To hit calculation

[Atarlost]

Which is why I carry a laptop.

Ah. I see. buzzkill wants a solution that works for buzzkill, but doesn't give an expletive if it works for everyone else. Nice.

How about a solution that works for *ALL* current and pending supported platforms, eh? Like having a hit/miss calculation system that most people can do in their heads.

[Magnate]

I've always been a bit mystified by the calculations that take place behind the scenes. Being a old D&D player you (almost) always knew your % chance to hit an enemy before rolling the die. In Angband, while I know that a higher AC is better and that 'superb' is better than 'poor' in terms of fighting ability, I could never calculate a % chance to hit in my head. I wouldn't even know where to begin. Instead I use trial and error (take a hack and see what happens), which may not be such a bad thing, since it lends atmosphere, but I'm not opposed to making the system more transparent. There are already enough mysteries about the dungeon.

What I would like to see is and actual HP number for monsters (xxx/xxx), as well as spelled out abnormal states, such as asleep or confused, rather than the current colored coded ***** system.

I'm not averse to more transparency either, but IMO this last is a step too far away from RPG and into puzzle gaming. How on earth does @ know a monster's exact hp (aside from probing)?? I think the asterisks are fine for this.

Also, a visible damage calculation term window, so you can plainly see where you damage output is coming from. It would show the actual damage die rolled , + to damage modifiers, + critical hit damage (if any), + brand damage (if any). I don't see a down side to this, save for the wasted minutes of precious life paid by the programmer.

I don't see a need for this, myself. What I want to see is on a *weapon's* description, a "chance to hit AC50" - so I can easily compare weapons without having to wield and unwield them. I think you should only know the chance to hit a monster after you've learned its AC (which IIRC means killing a certain number of them, or hitting a certain number of times, or something). Once you know its AC, then yes it would be nice if the monster recall showed you %chance to hit under current circumstances (including temporary effects).

[Atarlost]

Yes, but should this definitive information be known to the player beforehand? I agree with you, but I think that there's a line to be walked here.

If it's available to players who sourcedive it should be available to everyone. Obfuscating game mechanics is only viable for closed source games and even they will probably be run through a disassembler and their algorithms posted on the internet if they can't be found by running test situations.

[Magnate]

If it's available to players who sourcedive it should be available to everyone. Obfuscating game mechanics is only viable for closed source games and even they will probably be run through a disassembler and their algorithms posted on the internet if they can't be found by running test situations.

I disagree. Lots of people don't want to know, even if it is in the source. This is what spoilers are for - to provide info to people who want to know it, without spoiling the game for those who don't. For me Angband has its roots in an RPG (though it has come a long way), and (e.g.) I don't want to know my exact %chance of hitting a monster unless my character knows its AC.

[Pete Mack]

I don't see much point in such extreme accuracy. I know that an HE Mage can hit M with about 65% chance given full buffing, and that he's much worse without buffing. I also know that a Warrior or Ranger with arrows hits M at close to 75%, and full buffing makes a <5% difference. I also know that there's a sigmoidal curve from "almost never hits" to "hits most of the time", with a very crude feeling for where the breakpoint is. (If I'm anywhere near it, melee is going to suck, and it will be immediately obvious.) At low levels, buffing makes a huge difference and can move you from one side of the breakpoint to the other. At higher levels, the difference isn't so much, unless you are playing Mage. What more do you need?

[Atarlost]

To know the math so that you can use consumables more efficiently if you know the target's AC so that monster memory and probing are useful.

[d_m]

The way I see it, there are several separate (but possibly conflated) goals of this exercise:

1. To make the combat algorithms (involving to-hit, armor class, damage, hit points, critical hits, etc) something that players can calculate in their heads. This probably involves reducing the use of complex formula, and potentially making monster stats easier to recognize.

2. To give players a better idea of predicting the effect of various spells or potions on their fighting ability, and thus whether they should deploy them or not.

3. Correlating attack rolls and critical chance more strongly, rather than having two independent systems. This might have the effect of rewarding "overkill" to-hit values.

I strongly support #2; I weakly support #1 (I like the idea of giving players a better intuition, but I'm not sure I want combat accuracy constrained to the kinds of functions people can calculate in their heads). I think #3 is interesting.

Anyway, this characterization may not be accurate, but I figured it might help guide the discussion.

[Atarlost]

The way I see it, there are several separate (but possibly conflated) goals of this exercise:

1. To make the combat algorithms (involving to-hit, armor class, damage, hit points, critical hits, etc) something that players can calculate in their heads. This probably involves reducing the use of complex formula, and potentially making monster stats easier to recognize.

2. To give players a better idea of predicting the effect of various spells or potions on their fighting ability, and thus whether they should deploy them or not.

3. Correlating attack rolls and critical chance more strongly, rather than having two independent systems. This might have the effect of rewarding "overkill" to-hit values.

I strongly support #2; I weakly support #1 (I like the idea of giving players a better intuition, but I'm not sure I want combat accuracy constrained to the kinds of functions people can calculate in their heads). I think #3 is interesting.

Anyway, this characterization may not be accurate, but I figured it might help guide the discussion.

I'm not sure #2 can be done without doing #1. I'm not sure how you could give the players a better intuition of combat accuracy without making the equations something they can wrap their heads around. It should be linear based on either the ratio or difference between the attacker's to hit and the defender's armor/evade.

#3 is a seperate issue. I think, though, that monsters should follow the same rules and that criticals should be kept modest enough that they aren't an instadeath risk to a prepared charachter.

[Magnate]

#3 is a seperate issue. I think, though, that monsters should follow the same rules and that criticals should be kept modest enough that they aren't an instadeath risk to a prepared charachter.

Again I disagree. Monsters and players do not follow the same (design) rules: players have huge damage output and low hp; monsters have lower damage output and vastly more hp. Given this historic situation, I don't think it's necessary to keep them following the same mechanics: I think it's perfectly acceptable for players to get critical hits and for monsters not to (even intelligent, weapon-wielding monsters).

I would very much like to see criticals re-worked in V, and I think having them related to the attack roll would make very good use of an underused and undervalued magic attribute (+to_hit).

[zaimoni]

I'm not sure #2 can be done without doing #1. I'm not sure how you could give the players a better intuition of combat accuracy without making the equations something they can wrap their heads around. It should be linear based on either the ratio or difference between the attacker's to hit and the defender's armor/evade.

The to-hit equations are already basically linear, in the way stated.

[Atarlost]

But they're not transparent. There's the one terrible source of confusion Angband has that no other game system I've seen has: +1 attack is not equivalent to +1 defense.

[Pete Mack]

@zaimoni--
It's not quite linear. It starts out linear when to_hit>= effective_ac, but it approaches unity asymptotically rather than linearly.

Still, it's close enough to linear as a rough approximation. And it scales a lot better than THAC0.

[Polyonymous]

Again I disagree. Monsters and players do not follow the same (design) rules: players have huge damage output and low hp; monsters have lower damage output and vastly more hp. Given this historic situation, I don't think it's necessary to keep them following the same mechanics: I think it's perfectly acceptable for players to get critical hits and for monsters not to (even intelligent, weapon-wielding monsters).

I would very much like to see criticals re-worked in V, and I think having them related to the attack roll would make very good use of an underused and undervalued magic attribute (+to_hit).

To provide some numbers to help show how to_hit doesn't have much impact, consider an attack at 400 base hitchance (this is a rogue with 46.7 +hit, warrior with +35). +1 to hit increases damage output by 0.27% (against a mob with 150 AC). The per attack damage (not per round, per attack) would have to be 370ish (never happens) to make +1 to hit = +1 to dam. Needless to say, in the end game, +dam is worth a lot more than +hit.

[Polyonymous]

But they're not transparent. There's the one terrible source of confusion Angband has that no other game system I've seen has: +1 attack is not equivalent to +1 defense.

+x% attack = +x% defense in angband terms. I actually find this much better than a inverse linear relation as it's adaptive and much less likely to get stuck in one of the endpoints.

Granted it can get stuck in the "maximized miss" endpoint if hit is low, but that's fairly rare. Personally I'd use a double tailed asymptotic like hit % = 1 / (1 + e^(a *d)) where a is a balance constant and d is the difference of hitroll and AC [have to rebalance hitroll]. This is essentially rewriting the win expectation formula for ELO chess and other systems into angband where d is the difference in ratings and a is a constant to control how flat the formula is. (in chess a difference of 400 rating means 10:1 odds, but it's just an arbitrary calibration choice)