Autoautofight

[Hurkyl]

Problem: sometimes, it takes longer to conclude a fight than it really should.

Examples:

• Your high level MiBe gets unlucky and has to tab three times to kill that popcorn.
• The monster is otherwise unthreatening to you, but has high EV/SH
• Your well-defended short blades user is meleeing a monster with good AC/HP/resistances, but is not capable of damaging you at a significant rate, so the outcome of the fight is clear, it just takes a long time

The most obvious workaround is to simply hold tab down. This has problems, such as

• This doesn't work all that well in webtiles
• A new monster could wander into battle and kill you before you have time to react

Note that the second bullet point cannot be fully fixed with force_more: you only get a message the first time a particular monster enters view, so if there are any monsters you have seen but not killed (e.g. because you retreated), force_more cannot protect you from having them wander into battle to kill you.

Therefore, I suggest an extension to autofight that does more than one round of combat.

Specifics for the initial proposal are that autoautofight would autofight until one of the following conditions are met:

• Your HP drops below some threshold
• Any monster changes position in your LOS. (this includes entering LOS, leaving LOS, or dying)
• Any monster casts a spell
• You gain or lose a status effect, or its status light changes color

(these conditions are probably too conservative)

[tedric]

I would enjoy an option like this. Actually there should be three versions: current autofight (single attack), auto-autofight (stops whenever the foo you're hitting dies or moves away, or conditions above), and multi-auto-autofight (keeps plowing through foos until none can be reached, or conditions above).

Also: Monsters change position in LOS all the time without it mattering at all to the tab-fest, i.e. when you're fighting 1-on-1 just inside a 1-tile corridor and the rest of the mob is milling about in the room beyond. You'd probably have to special-case this to account for smite attacks, blinking foos, etc.

I wonder if this is the sort of thing someone can script up for insertion in rc files?

[PleasingFungus]

imho skip the intervening steps and go straight to parabolic

parabolic[1/1]: Lua bot that autoplays HOBe, returning control to a human pilot when it is scared of something. Written by elliptic and elliott. Piloted to a 32-minute win by elliptic.

[damiac]

A "shift+tab" autofight that just keeps tabbing until the situation changes would be cool. I'd say if such a thing were to be added, let it be simple, without the special casing tendric mentioned, just keep tabbing until a monster dies, a new monster shows up, or HP goes low (or if you hit a key)

[stickyfingers]

Shift+tab is already in use, it attacks in melee if possible, otherwise uses quivered throwing ammo.