Playing with nerfed archery, missile rebalance

[Timo Pietilä]

Limiting missiles in the stores won't drive people to use melee more, it will cause them to rest on dlvl 1, store scum and call for a buy-out button.

A better solution is to remove enchanted/ego arrows from stores and provide an unlimited supply of (+0, +0) missiles.

I don't think people would do store scumming. It's just boring and unlimited supply of missiles from stores are not that important to anyone. Especially if we change drops (again) to contain more consumables. Missiles could be counted as such thing because they break and eventually you run out of them if you do not find replacement. Arrows and missiles should be common. Many orcs for example "shoot missile" which, according to Tolkien, is almost always arrows. I think a bit more thematic drops could be useful in this. Kill a black orc and it might drop its quiver of arrows. Need more arrows? Find a proper target.

Add "orcish arrows", "elvish arrows", plain "arrows" etc. Replace seeker, mithril etc. with these.

Whole situation where shops are needed is just absurd. Game should be winnable in no-shop artifactless chars with just a bit patience. Not much patience. Shops should be just safety net that provides something you have hard time finding in dungeon by quirk of RNG, with no guarantees whatsoever that that item actually is in shops (but with guarantee that it usually is).

Ammo is not the only one. I think also spellbooks should be abundant enough in dungeon that you wont need shops unless very unlucky. Restore <stat> potions and scrolls of phase door, teleport etc. should be dungeon items, not shop items.

Absolute essentials are food, lite, scrolls of recall (for convenience sake) and beginning spellbooks for spellcasters. Everything else should be subject of random occurrences. And even those essentials should be plenty enough in dungeon for player not needing to play game of shopping.

I think removing the to-hit and to-damage values completely from missiles would be a good idea as well. Leave the brands/slays intact.

I like the idea of making brands and slays additive to missile multiplier instead of multiplying entire damage. That makes a big impact without making slays and brands unusable. If you are serious about getting rid of to_hit and to_dam bonuses from missiles then I suggest that missiles get bigger dice. 1d8 or 2d4 instead of 1d4. 3d6 instead of 3d4. 4d6 instead of 4d4. Something like that. Maybe even bigger chance to get extra dices than with melee-weapons. More randomness.

[Atarlost]

It's only a problem if you want archery to remain dominant in the early game. Right now it trumps all other damage sources. Magic missile may as well not even exist because mana pools are so small and melee requires exposing yourself to enemies. There aren't a lot of ranged damage dealers in the early game. Even 13 damage is over half what you do with a +10 dagger in two blows and at no risk to yourself.

[miyazaki]

I found that archery was still pretty powerful for DJA, even with the reduced multipliers. Then again, I was playing an archer, so I guess it was supposed to be powerful.

I like the missile-resistance idea. When I first started Angband I thought skeletons might be resistant to edged weapons, which is a similar thought process.

I think that missile breakage should be linked to the monsters. Seems like arrows hitting a bronze golum would break on contact. And maybe non-ego missiles should fly through ghosts, et al.

[fizzix]

I think what I did in DJA for nerfing archery works pretty well:
x2 = x1.75
if x1.75 = 2 then x1 = .875 (half of 1.75), so:
x3 = x2.625
x4 = x3.5
etc

EDIT: Also, a missile-nerf idea no one has suggested: Make some monsters resistant to missiles (halves damage for those monsters).

I found that archery was still pretty powerful for DJA, even with the reduced multipliers. Then again, I was playing an archer, so I guess it was supposed to be powerful.

I like the missile-resistance idea. When I first started Angband I thought skeletons might be resistant to edged weapons, which is a similar thought process.

[will_asher]

I think what I did in DJA for nerfing archery works pretty well:
x2 = x1.75
if x1.75 = 2 then x1 = .875 (half of 1.75), so:
x3 = x2.625
x4 = x3.5
etc

EDIT: Also, a missile-nerf idea no one has suggested: Make some monsters resistant to missiles (halves damage for those monsters).

[Pete Mack]

Interestingly, it doesn't change a beginning character's life that much. Rather it makes the standard advice to enchant a longbow to +9/+9 much less useful than it was.

That's a huge change to a starting character's survivability. Inability to do 30 dam/turn at a distance (and replace it with ~13) is a really big change. That is at the level of O-combat starting archery, which is already well-established as useless for most characters.

[d_m]

Applying the multiplier to the damage is realy brutal for starting players, since arrows are only 1d4. Really, really brutal.
Rather than that, I'd tone down rangers by giving them only 1 extra shot as the next step, as in NPP.

Interestingly, it doesn't change a beginning character's life that much. Rather it makes the standard advice to enchant a longbow to +9/+9 much less useful than it was.

Anyway, it is easy to do only half of the change. I'm gonna play around with this for a bit but I expect you are probably right.

[nullfame]

If you remove enchant scrolls from the stores then you remove the only practical way to break heavy curses currently in the game.

Oops! I retract. Unless curses are reworked. Or remove curse applies to heavy curses. Or something.

enchant scrolls shouldn't be sold in the store, and they should useful to +20 or higher.

+1

[miyazaki]

If you remove enchant scrolls from the stores then you remove the only practical way to break heavy curses currently in the game.

Mind you, given that heavy curses can be broken by enchant scrolls, I'm not sure what point they're serving right now...personally I'd rather see non-permanent sticky-wield removed from the game entirely.

I think removing heavy curses is in the works.

I agree that enchant scrolls shouldn't be sold in the store, and they should useful to +20 or higher.

[Pete Mack]

Applying the multiplier to the damage is realy brutal for starting players, since arrows are only 1d4. Really, really brutal.
Rather than that, I'd tone down rangers by giving them only 1 extra shot as the next step, as in NPP.

[d_m]

I'm working on a patch right now which implements Pete Mack's idea of adding rather than multiplying launcher and ammo multipliers (so longbow + fire branded arrows would get x6 instead of x9 against fire-susceptible foes). It also applies the multiplier to the damage roll only (like melee weapons get).

I'll post the patch here and then start playing rangers

If the rangers still are able to effectively use archery then I'll probably check it in; otherwise I'll probably tone it down a bit and try again.

EDIT: see http://bearhome.net/erik/ranged.patch for the first stab at this. All I modified is attack.c (for the actual damage) and obj-info.c so you can tell what damage your "new" missile weapons will do. I intend to make things like =damage work with archery to compensate (although that isn't included in this patch)... even so I expect it will be pretty sobering.

[Derakon]

If you remove enchant scrolls from the stores then you remove the only practical way to break heavy curses currently in the game.

Mind you, given that heavy curses can be broken by enchant scrolls, I'm not sure what point they're serving right now...personally I'd rather see non-permanent sticky-wield removed from the game entirely.

[nullfame]

IMO the current quiver is too powerful (immunity to damage aside, which IIRC is regarded as a bug). Getting rid of the "enchant arrows to match" game was good but now it is way too easy to carry large quantities of arrows in to the dungeon. Quiver should be 50 arrows per slot or even 40. 99 is too many.

Getting rid of branding spell is okay but I don't think will make that much of a difference. I've never had a hard time finding good ammo once I'm deep enough. YMMV.

Getting rid of extra shots is okay too. I value might over shots right now. I operate under the assumption that every arrow I shoot will be lost so I try to make each go farther not faster.

Limiting bonuses on ammo would probably make the most difference. Maybe arrows should be immune to enchanting too.

Another idea is to not sell enchant scrolls in the store. I feel the same way about restore potions but recognize that is wildly unpopular.

[miyazaki]

Another way to nerf archery/make the game more realistic: when you hit a monster with an arrow, it doesn't immediately fall to the ground, it sticks in. This should happen in the game. You don't get the arrows back until you kill the monster. Practically, they could disappear into the monster's inventory. Same with bolts. Shots/pebbles OTOH wouldn't. They would end up on the floor and could be picked up and reused immediately. This might make slings slightly more attractive.

[PowerDiver]

I think removing the to-hit and to-damage values completely from missiles would be a good idea as well. Leave the brands/slays intact.

You are probably right, but I keep wondering if archery brands and slays should only appear on the launchers which I alternate between thinking is brilliant and stupid.