Minimum delay demystified

[mrbobbyg]

How about when you inspect a weapon it will tell you the weapon skill needed to "master" it or get it to its minimum delay? I don't think this would have any negative effects, and would save people a trip to the wiki when they pick up a weapon they don't understand.

It might even save a few new players from death when they see how hard it is to master that awesome great sword they just found and were thinking about equipping.

Thoughts?

[giygas]

I like this Idea. Actually, I think that there should be a thing in the info screen for each weapon that says how much damage per turn you do with that weapon. This would save a lot of tedious calculation.

[Sporkman]

I've really wondered why the heck this isn't already there.

What I'd like to see is both minimum and current delay, as well as the skill needed to master it. Having to calculate your delay with a weapon feels a little ridiculous.

[mikee]

I'm not directly opposed to this idea, but please keep in mind two things:

1) This information is not necessary to win or even be good at the game - I know several players many would consider good players who do not bother to remember or calculate minimum delay for weapons.

2) There is already a plan to remove 'magic numbers' for minimum attack delay. This plan is outlined on the development wiki: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:combat:fighting_reform

and even on *the same page as your thread*:
https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5148

[mrbobbyg]

Excellent on those proposed changes!

I'm so amazed at the intellect people bring to bear on making this the best game ever. Thank you devs!!!!

As for the first part, I'm sure you're correct that this isn't vital information for a win. I only really suggested it because I thought the (a)benefit to players / (b)work for devs / (c)effect on game balance was a very high number.

[BlackSheep]

My only objection to excluding it from the information given to the player is that it's a pretty simple formula and all the components are exposed. That said, if the formula is changing soon, there's not much point in adding this.

[Sporkman]

Even with those changes, I think we should at least tell the player roughly how effective they are with their current weapon. Magic numbers may be bad, but feedback is good.

[mageykun]

think we should at least tell the player roughly how effective they are with their current weapon

That's what tapping @ and seeing your current attack speed is for. Of course, it gives you no indication of how fast you could be, so it's not so great for optimizing delay, but at least you can tell when the delay is bad.

[BlackSheep]

You can also see exactly how long your attacks take with show_game_turns enabled.

[graffen69]

Speaking of Weapon Speed this site http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?t ... apon_Speed shows wepon speed and the min. skill required to reach it for each specific weapon. This site http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?t ... ight_Guide, which is a fairly new MfDK guide, says that to reach min delay with spears you need 10 polearms and 12 with Demon Tridents. According to the former site however those min. delays are reached with skill 12 and 14 respectively. Which one is correct?

[BlackSheep]

The MfDK guide never explicitly says you'll reach min. delay at those skill levels, but there's no good reason not to recommend training spears or demon tridents to min delay, so that's kind of dumb. The Weapon Speed article has the right numbers for those weapons.

[mikee]

I don't get a lot of things in that guide at all. Why do you need leather armour; why do you need 10 traps & doors in lair (or 12 invocations); why do you have to use a demon trident/what do you do if you don't find one; what's with all the backtracking/won't that drive people insane if they are using yred?