The Tavern

I think it would be fun to be able to directly control at least some of your allies; for example, you ancestor.

I got this idea when I tried to place myself and my ancestor at the exit of a corridor to hit monsters together while forcing them to come one by one. It was frustrating, because the ancestor kept leaping inside the corridor as soon as a monster was dead, so that it ended up alone against the monsters.

Why not to enable a toggle to directly control certain allies, then? You would take your PC's turn, then, according to the turns, the one of your ally, guiding it as if it were yours.

The ally field of vision would be the same as yours, i.e. determining by your position, not by theirs. This way, it would be easier to understand that allies do not fight beyond your fov. You would not be able to control allies beyond your fov.

God-given special allies like Yred's and the ancestor are the most obvious for me, because, if you chose certain aspects for them, you likely have a strategy in mind. But certain spells also could give you controllable allies, with a toggle in the I menu to turn ally control on and off for this spell.

Shtopit wrote:Why not to enable a toggle to directly control certain allies, then? You would take your PC's turn, then, according to the turns, the one of your ally, guiding it as if it were yours.

1. Because it would be a bad feature
2. Because it would require refactoring about half of the codebase

It would be a bad feature that would take crawl farther in bad direction, but I would like to see someone make a hacked up fork that has this. I bet it's possible to make this kind of thing tolerable with enough automation.

the gameplay will be disastrously tedious

We still might limit it with XP like lamp of fire. Want to position ancestor again? Kill some monsters first. Then it would add extra decisions which is good IMHO

I do wish the AI would push caster allies harder to stay out of the obvious, direct line of melee/fire though.

I'd imagine doing that would be simpler than having players constantly fuss with it.

It probably wouldn't be perfect, but they should be able to guess that for example: Stepping into the one tile of a narrow corridor directly between a player holding a melee weapon and a monster with huge damage attacks against themselves, probably isn't their typical job. Particularly when they have ranged spells of their own.

papilio wrote:the gameplay will be disastrously tedious

I'm pretty certain that this is not true. In the current state of the game, you have to give multiple commands to your allies in every situation if you want them to do something reasonable. And in answer to this, most players simply don't play ally gods. A better command system would probably make the game less tedious, not more.

Disagree that you currently "have to" use ally shout commands to play effectively with allies. Effective ally tactics are mostly about understanding subtleties of monster movement and using a few weird tricks that make your guys attack things without making excessive noise or using turns without making a combat action, e.g. throwing things and using polearms.

watertreatmentRL wrote:Disagree that you currently "have to" use ally shout commands to play effectively with allies. Effective ally tactics are mostly about understanding subtleties of monster movement and using a few weird tricks that make your guys attack things without making excessive noise or using turns without making a combat action, e.g. throwing things and using polearms.

lure to open space then T W

T W makes noise, my man.

i would say its ok to make some noise and waste one turn to make your horde of summons not useless.

MAKE YOUR GUYS ATTACK THINGS USING THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK. DEVS HATE HIM!

If by "bad for the game" you mean "the optimal way to play would be to never turn the toggle off", this can be solved by having the toggle only activate if there is a monster in your LOS. Maybe leave it open for a window of around five turns after you lost it from sight (e.g. because you turned a corner while running away in a corridor).

TW does not make noise as of this commit unless it got reverted later on and I missed it. I agree that you don't usually need to use ally commands though, and certainly not multiple commands in every fight. Managing allies is still super annoying regardless.

I missed that one. Thanks for the tip.

I confirm that ally commands are silent. However, I tried playing a bit more with allies, and... argh. It's just too frustrating. I think that, even if not by the way proposed by my OP, ally management needs to be changed, and that it should be a huge focus in brainstorming. After all, 13 gods (if you include Kiku and Sif) give you allies (TSO, Beogh, Fedh, Gozag, Hep, Lugonu, Makh, Nemelex, Qazlal, Trog, Yred). Then you have dominate spell and wand, a summoning school, a school about undead allies, sticks to snakes, scroll of summoning, the Ds mutation...

Lucy doesn't give ally but neutral monsters, does she? What kind of allies gives Sif?

Anyway I'd propose the allies managment of Qzlol: everything you summon die the turn after.

Allies are strong and gods are supposed to be useful, so it's not too surprising that many gods give allies. Kiku is definitely an ally god. Lucy doesn't technically give allies. Sif, well, just gives access to all the spells, including summons.

Just out of curiosity, what specific things to do with allies do you find frustrating?

I find it a little annoying when I have to manipulate my zombies to prevent them from walking into flame clouds and the like.

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:Just out of curiosity, what specific things to do with allies do you find frustrating?

Here's why I don't like playing with allies:

They take away part of my experience.
Most are temporary, and must be re-cast/re-called constantly, which results in a very tedious game play.
They tend to stand in the way of ranged combat or conjurations. They usually turn against you when they get hit in this way. They make some of your gods turn against you.
They clutter up the screen with monsters, and it is not easy to distinguish between friend and foe. Often they confuse me more than the opposing monsters.
They prevent me from studying the dungeon floor.
Some high level spells are outright impossible when allies are around (Shatter, Tornado, Ignition, OR, to a lesser extent Firestorm), and some god abilities are rendered useless by the presence of allies.
Many necromancy allies have severe side effects, same as most spells from the Grand Grimoire.
Some allies (mostly imps), if not standing in the way, are uselessly hopping around without attacking monsters.
They can't keep track with me if I'm fast. Then I spend a lot of time waiting for them.

In short: When I play with allies, I usually cry myself to sleep afterwards.

Majang wrote:They can't keep track with me if I'm fast. Then I spend a lot of time waiting for them.

If you use manual exploration this doesn't help, but you can use ctrl-e to set your travel speed to match your slowest ally.

Majang wrote:[*]Some high level spells are outright impossible when allies are around (Shatter, Tornado, Ignition, OR, to a lesser extent Firestorm), and some god abilities are rendered useless by the presence of allies.

Ignition, is fine to cast around allies.

Majang wrote:[*]Many necromancy allies have severe side effects, same as most spells from the Grand Grimoire.

What do you mean by side effects for necromancy allies? (They don't have anything like the drawbacks from XXX, Malign gateway, or summon greater demon)

Siegurt wrote:
Majang wrote:[*]Many necromancy allies have severe side effects, same as most spells from the Grand Grimoire.

What do you mean by side effects for necromancy allies? (They don't have anything like the drawbacks from XXX, Malign gateway, or summon greater demon)

Right, I thought that Haunt would still cause sickness, but that appears to have been changed some versions ago. My bad.

Majang wrote:Here's why I don't like playing with allies:
[list]
[*]They take away part of my experience.

This does not, and has never mattered in any real way.

Most of your other complaints are valid though. Ctrl-e will match your autoexplore speed to that of your slowest ally, if that helps.

E: I see someone else already addressed autoexplore speed.

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:Just out of curiosity, what specific things to do with allies do you find frustrating?

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12012&p=168371#p168371

TheDefiniteArticle wrote:The issue is the mere existence of allies. They clutter up the screen, make tons of message spam, ruin +/- key targetting, drown important monsters out on the monster list, and that's assuming they stand politely out of the way for the whole battle. When they actually do things, all your actions are basically forced to revolve around them, partly because they directly interfere with your normal tactics, and partly because allies as a crawl concept are so overwhelmingly powerful that any desire to win mandates taking full advantage.

prozacelf wrote:
Majang wrote:Here's why I don't like playing with allies:
[list]
[*]They take away part of my experience.

This does not, and has never mattered in any real way.

Apparently not to you. To me it matters in a very real way, because experience, and experience only, is what makes me stronger in any game. I don't want to sacrifice any of it.

The (sad) truth is that allies give you more power than you would get from the 'missing' experience.

I doubt that. Certainly that is not true for a caster, who can deal obscene damage with level-9 spells, clearing the screen in three to four turns. No number of allies of any source or quality can do that. But this caster needs every scrap of experience to get there as soon as possible. Even on the way there, lower-level damage spells provide an efficient way to deal with all possible situations.
I'm ready to admit that a melee-style character will benefit from the added power of allies (and even I make occasional use of Trog's Brothers and Makhleb's demons). But come to ranged combat or high-level damage-dealing spells - allies are just a liability, and you are much better off without them.

Edit: I see now that you compare the "missed experience" to the resulting power you have from the allies, and therefore I have not really answered your point. That is certainly a valid consideration - can I wait for my high-powered spells a bit longer, if allies help me reliably to survive on the way? This question I cannot answer, as I don't play this way enough to evaluate it. I just can't stand the tedium.

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:The (sad) truth is that allies give you more power than you would get from the 'missing' experience.

So it is optimal to avoid using Summoning spells as much as possible while still training Summoning school, even if it is boring and time-consuming. I mean I might easily cast Summon Ice Beast to kill those plain orcs but I still kill them with a dagger for the XP.
Similarly it is optimal to avoid casting high hunger spell as much as possible so you continue casting magic darts at those plain orcs instead of bolt of fire or fireball you have online due to Vehumet or wizardry.
That's why melee is so much more enjoyable, you don't need to switch from battleaxe to hand axe or dagger when you want to kill some popcorn.

One suggestion that would reduce both ally power and ally annoyance would be to make them time out far quicker when there are no hostiles in view. Wouldn't address all the issues, but at least it'd be a dual-win nudge in the right direction?

It would blow the "one zombie horde per floor" strat but maybe that needs to go anyway.

Hep ally could do the same, but reappear (if not on cooldown due to death) automatically when needed. Perhaps only upon hostile action by yourself or an enemy, so that you have the luxury of first shot without aiming issues.

Frustrating things: not being able to adopt a basic tactic like being two at the end of a corridor and forcing the monsters to come one by one. Tactical lack of agency once you have summoned the ally. Extreme tedium if you want to maintain some agency. Having to summon one by one. TeAE of Hep. Otherwise, most of what Majang said. (Lucy was a mistake on my side).

Part of the problem is due to how many ways you have to gain allies.

If it were just summoning spells, I'd say, "OK, let's raise the level of a few spells, so that they become mass summoning spells, if you are allowed to summon more than one monsters of that kind" (call imp, spammals, that sort of things). This would remove the "one by one" aspect. (Makh summon lesser demon might work like dragon call and burn HP while it's active?).

I think that the XP thing is not good because it's a way to penalize what is a main technique, with a whole school based around it. If it were just summonings spells, I would say, "OK, limit the XP to the player, but allow the lost XP to go into the spell that summoned the creature. In other words, let the XP that went into the creature cause a slow spell power increase for the spell that summoned it". This way, XP to the player would be limited, but it would not be lost; it would be more of a trade.

Limited XP works imho well with non-spammable strong powers, like banishment and probably some god allies. The reason is simple: you can't keep using them to solve any and each encounter. So you are already making a trade-off by giving up some piety and the option to use them later. If you are a spell-based summoner, however, summons are supposed to be your daily bread, and it's strange to ask for a permanent tradeoff for it. Now sure, summons are powerful, so they need balance, but I am sure that there are other ways (-HP %, contamination, noise, directly nerfing the spells, adding a school to all summoning spells...). As it has already been noticed, this also adds to weird XP management in which you want to pour as much XP as possible into summonings, but use them as little as possible.

Allies also are an indirect nerf to Quetzal, although I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be immune to Quaz clouds.

These are just little patches, however. Ally control would still be as bad as it's now.

FR: "Qazlal's clouds do 50% extra damage to allies." Translation: an avatar of the storm is not good at being friends. Find another way to be overpowered with Qaz.

How about this: the first time you cast a spell that makes allies, or use a god ability that creates allies, or evoke a sack of spiders or box of beasts or worship Yred or Beogh etc., you get a permanent 50% XP penalty for the rest of the game, and your skill levels and XL are reduced retroactively as if you had lost 50% of your XP up to that point. It doesn't matter whether things die to your allies or to you, you get 50% XP either way. This way, the XP penalty for ally play is imposed without promoting micromanagement, and the retroactive penalty limits the appeal of strategies like "only start using allies in Zot" or whatever.

Or we could admit that an XP penalty is neither a good way to balance allies nor even a sufficient way to balance allies.

The Demonic Ally mutation is totally tolerable since you can fire through them etc.

Airwolf wrote:The Demonic Ally mutation is totally tolerable since you can fire through them etc.

Not exactly true. For some reason they still get hit by Shatter, and you still get warnings about that, cluttering up your messages, and requiring a response by you (so all the annoyance is still there). But it seems that they don't turn against you when that happens.

The Tavern

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