Walking at the pace of your minions shouldn't screw you

[nago]

My last char (DDNe) died specifically for this reason:

The stone giant shouts!
The stone giant throws a large rock. The large rock hits you!!!
* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
The stone giant throws a large rock. The large rock hits you!!!
You die...

If you have decided to walk at the speed of your undead minions (quite common for anyone using skeletons/zombie), that means you're going to generally give double turns to enemies first entering to LOS -which is very painful when they have ranged attack (but it's quite bad even for other critters).
I know chei suffers the same problem, but in my opinion that's a separate matter, because the god is pretty much about the conduit being slow which largely change all the gameplay (especially during combat) - while this walking speed setting only affects autoexplore, and is used to free the player from manually obtaining the same result in a damned tedious way. I don't think the game should punish for not playing in the most boring way (had I preferred to manually explore all the levels, my char would have been still alive).

So what I'm suggesting is:
1st) Don't give double turns to monster entering in LOS, like my example, thus considering the player speed like normal when "entering combat" if the slow movement is due to the setting and not some ingame effect (chei, slow, whatever)
2nd) More general solution: give skeletons, zombie speed 10. In that way the monsters wouldn't be anymore the free exp actually are while I don't believe the buff for the minions would be so noticeable
3rd) if nothing change insert a message like: "walking at slow speed will save your mental health when playing Ne, but will randomly kill your character"

[damiac]

I recently ran into a similar situation, but it wasn't deadly for me(luckily). I did lose about 50% HPs due to eating a few lightning blasts, I think due to the fact that my slowest minion was something extremely slow.

So yeah, if moves into monster LOS could use your normal move speed, it would be nice. There's no gameplay justification for why my character just sat there like an idiot eating lightning bolts to the face.

Also giving all zombies and skeletons speed 10 would be nice, and as you say, make them non-trivial enemies at the same time.

[nagdon]

Giving zombies the original speed of the creature would be an interesting and probably good change, I would definitely want to try it. It would convert zombies from trivial kiting exercises into meaningful opponents (and undead resistances and mindlessness still differentiates them from the original monsters). Of course defeating zombies would be a bit hard for Venom Mages and low-level Ice Elementalists, so maybe generating too strong zombies in early D should be checked/toned down; but this is not a critical problem.

[TeshiAlair]

Even Chei LoS kills are annoying as hell, or autoinvis Sigmund.

[damiac]

Well Chei is a bit of a different matter, as the god is actually making you move extra slowly. On the other hand when moving at the speed of your slowest ally, I picture the guy taking a step, then standing there for a while, waiting for the slowpokes to catch up. So there's no reason he can't react to seeing a monster in LOS.

With that said, I'd like it if all 'move to LOS and die' events didn't happen, Chei or otherwise.

[XuaXua]

Giving zombies the original speed of the creature would be an interesting and probably good change, I would definitely want to try it. It would convert zombies from trivial kiting exercises into meaningful opponents (and undead resistances and mindlessness still differentiates them from the original monsters).

Pfft. Give them a higher speed than average speed; running zombies are always a heck of a lot more frightening than walkers.

[BrewFall]

Instead of slowing your speed when walking with slow allies you could keep your original speed, but sometimes wait, as in spend a turn resting instead of moving, to let them catch up.

[Quazifuji]

Instead of slowing your speed when walking with slow allies you could keep your original speed, but sometimes wait, as in spend a turn resting instead of moving, to let them catch up.

3rd) if nothing change insert a message like: "walking at slow speed will save your mental health when playing Ne, but will randomly kill your character"

Waiting a lot for minions to catch up is really annoying.

[damiac]

No, I think he meant change the way the ctrl+e thing works, so when you 'match your speed to your slowest ally' instead of taking 25 aut per step, instead you take a normal step, then wait automatically. So it would look pretty much the same as now, but you wouldn't end up sitting in enemy LOS for more than the usual amount of time.

However, since you cannot wait less than 10 auts, this means walking around with slow minions would take longer, unless they special cased it to just wait the correct amount of time for the minions to keep up (so for example, take 1 step, then wait exactly 15 auts, then take another step, etc)

EDIT: fixed the aut numbers

[dck]

Uh, okay 10 aut are what a "turn" is (which is what you're calling auts) and there are obviously actions that are completed in less than 10 aut already so this doesn't look like a huge change to the system to me.
It would be a much better system than giving yourself false naga-itis if you don't want your titan zombies to fall behind; all things considered thought, it's pretty silly needing such workarounds to get the act of walking around with minions not make the player want to kill himself.

[Arrhythmia]

Speaking of changes to AUT-and-turn fuckery, whatever happened that one patch (I think galehar was making it) where pressing "." would case you to wait only until an enemy reached melee range?

e: that was a poor description of it but I'm just hoping someone remembers

[duvessa]

It was reverted because of bad performance.

[damiac]

It would have been nice to be able to just wait until an enemy took a step toward you, and have fine control over turns like that.

[Galefury]

AFAIK it would require some major behind the scenes changes to how player and monster actions are handled.

[sgrunt]

It would have been nice to be able to just wait until an enemy took a step toward you, and have fine control over turns like that.

I tried to implement this at one point. The basic concept worked well, but the way it was implemented it caused a major performance hit; a better implementation is greatly sought after.

[TeshiAlair]

Idea- undead have regular move speed, but slower attacks.

[khalil]

Idea- undead have regular move speed, but slower attacks.

This would solve the problem of them not being a threat in any way while also solving the problems mentioned in the thread, thus making Crawl a better game overall. Thus, I can say without a doubt it will never be implemented.

[spudwalt]

It would have been nice to be able to just wait until an enemy took a step toward you, and have fine control over turns like that.

I tried to implement this at one point. The basic concept worked well, but the way it was implemented it caused a major performance hit; a better implementation is greatly sought after.

Ah, I'd wondered what became of that. Oh, well.

Idea- undead have regular move speed, but slower attacks.

I could see that working.

[Pereza0]

It was reverted because of bad performance.

Shame, would have been ideal.

Idea- undead have regular move speed, but slower attacks.

This also has a problem, many slower monsters can be zombified, it does not make sense for them to be faster than their living counterparts. It affects every character build, not just necromancers, not a decision to be taken lightly.

I would suggest adding a third toggleable speed, most of this issues come from the players moving at an extremely slow pace (eg:Zombie Goliath Beetle) and getting things thrown at them when stepping into unseen areas.

If the player is allowed to move at an intermediate speed (for example, that of most companions or regular zombies) instead of that of the slowest of the bunch, only extremely slow creatures would be left behind. If you have none of those, moving at the slowest speed is still a good option.

It doesn't entirely solve the issue, but it does strike a balance between moving faster than everyone and moving at (literally) slug speed. I don't think it is unintuitive or too complicated either.

Eventually, a better implementation would be ideal, but in the meantime this would suffice and make the game more enjoyable without requiring huge changes to the code or the gameplay.

[giovform]

Yeah, I think combining two suggestions above would make the problem almost null: zombies with the same speed as their living, but slower attacks and player speed an average of the group, not the slowest.