penalties to either their XP or stats. The more often a character dies in a short span of time, the greater these penalties become. In no case does a dead character leave a lootable corpse behind, so there’s no stealing a player’s gear, mount, or vehicle.

The mechwarrior mod for crysis and the new battlefield bad company 2 beta is about all i'm playing these days.   I already preordered bf bad company 2 for PC so that's where i'll be come march.    I don't have time for anything else .