Penetrating Large Rocks

[Siegurt]

Yes it will; maybe you don't know what '.' does. If you aim to a square and press ".", the missile you launch will not pass beyond that square.

I know what '.' does. Consider this example:
You are in corridor and there are 2 monsters, each has 20% to be hit by large rock. In old crawl you could throw a rock and experience the following results:
1) 20% - only first enemy is hit
2) 16% (0.8*0.2) - only second enemy is hit
3) 64% - no enemy is hit.

In new crawl you have
1) 4% (0.2*0.2) - both enemies are hit
2) 16% (0.2*0.8) - only first enemy is hit
3) 16% (0.8*0.2) - only second enemy is hit
4) 64% - no enemy is hit

In new crawl with '.' at first enemy:
1) 20% - only first enemy is hit
2) 80% - no enemy is hit.

You have almost half a chance to hit an enemy comparing with #1 (20% instead of 36%).

For more enemies it gets even worse - you lose chance to hurt all of them except first one.
If you are throwing a rock at 5 monsters and every monster has 20% chance to be hit, you had more than 63% to hit one of them, with '.' you have only 20%.

You should select the *last* enemy in the line and use '.' for optimal hit chances and lowest "have to go fetch my item" problems.

Note this was also the optimal behavior under the old system (if you wanted to avoid backtracking to pick up missed shots)

[Sandman25]

You should select the *last* enemy in the line and use '.' for optimal hit chances and lowest "have to go fetch my item" problems.
Note this was also the optimal behavior under the old system (if you wanted to avoid backtracking to pick up missed shots)

Perhaps I got something wrong but I treated "use ." suggestion as a way to *avoid* penetration, to impose a honest conduct ("penetration is overpowered and will be nerfed soon, I will not use it").

Edit. Here is the original quote: "If you really can't accept how this affects Troll and Ogre players, you can choose to use . to prevent your own rocks from penetrating."

[Lasty]

Sandman's analysis of my comment is correct, and his response is also valid. I retract that statement, but stand by the larger point of the post, which is that this is a really small change to a minority of Crawl games, and thus not really worth getting worked up about.

[Siegurt]

Yes, I was conflating the comment about '.' with something someone else had said about penetration causing extra work retrieving ammo.

[pubby]

I personally am not in the habit of having several dangerous monsters on the screen at once.

Jackals, bees, wolves, ugly things, and those vaults with 50 enemies inside are noticeably easier with penetration rocks.

How about you read the commit messages?

  Code:

commit 02ff1875cfc357c5f47c284aff75f85bb861850a
Author: Brendan Hickey <brendan@bhickey.net>
Date:   Sat Sep 14 12:41:58 2013 -0700


    Make Large Rocks penetrating

    Silently brand all large rocks as penetrating.
    This is mostly a buff to Stone Giants and Cyclopses.
    I considered accompanying this change with a reduction to damage,
    but I'm ambivalent on that.

As you can see, the main point was to buff monsters, not players. And the considered nerf is damage, not mulch rate. A lot of this pointless discussion could have been avoided if you guys took the time to read the commit message instead of making wrong assumptions on the reasons of the change.

I did read the commit message, but it described what happened rather than why.

Here's the type of commit message I really appreciate:

  Code:

Replace Caniforms with Druid's Call

Even after being buffed somewhat, Caniforms summoned only virtually
harmless monsters for the druid's depth, and worse, the druid's speed
meant summoning them in large numbers. Possibly these were originally
intended to provide movement constraints to block the player from
escaping angry trees, but dryads already focus upon this angle.
Instead, let's replace the spell with something thematically similar,
but which hopefully sidesteps the problems the original suffered.

Druid's Call summons wild beasts from elsewhere on the level to
the druid's location and grants them might in the process. Each cast
will summon either 2 lower-HD monsters (HD<10) or a single higher-HD
monster.

The definition of 'beast' here is hoped to be somewhat intuitive to
players (ie: wild animals of various kinds), but admittedly has some
fuzzy lines to it. Currently it is defined as any natural holiness
creature of insect, reptile, or animal intelligence, excluding dragons,
ugly things, ice/sky beasts, spirit wolves, and butterflies. And apises
(which are still bulls, despite being holy). Possibly these criteria
can use further adjustment.

[XuaXua]

Best Crawl experience today: end of ice portal with frost giant and yaks. Read new scroll of immolation (autopickup HELL YES), throw large penetration rock, walk away.

[twelwe]

my clvl6 OgHu has found 12 large rocks excuse me, large rocks of penetration, in addition to the 5 i started with, along with the tomahawks, needles and stones all by d:4

[brendan]

Jackals, bees, wolves, ugly things, and those vaults with 50 enemies inside are noticeably easier with penetration rocks.

Most players are going to be on the receiving end of large rocks. There are 24 races that can't use them.
As people in the thread have pointed out, this is primarily a debuff to summoners and eovcable users. Stone giants should be scary.
I've received feedback that the change is fun. If the boost to Og and Tr is too significant, there are other knobs we can turn. I think we'd all prefer not to be paralyzed by the status quo.

I did read the commit message, but it described what happened rather than why.

Sure, I can write better commit messages.

[Sandman25]

It's a nerf to conjurers also, just got wounded by the same large rock which killed my battlesphere.

[RBrandon]

From a pure flavour standpoint, it doesn't really make sense for large rocks to penetrate. Doing damage would require the rock to expend its energy and slow down. For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KcaDYsAudo
(It's the same concept, but with high mass instead of high speed)

While this wouldn't be a problem for, say, a rat it doesn't make as much sense for a rock to punch through a giant, let alone a row of them. I guess this applies to bolts and javelins too but at least they make holes in dudes and they have magic going for them.

They did come in handy when I was chucking them around, but I wasn't playing Su or similar so I didn't notice the buff to giants and cyclopes. Didn't summoners kinda get nerfed into the ground already?

[dck]

http://crawl.develz.org/learndb/index.h ... m_of_crawl

[brendan]

watermelons

  Code:

You butcher the watermelon dragon.
You see here a watermelon dragon hide.
You pick up the watermelon dragon hide.
You read the scroll of enchant armour.
The watermelon dragon hide glows and becomes watermelon dragon armour!
You spit a watermelon seed at the banana slug.
The banana slug hits you!!!
Ouch! That hurt!
You die...


[roctavian]

You throw the large rock!
It mushes the manticore like a melon!

[Lasty]

Inspired by this change and also the addition of tomahawks, I started up a couple ogre hunters of chei. The first one was doing quite well albeit struggling w/ limited ammo until he hit a cyclops in late D, but then died in some foolish way I've now forgotten. The second has two runes, has maxed Throwing, has cleared the dungeon down to 27, and has more ammo of just about every type than he knows what to do with.

At this point I can say 1) making Throwing your primary offensive skill with an ogre is a reasonable choice, because large rocks are quite powerful, and ogres can easily pick up a decent M&F weapon as backup without spending much XP, and 2) if large rocks didn't have penetration, there's no way that this Throwing-first build w/ Chei would work. The penetrating brand turns each rock into something like "bolt of highly accurate iron shot", which helps a character who can't run away deal with bigger crowds of things. That said, I strongly suspect that w/o Chei, penetrating would be merely a nice perk.

However, it is frustrating that even with ~40 strength and 27 Throwing, boulders still often stop short of full LOS range.

[Lasty]

I just posted a YAVP of the character alluded to above https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=9448#p129711. 27 Throwing + large rocks worked out pretty well for me, though I think the thing that really made the game feel easy at the end (and it did) was the crazy hp/defenses I had. Still, being able to toss rocks through crowds of summoned demons to hit fiends and summoners behind them was very nice.