The Tavern

Right now, when you press tab with ranged weapons, it just picks a target like tab normally would, and then fires at them as if you'd targeted them with f. You can change it to shoot as if you'd used . instead of f all the time, but that's not always what you want either. Obviously, sometimes tab won't produce the optimal behavior, it's there to speed the game up, not play it for you, but there are a lot of straightforward cases where the behavior of tabbing with ranged weapons could be hugely improved.

If there is only one enemy in line of fire, fire as if you'd used ., otherwise fire as if you'd used f. Depending on computational complexity, this could be simplified to just use . if there's only one enemy in LOS, or complexified to specifically try to fire in lines that would hit multiple enemies.
Don't fire through a plan if you don't have to. To accompany this point, I provide the following diagram demonstrating a situation that occurred when pressing tab:

3. Remove plants

4. fix the bug where autofight with ranged weapons makes you read scrolls

It's not a bug that is exclusive to ranged autofight, though it does seem to happen more often with it.

it is, as far as i know, exclusive to ranged autofight and polearm autofight

Well polearms aren't really a ranged weapon ever since throwing spears got removed. Anyway, I can't say 100% that I had it happen with non-polearm melee, but it did happen to me with melee, and I don't use polearms all that much.

I don't see how the situation required for it to happen could ever arise with non-polearm melee. The bug occurs because ranged/polearm autofight enters targeting mode, in which commands have different meaning than they do in the main interface. Ranged/polearm autofight ends up reading scrolls because 'r' is for reading scrolls in the main interface and 'r' is for centering the cursor on the player in the targeting interface. Ranged/polearm autofight ends up making you move towards monsters because the movement commands move the player in the main interface but move the cursor in the targeting interface.

Non-reaching melee autofight never enters targeting mode or any other screen. It just sends one movement command and that's it.

Remove Tab

if tab was removed I can guarantee you I would never play crawl again

what tab?

vergil wrote:3. Remove plants

TonberryJam wrote:Remove Tab

To continue the list of things that could be removed to "solve" the problem in the image:

Remove ranged weapons

Make tab try to skewer through as many enemies as possible, and end with `.` on the last one, giving you a chance to hit something even if you miss.

Maybe something akin to granting plants a flag (count as a wall for bow targeting purposes).

sooheon wrote:Make tab try to skewer through as many enemies as possible, and end with `.` on the last one, giving you a chance to hit something even if you miss.

Unless the targeted tile would be deep water, in which case use Enter rather than .

sooheon wrote:Make tab try to skewer through as many enemies as possible, and end with `.` on the last one, giving you a chance to hit something even if you miss.

This would be the ideal behavior as long as it's fast enough to not cause too much server load when playing online.

Better solution: remove the not-super-important-but-technically-optimal-to-plan-for case where missed arrows will fly past the first target and hit a second. When a non-penet projectile hits or misses a target, make it drop to the ground underneath that creature.

Then instead of having to do this annoying micromanagey thing where you always aim *past* your target, you can simply aim at the enemy you want to shoot at without losing out on efficiency.

genericpseudonym wrote:Better solution: remove the not-super-important-but-technically-optimal-to-plan-for case where missed arrows will fly past the first target and hit a second. When a non-penet projectile hits or misses a target, make it drop to the ground underneath that creature.

Then instead of having to do this annoying micromanagey thing where you always aim *past* your target, you can simply aim at the enemy you want to shoot at without losing out on efficiency.

As an addional bonus it would be a very slight nerf to ranged weapons.

The Tavern

Improve tabbing with ranged weapons

Improve tabbing with ranged weapons

Re: Improve tabbing with ranged weapons

Re: Improve tabbing with ranged weapons

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Re: Improve tabbing with ranged weapons

Re: Improve tabbing with ranged weapons

Re: Improve tabbing with ranged weapons

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Re: Improve tabbing with ranged weapons

Re: Improve tabbing with ranged weapons

Re: Improve tabbing with ranged weapons

Re: Improve tabbing with ranged weapons

Re: Improve tabbing with ranged weapons