[Announce] Oposband 0.1.0

[EpicMan]

Just what the world needed, another Poschengband variant. I've been working on this off and on for a while and its time to put out a version before returning to my unending tinkering. Note that this is a beta release and there are probably many balance issues.

This is a variant of FrogComposband 7.1.Chocolate

Oposband has a lot of small changes and a few big ones (full changelog below):
-Blue Mages and Imitators return from Hengband!
-Instead of clicking File->New or File->Open, you just type 'n' or 'o' to start or load a game (Windows interface change only, should work same as before on other platforms but that hasn't been verified)
-Item hit and dam pluses have been merged into a single plus that does both, so weapons look like Broad Sword (2d6, +0) instead of Broad Sword (2d6) (+0, +0). This makes them similar to armor displays. This should also make magic ammo stack more readily.
-Replaced old 18/XXX stat numbering with a simpler linear system (17,18,19,20 ..., 39, 40 is the old 18/***).
-Most caster classes no longer need to learn spells via the 'G' command, they are able to cast all spells of appropriate level provided they have the book.
-Soft Easy ID: Average and Good items are auto-IDed on walkover, anything else is instantly pseudo-IDed.

Source repository on Github:

https://github.com/EpicMan/Oposband

Precompiled Windows Zip: https://github.com/EpicMan/Oposband/...band.0.1.2.zip

Full Changelog from FrogComposband.7.1.Chocolate:
-Removed many unnessary if_savefile_older_than calls as we won't be converting those
-Removed 18/* notation for stats. Old 18/10 is now just 19, 18/100 is 28, 18/*** is 40, etc
-Adjust many Charisma values to pre-PosChengband values.
-Fear saves now work off of best of Strength and Charisma, to make strong but poor CHR monsters like zombies and balrogs better at fear.
-Identify acts as *Identify* and the latter is being phased out
-Psuedo-ID items on walkover, and Average/Good items IDed on walkover.
-Sorceror reverted to using INT for casting. CHR was thrown in because DND sorceror's are CHR-casters, but they are a completely different creature from the Zangband sorceror, who is just an uber-mage. Sorceror INT now +6 and CHR now -2
-Added Hexblade and Chaos Mage from Composbad
-Removed Chaotic personality, chaos patrons are reserved for the two chaos classes.
-Many monsters are more affected by doors than before: felines, dragon flies, canines, snakes, and ants
-Reversed pack AI settings for animals and sentient beings, so the latter will try to lure healthy players into rooms while the latter will hunt you down. Idea from Sil
-Player now receives full HP and SP restore when levelling up
-Objects now have a single attack plus instead of split to-hit and to-dam values. Generally to_h was always much less important than to_d to players and having them different (and randomly rolled) just made stacking ammo, etc harder. Scrolls of enchant to-hit and enchant to-dam have been replaced with a single Enchant Weapon scroll.
-Can now create new characters or load savefiles with keystrokes from news screen, without having to use the File menu. High scores list viewing has been moved to this screen as well.
-Streamlined character creation by compressing screens to character creation. Removed beginner mode and moved normal/monster mode selection to the race/class UI, so you can easily switch between them.
-Prayer class group had a single class, Priest, and even when the alternative priest class, Disciple, was added it wasn't put there. So Priest has been moved to the Magic class group and Prayer group has been removed.
-Orc shamans now have SP like other casters. I see no reason for them to use HP to cast.
-Needless opaque and polemical no_chris option renamed no_nexus_warp
-Removed some unneeded options
preserve_artifacts - Artifacts always give a special feeling in FrogComposband, removing main advantage of no_preserve.
empty_lore - just use a new savefile. With full monster knowledge no downside other than quickstart.
allow_friendly_mons - minor feature that does not need to be allowed. Just attack friendly monsters to make them hostile.
allow_hostile_monst - integral feature that does not need to be toggled
allow_pets - Integral feature that does not need to be toggled
allow_spoilers - moved to debug command z.
-Changed the display of weapons bonuses to be more similar to armor displays: From "Dagger (1d5) (+0,+0)" to "Dagger(1d5,+0)."
-Re-Added the Blue Mage and Imitator classes from Hengband, which had been removed with the monster spell revamp in Poschengband 7.0
-Added many monsters from Vanilla
-Buffed dragons (hp, ac, and melee) and moved deeper / increased xp, based on Vanilla 4.2.0 levels. Also added great wyrms for the missing elemental types.
-Added Greater elementals: take earth/air/fire/water elemental, move twice as deep and boost HP/AC/speed and damage.
-Player elemental characters get a thematic reward from the thieves quest (a magical version of their starting weapon)
-Player life rating now stored as a number, and player_hp array replaced with a simple hp= 5 + (5 * level * life_rating / 100). Older savefiles will be converted;
-Samurai gain their spell attacks as they level, and no longer need to learn their spells from books. Books of Kendo nhave been removed
-Most book casters no longer need to learn spells, they can just cast any from their books they are high enough level for. Gray Mages and Rage Mages still learn spells due to their unique mechanics.
-'C'haracter display now lists the percentage of physical damage reduction from AC.
-Players receive a full HP/SP restore upon levelling up, like in many other games. Could be a birth option but there are so many alreay. Mostly it allows more extended fighting in the early levels when level ups come frequently.
-Added many monsters from Vanilla Angband 4.2.X (Blood Falcons!)
-First town renamed Rampart (from Omega) - Outpost was always a silly name
-Can now see/browse what race/class powers the character will get at what level.

[Sideways]

Nice! More competition is always good

[HugoVirtuoso]

Is there any way for Oposband to be uploaded/compiled on angband.live?

[A Kobold]

Lookin' dope, my favorite change is this one.

-Added Hexblade and Chaos Mage from Composbad

[Gwarl]

Lookin' dope, my favorite change is this one.

Sort of skeptical that this is a composband chaos mage, if composband patron behaviour hasn't been copied.

[ster]

Hi there's a lot of good quality of life additions in this variant, I especially like killing ID and ID in a way that doesn't give players any choice but doesn't break the game like CPB gwarlvision and also removing random HP rolls.
Kind of neutral on spell learning as long as the garbage legacy proficiency system remains.

However it doesn't seem to have much long term staying power.

I will break it to you: you can't balance for shit.

Some of it is the funny kind of broken - so ridiculous you just laugh - like Samurai getting their 2 strongest moves 10 minutes from the start of the game , Hexblade existing at all and Sorcerer being made even more overpowered.

One change is even good: the removal of Chaotic. If your balls had dropped maybe you would phase out chaos patrons and the related classes completely too as they are free reward for minimal risk and are from some irrelevant author Gwarl likes - I read Amber just to one up him and it was shit, so I presume this one is shit too. And Warhammer, Warhammer can fuck off.

Some of it is just nonsensical. Let's look at this change in great detail: https://github.com/EpicMan/Oposband/...f2f183ca9b02cf . Have you ever tried playing with your own allocation versus the defaults? The terrible defaults that will give you 11 CON and force the awful 15/15/15/15/15/11 spread on flexible classes?
And all this removal of player agency and attacks on character progression for the sake of one keypress at quickstart - did I stumble into the DCSS forums on accident? Revert this absolute fucking travesty or at least make the default starting stats reasonable.

Some of it really shows that you haven't played the game at all. Okay, you buffed dragon HP to be closer to V, but you didn't pay attention to the special casing on mature and ancient dragons that puts their damage closer to V.
So now ancient dragons and only ancient dragons do 750 unresisted at their depth. Whites on Smaug's floor hit harder than him
I've played nightmare mode - i've even won nightmare mode and easily the greatest enemy of progression is the midgame where every breather is implausible to fight head on because they two shot you through the resist. But this discrepancy where white monsters that barely provide any reward hit for nearly capped damage and it never progresses past that is literally just for four monsters that you will TO every time. Inserting V sensibilities into poschengband doesn't work, you're supposed to fight all monsters in PCBlikes instead of avoiding them.
But what would you know of V anyway? You have no wins.

Oh and great wyrms summon now All of them, including the base ones You know you fight great wyrms because they're just big sacks of HP that don't summon right You know great wyrms are supposed to appear in the dragon themed dungeon that goes from floor 60-72 but your variant makes sure they have to go through OOD checks to appear in their own fucking dungeon?? Have you actually played a PCBlike at all in any capacity?

This is an okay variant in dire need of a hotfix. But you are not suitable for a variant maintainer, not ready for the variant war. It's nice to see your ideas implemented but you are an ideas guy at your best. If I have to breathe down your neck every major release to tell you your changes are dogshit, your variant isn't going to be played by any of the hardcore crowd.
You're also too passive. I bet the "Composbad" in your OP was a typo even, and you would defend Chris' honor after he put out 7.1.1, let alone the rest of his vision?

tl;dr Go fuck yourself and fuck off back to CDDA

Sort of skeptical that this is a composband chaos mage, if composband patron behaviour hasn't been copied.

Would it hurt you to finish your goddamn variant before you white knight it in as many threads as possible?

[Gwarl]

Yes Ster it does hurt to have all the post-frog work on composband go unnoticed and that is causally connected to having abandoned development.

Nopseudo doesn't break the game at all.

[ster]

Nopseudo doesn't break the game at all.

I'm not interested in having this discussion with you for the fiftieth time and it's hardly like nopsuedo is the only thing broken about what you added to PCB with compos.

What post-frog work again? You stapled hex onto the warrior mage chassis, added your (direct quote here) "trans video game alter" to the game and segregated anime instead of fixing what was busted. Wow.

e: I should note OP that no matter how bad your commits were that it is significantly more playable than Composband.

[Gwarl]

That isn't a direct quote.

Nice job skipping over the reworking of quest lines, dungeon generation, nopseudo, chaos patrons, playable silver dracs/draconians, device power display, etc etc

Doesn't matter but but being a dick who sometimes makes valid points doesn't also make your points valid just because you're being a dick about them.

[ster]

Like I said finish your variant before you white knight it without justification.

It's a direct quote.

[Gwarl]

hissatsu.c fails to compile.

hissatsu.c:142:36: error: ‘player_type {aka struct player_type}’ has no member named ‘spell_learned1’

[debo]

I will break it to you: you can't balance for shit.

... a whole bunch of other rudeness

We've had a long run of running a great forum without any edgelords gumming up the works. Can we not start now please?

[wobbly]

To be honest complaining about balance in a variant called OPband seems a little odd...

[Derakon]

you can't balance for shit.

If your balls had dropped

And Warhammer, Warhammer can fuck off.

Have you ever tried playing with your own allocation versus the defaults?

Revert this absolute fucking travesty

Some of it really shows that you haven't played the game at all.

But what would you know of V anyway? You have no wins.

Have you actually played a PCBlike at all in any capacity?

you are not suitable for a variant maintainer

If I have to breathe down your neck every major release to tell you your changes are dogshit

tl;dr Go fuck yourself and fuck off back to CDDA

You're an asshole. Fuck off. Your attitude and words are not welcome here.

[debo]

To be honest complaining about balance in a variant called OPband seems a little odd...

Haha That's my kind of joke.