HardLife - on training, conditioning, and injury (Patreon)
Content
First off, everyone has their own favorite area/group they want to focus on, and the description system needs more precise measurements to work from. Tracking individual regions will give us this level of detail. It would be a huge injustice to you guys to glaze over the opportunity to build the physiques you want.
It should be up to you guys, the players, to decide how you want to focus your growth and abilities. As the developer, I shouldn't force you down a narrow or generic path just to save time/effort.
The exercises themselves work different combinations, and keeping track will lead to a training rhythm that alternates work/rest days on each group, creating a more natural simulation.
Then there's the matter of the upcoming contest/gambling system in v0.4. It will have activities like Armwrestling, in which very specific muscles play a huge role, while others a more minimal. Not to mention Wrestling and Boxing, which will need to know what area is fatigued or injured from impacts and submission holds.
There's also the matter of resting and recovery. While Qi is meant to refill very quickly, physical damage, toxic buildup, or injury takes quite a bit longer. So far we have not been tracking this. Among other things this change allows us to account for mental fatigue and the affect of stress, injury, and illness. It will also make it possible to overwork an area to the point of critical failure, which will create the need for a bit of strategy.
Breaking training and damage into specific regions also gives us a starting point for the upcoming perks and conditioning system, and a way to fine tune current karmic purchases such as height boosting.
Under the new system, conditioning/training/perks (and damage/wounding) will take advantage of the recently added caliber metric from combat. It was always intended as a measure for skill/abilities, and now its role is twofold: first it marks the upper bound for training at any given level, which helps us split the perks/conditioning into discrete increments; next it gives us a way to boost all existing abilities, to show overall growth with new levels.
Caliber is the triangular-root/base of your level, which in turn is the average of your primary stats. At Level 6 (having raised Cindy's stats by an average of 1) your Caliber would be 3. This means you could train muscles, perks, et cetera up to 3, and the power units would also be 3; which would make the durability/integrity of any particular body-part/muscle a 9 once fully trained, or a 3 if completely untrained.
The more you train an area or ability, the more it can handle without failing.
When an area has low integrity, there is significant risk of injury. This can and will lead to scenarios like breaking someone's arm during a match (armwrestling, submission holds, etc.). That will add a lot more flavor to the game.
Sorry for not getting this out sooner, I was writing an update last night when the internet went out, even my phone had no service. :|
I know its a lot to take in (and code) at once, but what do you guys think of this idea?