Making the game harder

[d_m]

Had a thought this morning that might go a long ways to making archery easier to balance across all classes. Right now, rangers get extra shots. It's going to be brutal to have archery be effective for all classes, without making it seriously overpowered for the ranger.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I don't think anyone is arguing that the ranged weapon code in HEAD isn't good enough for non-ranger classes.

My position is that it's already too good for all classes, including the ranger. So I'm not planning on making it *more* effective for anyone.

EDIT: That said, if we want to tone rangers down relative to everyone else, substituting might for one (or both) or the extra shots would work. It's a good idea.

[fizzix]

EDIT: That said, if we want to tone rangers down relative to everyone else, substituting might for one (or both) or the extra shots would work. It's a good idea.

Having playtested it already, I can assure you that it works. It makes bows and xbows equal in the midgame and a good bow preferred to an equal xbow in the late game. Personally, being that rangers are so overpowered already, I think that this change can be added almost immediately.

[d_m]

Having playtested it already, I can assure you that it works. It makes bows and xbows equal in the midgame and a good bow preferred to an equal xbow in the late game. Personally, being that rangers are so overpowered already, I think that this change can be added almost immediately.

So you playtested giving +1 might instead of +1 shots for both of the ranger's bonus shots?

Do you have a patch?

[Magnate]

So you playtested giving +1 might instead of +1 shots for both of the ranger's bonus shots?

Do you have a patch?

I would like to see +1 might at cl20 and +1 shots at cl40. Ultimately, when fractional blows is introduced and speed is overhauled, that +1 shots could be watered down a little: instead of halving the energy per shot, it could reduce it to 70% or so.

[fizzix]

So you playtested giving +1 might instead of +1 shots for both of the ranger's bonus shots?

Do you have a patch?

Alas I don't know how to make a patch. If you could direct me to instructions, I could probably do it. I'm pretty noobtastic when it comes to coding as pretty much everything I know is self-taught, and Angband is really my first experience with C.

The section that I changed for this was in player/calcs.c:

/* Hack -- Rangers love Bows */
			if (player_has(PF_EXTRA_SHOT) &&
			    (state->ammo_tval == TV_ARROW))
			{
                        /*Hack, change num_fire to ammo_mult (AB)*/
				/* Extra shot at level 20 */
				if (p_ptr->lev >= 20) state->ammo_mult++;

				/* Extra shot at level 40 */
				if (p_ptr->lev >= 40) state->ammo_mult++;
			}

obviously the name PF_EXTRA_SHOT is misnamed, but that wasn't too concerning for me. (AB are my initials btw)

There were other changes besides that in this game. The character is here:

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=10314

[d_m]

So, on Linux I create a patch from an SVN checkout like this: svn diff -x -w > mychange.patch

This assumes that you have an up-to-date SVN checkout of the game. The "-x -w" part is optional but basically tells svn to ignore whitespace changes, which can sometimes reduce the size of the patch a bit (and leave out random noise).

The diff you posted is just as good for this change... but patches are great once the change is larger and/or across several files.

[fizzix]

Ohhhhhh

ok, that was much easier than expected.

So here is the +might for rangers patch

And as a bonus, here's a switch nexus stat-swap to +1/-1 patch.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I don't think anyone is arguing that the ranged weapon code in HEAD isn't good enough for non-ranger classes.

You are.

My position is that it's already too good for all classes, including the ranger. So I'm not planning on making it *more* effective for anyone.

I never said I was going to make it more effective for non-rangers.

Right now, rangers get extra shots. It's going to be brutal to have archery be effective for all classes, without making it seriously overpowered for the ranger.

Basic logic translation: effective archery for non-rangers fundamentally implies that archery for rangers, who get extra shots, will be overpowered. It is not making any kind of statement about whether current archery for a non-ranger is weak, effective, or overpowered, and it is a freshman-level logic error to infer any such statement.

I started with that premise to create the framework for the rest of the argument. If we can't use extra shots, then.......

On Magnate's point...+1 power at 20th, +1 shot at 40th. I don't think so, and I considered that. The problem is, it's still *exceptionally* hard to balance. It's the scale; # of shots is almost never anything *but* 1 or 2, for any other class. +1 shot here, is not even *close* to being on the same scale as +1 swing (for example)...it's massively better, because you've already got 4 swings.

Nope...think thru it. +1 shot is damn near the same as +10 speed.

[Atarlost]

So give everyone shots based on stats the way everyone gets blows. Then apply every other archery nerf. Reduce standard multipliers, halve the value of extra might, make slays additive and only applied to dice, make plusses not multiplies, and if that's not enough go right out and eliminate ego arrows and ammo branding entirely.

[Derakon]

Atarlost: that would work, but given the tedium of archery, I'd personally rather not encourage requiring lots of extra shots to make it damage-competitive compared to melee.

[Atarlost]

It seems to be the only way to save extra shots, and converting all extra shots to extra might would make ammo go farther, easing the inventory even more than the quiver already has.

[fizzix]

It seems to be the only way to save extra shots, and converting all extra shots to extra might would make ammo go farther, easing the inventory even more than the quiver already has.

The way to save extra shots is to do the following:

Reduce extra shots to 50% effectiveness. So an extra shot is actually only 0.5 extra shots. You'd get 3 shots for every 2 and so on.

Then, get rid of the extra shots on haradrim shield, and make extra shots on non-bows exceedingly rare. On randarts it should be equivalent to 2 immunities. haradrim was made more powerful because people were complaining that it wasn't usable because of aggro. Instead they've made it an uber-item. If you want to keep it as is, it needs to be very rare. Umbar too.

x4 bows with extra shots should be extremely rare. x5 xbows with extra shots should also be extremely rare. extra shots weapons should be much rarer than extra might weapons. +2 extra shots should be almost impossible. +2 extra shots on a launcher should be equal to +1 shots off-launcher (i.e. 2 immunities). Slings of buckland are ok, they're rare enough as is. There you've save extra shots.

[Atarlost]

The first extra shot is the worst though. Even with them halved it's +50% damage. +0.5 shots will still be as big as +2 blows for a post-statgain mage or priest or +3 blows for a fighter.

[fizzix]

The first extra shot is the worst though. Even with them halved it's +50% damage. +0.5 shots will still be as big as +2 blows for a post-statgain mage or priest or +3 blows for a fighter.

Which doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me. That's also why it should be rare and considered powerful.

Another option that occurred to me based on your previous comment was to make extra shots equivalent to +10 speed while shooting. Then it would function exactly how it does in the early game, but would be much weaker in the late game.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Right. The basic problem is the degree of disparity.

Now, you *could* give everyone the potential to have 2 shots, given a high Dex. That's not overly tedious, and if you take Magnate's suggestion of +1 power at 20th and +1 shot at 40th, things would probably work out. It would also dampen the impact of something giving +1 shot, because now it's typically just +50%...still nice, obviously, but much less likely to be unbalancing.

fizzix' suggestion of treating extra shots as +10 speed when shooting...that's interesting. It self-damps both on the 2nd and 3rd extra shots, and with speed.