Danger level

[bel]

[The following is related to this thread I created. However, this idea is completely stand-alone]

Suppose we want to calculate: "how much danger is our character in right now"? It is difficult to calculate this exactly. DCSS damage formulae are insane, and there are all kinds of interactions between monsters.

To get around this problem, we can try to devise a proxy which is "good enough". The in-game measure "tension" tries to do this.

However, as far as I know, there is no real study of whether "tension" is really a good measure of danger. What exactly is the relationship between tension and danger? If you have double the tension, are you twice as likely to die?

I propose that an alternate measure of "tension" should be calculated (call it "danger level"). It should be anchored to real-world danger. For instance, just like the game makes an automatic note when your HP is very low, the game could make an automatic note when the "danger level" is above a certain value. We can then use morgues to determine whether you are really in "danger" when the game thinks you are.

How this measure would be useful:

• New players have problems with threat assessment: displaying this measure could help them.
• We could graph the danger level across the whole game to see how "risky" the play was.
• It would help with game balance: for instance, if we find that some areas tend to have lower (or higher) "danger level" -- for comparable characters -- we can buff (or nerf, respectively) the areas.

[Implojin]

Tension is an arbitrary fabrication, loosely based on monster HD vs. character XL, with a bunch of hacky adjustments in the middle. It is not a good measure of the actual threat facing a character, turn-to-turn.

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/mas ... l.cc#L2331
https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/mas ... n.cc#L4330

[bel]

Yes, I agree that tension is a made up measure.

To be fair, the "danger level" would also be some kind of measure based on enemy HD and character XL, with a bunch of hacks in the middle. The measure needs to be easy to calculate. The aim is to approximate actual danger as well as possible.

I have some ideas on how the function should look like. For instance, tension does not take into account character AC/EV/SH. It also does not include character MP -- a spellcaster at full HP and 0 MP is in a fair bit of "danger".

There is also the problem that monster HD isn't really a good indicator of how dangerous the monster is. Boggarts have very low HD, but they're very dangerous. This issue, however, should be fixed independently.

[Sorcerous]

Yes, I agree that tension is a made up measure.

To be fair, the "danger level" would also be some kind of measure based on enemy HD and character XL, with a bunch of hacks in the middle. The measure needs to be easy to calculate. The aim is to approximate actual danger as well as possible.

The added transparency could work quite well, but wouldn't this become extremely unreliable in the Abyss and the Hells branches because of random spawns and other events? Also, would the hypothetical formula take into account existing flags like +Sprint or +Abj or even +Tele on the char? Those could also skew risk down to a degree. Also, would there be a significant increase or decrease in risk while using items like tree potions or immolation scrolls?
Sure, this "danger level" is not exact, but the game as is would still introduce some very real inconsistencies.

[bel]

I don't really see what's special about Abyss and Hell.

The "danger level" would definitely depend on status effects on the character. Whether lignification is more "dangerous" or less "dangerous" depends on what's on the screen, the character's offence and defence.

Of course, the measure would not be perfect: it's meant as an approximation. How good of an approximation one can achieve, remains to be seen.