A Few Questions/Observations From an Old Player

[Derakon]

I suspect the current respawn system is simply that every turn, there's a small chance that monsters will be spawned somewhere, ideally not in LOS of the player. Perhaps it'd be preferable if there were a soft population ceiling of monsters on the level? That is, the game can only spawn monsters if the current population is under the population ceiling. Then when the level is created, the population is "overfilled", which basically means that new spawns are banned until the player has brought the population down a bit. You could set the ceiling at, say, half the target starting population. Then no monsters would spawn until the dungeon was half-cleared.

[Oramin]

I'd actually prefer a resetting timer for the respawn since it makes sense that the longer a player is on the level, the greater the likelihood that monsters will show up from other levels.

[Timo Pietilä]

You can't pillar dance with a monster that eats or moves through walls.

Except in GV with permanent wall pillar. Even Morgoth can't eat permanent walls, so greater vaults sometimes make endgame a lot easier. GV:s also make escape from sticky situation very very easy.

Pillar-dancing is difficult to do against +30 speed monster. It would take forever unless you have absolutely insane speed and/or weapon because diminishing returns of energy after +26 and fast regen of Morgoth. Counting when you get that extra move before actual fight requires very good knowledge how the energy system works.

[Timo Pietilä]

I suspect the current respawn system is simply that every turn, there's a small chance that monsters will be spawned somewhere, ideally not in LOS of the player. Perhaps it'd be preferable if there were a soft population ceiling of monsters on the level? That is, the game can only spawn monsters if the current population is under the population ceiling. Then when the level is created, the population is "overfilled", which basically means that new spawns are banned until the player has brought the population down a bit. You could set the ceiling at, say, half the target starting population. Then no monsters would spawn until the dungeon was half-cleared.

That would make boring levels really really boring. I like the fact that there might be some action even in initially boring level after you have spent some time in it. I'd prefer a small turn limit before first spawn, then go like it is now.

[Oramin]

Didn't some of the previous version tell you when your spells beamed? At the moment I can only tell when I happen to have multiple monsters lined up. This makes it difficult to estimate the chance of beaming.

Also is the following still the current information for beaming:

Certain "bolt" spells (magic missile, lightning, fire and frost bolt, etc) have a chance to become a "beam" based on your experience level. This chance is 1% / level for mages and 0.5% / level for rangers. Magic Missile, Lightning Bolt and Frost Bolt all have a -10% to the roll.
Wands have a 20% chance to "beam" and rods have a 10% chance.

(actually, it is obviously wrong for the current version of Lightning Bolt, but other than that...)

Thanks.

[ekolis]

If you set the base delay factor to something above zero, you should be able to see a line of stars appear briefly when your spell beams, as opposed to a little dash flying toward the target when it is a bolt...

[Derakon]

To my knowledge, there's never been a message telling you that a beam happened. Just increase the delay factor, as ekolis mentioned.

Looking at the source, the chance to get a beam seems to be a bit weird. The base chance is your character level / 2. There's a flag PF_BEAM that doubles your beam chance, roughly, but it's never set, as far as I can tell. It'd make sense to have it set for mages and priests though, so maybe it's set somewhere I didn't find. Then, beam chance is modified depending on the spell:

Magic Missile: -10
Frost bolt: -10
Fire bolt: +0
Acid bolt: +0
Rend soul: divided by 4
Chaos strike: +0

So at level 50, you'd expect to get Magic Missile to beam 15% of the time, or 40% if you have PF_BEAM set. Meanwhile Rend Soul would only beam 6% of the time, or 12% with PF_BEAM.

[myshkin]

Looking at the source, the chance to get a beam seems to be a bit weird. The base chance is your character level / 2. There's a flag PF_BEAM that doubles your beam chance, roughly, but it's never set, as far as I can tell. It'd make sense to have it set for mages and priests though, so maybe it's set somewhere I didn't find.

The algorithm is pretty clunky. Meanwhile, devices just get a flat 20% (wands) or 10% (rods) beam chance...that should probably vary with device skill.

Mages (and only mages) get PF_BEAM in lib/edit/p_class.txt, for what it's worth.

[Derakon]

Mages (and only mages) get PF_BEAM in lib/edit/p_class.txt, for what it's worth.

Ahh, my problem was that I was searching for "PF_BEAM" and it shows up as "BEAM" in p_class.txt. Bah.

[Oramin]

Thanks, folks.

A couple more questions:

Do artifacts get a chance to beam (e.g. Narthanc)?

Do skills/wands like Life Drain and Annihilation get a chance to beam?

[Derakon]

I believe the answer is no in both cases. Certainly I've never seen Life Drain / Annihilation beam, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen artifact bolt activations beam either. Come to think, I don't think there are any artifacts that activate for a beaming effect, period. All of the offensive ones are bolts or balls. Or "everything in line of sight".

[Timo Pietilä]

I believe the answer is no in both cases. Certainly I've never seen Life Drain / Annihilation beam, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen artifact bolt activations beam either. Come to think, I don't think there are any artifacts that activate for a beaming effect, period. All of the offensive ones are bolts or balls. Or "everything in line of sight".

IIRC one of the elemental gauntlets had lightning bolt that always beamed. Not sure if that exists anymore though.

[Magnate]

IIRC one of the elemental gauntlets had lightning bolt that always beamed. Not sure if that exists anymore though.

The gauntlets do, but the auto-beam flag doesn't. Trivial to bring it back though (but in fact better done as a property of the activation than as an object flag).

[Oramin]

1. I recently tried using a Rod of Drain Life to target a monster on the other side of a group of monsters. I ended up killing one of the intervening monsters so apparently Drain Life uses the bolt targeting code instead of the ball targeting code. Is this working as intended?

2. Gnomes have wand/staff ID and free action? It would be nice if the character screen specified the racial advantage.

3. When you hit monsters with Meteor Storm (or whatever the name is from Raal's), the message includes monsters fleeing after they've already been destroyed, which seems a bit odd. Probably a result of a flag being set for fleeing in the middle of the 4 separate attacks.

4. Just nitpicking but I ran across a message where I "freez" a monster - I would normally expect to "freeze" monsters.

5. Does anybody happen to know the Teleport percentage for Rift?

6. Is there any way to stop monsters from teleporting me? Apparently Boots of Stability don't manage to do that in 3.3.2; I thought I recalled them working that way in an earlier patch.

[Timo Pietilä]

6. Is there any way to stop monsters from teleporting me? Apparently Boots of Stability don't manage to do that in 3.3.2; I thought I recalled them working that way in an earlier patch.

Nexus resist and perfect saving throw prevent all forms of teleport level and nexus resist prevents all teleportations by nexus side-effect, but you don't get any protection against any other forms of teleportation. Nexus Q teleportation is not nexus effect, just plain teleportation.