Towards FAangband 1.2

[Fendell Orcbane]

If anyone's wondering, I have not abandoned this - in fact I'm a long way toward moving FA as close to V's codebase as possible. I hadn't planned on quite such a complete change, but once I got started...

I've had a couple of changes of mind, too - mostly from becoming more aware of details of differences. I'm going to keep squelch (more or less) as it is - FA egos, curses and jewellery don't really fit the V model. I'm also not going to touch stores, because there's a possibility they'll be gone soon

I'm hoping that 1.2 is weeks away rather than months.

So no more stores? Why ? And as for 1.2 being weeks away...I feel like I'm just getting into 1.6 : )

[Nick]

If anyone's wondering, I have not abandoned this - in fact I'm a long way toward moving FA as close to V's codebase as possible. I hadn't planned on quite such a complete change, but once I got started...

I've had a couple of changes of mind, too - mostly from becoming more aware of details of differences. I'm going to keep squelch (more or less) as it is - FA egos, curses and jewellery don't really fit the V model. I'm also not going to touch stores, because there's a possibility they'll be gone soon

I'm hoping that 1.2 is weeks away rather than months.

[Fendell Orcbane]

IMHO currently mana burn is a bit broken. It adds very small amount of damage against monsters with mana, and reduce thier mana, so it is useless if monster dies before it's mana is reduced to 0, and this happens in 99% of fights, but it is extremely overpowered if monster mana is eliminated before monster is seriosly hurt e.g. Morgoth or Ungoliath.

It can be remade, so instead of reducing monster mana it only adds damage, proportional to mana, but this additional damage should be significant.

I want some feedback on this subject.

I'm with you on the Mana burn. With my last winner Morgoth got to summon 3 times before he ran out of mana. Sauron wasn't too hard either. With my first winner I was scared of Morgoth. Of course I wasn't ready for him just summoning Winged Dragons. Maybe mana burn is too powerful and should be removed?

[Fendell Orcbane]

Dragon with mana will try to blind, confuse, or scare player allmost allways, very low chance for breath, without mana it will breath any time, it gets roll for ranged attack. This is indeed broken AI, but it is how it works now. Manaburn makes e.g. Glaurung much harder to kill, another example is WD of storm, just fodder for a warrior and nightmare for rogue, well not really, but how often do you clear storm dragon pits with mana burning melee ?.

This does not apply strictly to dragons with nasty summons e.g. WD of balance or power, but anyway you are going to use ASC against them probably, or just avoid.

I think that create doors works as well if not better than ASC. I say this because you have a lot of creatures that dig. Like WDOP. I hate them. But with create doors I'm willing to step up to them: )

[LostTemplar]

That runs the risk of making Morgoth harder for people with manaburn than without, which is backwards

Something terrible should not be stronger then his current spells, just comparable, maybe just couple of his spells may have 0 mana cost, definitely not all, manaburn still must hurt him, just not render completely helpless (his melee is nothing to care about).

[camlost]

One more possibility to balance mana burn vs Morgoth is giving him something terrible, that he can use without mana, e.g. more powerfull version of breath attack.

That runs the risk of making Morgoth harder for people with manaburn than without, which is backwards.

If manaburn and questors are a problem, then there are a few options:
1) Make questors immune or resistant. Or not require mana, or have a metric boatload of it.

2) Increase mana regen rate for questors, especially at low mana, which might result in being able to cast spells with reasonable frequency. Of course, finding the proper rate is perhaps very hard.

3) Add a spell that gives questors time to recoup. Perhaps a combination of thrustaway and mana regain? Perhaps it could give the player (and nearby monsters?) more mana too.

[LostTemplar]

One more possibility to balance mana burn vs Morgoth is giving him something terrible, that he can use without mana, e.g. more powerfull version of breath attack.

[LostTemplar]

Dragon with mana will try to blind, confuse, or scare player allmost allways, very low chance for breath, without mana it will breath any time, it gets roll for ranged attack. This is indeed broken AI, but it is how it works now. Manaburn makes e.g. Glaurung much harder to kill, another example is WD of storm, just fodder for a warrior and nightmare for rogue, well not really, but how often do you clear storm dragon pits with mana burning melee ?.

This does not apply strictly to dragons with nasty summons e.g. WD of balance or power, but anyway you are going to use ASC against them probably, or just avoid.

[thapper]

Yeah, I was probably thinking about dragons, and I had not thought about the point that some monsters actually gets more dangerous without mana.

[LostTemplar]

You get 1 die worth of damage affected by deadliness and slay per round at most and 20 mana burned. e.g. with ringil and 200 deadliness against evil you will have 13 bonus damage per round from mana burn, it is about 3% of your total damage. with 1d23 slay evil, bonus will be about 54 dmg/round, 10%, not too good also.

Monsters like dragons are likely to be out of mana quickly, due to low mana pool, but they are more dangerous without mana.

[thapper]

IMHO currently mana burn is a bit broken. It adds very small amount of damage against monsters with mana, and reduce thier mana, so it is useless if monster dies before it's mana is reduced to 0, and this happens in 99% of fights, but it is extremely overpowered if monster mana is eliminated before monster is seriosly hurt e.g. Morgoth or Ungoliath.

It can be remade, so instead of reducing monster mana it only adds damage, proportional to mana, but this additional damage should be significant.

I want some feedback on this subject.

In my experience, with rouges and light weapons (mostly pre 1.1.6 if something changed there), many tougher monsters run out of mana before they die. I also don't have the feeling that the additional damage is so insignificant. On the contrary I have at times wondered how I'd be able to kill a monster when it ran out of mana and my damage dropped.

Can we get some raw numbers on how mana burn works? My feeling could be completely wrong...

[HallucinationMushroom]

My experience with mana burn is with only one character, but it was so extremely effective against Morgoth, as you mentioned, that I was wanting a weapon of mana burn for my warriors to find just for the final fight.

[LostTemplar]

IMHO currently mana burn is a bit broken. It adds very small amount of damage against monsters with mana, and reduce thier mana, so it is useless if monster dies before it's mana is reduced to 0, and this happens in 99% of fights, but it is extremely overpowered if monster mana is eliminated before monster is seriosly hurt e.g. Morgoth or Ungoliath.

It can be remade, so instead of reducing monster mana it only adds damage, proportional to mana, but this additional damage should be significant.

I want some feedback on this subject.

[LostTemplar]

Overland map is for reference only, not for travel.

[bio_hazard]

Have you had thoughts on how food/hunger should work on an overland map? For ease of gameplay it would be nice if you didn't have to tote around a million rations like you did in ToME. This would encourage exploring, and avoid some frustrating deaths.
Thematically, some regions would probably be rich with food and travelers could be assumed to forage for themselves without depleting their carried stores. In other areas, finding food would be a real problem, and hunger played a significant role in some of the journeys Tolkien described. I'm not necessarily suggesting this level of complexity be added, but I think one could justify having hunger work any way you wanted when thinking about long-distance travel.