Who wants to mess with speed?

[ramela]

I recently made this suggestion on the NPP forums:

Completely eparate speeds for movement, attacks, shooting and spellcasting. It opens up a lot of design space in items, races, classes and monsters.

A separate movement speed bonus on top of the regular speed is IMO a worse idea since stacking bonuses make balancing them harder.

As a bonus, if a player and monsters are forced to commit up to his whole turn (100 energy) everytime he attacks, pillardancing, shoot and run and hack 'n back tactics are eliminated.

[Patashu]

Yep, that's correct.

[MattB]

Firstly, thanks to Fizzix, Nick and Derakon for taking the time to answer my question.

And particularly in answer to Nick - yes crystal clear, thank you!

However, for the benefit of those equally uninitiated as myself, I've done the maths...
Obviously, if I've cocked up then I fully deserve the storm of abuse that's heading my way...

spd times faster
0 normal
10 2x as fast
20 3x as fast
30 3.8x as fast
40 4.2x as fast
50 4.5x as fast
60 4.8x as fast
70 5.0x as fast

Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

[Derakon]

Put another way, every game turn, you gain energy based on your current speed. The line in Nick's post that starts with "Norm" has the gain rates for speeds of +0 through +9; note that at +0 you get 10 energy/game turn. That means it takes 10 game turns for you to get 1 player turn. If you have +1 speed, then you get 11 energy/game turn, so it takes 9.1 game turns for you to get 1 player turn. At +10 speed you get 20 energy/turn, so 5 game turns per player turn -- twice as fast. And so on for +20 speed (+30 energy/turn). But starting at +28 speed, not every speed point gives you an improvement in your energy gain rate (+27 and +28 speed are identical). That's what's meant by diminishing returns. In order to get to 40 energy/turn, you need to get up to +33 speed, and it's impossible to reach 50 energy/turn.

[Nick]

/*
* This table allows quick conversion from "speed" to "energy"
* The basic function WAS ((S>=110) ? (S-110) : (100 / (120-S)))
* Note that table access is *much* quicker than computation.
*
* Note that the table has been changed at high speeds. From
* "Slow (-40)" to "Fast (+30)" is pretty much unchanged, but
* at speeds above "Fast (+30)", one approaches an asymptotic
* effective limit of 50 energy per turn. This means that it
* is relatively easy to reach "Fast (+30)" and get about 40
* energy per turn, but then speed becomes very "expensive",
* and you must get all the way to "Fast (+50)" to reach the
* point of getting 45 energy per turn. After that point,
* furthur increases in speed are more or less pointless,
* except to balance out heavy inventory.
*
* Note that currently the fastest monster is "Fast (+30)".
*
* It should be possible to lower the energy threshhold from
* 100 units to 50 units, though this may interact badly with
* the (compiled out) small random energy boost code. It may
* also tend to cause more "clumping" at high speeds.
*/
const byte extract_energy[200] =
{
/* Slow */ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/* Slow */ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/* Slow */ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/* Slow */ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/* Slow */ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/* Slow */ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/* S-50 */ 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
/* S-40 */ 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2,
/* S-30 */ 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3,
/* S-20 */ 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4,
/* S-10 */ 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9,
/* Norm */ 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,
/* F+10 */ 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29,
/* F+20 */ 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 36, 37, 37,
/* F+30 */ 38, 38, 39, 39, 40, 40, 40, 41, 41, 41,
/* F+40 */ 42, 42, 42, 43, 43, 43, 44, 44, 44, 44,
/* F+50 */ 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46,
/* F+60 */ 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48,
/* F+70 */ 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49,
/* Fast */ 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49,
};

Clear?

[fizzix]

Okay, hands up, I'm a bit of an idiot and I don't have a clue about coding (I'm not even sure which type of pencil you use to do it), but could someone PLEASE explain the maths behind speed?!

As I understand it, +10SPD is twice as fast, but increases beyound +30 are marginal returns. How does this work?

It's not an outright formula. There's an array mapping between speed values and "energy costs." I believe it's in tables.h, but I haven't checked for sure.

When you do an action you expend N energy (for speed +0 this is 100) and every game turn it decays by 1, so 100 game turns later you can go again. Each turn the game processes the player and all the monsters and the ones that have 0 energy get an action.

[MattB]

Okay, hands up, I'm a bit of an idiot and I don't have a clue about coding (I'm not even sure which type of pencil you use to do it), but could someone PLEASE explain the maths behind speed?!

As I understand it, +10SPD is twice as fast, but increases beyound +30 are marginal returns. How does this work?

Derakon's post earlier hinted at it, but to be honest I didn't really get it.

Apologies for interrupting a high-powered thread with a newbie query.

[Starhawk]

It'd be interesting to introduce higher speed costs / aka "casting times" to really powerful abilities - perhaps offering both players and monsters a chance to dodge or interrupt.

> The drolem takes in a deep breath...
> You cast Teleport Other.

[OOD Town drunk]

There's possibly too much of it. Getting much more than +7/+8 from any single item should be a once-a-game occurrence. Conversely, there could be more +1/+2 bumps to ego mittens, hats etc. Why should cloaks have all the fun? Basically, it's currently too easy to get a base speed of +30 with minimal compromise to kit.

I like this idea

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Antoine's idea sounds good to me!

I got an idea for Halls of Mist out of this thread: mystical zones where everybody's speed is set to 0.

[Antoine]

How about leaving the speed stat as it is, and adding another similar stat that only reduces the cost of the movement action?

Then some items and abilities could be changed to affect movement instead- which would be weaker. You could also add low level consunables affecting movement. Or give bonuses to it based on race, class, or dex.

[Therem Harth]

I'm blissfully happy with regular V speed, with a couple of tweaks:

a. Browsing spellbooks, inspecting inventory, or aborting a spell/missile should have a cost.

This seems like a bad idea to me. Making the game harder is well and good, but IMO players shouldn't be punished for using their brains and thinking things out.

b. There's possibly too much of it. Getting much more than +7/+8 from any single item should be a once-a-game occurrence. Conversely, there could be more +1/+2 bumps to ego mittens, hats etc. Why should cloaks have all the fun? Basically, it's currently too easy to get a base speed of +30 with minimal compromise to kit.

I'm somewhat ambivalent on this. I like the idea of speed being found in smaller increments, but lack of speed is also one of the major limits on fast diving IMO. I would like to see changes that make the game faster paced, and I'm just not sure whether this would work.

[scud]

I'm blissfully happy with regular V speed, with a couple of tweaks:

a. Browsing spellbooks, inspecting inventory, or aborting a spell/missile should have a cost.

b. There's possibly too much of it. Getting much more than +7/+8 from any single item should be a once-a-game occurrence. Conversely, there could be more +1/+2 bumps to ego mittens, hats etc. Why should cloaks have all the fun? Basically, it's currently too easy to get a base speed of +30 with minimal compromise to kit.

[OOD Town drunk]

Maybe it's just me, but I think speed is fun and interesting as is. Although as most people seem to want it nerfed, why not just nerf it? +10 is only 1.5 Times faster.

[tussock]

Things like death molds can still have a high energy income with split move and attack costs. You could have Drolems that are slow movers but fast attackers, and Master Mystics that move like lightening with slower attacks and spells.

I always figured the best reason to split movement and attack speed was to have fast dogs and tigers who don't double attack you in the early game, while creeping coins can have devastatingly fast melee and still keep their slow move. Well, that and have the default energy cost be 40 for a step, to make combats a little less static and player speed somewhat less dominant for hack-and-back or pillar dancing. Usually hack up my own build to do that, works well enough for melee at least.

But it's classic Moria/Angband that you can eventually do everything four times as fast as the beginning of the game, and it saves a lot of number inflation in other places to keep monsters and characters progressing in power to do it that way. 40 energy per tick could perhaps require more of a drain on food supplies and mana to sustain for some less trivial choices, but the end effect is good.

Separating out that effect, so say some of it comes from energy, and some from reduced costs in various fields, that could make for more interesting gear choices, but it's not really needed for the basic thing of having some monsters be more or less fleet of foot without overpowering or ruining their attacks.