A Few Questions/Observations From an Old Player

[Timo Pietilä]

No, I don't get the point.

A slay 3x power adds twice the base damage as the bonus from the slay power. Therefore generating a total of 3x the base damage.

Answer to that is "who cares" (besides you). Launcher has multiplier. Slay is another multiplier. Add them. Then multiply the base damage with it. That's how it is done. That's the mechanism. Now did you get the point?

[DaviddesJ]

Answer to that is "who cares" (besides you). Launcher has multiplier. Slay is another multiplier. Add them. Then multiply the base damage with it. That's how it is done. That's the mechanism. Now did you get the point?

Your point is just, "I don't care about the inconsistency"? That's fine. I don't expect everyone to care about everything.

[Timo Pietilä]

Your point is just, "I don't care about the inconsistency"? That's fine. I don't expect everyone to care about everything.

It's not inconsistency. Both x3 add base damage, so it is base twice + 2* base twice. Total of 6* base.

|----- first x3 -----| + |----- second x3 ----|
  base + base + base   +   base + base + base

[kaypy]

Slight correction here:

  What it would do without any multiplier
   | 
   v   +   |- first x3 --| + |----- second x3 ----|
  base   +   base + base   +   base + base + base

Or to put some numbers to it:

If a shot does 4 damage unmodified (thrown?).
Then with a 3x modifier it would do 12, increasing by 8
With two 3x modifiers, it would do 24, increasing by 12

So the second modifier is half again more effective than the first.

Of course, the *correct* behaviour is... whatever gives best game-balance.

[Timo Pietilä]

Slight correction here:

Actually this:

(  v   +   |- first x3 --|) + (  v   +  |- second x3 -|)
( base +    base  +  base ) + ( base +   base  +  base )

both individually for total of 6.

Of course, the *correct* behaviour is... whatever gives best game-balance.

Agreed.

[DaviddesJ]

Of course, it makes no significant difference for game balance whether the slay/launcher combination does x5 base damage or x6 base damage. Doing it "wrong" bugs me because I'm a mathematician and internal consistency "feels" better, even when it's irrelevant. This sort of intuition about how things should be is very useful in technical work, but here it's purely aesthetic. Anyway there is no point in belaboring it further; I made my point and either people agree or they don't.

[Oramin]

I agree with you that triples damage should be adds +200% damage but then I also think that multiplication of the arrow damage w/out multiplication of the launcher bonus makes more sense.

[Derakon]

The issue is really one of display. Both the launcher display, and the slay display, assume that they are the only sources of damage multiplication. In the absence of slays, a light crossbow will triple your damage -- you go from x1 to x3. So putting "x3" in the name makes sense. Likewise, in the absence of a launcher, a slay will double or triple your damage; putting "x2" in the description for Slay Evil makes sense. Combining the two is where you get into trouble; it'd be really unintuitive to most users to have the rule be "add up the relevant multipliers, then subtract 1".

You could represent multipliers differently -- "a Light Crossbow (+x2)", for example. But then the display looks clunky.

[DaviddesJ]

it'd be really unintuitive to most users to have the rule be "add up the relevant multipliers, then subtract 1".

That depends on what subject their degrees are in.

[Derakon]

Hence the use of the weasel word "most".

[DaviddesJ]

I wonder about the demographics. When I was playing Angband in the 1990s, I had the impression that the majority of the player base were scientists or engineers of one sort or another.

[Oramin]

Well, if you want another data point, physics and law degrees here (+ minor in CS).

[Derakon]

I wonder about the demographics. When I was playing Angband in the 1990s, I had the impression that the majority of the player base were scientists or engineers of one sort or another.

In the 90's, most people who had access to Usenet (and thus could be encountered on RGRA) were scientists or engineers of one sort or another.

I mean, I'd like to agree that Angband has a smarter breed of player than the average game, but I don't think anyone's actually done any surveys.

[MattB]

Well, if you want another data point, physics and law degrees here (+ minor in CS).

Classicist (Latin and Greek).
So I'd like to see (xIII).

[Vertigo1]

X0x03 is the only acceptable representation