Competition 154 (planning)

[fizzix]

So the current plan as I understand it is to do a PosCheng competition for 153 and then after do a modified vanilla with TO (and possibly other things removed). It will also include some custom changes, since I'm basing it off of my "ideas that are too controversial to be moved into V" branch.

Right now the plan is to nerf the players abilities by:

• Commenting out the allocation line of TO wands and rods.
• Removing the spell "teleport other" from the learnable spells of the chosen class. (I suggest rogue)

My personal opinion is that these changes alone will make a winnable, but incredibly unfun game (unless you have the heroic patience of bron). So I'm going to include some corresponding nerfs to monsters to even things up a little. Namely.

• Summoning gets replaced by "call monster" where the summoned monsters must already appear on the level, and are teleported to the summoner.
• Summon Uniques and Summon Wraiths will work as before though
• Dropping OoD spawns in vaults from 40 OoD to something like 10 OoD for 8 squares, and less for other squares. (I'd rather vaults not be "avoid at all costs" things)

Still undecided is what to do with banishment, mass banishment and destruction.

In addition there are some other changes in my personal version that I've tinkered with over the years. Most of these make things easier, but that might be needed for a no TO comp. These are.

• Mass identify spell (rods activate for it)
• Some monsters have speeds of -5, +5 and +15
• Flatter HP curve (more HP early, CON is more valuable early)
• Option to descend an extra level on down stairs
• Nexus stat swap is gone
• Time and gravity have a 6 divisor instead of 3 (bringing them in line with most other higher elements, upshot is time and gravity breaths do half damage from what they used to)
• I'll add to this list when I remember any more changes

[Derakon]

I'd say replace Banishment/Mass Banishment with scrolls only. That makes them rare enough to not really be abusable.

[fizzix]

I'd say replace Banishment/Mass Banishment with scrolls only. That makes them rare enough to not really be abusable.

That just means dropping the allocation line on the staves, right? (Rogues don't get the spell anyway) I'm fine with that.

[Derakon]

Okay, I wasn't sure if rogues got the spells. Removing the staves should be sufficient, yeah. I always felt a little weird about them anyway -- technically they're multiple-use, but they always seemed to either blow up on recharge or get burned up before I could use them up.

[Estie]

Looking forward to see this, but waiting for Debo to show up with "But I wanted to do a Steamband competition next!".

[fizzix]

Looking forward to see this, but waiting for Debo to show up with "But I wanted to do a Steamband competition next!".

Well, i'm in no rush. I probably can't play the next competition whatever it is, since I'm losing 2 weeks (and 3 weekends) at the end of February/beginning of March.

[debo]

Looking forward to see this, but waiting for Debo to show up with "But I wanted to do a Steamband competition next!".

Actually I'm the one that strongarmed fizzix into doing this. And it was clouded who remembered that this was proposed long ago!

[fizzix]

Anyway, I got monster "calling" working where summons pull monsters from the level, and if there aren't any monsters that fit the critera then you get an "and no one comes" message. I believe everything is working.

I pushed the branch that I'm doing this on to github.

https://github.com/fizzix/angband/tree/comp154

so you can see what I've been up to. Haven't zeroed out TO yet, but that's easy.

[debo]

How easy / hard is it to host new builds on rephial or whatever? If we can't do that, I'm happy to host the comp154 builds on personal webspace.

[debo]

If anyone wants an advance look at the fizzixband comp:

http://angband.oook.cz/competition.php?showcompo=154

I'm open to suggestions re: the savefile. If anything is messed up on any of the builds... I guess you can tell me and I'll be like, uhhhh

[fizzix]

If anyone wants an advance look at the fizzixband comp:

http://angband.oook.cz/competition.php?showcompo=154

I'm open to suggestions re: the savefile. If anything is messed up on any of the builds... I guess you can tell me and I'll be like, uhhhh

I suggest the char be named Estie, since I think it was Estie that suggested a no TO comp.

[fizzix]

Also, if people are wondering the major changes are:

No Teleport Other. wands and rods should not generate. You can still learn and cast the spell, but it won't work (you'll gain XP for the first time casting, but that's it). If either of these is broken, please report it.

No staves of banishment. sorry. Scrolls will still spawn though.

There are some things to ease the difficulty though.

Major nerf to monster summoning. Monsters can only summon other monsters that are already on the level (with the exception of unique summons). I have no idea how this will play. We'll see...

You will have more HP than you're used to, there's a flatter HP curve.

Time and gravity breaths do half as much damage. Their side-effects still suck though.

Rods of identify will ID all items that you can see. Be careful not to ID something in a vault, that you can't get to. You'll lose it. Messages for artifacts being "revealed" aren't polished, consider that fair warning. You'll get stuff like "of Fundin Bluecloak was revealed".

Some monsters have gotten speed boosts/nerfs on the order of +5. The big ones to note are cave spiders (+5 instead of +10) and mature dragons (+5 instead of +0). Look out for these.

[Nick]

These are really interesting changes - I'm looking forward to seeing how people find it. Well done fizzix and debo for doing this.

[debo]

Thanks also to clouded for testing and fixing problems with the windows distro I threw together, because who runs windows anymore

[fizzix]

So I just realized that the comp character doesn't have "forced descend" on which is kind of a pre-requisite for this experiment to make sense. (also, randarts would've been nice, but that's less important...)

I'm going to start a character with forced descend, and if people think its kosher, I'll enter that one into the competition. If people don't, I'll just play alongside for my own interest.