positioning and you: elrocha example

[twelwe]

positioning and los is very important!

xlos1.png (49.27 KiB) Viewed 1934 times

welp there she is dumb biach, im fully mana and have all my heal points. but im cj and dont have my battlespear out, so im not ready. if i just stand and cast it she will do something, who knows what it will be, even banishment! no way, i want to get out of los but i AM going to fight i just have to get out of los first. but i also don't want expand our range; i want to be close enough to hit with mystic blast. also to level the playing field i put away my conj staff, since she is a girl

xlos2.png (34.53 KiB) Viewed 1934 times

the pillar next to me could have protecting me. moving up looks like a good guess, but i'm fighting elrocha to don't want and guess. moving into her los lets her act, moving out of los means she has to move to find me. but shes unaware, so anything can happen!

xlos3.png (33.21 KiB) Viewed 1934 times

right now, the only way to see an enemy los is to place a travel exclusion and check the map. this is how you do it in console, tiles has a visible exclusion field. i can see where its safe to move, and i was wrong, up is not an option.

xlos4.png (40.84 KiB) Viewed 1934 times

now that elrocha is out of los, i can cast battlespear knowing that if she does enter los, i get to make the first move

xlos5.png (47.7 KiB) Viewed 1934 times

which is exactly what she does, and i am too far away to cast mystic blast! i need to break los again.

xlos6.png (35.28 KiB) Viewed 1934 times

here are my options. again, i want to close range so i can cast mystic blast but i dont want her pounding on me while i move.

xlos7.png (48.15 KiB) Viewed 1934 times

i choose where to go, and she uses her turn to move into los again. shes within range of mystic blast!

xlos8.png (45.39 KiB) Viewed 1934 times

Very important shot! If I started this battle 7 turns ago, she'd have gotten two shots off just for me to cast battlespear and magic dart once. Instead the fight is almost over. sensing victory, i wield my staff once again and finish it with a magic dart

xlos9.png (48.05 KiB) Viewed 1934 times

there should probably be a better way to see enemy los, like upon examining them, instead of needing to place and remove several exclusions for what i guess people call optimal play. till then, this is about as good of a solution as i can see

[Siegurt]

As a slight shortcut for that, you can go to the map mode with Shift-X, move your cursor to your opponent and hit 'e' to place and hit it twice more to remove the exclusion, so you can see their LOS using exclusions without doing quite as much work.

[Siegurt]

Also I find that with regular play, you don't really need to use this very often to know what the enemy's LOS will be, you can learn it yourself and know just by looking with enough experience.

[Siegurt]

I also agree that simply moving your cursor to an opponent should show you their LOS field.

[twelwe]

it doesnt matter how long i play im not going to memorize los placement from 3+ squares with pillars out in the open, nor do i want to guess

[mikee]

Was that optimal play, though? It was a play for sure, and not necessarily a bad one - but I am not sure the LOS blocking properties of the pillar really mattered for that. Like, you might have decided to move exactly the same way even if the pillar was not there.

[Baldu]

Would be nice to have that feature you describe (press x, move to enemy, see overlay of their vision), but for now what i do is "x" "+" "e". The "+" moves the cursor to the nearest enemy in "x" mode (can be pressed multiple times for different enemies), and then "e" two more times to remove the exclusion.

Also of note for casters, the battlesphere seems to be immune to all effects and can take a lot of damage from some sources, so it can be used as a blocker that wont inhibit shooting. For this reason its useful to keep all the way to the end of extended since it can be used to absorb banish/hexes/polymorphs/sticky flame/some damage.

In the example of erolcha, severely lowering her threat with battlesphere means drawing her to a corridor with battlesphere between yous. Then shoot.

edit: GDD thread(https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?t=9346) about this feature request.

[Frelus]

I always thought that BS lets through everything magical (Magic Darts, OODs, IMBs), but blocks everything physical (Darts, Arrows, Javelins etc), regardless of who fired it.