revisiting Teleport Other

[Remuz]

I know I should not be arguing, but... Dos, if you are in such a situation that you have no personal escape mean at all, you probably deserve this. Scrolls of teleport are plentiful, and if you really need to use your stack in no time, maybe you dove too quickly?

Anyway... my (newbie) opinion of TO is that indeed it feels like cheating, and I tend to use it only when it is a matter of life and death (say when I face 2 great wyrms at once and I am too badly wounded to risk a teleport). I do not wish to have it weakened too much in the regular dungeon, for reasons explained before... basically, diving is fun. In vaults, though, having no TO would introduce some nice decisions to the player.

Of course, blink and teleport should stay available, or vaults would become too dangerous.

[dos350]

blah blah if to is changed ill be sickened

[buzzkill]

My 2 cents, based largely on suggestions already mentioned in this thread. I feel these are changes that are easy to code and, if not a complete fix are at the very least, a step in the right direction, and are changes that very likely won't have to be reverted.

1. Increase the price. Nobody is going to sell TO (which is a great indicator that it's either over-useful/under-priced), so x10 or x20 doesn't seem unreasonable.

2. Maybe reduce the number of charges in wands, slightly. I haven't played bolt-style TO yet so I'm don't really know if this is even necessary.

3. Increase the rarity of rods of TO, slightly.

4. My out on a limb suggestion... DaJ does have some (maybe all?) monsters that rarely resist TO. I'm always unnerved when it happens, but it's never cost be a life (yet) and it certainly hasn't rendered TO useless. Maybe it's not for V, but if done with a light touch it can work.

5. Draw some suggestions form the recent thread on Scrolls of Teleport Level and make those changes at the same time since further nerfing TO will make TL that much more appealing (to Deep Decent too). I didn't note many, if any, fervent objections in that thread.

[fizzix]

Here's what TO allocation looks like currently. (500 sims for each level, which explains why things aren't smooth).

It's interesting that while total TO drops go up fairly linearly with level, the items that are generated on the floor rise up sharply around the allocation level and then remain steady for the rest of the game. (the bump at the very end is due to increased freq. of vaults)

All I would propose to do is to move this initial jump to the right a little. (I'll generate another stats run to show what I mean later)

[Magnate]

What are 'icky' tiles? I've also seen 'icky' corners mentioned, something else?

Icky squares have the CAVE_ICKY flag, which means (among other things) that you can't land there as the result of a teleport or phase.

I don't know what icky corners would be. Sounds like a reference to the ongoing LOS/FOV debate.

[Therem Harth]

In retrospect, no teleport out of vaults does sound a bit too strict; no TO in vaults seems like a good compromise. Maybe throw in a thematic excuse, e.g. "The magic in the vault's walls limits the range of effect of teleport spells" or something.

[fizzix]

I have a feeling people will reverse their opinions on TOing monsters out of vaults when they realize that they have to actually fight the skull druj and the master quylthulg.

Also, if you can't TO monsters out of a vault, they shouldn't be able to TO you either.

[d_m]

Icky corners is completely unrelated.

In some curses libraries, if you try to draw to the lower-right character in the terminal, the cursor will move to an invalid location and need to be reset (or crash when you try to use it). I think the icky corner code handles drawing to that particular cell in a special way, when required.

[Antoine]

DaJ does have some (maybe all?) monsters that rarely resist TO.

Perhaps better to have a small number of monsters that always resist TO?

Anything with 'nexus' in its name, some powerful undeads and casters...

A.

[the Invisible Stalker]

What's generally meant by "symmetrical LOS" is "if I can target a monster, then he can see and target me". Which is not always the case currently. Variants that fix this generally do so by allowing setups where you can see but not target a monster -- thus, line of sight still isn't symmetrical, but you can only derive information from it, not get free damage.

I know what people usually mean by the term, I was just pointing out that the term is not particularly well chosen. There are two kinds of symmetry you could consider, symmetry between player and monster, or symmetry between caster/shooter and target. Personally I find the arguments for the former compelling and the arguments for the latter quite weak.

[jens]

What if TO does a phase door inside vaults? i.e. a phase door that does not exit the vault. Thematically: The magnetic field of the permanent walls keep you inside the vault (just as they keep you inside the bounds of the map ;-)

[Pete Mack]

If you change Teleport Other, can you make it a ball (radius 0 or 1) spell instead of a bolt? Until summoning is fixed, there shouldn't be a defence against TO by monsters who summon.

PS: Yes, I am back from a long angband vacation.

[Nick]

PS: Yes, I am back from a long angband vacation.

Cool. Give 'em hell

[d_m]

If you change Teleport Other, can you make it a ball (radius 0 or 1) spell instead of a bolt? Until summoning is fixed, there shouldn't be a defence against TO by monsters who summon.

I'd be willing to split the difference here and have two spells/types: one that is a bolt (as in the nightlies) and one that is a radius 0 ball (which would need to be added). The current bolt mechanic is fun and challenging and I think it's worth having.

I think most of us are on the same page that summoning is (currently) unreasonable and often requires unreasonable methods to counter it (teleport other, banishment, LOS tricks, ASC, etc). I'm about to (hopefully) win with a Gnome Rogue that played with the new teleport-other mechanic and there weren't *too* many times where I wasn't able to deal with summoners. The big difference was that I couldn't get rid of huge numbers of e.g. Time Hounds in vaults.

[d_m]

PS: Yes, I am back from a long angband vacation.

Also, welcome back!