Attack speed questions

[celem]

I've got a few fuzzy spots in my understanding of how the speed of various actions matches up, and the wiki resources are not answering a couple of specific queries. So here goes:

As I understand it I have 2 speeds in-game. Theres my movement speed which is affected by slow/haste/swift effects and the run ego, plus species oddities like centaurs and spriggans. Then theres my attack speed which depends on what weapon im holding and how much skill i have there (as far as min-delayl, i get this bit), this is then also changed by haste/slow. So far, so good.

1st puzzlement. 'of Speed' ego. A weapon of speed is faster, it takes less skill to bring it to min-delay. But is it's min-delay actually lower than a similar weapon with no speed ego? In other words, if I find a short sword of speed and bring it to min-delay, would I be better switching it out for a damaging brand assuming I have enough skill to bring the second blade to min-speed?

2nd puzzlement. Spell-casting speed. How long does it take me to cast a spell? How does this relate to my two speeds? Is spellcasting governed by my movement speed? I often find myself playing a spellcaster who swings a backup shortblade. A monster survives the ranged attacks as he closes and gets adjacent to me. Swinging my blade is suddenly faster right? I attack with it several times per 'movement tick', so I could probably stab a couple of times in the time taken to incant one more cast yes?

As an odd followup to the latter question; are there only 2 'speeds' tracked by the game? If casting is using my movement delay rather than some third cast speed, would swiftness accelerate my casting like haste would?

Hope people follow what im after here. Im playing necromancer with shortblade backups and need to minimise time spent in contact with hostiles.

[cerebovssquire]

Casting takes 10 aut, the same time a human without movement speed modifiers needs to take a step. It's affected only by Haste and Slow, in the same way they affect any other action. This also applies to actions like evoking wands or elemental evokers, quaffing potions, and reading scrolls. Swiftness exclusively affects movement speed.
So yes, if you are using a short blade and have trained the skill, melee attacks will take less time.

Mindelay and speed brand are two seperate things. If I remember correctly, rounding up or down can affect the mindelay skill (i.e. a weapon of speed might have mindelay at skill 12 rather than 14 because attack speed is rounded to the same number after the *1,5 modifer from the brand is applied), but the speed brand is, in principle, a different modifier that doesn't directly affect mindelay skill

[mikee]

It's better to think of your speed as delay. For most actions, when you act, there is a delay until you can act again. For a simple example, if you take an action with 2.0 delay, a speed 10 monster can act twice before you can act again, and a speed 15 monster can act 3 times, etc. On the right side of the screen, I guess what you could call the HUD displays a number that is the delay of the last action you took. For most but not all actions under normal circumstances, that number will be 1.0.

The speed brand gives a weapon half of its minimum delay, rounded up, which incidentally makes it require 2 less skill for minimum delay.

In other words, if I find a short sword of speed and bring it to min-delay, would I be better switching it out for a damaging brand assuming I have enough skill to bring the second blade to min-speed?

I'm not sure how to answer this question in a good way. I guess the short answer is no, you'll do more damage with a short sword of speed than like a flaming short sword. If you're really going to use a weapon and be concerned about its minimum delay it probably should not be a short blade, though, unless you have a very high amount of slaying or enchantment or its brand is pain or electrocution.

[celem]

Gotcha, your comparison of swords is kinda where I was aiming. I just wasnt sure if the weapon itself was intrinsically faster because of the 'of speed' or whether the lower skill for a given speed was the bonus (with a same end speed). I understand the concept of additive/multiplicative brands, hoping for something in pain since im a MuNe, but i'm Ash so i'll wing it likely.

[daggaz]

Keep in mind that speed lower (base?) damage a bit, so if you do go with a SB of speed, you really want to lay on the slaying bonuses. If you are getting the stabbing bonus, speed lets you take a few attacks more before whatever effect gives the bonus (para, conf, etc) wears off, tho generally stabbing kills things so fast anyways, you wont notice the difference.

[daggaz]

Gotcha, your comparison of swords is kinda where I was aiming. I just wasnt sure if the weapon itself was intrinsically faster because of the 'of speed' or whether the lower skill for a given speed was the bonus (with a same end speed). I understand the concept of additive/multiplicative brands, hoping for something in pain.

You cant get two brands, so its speed or pain, not speed and pain.

[crate]

Keep in mind that speed lower (base?) damage a bit

This is no longer true. Speed brand is just +50% damage.

[daggaz]

Oh that's nice.

[Jeremiah]

Something that I've never been quite sure about: how is attack delay calculated for monsters? Is their "skill" for weapon speed determined by their HD, and do monsters that attack with bites etc use the same formula as unarmed players?

[xentronium]

Not sure about monsters with multiple attacks. They probably just use all of them at the same rate.

As far as monsters with weapons:

yes it does, monster attack delay with a weapon is (10+[base delay])/2
so a monster attacking with a bardiche has an attack delay of 15 and one with a spear has an attack delay of 10 or 11 randomly

[Lasty]

The commit that changed the speed brand:
http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... 63a7414648

Jeremiah: monsters have no "weapon skill", they just have a base damage, added weapon damage, and a base action speed modified by the weapon they're holding. Some monsters have specific modifiers to their base action speed for certain actions (swim, move, attack).