What Eddie Plays

[Pete Mack]

Well I kinda agree, but speed is pretty ridiculous. When you go from 0 to +9 or 10 early the difference is too much IMO.

This used to happen rather often, if you pushed things in 3.0. My "funnest" game recently was a mage that went from +3 to +12 in a big step around level 80, not because of finding speed because of finding enough CON both items and potions. The fun part was sneaking around with bad HP with no ESP.

[Nick]

I like the idea of "you need to be strong enough to swing this weapon effectively, but once you hit that threshold DEX is what limits your attack speed." Conceptually it makes sense, which is always nice. It'd be nice if the f(str, weapon_weight) function were a straightforward formula, but I haven't done the analysis to see how feasible that is.

I agree. In fact, I'd go further in the following ways:

1. Eddie's formula is as complicated as it is (not that it's actually too bad) because it's an attempt to precisely mimic the effect of the blows table and relevant adj_ arrays. I'd rather take a simple formula involving STR, DEX and the principles as Derakon has nicely summed up, and then let the blows progression follow from that.
2. Having looked at the adj_ arrays, I'd like to ditch the lot. They basically are about regulating the power curve of the player relative to their stats, for IMHO dubious gains.

In both these cases, the result of the current code is that the player has no real way of predicting how an extra point in a stat is going to help them. We have smoothed over this over the years with increasing numbers of stat sheets, weapon descriptions explaining what would happen if the player had more DEX, etc. If it's a simple formula, though, we don't need that, and compensation can be made by adjusting the monster list and item drops.

Off the top of my head, here's a suggestion for blows:

• All stats are in the range 1-40
• Standard 2 blows, one for spellcasters
• Reduction by n blows if n*STR < weapon weight, with reducing below 1 meaning you are "barely lifting"
• One extra blow for every 12 DEX, 10 for warriors

This seems to me to approximate the current system in broad structure. What have I missed?

[TJS]

"Smoothing things out" turns out you be a mistake, usually. The bumps make the game both more challenging and more exciting. Good gameplay requires imperfect balance.

Well I kinda agree, but speed is pretty ridiculous. When you go from 0 to +9 or 10 early the difference is too much IMO.

[Pete Mack]

"Smoothing things out" turns out you be a mistake, usually. The bumps make the game both more challenging and more exciting. Good gameplay requires imperfect balance.

[TJS]

The hope is to bring some degree of balance to the different modifiers in the game. Speed is, by a gigantic margin, the most important modifier the player can have on a piece of gear. It remains as such until you hit +20 at least and is still pretty competitive above that.

This is true, but I don't think that making it more complex and unintuitive by splitting up the speeds is the answer.

But yes speed is ludicrously overpowered. Two possible solutions I can think of, one is make monsters either normal speed or fast and give the player access to temporary speed boosts only.

Or less controversial just reduce the speed boosts on equipment to smooth out the bumps in speed increases. Also reduce the need to have +20/30 to even survive instakill monsters.

[Estie]

I was just wondering if I am missing something. Apparently I am not

[Derakon]

What exactly are you hoping to achieve by splitting the speeds ?

The hope is to bring some degree of balance to the different modifiers in the game. Speed is, by a gigantic margin, the most important modifier the player can have on a piece of gear. It remains as such until you hit +20 at least and is still pretty competitive above that. It's such that there's absolutely no question that you wear every piece of speed gear you can until you start hitting those higher levels.

This distorts game balance badly and removes choice from the player. It's certainly nice to get a new speed item and suddenly be much more powerful than you used to be, but it'd also be nice if speed wasn't such a hugely dominant part of the "equipment equation".

I think it's at least worth examining, even if we ultimately decide it's not worth implementing in the "final version".

Also, remember, there are no bad ideas when brainstorming! You too, Bogatyr, don't think I didn't notice when you poo-poo'd my 5-turns idea!

[Estie]

What exactly are you hoping to achieve by splitting the speeds ? Currently, the stable endgame setup most meleers end up with a speed boots, speed ring and damage ring. If you split speed, maybe it will be something like speed boots, speed ring and attack speed ring instead of damage ring, but you still end up playing the same game.
There are already enough different modifiers to have overflow; wouldnt it be more interesting to try to get away from that stable sink everyone ends up with, by distributing the mods differently over the item types, than adding new ones with the only effect being to change the shape of the sink ?

Currently speed +10 is the most important property and tops everything else; but from 10 -> 20, you already have competition, from stats and even damage alternatives. Also, recent changes (including Fizzix´s patch to make speed values dependant on dlvl) mean you dont normally get +10 speed in one swoop, usually you start with less from your first items. So, by splitting speed, you dont even gain more relevant choices in the mid game.

What am I missing ? To me, it seems splitting speeds is just like pouring water into the soup. More, but not better.

[PowerDiver]

I don't see an easy way to account for speed in this framework, though. Both movement speed and attack speed, if you plan to split them.

This combat works perfectly with speed in a turn-based game. You accumulate energy according to your speed, and when you get 100+ energy you spend 100 energy doing something, which should include 1 round of attacks. That's how the entire rest of the game works. The only difference with the melee attack system is in charging less than 100 energy if you have multiple blows, and achieve a kill before the last blow. I think this is an improvement worth the inconsistency, especially as I wanted other actions such as wield and unwield to take less than 100 energy [50 each in my code].

[Derakon]

I don't see an easy way to account for speed in this framework, though. Both movement speed and attack speed, if you plan to split them.

The only way speed currently touches on turns is that it dictates how much energy you get per game turn. You still use 100 energy for all turns, except for edge cases like not using all of your blows in one round, or having a bow of extra shots.

If I were to split movement speed from combat speed, though, then I think I'd do it by having your "movement speed modifier" divide the amount of energy it takes to move one tile. So a +1 mod means you move twice as fast (it takes half the time to move one tile), +2 three times as fast, etc. That might be too powerful, I don't know, but it's a nice, simple system, and it should be easy to implement without ripping out the existing speed system (just make movement take less energy).

Combat speed can just stay with the "how many blows do you get in one round?" system.

Mage non-attack escapes are in fact part of their "offense". If you do this, then you must make warriors swing 5 turns in advance, too, which would be pretty ridiculous.

You laugh, but I'm actually considering trying to build a game that basically works something like this. It'll probably never happen, considering my track record with game development, but I'm having fun thinking about it at least. Have you ever played Frozen Synapse?

[Bogatyr]

Random silly idea: reduce all monster damage values by a factor of 5, but make all player spells that aren't immediate offensive actions take 5 turns to go off. Want to phase door? Cast it 5 turns in advance. One turn from death? You should've drunk a healing potion five turns ago.

Mage non-attack escapes are in fact part of their "offense". If you do this, then you must make warriors swing 5 turns in advance, too, which would be pretty ridiculous.

[fizzix]

OK, it's clear to me yet again why I'm leaving combat system changes to last.

I don't think you need to make a perfect system up front. But I do think we need to know where we're headed towards for good design decisions as far as monsters and gear are concerned. A rough framework choice is what I'm asking for.

[Nick]

OK, it's clear to me yet again why I'm leaving combat system changes to last.

Clearly all that I need to do is design a combat system which combines all the best aspects of V, O, v4 and Sil combat (and I nearly forgot Ey - how could I?) which removes all the properties which annoy anyone, is simple to explain, and actually makes the game play exactly as it currently does, only better in some indefinable way.

Of course once I do this, someone will point out that their Kobold Mage wielding Narthanc and a Ring of Damage (+11) used to be able to kill an Uruk in three rounds, and now it's taking four or even five. The game has been ruined and it should be reverted back to 2.6.2 with the named slime molds patch.

I feel better now

[fph]

I've gradually become convinced that your way is the right way here. I liked the reduced-energy-cost approach from a mathematical standpoint, but it's not what players expect -- we've had multiple people ask "if I'm getting 3.5 blows/round, how come I never get 4 attacks in one go?" Plus having your turn take only 80 energy (or whatever) is kind of weird. Turns should take 100 energy.

I don't see an easy way to account for speed in this framework, though. Both movement speed and attack speed, if you plan to split them.

[Derakon]

Another big difference not in that code snip is that I treat partial blows differently at a macro level. Consider 1.8 blows per round. 3.1+ treats that as a series of attacks using (100/1.8) energy each. I treat it as 80% likelihood of two 50-energy blows, and 20% chance of one 100-energy blow ,each turn independently.

I've gradually become convinced that your way is the right way here. I liked the reduced-energy-cost approach from a mathematical standpoint, but it's not what players expect -- we've had multiple people ask "if I'm getting 3.5 blows/round, how come I never get 4 attacks in one go?" Plus having your turn take only 80 energy (or whatever) is kind of weird. Turns should take 100 energy.

On a related note, I've been quietly agitating for the removal of extra shots modifiers as being too hard to balance. Give rangers +1/+2 on their launcher multiplier instead.