13.8 PLAYER VS. DENIZEN COMBAT

When you wish to fight a denizen, you may, generally, initiate combat with
it simply by finding it and attacking it with whatever ability you choose to
use. However, most abilities that do something other than just cause damage
will not work against denizens. The reason for this requires some
understanding of how player vs. player combat works, but for now suffice it
to say that creating an artificial intelligence that allowed denizens to
effectively deal with the hundreds of things a player can do to another
player would be prohibitively complicated.

Once you have attacked a denizen, it will, in most cases, either attack you
back, or run away. Usually a denizen will continue to attack you until
either it begins to panic and runs away, or until you or it is dead. Be
warned that some denizen may loot your corpse of an item or two after they
have killed you.

Critical hits
-------------

As you get to some of the higher experience levels, you will begin to score
critical hits more and more often. There are five levels of critical hit,
ranging from:

CRITICAL                          : 2x damage
CRUSHING CRITICAL                 : 4x damage
OBLITERATING CRITICAL             : 8x damage
ANNIHILATINGLY POWERFUL CRITICAL  : 16x damage
WORLD-SHATTERING CRITICAL         : 32x damage

In aethership vs. denizen combat, crew members specialised in the
Combateer skill of Aethercraft can score critical hits while manning
a battle turret. The chance of critical hits there is determined by one's
skill in Combateer rather than level, however.

Note that certain denizens are immune to critical hits - notably city and
commune guards and certain extraordinarily powerful denizens (ie, the Demon
Lords of Nil).

» Critical Hits Report:
»   Attacks                      5239
»   Misses                        687   13.11%
»
»   Normal                       1133   51.83%
»   Crushing                      562   25.71%
»   Obliterating                  272   12.44%
»   Annihilating                  113    5.17%
»   World-Shattering              106    4.85%
»   -------------------------  ------
»   Total critical hits          2186

function criticals:attack()
  self.attacks = criticals:count("attacks") + 1
  SetVariable("treant_crit_attacks", self.attacks)
end

function criticals:miss()
  self.misses = criticals:count("misses") + 1
  SetVariable("treant_crit_misses", self.misses)
end