Sil-Q 1.4.2 release

[DavidMedley]

Throwing Mastery

Not sure where to post this question. One section of the manual describes "trap" skills in Sil. Careful Shot and Mind Over Body I get. But why say "Throwing Mastery offers an inferior ranged option"? Seems useful enough, but maybe the problem is it drives up the cost of other Melee skills which would be even more useful? Or is it that thrown weapons' range is too limited?

[wobbly]

Are you playing with subwindows? It'll glow in the subwindow, but not in the inventory menu. A bit of a pain really.

[Pete Mack]

Feature request:
When you have an un-Ided weapon with a slay on it, make a message that says 'your short sword {special} glows if a suitable monster is near by, even if the weapon is 'in your pack'. The nonsense of dropping it on the floor to check is just unnecessary tedium. (Possibly have the message even if the weapon is ided.)

[HugoVirtuoso]

I noticed these two things in Sil-Q 1.4.2 (also probably present in older Sil-Q or in Sil-Vanilla or older):

1) Spider hatchlings and maybe the Brood Spider cna be poisoned by a Dagger (Poisoned)

2) When Mountain Trolls knock-away players with zero damage inflicted. If player not knocked-away, damage occurs right. But if batter + knock-away, then there is no damage.

I don't know if these are intended or even bugs. But, I took notice of these

[Quirk]

The Forewarned ability states:
If your base Perception exceeds your Evasion, you gain a bonus to your Evasion of one-third your Perception score.

It's not entirely clear what a "base Perception" is. For quite a while I thought it was skill points plus your base stat, but now I'm convinced it's just skill points.

Versatility reads:
If you have more skill points in archery than in melee, you gain a bonus to melee of half the difference between the two scores (rounding down).

I think this wording is clearer.

Here's what I really wanted to ask: Why did you reject the existing half-the-difference model already in use in favor of the 1/3rd skill formula? The latter seems much more powerful, despite the larger divisor, because you're not handcuffed against increasing the lower skill. But I like the smooth benefit curve of the former. Both have merit.

Good question, and worth an explanation.

Forewarned was designed as an ability to complement the many Perception abilities which scale with more Perception: Concentration, Focused Attack, Master Hunter, and as a reason to invest more heavily in the Perception tree after the difficulty of spotting traps was scaled down from Sil (where it had been in several instances actually bugged).

Using the former calculation was not remotely viable, power-wise. Versatility is somewhat niche, even though a pure Archery build with no Melee is possible - it's there mostly as a tool to handle no-crit enemies or to conserve ammo. Having Perception far exceed Evasion is really unlikely unless you're a Stealth build; but a Stealth build taking Keen Senses, Listen, probably Alchemy, maybe Focused Attack doesn't have room for Evasion it hopes never to have to use.

So, Forewarned had to give a bigger bonus and work for builds that wanted enough Evasion to hold their own in a fight. Finding an elegant way for it to give a bonus that's neither trivial or entirely broken has been difficult and the current solution is not entirely elegant.

The condition is that you have invested slightly more into Perception than Evasion. The payoff is initially substantial. At the point you get Forewarned, you're probably getting 3, maybe 4 Evasion for it; raising an Evasion of 6 to 9 or 10 by investing XP is worth 2400 or 3300 XP. This is a pretty good bargain if you were already picking up other Perception abilities, but the consequence is that if you want to keep your Forewarned bonus you need to keep spending on both Perception and Evasion - your immediate future is easier but your longer term strategy less so. If you have other abilities that benefit from Perception you may get enough value from the Perception investment in the long term anyway.

The ugly thing is that once your Evasion investment exceeds your Perception investment, you take a sudden drop in Evasion overall. Scatha commented on it in his review, and it's on my list for reworking at some point because of this. It could be even uglier if the bonus condition went not off your investment but your equipment, or stats. Removing the ugliness by having it always contribute some flat percentage of Perception as Evasion (e.g. 25%) would be a bit dull and do relatively little to encourage buying more Perception.

In terms of power level it is managing to find some buyers and helping Master Hunter out a bit.

It's possible several things in the Perception tree need reworked, as the scaling motif is even less successful than it is with Song, and the base skill itself is probably the single least useful skill. Perhaps at some point I'll get a brainwave that makes it more viable.

[DavidMedley]

Forewarned

The Forewarned ability states:
If your base Perception exceeds your Evasion, you gain a bonus to your Evasion of one-third your Perception score.

It's not entirely clear what a "base Perception" is. For quite a while I thought it was skill points plus your base stat, but now I'm convinced it's just skill points.

Versatility reads:
If you have more skill points in archery than in melee, you gain a bonus to melee of half the difference between the two scores (rounding down).

I think this wording is clearer.

Here's what I really wanted to ask: Why did you reject the existing half-the-difference model already in use in favor of the 1/3rd skill formula? The latter seems much more powerful, despite the larger divisor, because you're not handcuffed against increasing the lower skill. But I like the smooth benefit curve of the former. Both have merit.

[Quirk]

In the 1.4.2 distribution I got, the manual says:
Attacks on fleeing enemies are calculated as if you had 3 more points of
Dexterity.

In-game it says:
Firing at fleeing monsters is calculated as if you had 5 more points of Dexterity.

Brief test indicates the game text is correct, and melee and thrown weapons do not benefit. Is that right?

Looks like the manual has missed an update. I'll stick it on my to do list. Rout was buffed a bit for the 1.4.2 release when the archery changes were made and elves lost the free archery skill.

[DavidMedley]

Love the Game!

Really liking Sil-Q, BTW. I wouldn't be in here posting about it if I didn't! Still, wanted to say I like Sil and I like the Q branch. Will likely be asking a few questions in the near future. Maybe I'll throw in a few commits, too.

[DavidMedley]

Rout Discrepancy

In the 1.4.2 distribution I got, the manual says:
Attacks on fleeing enemies are calculated as if you had 3 more points of
Dexterity.

In-game it says:
Firing at fleeing monsters is calculated as if you had 5 more points of Dexterity.

Brief test indicates the game text is correct, and melee and thrown weapons do not benefit. Is that right?

[Quirk]

I noticed this recently while playing Sil-Q 1.4..2 (on angband.live):

Staves of Shadows do not blind player. Should they blind the player? In FCPB, the Staves of Darkness do.

I don't see any particular reason for them to do so; they're not linked in any way to the FCPB implementation. Assuming that they're useful to some denizen of Angband who wishes to create darkness (perhaps a Balrog), they'd probably be a lot less useful if they blinded the user.

[HugoVirtuoso]

I noticed this recently while playing Sil-Q 1.4..2 (on angband.live):

Staves of Shadows do not blind player. Should they blind the player? In FCPB, the Staves of Darkness do.

[Quirk]

I was also going to comment on the tutorial, but others have beaten me to it

There is actually a fix in the (unreleased) latest commits on Github, but that requires compiling code yourself, which I appreciate is unreasonable for many people.

[DavidMedley]

Tutorial

I was also going to comment on the tutorial, but others have beaten me to it

[Quirk]

So, I took Smite for the first time and it's FUN!

UX Question: Would you consider adding a command key to turn it on and off? I know that macros exist, but this ability really feels different than almost every other one in that there is very high risk to having it on.

Flaming arrows was arguably like this in vanilla Sil and the repercussion was much lower (losing arrows.)

I also think it's worth having a light on for it in the bottom bar ('Smite') just so I remember if I have it on or off.

Gameplay question: If I have whirlwind attack and I attack an enemy for the first time, will the surrounding enemies hit by my whirlwind attack also be smitten? (Smote?) The wording of Smite suggests that this is so, and I'm thinking it might be a fun gamble build (kill'em all in one swing or die trying.) Will I lose N turns if I smite N enemies with the whirlwind? :O

You only lose one turn if you Impale or Whirlwind, but you will do full damage across the entire swing.

I am open to considering a Smite toggle key, though the ability description is pretty lengthy as is so I might need to think about how that would work.

It might be easier when considering the "downside" to think of Smite as delivering the damage you'd deliver in two turns up front. It's not precisely the same, as the maximum is not quite double the average (average usually comes out ahead over two swings by the number of dice), but hitting only once means only one enemy armour roll. For a Flanking build where you want to reposition every turn it's not ideal, but it's less problematic elsewhere.

[debo]

So, I took Smite for the first time and it's FUN!

UX Question: Would you consider adding a command key to turn it on and off? I know that macros exist, but this ability really feels different than almost every other one in that there is very high risk to having it on.

Flaming arrows was arguably like this in vanilla Sil and the repercussion was much lower (losing arrows.)

I also think it's worth having a light on for it in the bottom bar ('Smite') just so I remember if I have it on or off.

Gameplay question: If I have whirlwind attack and I attack an enemy for the first time, will the surrounding enemies hit by my whirlwind attack also be smitten? (Smote?) The wording of Smite suggests that this is so, and I'm thinking it might be a fun gamble build (kill'em all in one swing or die trying.) Will I lose N turns if I smite N enemies with the whirlwind? :O