Comparison: FAangband v1.4.x vs v2.0.x

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  • MITZE
    Swordsman
    • Jan 2017
    • 292

    Comparison: FAangband v1.4.x vs v2.0.x

    Comparison because Nick asked for one after my recent Priest win in FA nightly. This won't really be a 1:1 comparison, as I've still not won FA v1.4.x although I have a Beorning Rogue that's currently sitting at Tol-In-Gaurhoth DL84 (which I haven't touched for some time, so the state of things in FA1 isn't as fresh in my mind).

    ---

    Getting it out of the way first: FA2 is easier than FA1. Much easier. Largely this boils down to differences in monster spellcasting AI; as I understand it FA2 monsters cast randomly from their spell/breath set (with eventual biases if you have birth_ai_learn on?), while FA1 monsters are "intelligent" and deliberately choose "smart" choices for their spells/breaths . . . this mostly boils down to things that can blind or confuse casting those first and spamming them if you don't have the relevant protection, summoners being extremely prone to open up with them during the first few rounds of an engagement, healers spamming self-heals when they get to low health, and things with distance attacks never closing the full distance (for example, nrulings have a lash attack with range 3 or so, so they'll tend to get that close and then spam it). FA1 has monster SP to mitigate this, although unlike players monsters can just choose to "cast" Recover SP when they get low with no limit on the number of times they can do so total as far as I'm aware. Monster SP was removed for FA2; IIRC Nick said the reasoning was that he felt that it was essentially acting as a second healthbar you had to whittle down before you could work on the actual healthbar in many situations, just making things tedious (personally I thought it was interesting enough to make up for those situations when they happened).

    On loot:
    Something I noticed with the Priest was that towards the end rings and amulets became pretty hard to find, which definitely isn't the case in FA1; thinking on it I feel like FA2 just has less loot in general because monsters drop less comparatively. The actual variance seems to be worse too, both in jewellery and in other loot. The jewellery I would blame on differences in the generation code (a specific case I have noted is that Combat rings in FA2 seem to very easily acquire aggravation-type curses or flags, so it's very difficult to find a decent one that doesn't come with drawbacks, especially on top of the general jewellery rarity—while on my FA1 Rogue I found a +0,+28 one fairly early on that I've never replaced); the other loot I would blame on a lot of the egos from FA1 being altered in some fashion . . . all the out-and-out "bad" egos got removed or had their "badness" nerfed, while other egos had their native depths altered so you're not finding like daggers of Shocking on DL98 (I would say like a good 85% of endgame weapon egos in FA2 are either Gondolin or Holy Avenger, to give an example).

    On monsters:
    FA1 monsters on the whole have less health and AC than their FA2 counterparts (dracolisks and dracoliches for example went from average 1700 HP and 48 AC to 3080 HP and 144 AC, with the FA2 iteration actually showing up *earlier* than the FA1 one), but are more dangerous offensively (because of the spellcaster AI thing) to compensate. Some notable monsters/spells are missing from FA2—two big examples off the top of my head are giant marksman ants (earlyish enemy with a short-range acid spit, they tended to get summoned en masse by early ranger/druid types), and while short-range-but-not-adjacent monster attacks still exist in FA2 (my monster memory says balrogs have them) nrulings don't appear to have theirs anymore (or at least I never saw it on my Priest). Summon spells in FA2 result in a lot less monsters summoned per cast than they did in FA1. There are a few changes in mechanics that have changed combat balance in some fashion in FA2—for example demons are considered "living" now and thus are susceptible to things like Drain Life wands. Everything seems to be susceptible to fear now in some fashion; pretty much everything gets scared at low health for instance, even mindless things like golems (which feels wrong to me, some things should *never* be scared). Wilderness at night in FA2 is a much safer prospect than in FA1 on account of *everything* generating asleep at night in the wilderness, even hounds and vortexes, noted hated-for-being-always-awake-and-tracking-the-player-from-afar monsters. Stealth on the whole feels more effective, or monsters on the whole less wake-able in FA2.

    On other combat things:
    AC formulas have been reworked I believe, so AC has a much bigger effect on hitrate and damage mitigation. As an example, I've previously won a Green-Elf Ranger in FA2, and something I noted was that even though the combo had the best shooting skill out of all the possible race/class combinations, I still had to have Heroism and Bless active to reach over 50% hitrate on winged dragons (all of which had 200+ AC, with the biggest ones having 255). Shooting damage feels different between FA1 and FA2 in ways that I can't quite describe, despite multipliers and dice being relatively the same—my best guess is that in FA2 it feels like I'm doing less damage comparatively because FA2 monsters have more HP. Ditto with throwing damage—in FA1 it's not unusual to see 500+ damage displays on thrown weapons in appropriate slay/brand/monster circumstances (my Rogue has The Spear of Boldog saying it deals an average of 658 with poison or against animals and 383 versus others when thrown), but in FA2 it feels like it's difficult to get to numbers even half that, and in this case I'm not sure where the difference is coming from because I'm comparing damage estimations from the weapons themselves. Quiver slots are limited to 40 ammo per instead of the 99 per that FA1 had; this probably evens out for ordinary ammo since with summons being nerfed there's less monsters to fight on the whole, but I suspect with a dedicated thrower being limited to 40 (keeping in mind that throwing weapons take up more space in the quiver and weigh more than regular ammo) in combination with throwing dealing less makes the avenue a lot harder in FA2 than in FA1.

    EDIT:
    On miscellaneous things I forgot at first:
    Dice variance seems like it's a lot less common an occurrence in FA2; it's pretty common to go into the weapon store or general store and see like both 2d3 and 2d4 lead shots in stock in FA1, but seeing nonstandard dice outside of artifacts is something of a rarity in FA2.
    Last edited by MITZE; December 31, 2023, 20:17.
    Everything you need to know about my roguelike playstyle:

    I took nearly two years to win with a single character in PosChengband.
  • Nick
    Vanilla maintainer
    • Apr 2007
    • 9633

    #2
    This is a really good analysis, which raises some things I was aware of, and some I wasn't. Here are my first responses (noting that I'm part way thorough my first really proper character in FA2):
    • The monster spellcasting is certainly a thing, and I'm starting to question my randomness vs monster mana decision. It varies between monsters - Mim and his sons spammed heal at me to an annoying degree, so they're not nerfed completely - but overall spellcasting is less aggressive and breathing much less aggressive (I've yet to be breathed on by a hound). Also I'm seeing a lot of monster spell failures - this was not a thing at all in FA1, and I'm thinking it may be happening too often now.
    • I'm not deep enough to comment properly on jewellery at the end, and I thought the generation code was pretty similar, so I'll have to go back and do a comparison. One thing is the object properties have changed quite a bit, so that could be responsible for some of this effect. Also object generation has changed considerably, especially what occurs at what depth; I should look at that.
    • It's entirely possible there's something wrong with the spit/lash mechanic - I'm not observing it from nrulings either, and giant silver ants (the replacement for marksman ants) also don't seem to be spitting. If this is what's happened, presumably it's the case in V too as it also has these attacks now. Needs checking.
    • Monsters getting afraid is not something I've noticed. The stealth system is different, and probably I should re-implement FA1's (originally from O) or even Sil's. Everything including hounds and vortices was asleep at night in FA1 too, but they woke up more easily.
    • AC was re-worked in a big way in V (around 3.3, IIRC), and FA2 has inherited this. Certainly "HP inflation" was something that happened in V a long time ago, and O deliberately reversed it, which explains the HP difference. This results in fighting being more of a slog rather than short, sharp and dangerous. Just redoing all the AC and HP values might fix this, although there might need to be formula adjustment as well.
    • Dice variance is a weird one, I'll need to check that.
    So there's a lot to think about. Something I noticed is I tried to start a high-elf warrior and got swiftly murdered every time I left Gondolin, which seemed harder. On the other hand the current longbeard warrior is powering through, and has survived despite me being quite careless sometimes. Also Fury ability never gets me above +1 speed, so something's wrong there.
    Anyway, I'm having fun playing it again. Maybe I should have stuck with FA instead of getting sucked into V, Sil, etc
    One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
    In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

    Comment

    • MITZE
      Swordsman
      • Jan 2017
      • 292

      #3
      Having just tried to get out of Gondolin a couple of times with a High-Elf Assassin to test throwing in FA1 (AFAICT the combo has the best skill for it, maybe second-best to Ranger, not sure how throwing/shooting is differentiated), I can definitely confirm the breath thing in regards to hounds; not getting breathed on by them in FA2 was definitely something I noticed, but it became all the more apparent when I played FA1 and ran into hound packs two to three times the size of FA1's that had hounds breathing at me nearly every drat turn in was in LOS.

      In regards to jewellery, I can only go by my memory of FA1 since I haven't played that character in a while, but from what I'm remembering jewellery was both not only more common but also generally better in FA1 than in FA2 for most of the game; I don't know if it helps but I do have a few samples I can give from where I left that character, both stuff I'm wearing and stuff I found on the level (although both might not be exactly as they were generated, I might've done some uncursing attempts but I don't specifically remember).

      The fear thing might be a consequence of you being a warrior (and thus more prone to dealing big chunks of damage) and me being a priest (and thus being prone to inflicting deaths of one thousand cuts)—assuming I didn't somehow make it up, priest is probably consistently getting monsters to lower HP without actually killing them (and thus proccing the fear status).

      AC, although I'm a little hesitant to say it, might even be too effective at the moment in regards to effect on hitrate . . . I think I've expressed my disagreement before that the best shooting combo in FA2 still needs to Heroism and Bless to hit the big dragons a majority of the time, and I've noticed before with like Mim me having (what I felt was) mediocre AC was enough to make his melee a nonthreat, and render his disenchanting blows incredibly unlikely to land.

      For Gondolin starts: I just find that unless you're a caster (or a shooter in FA1), it's just very tough because things are a lot more dangerous in melee until you get AC and a better weapon, while casters can pick and choose their targets at a distance and often kill them before they get to you (ditto with FA1 shooters; FA2 shooters have trouble because of probably the HP thing and not having sufficient skill to hit yet or damage).
      Last edited by MITZE; January 1, 2024, 20:37. Reason: Fixed grammar.
      Everything you need to know about my roguelike playstyle:

      I took nearly two years to win with a single character in PosChengband.

      Comment

      • MITZE
        Swordsman
        • Jan 2017
        • 292

        #4
        Encountered a giant silver ant and saw a message that it spit at me—however I saw no animation for it and did not see myself take any damage from it (monster memory says that spit is 24 and my rAcid was 76%).
        Everything you need to know about my roguelike playstyle:

        I took nearly two years to win with a single character in PosChengband.

        Comment

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