[engine] Attacker does not kill

[HenryPlainview]

I can't be the first person to think of this, but I couldn't find it anywhere on the forum. I know we recently entered a feature freeze, but realistically I was assuming it would be a long time, if ever, that this made it into mainline, so I'm more interested in what you think of it.

One of the most frustrating things in a campaign (and my most frequent cause of save-loading abuse) is when a disposable unit defies me and kills the enemy that it was supposed to only wear down. If the unit I am trying to level misses, then sure, I kneel before the gods of the RNG, but if I don't save load in these instances, besides losing a chance to help level that unit, the XP is just wasted. So my suggestion is to add a checkbox on the attack menu labeled "Do not kill", which would cause the attacker to stop attacking if its next hit could kill the defender, and of course the defender would be free to finish his counter-attacks. It seems to me a person can choose to not kill someone, and I know WINR, but surely there is some logic to that even in the heat of battle.

Now, I know there could be some problem with this. I am not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement. I only play campaign, so I have no idea how this would impact multiplayer, but presumably it could be left out if it is a problem. I am guessing it would be very difficult to get the AI to use this feature intelligently so it would be better to just leave that out of the AI entirely. That extra level of control would give the player a slight advantage because he could maneuver more delicately with units that have a low number of high damage attacks, but I think it would be minor enough that the campaigns would not have to be rebalanced. I guess this could be considered a departure from the current texture of Wesnoth, but if people don't have to use to it if they don't like it. And if the implementation is that the attacker irrevocably stops attacking once it's triggered, this could have the opposite of the intended effect when attacking a unit with drain, but this is only supposed to provide a more control, not perfect control.

Thanks for reading.

[Xudo]

Careful killing - one of the most important skill in Wesnoth. Tweaking will devalue experience of thousand players.

[Iris]

So my suggestion is to add a checkbox on the attack menu labeled "Do not kill", which would cause the attacker to stop attacking if its next hit could kill the defender, and of course the defender would be free to finish his counter-attacks. It seems to me a person can choose to not kill someone, and I know WINR, but surely there is some logic to that even in the heat of battle.

Now, I know there could be some problem with this. I am not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement.

It doesn’t seem convenient for a unit to stop fighting during a single attack sequence just because it’s about to kill its opponent — that doesn’t really fit into the gameplay mechanics (that can be nonetheless overridden by WML events), or could otherwise interfere with a scenario designer’s expectations (again, WML events). However, since (IIRC, but otherwise it can be made to) the game knows in advance the outcome of an attack before firing any WML events and playing all related animations, it would be more feasible to simply prevent the unit from attacking at all. Either way it doesn’t sound really worth it to me — how should your (potentially AI) opponent handle it if they attack one of your units and run the risk of getting their fighter killed in the process?

[Gambit]

This is very unKISS and changes the way Wesnoth works in a fundamental way. Denied.