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Slime creature change

PostPosted: Wednesday, 8th January 2020, 04:49
by phloomp
Slime creature merging is great for making bottlenecks less attractive. But it has problems as well:
  • Merging slows down mobs of slime creatures chasing the player. Since they start at normal speed, this is bad.
  • Player needs to have a sense of how hard 5 different monsters hit (slime creature, enormous slime creature, etc.) rather than just one
We can get the best of both worlds with the following change:
  • Slime creatures no longer merge
  • A slime creature can attack any square such that there is a path between it and that square occupied entirely by (player-hostile) slime creatures. In the picture below, the human can be attacked by any slime creature except the one in the top left:
      Code:
    J....
    ....J
    ...J.
    JJJ..
    J....
    .@...


Flavor: "The slime creature sends a shock wave through its brethren. The shock wave hits your crimson imp!"

Re: Slime creature change

PostPosted: Wednesday, 8th January 2020, 04:54
by chequers
You could use LoS to prevent slimes from attacking you. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

Re: Slime creature change

PostPosted: Wednesday, 8th January 2020, 06:44
by Aean
The reduced cognitive load is nice - memorizing fewer monsters. But it seems like there'd be a couple major flaws.

1. Tedious optimal behavior becomes even more tedious and optimal. Now it's even more optimal than before to lure each individual slime away and engage it by itself.

2. Line of sight. Either they can chain from out of sight - in which case luring becomes even more important, and we have frustrated players who got killed by titanic damage even though only one slime had been seen. Or they can't chain from out of sight - in which case luring and killholing and corner combat become even more optimal.

Re: Slime creature change

PostPosted: Wednesday, 8th January 2020, 09:47
by Sorcerous
So, this in crawl format? :)
I can't figure out how to do timestamps, it's at 2:26 or so.

Re: Slime creature change

PostPosted: Wednesday, 8th January 2020, 12:55
by rigrig
It would also be a nerf to their damage against AC chars and lower the chance of huge damage spikes.

Re: Slime creature change

PostPosted: Wednesday, 8th January 2020, 13:45
by petercordia
At a certain point of the game titanic slime creatures are the only real threat to characters with massive AC. I found out the hard way, losing my sand dwarf in the process.

It would be nice not to have to wait for slime creatures to separate.
Being able to split packs of slime creatures with stairs wouldn't be good though, imo.
And it adds some tactical depth that most characters actually want to prevent slimes merging.

Re: Slime creature change

PostPosted: Wednesday, 8th January 2020, 16:02
by rigrig
The split mechanic could probably be improved to reduce tediousness, maybe only make them split when taking damage?

Re: Slime creature change

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th January 2020, 14:22
by delarado
I think this would be a large buff to slime creatures, if I'm not mistaken.

Normally, it takes a turn to merge. In the example you give, if the player came downstairs to find that - said player would be liable for 22 damage if he chose to fight. The possibility exists for the creatures to merge, and greater damage to be delivered later.

If your change were enacted, i believe the player could receive up to 154 damage straight away (7x22)

I do actually kind of like the idea of the attack rippling through multiple slime creatures (as opposed to waiting for them to combine) but I think the mechanics would get very muddy, and the code very complicated if anyone tried to implement it without changing too much gameplay wise.

Re: Slime creature change

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th January 2020, 17:51
by b0rsuk
How exactly is your illustration desirable? The human is fighting slime creatures in the open. Why should he be punished for that? I thought the point is to reduce reliance on bottlenecks? I think your proposal mostly promotes stealth and divide&conquer tactics.