Should auxillary attacks benefit from the Speed brand?

[XuaXua]

Discussion initiated here.

Basically, it was noted that a Vine Stalker benefits more from a speed-branded weapon because it gives the VS more aux attacks (bite attacks) for regeneration purposes.

This is because aux attack opportunities take place at what seem to be any melee attack attempt. Did the Speed brand allow the VS to consume faster? Does the speed brand of a short sword allow the non-shield-carrying attacker to punch faster?

Conceptually, it shouldn't, but it does. Is that OK?

--- end actual topic of this thread -- begin discussion --

My opinion on the matter is "no". I'm of the line of thought that, perhaps, aux attacks should have their own attack speed that is less than or equal to the primary melee attack speed.

While the main idea of this thread is whether aux should benefit from the speed brand (does it benefit from other brands), one possible solution would be to have aux be launched on a 1 attack per X aut basis. (AUT = abstract unit of time).

For example:
- currently, if a speed brand made you attack every .5 aut, you also aux-attack once every .5 aut. This gives 4 hit attempts (2 weapon, 2 aux) per 1 aut.
- if aux were set to 1 attack per 1 aut (adjusted by... Fighting and level, perhaps? Maybe give always-trainable Unarmed something to do?), then if a speed brand made you attack every .5 aut, you'd get 3 hits (2 weapon, 1 aux) per 1 aut.

Would it make sense to do this? In the revised case, aux would be used on the first attack it is capable of being used on, then would not apply to an attack again until the "recharge" aut period passed.

[crate]

I think the status quo is good because you get a chance to aux attack every time you attack. Nice and simple. No need to make it more complicated. You need to find some significant benefits to support this change, since it's assuredly a not-trivial amount of work, and would require addressing things like really slow attacks (you can get attack delays upward of 3.0 turns without too much work if that's your goal! Do you give 3 aux attack attempts in a single action? How hard would that be to code?) and I'm not sure that it's even any better for gameplay.

[XuaXua]

I don't know how hard that would be to code, but once separation is done, which I suspect would be the toughest part, then I don't believe it would be that hard to compute.

In that case where the primary attack is significantly slower, I'd think it reasonable for the aux attack to fire more than once, depending on which aux attack it is.

[duvessa]

It's not about the code, it's about the complexity you're introducing. Right now you get an aux attack chance on every attack. You want to change that to an aux attack every 10 aut. This sounds fine if you don't think about it at all, but as soon as you do, it gets weird: if you're in statue form, do you get more aux attacks per regular attack? What about if you're just under the slow or haste effect? You say speed brand shouldn't affect aux attack speed; what about finesse, shield penalties, and everything else that affects your attack delay?
Getting more aux attacks when you use faster weapons might be unintuitive. But getting the same amount of aux attacks regardless of your attack delay would be equally unintuitive, and having some of haste/slow/speed brand/shields/etc affect your aux delay but not others would be ridiculously unintuitive.

[Siegurt]

I feel like this would be worse for game play, this seems like an attempt to apply one persons feeling for what is 'realistic' and turn it into game design.

That's bad rationale for game design to start with, then on top of which there is complexity of your suggestion.

For the player, now not only do you have to worry about your attack speed but also an entirely unrelated aux attack speed. This also adds a significant amount of ugly special cased code.

Aux attacks are already highly random (there is a stat based roll, then a set chance based on the type of attack, then an attack roll, then finally an ac roll) adding another skill to train just for better aux attacks is awkward and awful.

Aux attacks also currently fill a very useful role by making it so that some races can benefit from using smaller less powerful weapons, increasing the game's replayability, and diversifying the number of viable strategies. Decoupling aux attacks from weapon attacks negates this.

Finally, as irrelevant as I think reality is for game design, I dispute your contention that it doesn't make sense conceptually. An attack action isn't done with the weapon alone, your entire body is involved in an attack with a melee weapon, and so implicitly your whole body must be moving faster at least in some respect including your horns, claws, tentacles or pointy teeth.
An attack in a game is representative of a whole series of individual actions designed to get by your opponents defenses and strike him in an effective way, there is nothing wrong conceptually with a magic weapon that makes that process faster also letting you try to get a head butt in along the way. Not that realism is useful for game design.

[Sprucery]

Siegurt's points seem solid. Personally though I think it would be good if UC affected aux attacks somehow (perhaps just damage if not speed) because a) it would be logical (newbies often think that it does) and b) there's too much exp in Crawl anyway, right?

[Lasty]

A few months back I was suggesting a similar idea to the OP, though I was thinking 7 AUT would be the default aux attack speed. I was dissuaded by other devs and experienced players with arguments similar to the ones already in this post. Even just focusing on the end result of the change, all it does is remove a few ways that fast, low-damage weapons can be good, which, at best, reduces weapon differentiation. While I have sympathy for the idea, I have come to the conclusion that this is a bad idea.

[XuaXua]

Right now you get an aux attack chance on every attack. You want to change that to an aux attack every 10 aut. This sounds fine if you don't think about it at all, but as soon as you do, it gets weird: if you're in statue form, do you get more aux attacks per regular attack? What about if you're just under the slow or haste effect? You say speed brand shouldn't affect aux attack speed; what about finesse, shield penalties, and everything else that affects your attack delay?

I'd say if it affects the player equally / comprehensively (statue form, slow/haste, finesse), then it should affect aux attack. Shields? Perhaps; that would be dependent on the type of aux attack. Also if this went forward, it would make sense for different aux attacks to have different cooldown periods.

Look, I don't pay enough in-game attention to aux attacks, or even rely on the precise moment when an aux attack launches. I just know that they supplement potential damage for a round, and with speed brand enhancing, that makes them even more powerful. For some characters it might not make sense to speed brand, but if you have some powerful aux, it certainly looks like the brand to acquire. Keeping that in mind, there are some alternatives.

Alternatives to the cooldown idea would be (1) to reduce aux accuracy under speed brand effects (speed brand would only make your use of the primary weapon faster, so while you have more aux attacks, you're less likely to succeed, evening it out), or to at least (2) ensure the description of speed brand explicitly states it affects overall attack speed for all combined offensive melee attacks (primary weapon and non-retaliatory auxiliary attacks) made by the player when wielded and used.

The idea of reducing aux accuracy under a speedier primary attack is an iteration of the original revision of the speed brand, which had damage (I think) reduced as a nerf; I believe that was determined to be inconsequential and removed. Accuracy reduction could potentially be based on some combination of (a) type of aux attack, (b) some potentially relative skill levels / overall player level. Reducing accuracy while maintaining the 1:1 prime:aux attack pattern could mechanically equate to a reduced number of aux attacks under a speed brand. There is currently no "attack speed" associated with aux attacks, so unless that was set, it is sort of not possible to adjust the primary attack accuracy (which is what would be done) if the primary is slower than the aux attack.

I agree that this may be over complicating things, but I'm glad to see with Lasty's post that the dev team actually discussed this exact concept at some point prior to this thread.

[crate]

An alternate solution that sounds better to me is to make speed brand go away. Since that seems to be literally the only thing you have a problem with.

[XuaXua]

An alternate solution that sounds better to me is to make speed brand go away. Since that seems to be literally the only thing you have a problem with.

I don't have a problem with the brand itself; as implemented, it's haste for all offensive melee attacks while held. What I hold issue with is that it's not explained as "haste for all offensive melee attacks while held", rather it is described as "attacks with this weapon are significantly faster". Speeding up aux attacks is a hidden bonus, well-known (abused?) to spoiled players.

In my suggestions, I've not once requested speed brand be removed. I've made three suggestions:
1 - give aux attacks their own weapon speed and the requisite mechanics therein
2 - give aux attacks an accuracy penalty when used in conjunction with speed brand
3 - change the description of the speed brand.

Changing the description of the speed brand description for melee weapons from "attacks with this weapon are significantly faster" to something similar to "all melee attacks while wielding this weapon are significantly faster" (which doesn't necessarily include or exclude aux attacks in the sentence) would suffice.

[crate]

Changing the description of the speed brand description for melee weapons from "attacks with this weapon are significantly faster" to something similar to "when wielded, this weapon enhances the speed of all melee attacks" would suffice.

of course, let's suggest a complicated solution instead of the simple one; that way i can bait out lots of forum posts before i acknowledge that wait yes there's a better fix

[XuaXua]

Changing the description of the speed brand description for melee weapons from "attacks with this weapon are significantly faster" to something similar to "when wielded, this weapon enhances the speed of all melee attacks" would suffice.

of course, let's suggest a complicated solution instead of the simple one; that way i can bait out lots of forum posts before i acknowledge that wait yes there's a better fix

I mentioned it the post prior to yours, but sure, let's make this a personal attack.

[damiac]

Changing the description of the speed brand description for melee weapons from "attacks with this weapon are significantly faster" to something similar to "when wielded, this weapon enhances the speed of all melee attacks" would suffice.

of course, let's suggest a complicated solution instead of the simple one; that way i can bait out lots of forum posts before i acknowledge that wait yes there's a better fix

Yeah! Goddamn punks making suggestions, 'baiting' people like crate to waste their time being a dick on the forums instead of solving the world's problems. Someone's gotta have the balls to make a stand against forum users discussing game design in the game design section of the forum!

[johlstei]

Having aux attacks influence weapon selection is cool and I don't think the game would gain anything if that went away, and it would especially suffer if an additional layer of complexity were added to replace the very elegant "you use aux attacks when you attack". If the problem is that it is unclear that the speed brand speeds up aux attacks, why not just add that to the description speed branded weapons?

[cjo]

Changing the description of the speed brand description for melee weapons from "attacks with this weapon are significantly faster" to something similar to "all melee attacks while wielding this weapon are significantly faster" (which doesn't necessarily include or exclude aux attacks in the sentence) would suffice.

This seems like an easy and reasonable change.

[PleasingFungus]

Changing the description of the speed brand description for melee weapons from "attacks with this weapon are significantly faster" to something similar to "all melee attacks while wielding this weapon are significantly faster" (which doesn't necessarily include or exclude aux attacks in the sentence) would suffice.

This seems like an easy and reasonable change.

it's missing the point. why call out the speed brand specifically, when finesse, haste, weapon skill all increase the "speed" of aux attacks...

imo, if you were going to do anything, the 'right solution' would be to stick a note about aux attacks being tied directly to melee attacks in the manual. I don't think even that is necessary, though. no one is actually confused about that, not even in this thread...

just a big waste of words.

[Lyrick]

Not advocating for changing aux attacks, but instead of changing the frequency of aux attacks by time, why not change the frequency by changing its %change to trigger?

Right now I believe each individual aux attack has a (str+dex)/50 chance of activating; multiply by this by the auts of your next attack to change its frequency.

This keeps the status quo of aux attack being able to activate with every attack, and would all have the same frequency.

eg. 15 str and dex, for a 30/50 chance to activate.

If you got a quick blade and attacked every 0.3 auts, you'd only have a 9/50 chance to activate an aux attack with every attack.

If you had a triple sword and was attacking every 0.7 auts, you'd have a 21/50 change to activate an aux attack with every attack. So they'd activate aux attacks at roughly the same rate.

We'd have consistent aux attacks and no more complexity.

[duvessa]

Right now you get the same aux attack chance on every attack. You want to change that to the same aux attack chance every 10 aut. This sounds fine if you don't think about it at all, but as soon as you do, it gets weird: if you're in statue form, do you get a higher aux attack chance per regular attack? What about if you're just under the slow or haste effect? You say speed brand shouldn't affect aux attack chance; what about finesse, shield penalties, and everything else that affects your attack delay?
Getting more aux attacks when you use faster weapons might be unintuitive. But getting the same amount of aux attacks regardless of your attack delay would be equally unintuitive, and having some of haste/slow/speed brand/shields/etc affect your aux chance but not others would be ridiculously unintuitive.

[Lyrick]

b-be gentle duvy o_o
Mebbe multiply them by an appropriate factor once more? If the concern was only about different speed weapons providing disproportionate benefit to aux attacks, then it could apply just to weapons; hasted or slowed players would have more/less aux attacks as appropriate.

...anyways I got no notion of game balance, I just thought this might be slightly more intuitive than aux attacks at a different rate.