Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 6454
Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06
Proposal: Make Str better
What I have in mind roughly is that either str, or your str weighted stat impact how quickly your trained weapon skill gets you to minimum delay, so that at say, 20 str, it's exactly as things are now, at 10 str it takes twice as many weapon skill points to get you to minimum delay and at 40 str it takes half as many weapon skill points to get you to min delay.
This would mean that large, heavy weapons would *not* always be the optimal choice for low-str characters, and increasing your Str would have a measurable impact on the game, without changing the ultimate disposition of the damage curve significantly.
I've always felt like a Str 10 elf swinging around a huge two handed triple sword just as quickly and easily as a monstrous Str 40 ogre was kind of silly anyway.
Using "Weighted Str" would mean that Dex would be a limiting factor as well, so that races with a strong disposition towards Str over dex (e.x. ogres) wouldn't have an over the top runaway bonus towards getting say, GSC online and at min delay super early.
Note that I'm not suggesting that additonal Str have any *other* impact on weapon damage (having 40 str should not effectively double your weapon skill for damage-doing purposes)
Alternately the penalty side could be implemented without any of the bonus side (So the *best* you could do is the current training regime) which would effectively mean there was a effective minimum str to use any given weapon optimally (This could perhaps be implemented as "You can only reduce a weapon's delay by a half your Strength") Which would have some of the same effect without giving any training discounts to people who push str further than the optimum level.
The second possibility is probably easier to balance, but I don't like it as well, it doesn't reward pushing Str to higher levels, as Dex and Int are rewarded currently in the realms that they give you bonuses.
It would also mean (and I think this is a good thing) that not all characters can get any weapon in the game to minimum delay with proper training, forcing people to branch out into lighter-but-less-damaging weapons as the best solution.
***Edit pulling some of the latest formula and code suggestions up from the thread below, just to make it easier for anyone who hasn't been following along and doesn't want to read the whole thing:
Current formula for weapon delay is base delay - (Skill+10/20) (Minimum half or .7) proposal is that Str influence the denominator of that formula, in the general form of:
Where currently "percentage" is 50%, "normal" is 20, and "current weighted str attribute" is the value returned by calc_stat_to_dam_base (Strength weighted towards dex, using weapon weighting)
Using our current suggested values, that reduces down to:
As the reduction in weapon deay (with the normal weapon minimum delay)
(Effectively increasing/decreasing the effect training has on weapon speed, but not increasing the current min/max delay, other than potentially making min delay be out of reach for certain weapons without increasing strength)
To effect this change, one line of code would need to be made in player_weapon_speed() in melee_attack.cc:
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