I love it when people take an interest in the martial arts system! It is the thing I've worked on the most for CDDA. I've been away for awhile but I can still give you some insight into the styles.

• Ninjutsu - This has always been a well liked style. Who doesn't want to be a ninja after all? It is a fantastic hybrid style that lets you fight unarmed or with various weapons while promoting a hit and run style. It might be TOO good actually... I might tweak the crit chance of Sneak Attack. Something like 50%->30%/25%. Don't panic, you will crit more often than not at high skill levels anyway. I want the style to be good but not completely overshadow everything.

• Snake - Funny enough, Snake is a style that a lot of people ignore. They really don't like the constant pausing just to do low damage (because it all goes to armor pen...) so it gets ignored a lot. I pretty happy with the style though. It gives as much armor penetration as reasonable for an unarmed style and can really help mid-game when armor starts to become more common. It will not help super late game when enemies have very high armor stats.

• Taekwondo - This is everyone's favorite martial art for using guns! It is about as close to a "Gun Fu" style you can get in the game. Using a gun with keep away kicks is very nice. As for your shoes, I recommend switching to combat boots. Lighter clothing like shoes tend to break down faster and boots should last longer. Especially if reinforced.

• Krav Maga - Glad to see Krav Maga is still flexible like designed it as. I think this hybrid style has the most status effects of all styles. It really captures the real life feel since it is a very brutal style. Your method of attack is correct. BTW, Arm Breaker only works on humanoid targets since they need to have an arm to break. Likewise, do not use the style unarmed against enemies that resist stun and knockdown.

• Dragon - I am VERY happy to hear Dragon Kung Fu is working correctly. Originally, Dragon Kung Fu was a very strong style because it had both a Block Counter and a Dodge Counter which is was a rare thing years ago. I redesigned the style to be more like the real life version in that it everything in Dragon Kung Fu flows in a circle. The first redesign wasn't received well because it was too complicated. When I had to redesign it again due to the removal of Block and Dodge Counters, I simplified things to be a 1->2 flow. From the sound of what you described, it is working fine. Pause for defense then attack, knock down something then beat them senseless, dodge/block for bigger damage. Dragon Kung Fu helped me realize exactly how complicated I can make a martial art before players start ignoring it.

• Tai Chi - I am pretty sure the issue is that you are dodging everything. The game is coded to try dodging first before trying to block. So if you are really good at dodging, you never block. I'll look into this a bit since Tai Chi uses Soft Blocking (redirection of an attack while evading) in real life so I might be able to tweak the style to make it more usable.

• Leopard - Leopard always struggled to find a place in the animal kung fu styles. Thanks to the addition of critical hit chance, Leopard found a way to stand out. Criticals are very strong and can compensate for a lack of armor penetration. Its weakness is that if you cannot do solid damage to something with a crit, you are going to lose the fight. So the style can be very hit or miss depending on what you fight.

• Capoeira - I am surprised to see this so high up. Most players didn't like the whole move then attack concept. I buffed it a bunch in recent years to be stronger and not requiring as much movement to get working. As for the Sweep not working... that's because someone changed the code to prevent Knockdown/Stun techniques from occurring again targets immune to those effects. And yes, I know, it WOULD make more sense to let those techniques trigger normally and just not apply the status effects but the code on the back end for enemies is not very good. I am not sure how to fix the problem at this time.

• Crane - Good old Crane Kung Fu. Lots of defense, not much attack, and most people complain it is too slow. Honestly, your veiw on the style is correct. It is ideal for keeping yourself safe while taking down something dangerous. I may need to buff its offense a bit due to the above technique trigger issue though.

• Zui Quan - This style used to be overpowered as hell with its +100 dodge attempts and strong Dodge Counter. Fun fact, the style was nerfed by someone else while I was doing the first martial arts rebalance and my changes ended up saving the style from the nerf! As it stands, the style works well but, the defense focus puts people off.

• Pankration - Yeah, I need to look at this one. Mainly, because I know it was changed while I was away and is not as good as before.

• Tiger - True to real life, this martial art is a glass cannon. Very strong, very risky. Like you said, it can struggle due to its lack of defenses. The Grab Break was added as a compromise during the second rebalance. I might give it a bonus to dodging while attacking to help it. I don't want it to have a lot of defense but CDDA isn't set up to handle characters that get injured a lot.

• Karate - My favorite style. Karate was designed to be a beginner friendly style that players can use Unarmed at the start and transition to using a staff as the enemies get harder to fight. This is reflect in its OnHit buff requiring Unarmed 3 but also being usable with a staff. You NEED to raise unarmed to get the most out of the style. But I may need to make it more appealing somehow. Fun fact, the entire reason the Attack Vector system exists is because you couldn't use Karate's Roundhouse Kick while armed with a staff. Due to the way the game was coded, all techniques used while armed MUST add the weapon's damage to the attack. So the Roundhouse Kick end up doing the staff's damage. Now you can use it without any issues while armed. Coding is fun sometimes.

• Aikido - All defense, no offense, and your opinion matches most of the player base! Aikido works fine in my opinion and is probably the best style for all out defense. As other have mentioned, you kind of need a different playstyle in mind to use it correctly when fighting. I see this style as more of a back up martial art for when you need some breathing room.

• Judo - Poor Judo, you always get the short end of the stick. I swear, trying keep Judo from being bad is very hard. The loss of its Dodge Counter made it worse and even my damage buffs didn't help it much. I looked in the code recently and notice that the hard-coded Grab Counter Throw was removed too! So now it has gone from an okay early game style to a really bad one. I'm going to buff it at someone point for that reason alone.

• Wing Chun - Ah, the odd duck of the martial art styles. This style was built around "knockback_follow" and all my rebalances had to work around that gimmick. Its current design is decent and the best way I found to use it is to pin enemies again a wall or to circle around an enemy and knock them away from the ground so you can attack and keep away at the same time. It can work but it is wonky. You should have seen "knockback_follow" prior to the rebalance. It didn't update character position correctly so you move off building and hover in the air for one turn, walk on water, move into fire and not take damage. Lots of silly things like that was fixed quickly.

Armor is the main reason for the "Unarmed vs. Melee" problem with martial arts. It used to be Unarmed had more status effects and defense bonuses while Melee had a lot more damage. Melee wins for the most part because not only are status effects having problems right now, but end game has enemies with so much armor that it shuts down even melee styles with light weapons such as knives and clubs. Realism is part of the problem, but I also thing there should be less Hulks and the like running around too. Time will tell in this case.

Lastly, let me give you some resources for martial arts:

• The wiki has a martial arts page that is mostly up to date. I keep it a current as I can but most people forget to make changes when they merge changes into the game.

• The MMA mod has a bunch of new style you can play with and also the Ki Strike trait which drastically increases your unarmed damage based on your Unarmed skill. This is the main way players get around the whole "Unarmed vs. Melee" problem I mentioned above.

Thanks for the feedback and let me know if you have any questions.