rangers and ammunition

[Tibarius]

the main wepoan of rangers is a bow (once you find a reasonable good one)

I find the break probability of arrows with 35% Kinda high, even if it sounds reasonable. Especially in the higher Levels it is pretty annoying to visit town that often to refuel arrows.

Would it be possible to reduce the break % Chance of arrows once you magically enhance them?

Maybe reduce break % by 1 for every full Point to-hit, to-dam boost on them?
arrows of (+10,+12) would have their break Chance reduced by 10 to 25% then. And maybe an additional 5% or 10% if you lay a brand on them.

[Estie]

I would prefer the opposite: make the break chance 100% (arrow fired is gone). Assume a neverending supply of some kind of basic arrow which is fired by default, target challenging monsters with stacks of special arrows (brand, slay, wounding).

Furthermore I wouldnt mind to see a minimum range (that is, no archery works while a monster is in melee range = an adjacent tile). If that situation occurs, either get some distance or use melee weapon.

This and other ideas have been thrown around for ages. The above is what I think I would like best.

[Tibarius]

re: Estie

Would you care to explain why you feel this way Estie? I would be curious to learn about the Motive why you would the game to behave in this way.

My Motivation for the proposal is to make the game more smoothly. In fact i already HAVE an unlimited supply of enchanted+branded arrows. I go to town buy 3*40 arrows enchant and brand them (own tensers) and then go into dungeon again. Once i run out of arrows i use word of recall and repeat this procedure. So i feel like the time spend in dungeon could be prolonged without changing the power basically, i just would recal every 15 real life minutes instead of every 5 minutes. I think the playability would rise. There are often enough situations where i loose my arrows, because i have to flee and cannot collect them anymore.

Your 2nd idea is one i think is worth discussing. Even tho i underline that playability sometimes requires to throw realism overboard. If my character uses a heavy crossbow, a two-handed great flail, a large metal shield and a lantern of true sight ... nobody is asking where all the Hands come from to hold/use the Equipment as well, or?

[quarague]

I think the current design is based on the idea that you are not supposed to kill everything with your bow but rather use it only occasionally for especially tough monsters and melee the rest of the time. As described above, this can be circumvented by the fact that you can buy basic arrows WoR in unlimited quantities in town and even enchant the arrows if you want but doing so is rather tedious. So if one want to keep the idea that you are not supposed to kill everything with arrows one would have to limit the infinite supply of arrows some way. Or we change philosophy and say rangers can be exclusive arrow users without ever going in to melee. This immediately raises the question whether mages should be able to use magic to kill everything. In theory you could do that now with lots of resting and recalling when things get hairy but in practice it is not really feasible.

[Tibarius]

re: mages

How do you Play mages? I DO kill everything with Magic as mage. The weapon Slot is basically just another resistance/light/Speed Slot for my mages.

EDIT: and mostly i play a ranger as exclusive bow user

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Apart from a specific challenge (e.g., playing with only fists ), I never play exclusively one way or another with regard to damage dealing. Everything is dependent on the situation. What weapons/launchers/magic have I got in the arsenal? Does the monster have any particular susceptibilities? A mage with a great weapon or launcher can outdo magic with these at times. So too a ranger.

[Derakon]

How do you Play mages? I DO kill everything with Magic as mage. The weapon Slot is basically just another resistance/light/Speed Slot for my mages.

EDIT: and mostly i play a ranger as exclusive bow user

Don't limit yourself. Rangers are competent melee fighters, and should absolutely take advantage of that. Break out the bow for the bigger targets.

That said, Angband's ammo management isn't great, I'll happily agree with that. Most games these days abstract away ammo entirely, but doing that in Angband without turning bows into a limitless "ranged melee" would be a bit tricky.

[Estie]

Re: smooth gameplay

Compared to a bumping melee fighter, the archer requires many more clicks to get the job done. Enchanting arrows, firing the desired type and then on top of that collecting ammo after the battle. I want to reduce this amount.

So assuming we manage to automize everything, we end up with the @ standing there and the player just pressing the button till the room is cleared. With no limiting factors like mana, there are no tactical decisions to make. The melee guy has to cross the distance, thus committing more and taking a greater risk when engaging. To give the archer a similar tactical play, I suggest introducing the minimum distance.

Currently, the archer is handicapped by hundreds of keypresses so that when I play him, I always wish I could use a borg routine for some parts. I would rather have him challenged in a more interesting way.

I agree that gamplay > realism. My reasons for these changes are completely gameplay based. Nevertheless, the fact that minimum distance is realistic doesnt hurt.

[Tibarius]

re: Estie

Thanks for explaining Estie. Since i discovered keymaps i have to say that mages and rangers feel a lot more playable and enjoyable for me. As mage i create a couple of keys for firing Basic spells like Magic Missile for example.

Like: maa{K}5. That could even be optimized, if i would use inscriptions ... but i didn't cared to use them yet because once i miss a spellbook in the order i usually recall to town and buy a new one anyway.

Same for rangers: Instead of h firing at the closest target i define h as f0{K]5 - thus firing the first ammo Slot at the target i defined. So as ranger i define the target and then press 'h' to fire at it till i have to retreat or the Monster is dead. That increases playability a lot.

Basically i find the rangers Setup ok - it is ok that you have to visit town once in a while to buy new arrows (and once you can to enchant and brand them). And i have to agree to Derakon, even my bow ranger does ok as melee fighter, even tho you alreaedy have to make some compromises if you do not optimize the char for bow use.

Edit: I have to disagree for mages and their damage to some of the earlier posts tho. I have very Little attacks till the midgame (stat-boosting) is basically finished. Even a good weapon will deal much less damage than spells - same goes for shooters. Even a good shooter of extra shots with maybe +15 to-dam will deal not remarkable more damage than acid bolt for example. What DOES do more damage than the spells if you find them early are: rings of fire/frost/lightning/acid, Dragon scales (those which breath for 200+ dam) or wands of dragon's breath/frost. You find them usually earlier than having meteor-swarm or mana ball combat-ready.

I just thought that reducing the break probability somewhat would not touch the rangers power-Level too much while it would increase playability. You see the reduction would only take effect in endgame situations basically since you have very Little supply of enchanted or branded arrows without having the
tenser-spellbook.

That said i still find the idea of Minimum range interesting. I do not know the ranger's powers till the end yet - but for example if you stand on a rune of protection field - i think it would be ok to fire at range 1. Furthermore he can cast this mystic shield around him improving his AC. In my Imagination it would be ok to fire at range 1 as well if you have this spell up.

Just to discuss a large part of the aspects involved - do you think mages should be able to cast Magic at range 1 or not? Suddenly i feel unsure if a minimum range is realy workable.

[Estie]

Yes I think minimum range should only affect launchers, not spells.

I am using macros as well, but I find the amount of hassle with archery still way too much. Spells are bearable, but even there I prefer the green casters because they have only 1 attack spell. With mages, I bind 4 attack spells to hotkeys and change the spells bound as the mage levels. I basically never attack with an unbound spell.

Given that the variance with archery is very high (wether you find a good launcher, or ammo, or tensers can vary very much from game to game), I tend to emphasize melee with my rangers in the early and mid game. So no rings of mouse or escaping and defender weapon like the casters, but reckless attack and a good damage weapon. Of course I use archery for uniques, but I do that with all classes anyway. So, I play rogues and rangers pretty much in the same way.

[quarague]

It seems that people play mages very differently. I think if I play a mage I use melee on everything where I can do so without suffering major damage to my character. That is, even if using magic bolts on a snaga is much faster than meleeing it, I will still melee once the mage is sturdy enough to do so in a reasonable amount of time without loosing to many hitpoints. I feel even using that style I constantly run low on mana. Good to hear that different people play differently and both styles work.

[Estie]

It seems that people play mages very differently. I think if I play a mage I use melee on everything where I can do so without suffering major damage to my character. That is, even if using magic bolts on a snaga is much faster than meleeing it, I will still melee once the mage is sturdy enough to do so in a reasonable amount of time without loosing to many hitpoints. I feel even using that style I constantly run low on mana. Good to hear that different people play differently and both styles work.

The reason I dont do that is because I tend to wear escaping rings. Once those get upgraded (typically by speed ring(s)), I melee trash as well. Since melee isnt an option in that stage, the weapon also ends up being some defender or *slay* animal type with very low damage output.

[Timo Pietilä]

That said, Angband's ammo management isn't great, I'll happily agree with that. Most games these days abstract away ammo entirely, but doing that in Angband without turning bows into a limitless "ranged melee" would be a bit tricky.

Ammo could have different breakage probability based on its material.

I think material separation from items is a layer we should have in all items, not just weapon/ammo/armor. Potions, scrolls, books etc. could have different properties based on what kind of material they are made of. Like weights and resistances to elements.

[Tibarius]

again something new ...

Ammunition already has different weight as i experienced now playing rangers over and over ...

Iron Shots are very heavy and you can carry only one stack usually with a new char without Speed Penalty.

With the birth Option selling disabled by Default str and weight Management have lost some of their priority tho ...

[Estie]

My current ranger ended up wearing a ring of escaping: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=17321

I just drank a !brawn, but before that the lance was too heavy for melee anyway. So basically I gain 4 stealth and get positive speed at the cost of losing a ~40 damage melee attack.