How do turns and time work in Angband?

[Wanderlust]

Hi Everyone,

I notice there seem to be 3 separate "counters" on my character screen that track the passage of time in the game. They are labeled "Game", "Standard", and "Resting".

What exactly do these mean? How does the game track time and turns?

[Timo Pietilä]

Hi Everyone,

I notice there seem to be 3 separate "counters" on my character screen that track the passage of time in the game. They are labeled "Game", "Standard", and "Resting".

What exactly do these mean? How does the game track time and turns?

Game turns are turns where game gives energy to monsters and players based on how fast they are. Player and monsters get a turn when they get 100 or more energy.

Basic +-0 speed you get 10 energy / game turn so your "standard" turn is 1/10 of game turns until you get more energy.

Standard turns count each time you get a turn IE. you go over 100+ energy threshold, it doesn't count fractional blows and extra shots AFAIK.

Resting turns are turns you have used resting. There could be "active turns" which would be standard turns - resting turns, but because that's simple calc it isn't shown there.

[Derakon]

Think of game turns as being like "real time" in-world. There's a fixed number of game turns per day/night cycle in the town, for example. Standard turns are number of times the player gets to take an action. At normal speed there are 10 game turns per standard turn, but as your speed increases that number decreases. Resting turns are simply the number of turns you spent resting.

[fph]

[Random proposal: if we add an explicit day-night counter, we can convert game turns into something with a more meaningful scale: "I got a victory in under 10 days" seems more human-friendly than "I got a victory in under 1M game turns".]

[Wanderlust]

It's very interesting, the time system in Angband actually seems quite complex. Especially considering there is random variation across specific monsters of the same type (right?).

This is a very nice system because it means every little increment of speed is meaningful.

I've been thinking about what it means in terms of game tactics. Seems like if you want to melee (I've been playing half-troll warriors), it usually makes sense to let the monsters make the move to the adjacent space so you get the first attack (which seems true to life).

Beyond that I can see that speed is effectively a damage multiplier in a combat situation. So it's essential to either match the speed of enemies, or else overpower them to compensate.

[Carnivean]

Beyond that I can see that speed is effectively a damage multiplier in a combat situation.

Not just combat. Any check that gets done once per game turn gets done less often relative to the character.