DCSS Weapon Comparison spreadsheet

[TehDruid]

I've not said this before; Big thanks for taking the time to make this! After a year of playing Crawl I finally decided to check it out.

[sunspire]

Just in case you might find this helpful, the spreadsheet defaults to a shield being equipped. If you want stats on 2 handed weapons you need to change 'default shield' to 'no shield' in the spreadsheet. This will then give damage values for 2-handed weapons like Executioner's Axe, for example.

[Guppyfry]

Has it been discussed why this isn't in-game information? I'd really like it if there was some indication of actual damage output in there. It would be nice if there was easier access to the damage output for your character in-game instead of hoping that this spreadsheet gets updated. Especially since it sounds like there's a lot of changes coming with fighting reform.

[JeffQyzt]

I think the reason is that it would take a lot of coding (not just the calculations, but the UI), there is no consensus on how to display the information (you can't just pop up an Excel sheet), and it potentially would need frequent updates (whenever something affecting weapon damage gets tweaked), and, most importantly, none of the active devs wanted to undertake it. I believe Danr actually started looking into putting together a patch before his parental responsibilities took a large chunk out of his free time...but that was a few versions ago so it'd probably be horribly out of date now.

If you want to go bell that cat, though, a lot of other mice would be grateful

[danr]

Yeah, I thought about trying to code a patch but it would be my first and is probably a pretty ambitious project, and both family and work responsibilities have been increasing for me.

My sense of things around DCSS though is that it's a lot easier to get consensus on a change when you volunteer to do the work required to implement it. I think it should be doable, it would be similar to the algorithm that currently calculates spell power, though I think there are many more things that affect weapon damage output than go into spell power.

[Guppyfry]

Well that makes sense. I'm incapable of coding anything unfortunately. I was just imagining a single line on a weapon when you look at it in your inventory, under the speed/damage/delay line a line that says something like "Your current average damage per turn with this weapon is x" or even on the main screen have a "wp dpt: X" line under the quiver. For any imaginary scenarios (like shopping at stores) you'd still need to use the spreadsheet.

[Southpaw]

In order for weapon damage to be meaningful though you need a rather large amount of information. For example, having a very fast weapon with high damage enchantments might do the same damage per full turn as a slower, heavier hitting weapon does against a target with no forms of damage reduction/mitigation. But once you start factoring in enemy defenses, one or the other might actually be a way better option. This kind of information could just as easily mislead a newer player as it could assist them.

[danr]

I think it would probably be more limited than that. Similar to spell power, it would just tell you how much of that weapons max potential damage per turn you can currently exploit. It would probably have to exclude brand damage for simplicity sake.

[BlackSheep]

This is why it doesn't make sense to try to come up with a single number to display for each weapon. The components of weapon damage, speed and brand all become relevant at different times. A weapon summary that says something like:

  Code:

This weapon deals an average of X damage per strike.
Attacks with this weapon take an average of X turns.
This weapon's brand (flaming) increases damage by 25% against non-resistant enemies.

...communicates the various pieces of information, but leaves it up to the player to understand that fast weapons with low damage are worse against high AC targets. The only part that's hidden currently is the average damage calculation, and that number is fixed based on the weapon's enchantment level and the player's stats/skills/slaying. (Temporary enhancements like berserk/might aside.)

[glexus]

Why not have it show how much damage you would do on average if you hit yourself for one whole turn at the time of analysis?

The player knows his/her own resistances, armour, skills, current buffs etc etc, and can modify many of these things (e.g. by removing armour). So you get an idea of the damage you would deal to a monster like yourself at the time of analysis.

[crate]

Players tend to have dramatically higher AC/EV numbers than monsters do, so displaying how much damage a weapon would do if you hit yourself is not terribly useful.

The weapons already display base damage and actual attack speed (the latter as long as you turn on show_game_turns (which defaults to on as of 0.11, I think) and actually look at it). This is all you really need to figure out roughly how much damage your weapon does compared to other weapons of the same type (which is generally all you need to know). I agree the information could be better presented though.

[tasonir]

Yes, show game turns is enabled by default in .11 and is one of my favorite small changes. I got to remove that part from my naga guide, and hopefully it help people understand chei better, and therefore cope. Or just realize how great haste is and ignore my guide entirely

[wwf]

I have modified and updated the weapons lab.
I incremented the version number to 1.4.6.
The main feature that I have implemented is calculation of average damage.

Before average damage was calculated as average weapon damage - monster AC/2.
This is incorrect since a AC roll of 10 and a damage roll of 5 does not result in -5 damage, but 0 damage.
This made previous versions of the spreadsheet overestimate the damage of small fast weapons on monsters with large AC.
The corrections should show the "punch through" effect of high damage weapons vs small fast weapons.

Walter

[Roy]

Thanks - this is great! Any chance you can convert it to a Google Spreadsheet so it's easier to view? This is how the Spell Lab is done.

[battaile]

I have modified and updated the weapons lab.
I incremented the version number to 1.4.6.
The main feature that I have implemented is calculation of average damage.

Before average damage was calculated as average weapon damage - monster AC/2.
This is incorrect since a AC roll of 10 and a damage roll of 5 does not result in -5 damage, but 0 damage.
This made previous versions of the spreadsheet overestimate the damage of small fast weapons on monsters with large AC.
The corrections should show the "punch through" effect of high damage weapons vs small fast weapons.

Walter

Trying to use this version in open-office gives me a lot of errors which seem to be related to the named regions, which apparently have undergone some changes over the last few versions (I'm still using the one from the op). I've chatted with others on IRC that have the same problem. I tried doing some home-surgery but was unable to fix it, any ideas?

[Kate]

Unstickied this since Fsim now does a pretty good job for weapon damage (and it appears to be out-of-date).