Feature (item) request

[bron]

I'd like to request the addition of Dragon Hide shields. I envision them having the same sort of resists as the corresponding Dragon Scale Mail, but without the activations (nor any of the other stuff Magnate just added to DSM). In return, they would be shallower items (like say, 20 levels higher than the corresponding DSM).

The (admittedly minor) issue is that in a very real sense, there are only two kinds of shields: shields of Preservation, and shields of Elvenkind. All the other stuff (e.g. Resistance) is just flawed Elvenkind; not really a separate "type". Dragon Hide would bring greater variation to possible equipment.

I freely admit that this change is largely motivated by my predilection for playing birth-no-artifacts (and my current exploration of the possibility of birth-no-egos). It is probably a no-op for most people once they find an artifact shield.

[Magnate]

I'd like to request the addition of Dragon Hide shields. I envision them having the same sort of resists as the corresponding Dragon Scale Mail, but without the activations (nor any of the other stuff Magnate just added to DSM). In return, they would be shallower items (like say, 20 levels higher than the corresponding DSM).

The (admittedly minor) issue is that in a very real sense, there are only two kinds of shields: shields of Preservation, and shields of Elvenkind. All the other stuff (e.g. Resistance) is just flawed Elvenkind; not really a separate "type". Dragon Hide would bring greater variation to possible equipment.

I freely admit that this change is largely motivated by my predilection for playing birth-no-artifacts (and my current exploration of the possibility of birth-no-egos). It is probably a no-op for most people once they find an artifact shield.

My take on this: get Timo to support it and I'll happily add them!

(I agree that the shield slot is one that needs a little love - there aren't even that many artifacts. But if Timo argues that it will detract from rather than add to the game, let me know if you can counter those arguments.)

[fizzix]

so in this suggestion all the normal resistance shields will be replaced with dragon shields? or is there a difference between a red dragon hide shield and a shield of rfire. Or is the idea that these dragon hide shields could then get the ego boosts that dragon armor can get? In which case I'd really prefer there not to be red dragon hide shields of speed...

Alternatively, couldn't you add a couple ego shields that have the corresponding resistances.

shield of law (rshard, rsound (maybe sustain con))
shield of chaos (rchaos, rdis (maybe sustain int/wis))

shield of balance (rchaos, rdis, rsound, rshard (maybe sustain con, int, wis))
shield of many colors (rbase, rpois)

The first two are junk egos, even with the sustains. But the second two could be useful.

[Derakon]

I think the suggestion was for a new armor type, Dragon Shield (Dragonhide Shield?), which has either no egos or only the standard egos (Resist Foo, Resistance, Preservation, Elvenkind), and with there being one Dragon Shield for each Dragon Scale Armor.

Basic resistance shield egos should probably not apply to Dragon Shields so you don't get silly results like a Blue Dragon Shield of Resist Electricity.

A Power Dragon Shield of Preservation might actually be worth using over the standart shields...

All in all, sounds reasonable to me. We could use this as an excuse to push the artifact shields deeper into the dungeon, too. I'd say the shield should have an AC of 8 (matching large metal shields, notionally a step up from large leather shields) and a weight of 12 (large leather at 10, large metal at 15).

[Magnate]

I think the suggestion was for a new armor type, Dragon Shield (Dragonhide Shield?), which has either no egos or only the standard egos (Resist Foo, Resistance, Preservation, Elvenkind), and with there being one Dragon Shield for each Dragon Scale Armor.

Basic resistance shield egos should probably not apply to Dragon Shields so you don't get silly results like a Blue Dragon Shield of Resist Electricity.

A Power Dragon Shield of Preservation might actually be worth using over the standart shields...

All in all, sounds reasonable to me. We could use this as an excuse to push the artifact shields deeper into the dungeon, too. I'd say the shield should have an AC of 8 (matching large metal shields, notionally a step up from large leather shields) and a weight of 12 (large leather at 10, large metal at 15).

I changed the base AC values of shields recently as part of ticket #951. Not by much, but that's what I meant about implementing this if Timo agrees: I'd want to do it properly and get the AC/weight ratio right for the new shields, as well as their ego types etc. I think it would be interesting, but I know that there are quite a lot of people who share Timo's view that we already have enough items available and that adding more is a bad idea. So I'm not jumping in just yet. It looks like we'll be committing Ewert's changes to object.txt which seems to fix the drops problem (too many wearables vs too few consumables), so maybe we can look at this after that's been tested a bit more widely.

[bron]

My intent was that a Dragon shield would be a separate type of item (just as right now DSM is a different type than Armor). As such, they would NOT have ego powers added on top of them. I certainly agree that more-or-less the same effect could be achieved by inventing a couple of new shield ego powers instead. But personally I like the "flavor" of Dragon shields better (we use it for armor; why not for shields?). Personally, I find that the variety of shields is sufficiently lacking that doing *both* Dragon shields and new shield egos doesn't sound bad to me. YMMV.

[bron]

I think the suggestion was for a new armor type, Dragon Shield (Dragonhide Shield?), which has [...] no egos [...] and with there being one Dragon Shield for each Dragon Scale Armor

Right. What he said.

[Nick]

NPP has these.

[nppangband]

NPP has these.

True. For a more detailed explanation, NPP has base dragon shields and armor Dragon armor is much more likely to be used as shields than armor. I did this for the reasons stated above, there are lots of useful armors in Angband, but not so many useful shields.

Dragon armors and shields come in 4 types of varying powers each: regular, medium dragon, ancient dragon, and great wyrm.

All dragon armor and shields are assigned an ego type, which come from the various types of dragons in the game (green, blue, pseudo, power, chaos, law, etc.....) The kind of breath activation is based on on the ego type.

Now that I think about it, to have the activation strength and re-charge time be based on the base object (regular, medium, ancient, and wyrm) isn't a bad idea.

[Rizwan]

What if you have a full suit? A dragon helm, a dragon armor, a dragon shield and dragon boots (of the same kind). Would that then give you some special power or something? Maybe even have matching artifacts?

[TJS]

Wouldn't red/blue/white/black dragon hide shields be pretty much the same as shields of resist fire/lightning/cold/acid?

[Magnate]

Wouldn't red/blue/white/black dragon hide shields be pretty much the same as shields of resist fire/lightning/cold/acid?

Only insofar as the base DSMs are similar to single-resist armours. If we made the dragon shields rare enough, I think they'd be as interesting as DSMs are now.

[TJS]

Only insofar as the base DSMs are similar to single-resist armours. If we made the dragon shields rare enough, I think they'd be as interesting as DSMs are now.

They'd be interesting if they keep the activations. Otherwise the single resist armours would be exactly the same as the ego versions (other than maybe AC). Perhaps they could activate for temporary resist instead of breath damage?

On another note the DSM should breathe for a lot more damage than they currently do. Doing 250 points of damage (or whatever it is) once every so often isn't that great when you can do >500 a round using ranged weapons.

[Magnate]

They'd be interesting if they keep the activations. Otherwise the single resist armours would be exactly the same as the ego versions (other than maybe AC). Perhaps they could activate for temporary resist instead of breath damage?

On another note the DSM should breathe for a lot more damage than they currently do. Doing 250 points of damage (or whatever it is) once every so often isn't that great when you can do >500 a round using ranged weapons.

I'm with Timo here - we can't keep pushing everything upwards. The damage output from archery will come down - it already has for ego ammo with the change in multipliers adding, and it will come down further with other changes. I think the DSM breaths are about right, now that the recharge times have come down to 50 turns (you breathe about 5-10 times more often than before).

I like the idea of the shields activating for temp resist, so they're effectively double-resist shields. Nice.

[TJS]

I'm with Timo here - we can't keep pushing everything upwards. The damage output from archery will come down - it already has for ego ammo with the change in multipliers adding, and it will come down further with other changes. I think the DSM breaths are about right, now that the recharge times have come down to 50 turns (you breathe about 5-10 times more often than before).

I like the idea of the shields activating for temp resist, so they're effectively double-resist shields. Nice.

Archery damage coming down will give some more items the chance to compete I guess. It's just that I've never bothered to wear any DSM since I've always got an artifact armour by the time they show up (except the one time I found PDSM) and the activation just doesn't make up for it.

Can you get DSM of resistance now? Would be good if they give double resistance to the duplicate resistance (fire if it is red DSM of resistance etc.).

Mind you we can boost loads of items when my brilliant idea of removing stat potions altogether is finally accepted.