Cost/benefit

[Derakon]

Sorry, I sort of signed up for that and instituted it as -10, 15 or 20 to stealth, but sneaking around was still way too easy. I can't code for nothing, so I couldn't change it. It's probably in some commit somewhere if anyone wants to use it.

That seems odd, since stealth skill ranges from 0 to 30, and at 0 there's only a 1 in 1024 chance of a monster not being disturbed. Of course, disturbance doesn't translate immediately into waking up (some monsters are deeper sleepers than others), but I'd be surprised if you could avoid waking things up when your stealth is at 0, even later in the game when your speed means that stealth checks are made less often.

[fizzix]

That seems odd, since stealth skill ranges from 0 to 30, and at 0 there's only a 1 in 1024 chance of a monster not being disturbed. Of course, disturbance doesn't translate immediately into waking up (some monsters are deeper sleepers than others), but I'd be surprised if you could avoid waking things up when your stealth is at 0, even later in the game when your speed means that stealth checks are made less often.

Late in the game you have telepathy, which is also roughly the range that stealth checks come in. So it's easy to avoid the monster since you know it's there. Also, sleeping monsters take time to wake up, even if you routinely fail the stealth test. Each fail decreases the sleep counter until the monster wakes up. Some monsters (i.e ainur) have high sleep counters, so they take a while to wake up.

[Derakon]

If you're within 50 tiles of the monster, then they'll lose 2 "sleepiness" each check (within 33 tiles, 3; within 25, 4; etc). While it's true that Istar have 255 sleepiness when spawned, most non-dragon/demon/ainur top out around 50 and are usually quite a bit lower (lots are only at 10). IIRC telepathy has a radius of 24 tiles, meaning that if you can see a monster with it, then it'll be losing 4 sleepiness/check -- and has already lost quite a bit at 2/check and 1/check when you couldn't see it.

I think the main problem we run into with stealth is the fact that if you're twice as fast then you're effectively also twice as stealthy (as measured in how many player turns pass before the monster wakes up). Noise really ought to be normalized such that speed makes no difference to stealth. Arguably it should make you noisier, but I think that has important balance ramifications; I'd just be happy if late-game monsters were about as easy to wake up for a given investment in stealth as early-game monsters are.

[Timo Pietilä]

Late in the game you have telepathy, which is also roughly the range that stealth checks come in.

Monsters have detection range, which in many cases is far less than telepathy/aggravation range. That might explain why aggravation is far worse than just low stealth.

[Derakon]

Monsters have detection range, which in many cases is far less than telepathy/aggravation range. That might explain why aggravation is far worse than just low stealth.

Actually, the monster's vision range has no effect whatsoever on stealth -- you can wake the monster up from across the map if you're unstealthy enough. From what I can tell, the "vision" range for a monster simply is part of the determination for whether the monster should be processed (i.e. gets a turn). From monster/melee2.c, a monster gets processed if they're within their vision range, they've been injured, the player can see them, or they can "flow" to the player (which has a similar range check based on the monster's vision, so I believe this call is redundant).

In fact, at 0 stealth you're quite likely to wake faraway monsters up before they ever get activated, since you'll almost always disturb monsters (1 in 1024 chance to not disturb them), and the minimum decrement to a monster's sleepiness is 1 regardless of distance to the player or any monster attributes.

But yes, monsters with low vision are functionally asleep until the player gets close. However, that's true whether or not the player is aggravating.

[Timo Pietilä]

Actually, the monster's vision range has no effect whatsoever on stealth -- you can wake the monster up from across the map if you're unstealthy enough. From what I can tell, the "vision" range for a monster simply is part of the determination for whether the monster should be processed (i.e. gets a turn). From monster/melee2.c, a monster gets processed if they're within their vision range, they've been injured, the player can see them, or they can "flow" to the player (which has a similar range check based on the monster's vision, so I believe this call is redundant).

In fact, at 0 stealth you're quite likely to wake faraway monsters up before they ever get activated, since you'll almost always disturb monsters (1 in 1024 chance to not disturb them), and the minimum decrement to a monster's sleepiness is 1 regardless of distance to the player or any monster attributes.

But yes, monsters with low vision are functionally asleep until the player gets close. However, that's true whether or not the player is aggravating.

If the monster is not getting a turn, doesn't that mean that it will not wake up regardless of your stealth? My favorite char is Dwarf Priest, and that doesn't have very good stealth, however I see sleeping monsters everywhere I go if I haven't already been there.

I also think that in your list "if player can see monster" is actually reverse "if monster can see player". These checks are done even if you are outside of monster detection range, but flow check has vision range check because monsters can flow to player from across the dungeon, so without that check monster would always get a turn and be processed. This is best evident with ghosts that flee from you, if they are in a wall they run until they are outside of their detection range and then stop. Ghosts can always flow to player (unless contained in permanent walls).

[Derakon]

If the monster is not getting a turn, doesn't that mean that it will not wake up regardless of your stealth? My favorite char is Dwarf Priest, and that doesn't have very good stealth, however I see sleeping monsters everywhere I go if I haven't already been there.

You're right, of course. I don't know what I was thinking; the first part of process_monster (a.k.a. "monster gets a turn") is the bit that deals with the monster waking up or not.

[Timo Pietilä]

You're right, of course. I don't know what I was thinking; the first part of process_monster (a.k.a. "monster gets a turn") is the bit that deals with the monster waking up or not.

OTOH bad stealth can be worse than aggravation in case of some monsters: low stealth can wake things up across the entire dungeon if the monster detection range is good enough, while aggravation works only at telepathy range.

[Philip]

I tested a character with about 10 speed and telepathy and I could walk up to monsters and whack them. It was ridiculous. We need negative stealth or keeping aggravation. If We're changing ability code then we might want to change some other stuff.

[fizzix]

OTOH bad stealth can be worse than aggravation in case of some monsters: low stealth can wake things up across the entire dungeon if the monster detection range is good enough, while aggravation works only at telepathy range.

But mostly, those monsters can't path to you anyway, so it's a moot point. The only ones where it's probably relevant are adunaphel, maeglin (and maybe tselakus?). The first two at least will continue hunting you down from across the level once they're awake.

[Derakon]

I tested a character with about 10 speed and telepathy and I could walk up to monsters and whack them. It was ridiculous. We need negative stealth or keeping aggravation. If We're changing ability code then we might want to change some other stuff.

One thing we could easily try is increasing the vision range for all monsters to be at least max sight range. That would be easy to do (it's just a modification to monster.txt). It's unclear to me what exactly the benefits are of having monsters with low vision (15 or lower).

[fizzix]

One thing we could easily try is increasing the vision range for all monsters to be at least max sight range. That would be easy to do (it's just a modification to monster.txt). It's unclear to me what exactly the benefits are of having monsters with low vision (15 or lower).

Well, to be fair, max-sight should be lower, not the monster vision. Max-sight is too high, it hampers playing on small screens. There are some buggy pathing going on currently in V, but i've never managed to make much progress on it.

[Timo Pietilä]

Well, to be fair, max-sight should be lower, not the monster vision. Max-sight is too high, it hampers playing on small screens.

Then make that for small screens, don't ruin it to us that play with reasonable sized screens. (I'm guessing large tiles?)