New launcher system


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 06:03

Re: New launcher system

svendre wrote:the amount of time it takes to go between various weaponry and launchers could be looked at and be variable in the way that changing a cloak doesn't take the same amount of time as body armour.
changing a cloak does take the same amount of time as body armour

Spider Stomper

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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 12:23

Re: New launcher system

sdynet wrote:ok. I'll take this matter into consideration and make a new proposal.
Opinion 1. launcher needs five turn to Wear on/off. This is extreme, but it can block most weapons Switching.
Opinion 2. Change the bullet to a rechargeable format. (maybe, Is the charging method XP or Exploration?) Magazine increases proportionally to skill level. And I will introduce the concept of miscast here. If your skill level is low, you are likely to waste additional bullets. For example, when your skill level is zero, the size of the magazine is five. When you use the launcher, you lose 1-3 more bulletins with a 33% chance. This probability is zero when the skill level is 15 or higher.
If you don't like misscast, you can set the charge speed low. These methods will make hunter's early game difficult, but... I think this is better than being neglected in indifference like this.
Opinion 3. Add +1 LOS to all launcher. This enhances the strength and weakness of launcher.

Throwing has four ways.
First, remove. Their duties are left to wand.
Second, change to the launcher weapon.
Third, change to the evocation item.
Fourth, Keep it the way it is. However, the concept miscast applies.


The response to opinion 1 seems not to be bad. And we already know this concept. When you use shields, you don't try to switch to bow. Instead, you use tomahawk or wand.
Launcher and throwing are similar and different skill. Our discussion is to make Launcher a major weapon. But personally, I think throwing has the location of a sub-weapon. Therefore, I think we'd better have a separate discussion about throwing. Discussing the two together creates unnecessary confusion.
I think 5(or 3) turns is needed for Wear on/off. Less than 3 turns does not solve the problem completely, and more than 5 turns is too long.
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Barkeep

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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 17:13

Re: New launcher system

You could also lean into the similarity of missiles and conjurations, and give the same sorts of drawbacks to low-skill missile combat that exist for conjurations. If there were a 5% chance of a longbow misfiring and making an alarm-level noise or slowing you or something, you'd probably not use it super much.

If conjurations move more in the direction of the Positional Attack Spells thread, then you even get a nice distinction in that missiles get simple targeting.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 17:40

Re: New launcher system

njvack wrote:You could also lean into the similarity of missiles and conjurations, and give the same sorts of drawbacks to low-skill missile combat that exist for conjurations. If there were a 5% chance of a longbow misfiring and making an alarm-level noise or slowing you or something, you'd probably not use it super much.

If conjurations move more in the direction of the Positional Attack Spells thread, then you even get a nice distinction in that missiles get simple targeting.

This is a much better type of solution than the "prevent people from switching to/from ranged weapons during combat" type of solution. It more directly addresses the root of the problem, and doesn't require any weird special casing for throwing.
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Blades Runner

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Post Friday, 8th February 2019, 00:08

Re: New launcher system

Siegurt wrote:
njvack wrote:You could also lean into the similarity of missiles and conjurations, and give the same sorts of drawbacks to low-skill missile combat that exist for conjurations. If there were a 5% chance of a longbow misfiring and making an alarm-level noise or slowing you or something, you'd probably not use it super much.

If conjurations move more in the direction of the Positional Attack Spells thread, then you even get a nice distinction in that missiles get simple targeting.

This is a much better type of solution than the "prevent people from switching to/from ranged weapons during combat" type of solution. It more directly addresses the root of the problem, and doesn't require any weird special casing for throwing.


If it was an alarm, then you'd have people sitting on staircases firing their bow over and over just to trigger the alarm ability, get some free shots in, head upstairs and come down a different set. If it was a random slow effect, then that would be far worse than longer weapon swap times and I probably wouldn't ever use it.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 8th February 2019, 00:45

Re: New launcher system

svendre wrote:
Siegurt wrote:
njvack wrote:You could also lean into the similarity of missiles and conjurations, and give the same sorts of drawbacks to low-skill missile combat that exist for conjurations. If there were a 5% chance of a longbow misfiring and making an alarm-level noise or slowing you or something, you'd probably not use it super much.

If conjurations move more in the direction of the Positional Attack Spells thread, then you even get a nice distinction in that missiles get simple targeting.

This is a much better type of solution than the "prevent people from switching to/from ranged weapons during combat" type of solution. It more directly addresses the root of the problem, and doesn't require any weird special casing for throwing.


If it was an alarm, then you'd have people sitting on staircases firing their bow over and over just to trigger the alarm ability, get some free shots in, head upstairs and come down a different set. If it was a random slow effect, then that would be far worse than longer weapon swap times and I probably wouldn't ever use it.

Well, if the point is to make you not use launchers *at low skill* then some "bad thing" (of presumably enough "badness" that it would discourage you from using the item with insufficent skill) would be fine, if your random slow effect was at 10% at zero skill, but 0.0001% at 5 skill, it'd probably be worth using. I assume whatever "badness" was applied it would scale with skill (to make it an analog of miscasting.)

Using the "long swap times" *as* the "bad thing" would probably work ok too, (A reasonable-to-explain simplification might be if your equip and unequip time for a weapon was equal to the attack time of the weapon, although I'm not sure that would be "bad" enough)
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Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Friday, 8th February 2019, 01:04

Re: New launcher system

You can't get too wild with the mechanics without defeating the purpose of having ranged weapons. Even if you don't give the player a message like "You fail to fire your bow correctly. You hear the fail horns from The Price is Right!" you're still introducing an element of surrealism that cuts against the basically thematic rationale for ranged weapons being in the game at all.

Obviously, I favor moving magic away from targeted effects. Moving ranged weaponry toward the space targeted magic currently occupies makes sense to me. One way to go would be to tie combat variables (damage, accuracy, delay, etc.) for ranged weapons more strongly to skill and armor. There's no reason ranged weapons should work like melee weapons. Making them suck in heavy armor and with low skill is totally reasonable and thematic. You could even tie targeting of ranged magic effects to ranged weapon use, giving some coherence to the arcane marksman concept.

As long as ranged weapons let the player do nonzero damage at no strategic or tactical cost, njvack's free damage problem is going to be there. It is unclear to me whether you can make the damage bad enough not to be worth it without long-switch and without breaking ranged weapon backgrounds. Tying weapon exchange times to weapon delay, perhaps with new especially long low skill delays for ranged weapons, may help early in the game.
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Spider Stomper

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Post Friday, 8th February 2019, 04:49

Re: New launcher system

I'll get it sorted out again.
Opinion 1. The switching speed of the launcher takes 5 turns when the skill level is 0. And 0.5 turns when the skill level is 10.
Opinion 2. The switching speed of the launcher is basically one third of Encumbrance rating(a minimum of 0.5). This figure can be lowered by training weapons and armor skills.
Opinion 3. When the skill level of the launcher is low, you have a chance of getting -swift or noise. This probability decreases rapidly with the skill level. 25% at zero, 5% at five, and 0% at ten.

Zot Zealot

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Post Friday, 8th February 2019, 09:02

Re: New launcher system

If you make the damage/accuracy low enough at low skill levels, it'll almost never be worth the bother to fire/throw stuff with no training. Especially if doing so costs more than 10 auts. Already I usually press '.' instead of 'ff' because it is simpler and it doesn't make much of a difference anyway.
If you specifically want to introduce a strategic cost to throwing/shooting at low skill, you could make the mulch rate skill dependent. That could make both melee dudes and hunters nicer to play, if it's implemented well.

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Post Friday, 8th February 2019, 09:49

Re: New launcher system

petercordia wrote:If you make the damage/accuracy low enough at low skill levels, it'll almost never be worth the bother to fire/throw stuff with no training.


Do you want to do hunter? Use melee/magic until your launcher skill level is at least 5 or higher. Because, damage/accuracy is low enough at a low skill level, it almost never be worth the bother to fire/throw stuff with no training.

This is a contradiction.

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Post Friday, 8th February 2019, 17:19

Re: New launcher system

yes I like the concept of hunter (and AM), although I do find them very difficult to play.

I agree there's a constraint that launchers must be worth using at the starting skill level, but that seems ok. Say accuracy is rubbish below skill level 4 (the Hunter starting skill). Most of my melee dudes don't train a launcher to skill level 4. Hunter would be fine. Melee dudes wouldn't use launchers.
For the AM it would lead to the interesting situation where they actually need to Corona everything they want to kill. Since wizards need to Magic Dart everything they want to kill, I don't think it'd be a disaster.

If you're worried that it will become optimal to train launchers to skill level 4, don't worry. A level of usefulness which is good enough to survive D:1 is not even enough to be a significant buff in D:15. If it's balanced well it may be just as effective to put skill points in a launcher as in armour.

If nerving launchers nerfs Hunters and AM, I think there are nice ways to buff these. eg, Give them 100 bolts instead of 20. I'm not sure that would be balanced, but I think it'd be fun. Currently my hunters use a dagger until they get into an emergency, then switch to the crossbow. If they had a 100 bolts they could just pepper everything from a distance. Even if the hit chance of each bolt was only 1/3, they'd probably still survive D:1.

All the above also applies to my suggestion of making the mulch rate skill dependent.

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Post Friday, 8th February 2019, 20:41

Re: New launcher system

BTW, I've just found a game which makes me doubt your claim that ranged weapons are overpowered, but too tedious.

It's a Halfling AK with a sling and a falcon, whose game plan was to go around shooting things and using Bend Space to gain distance.

The thing is, the falcon and the sling have the same stats (+2 to hit, 7 damage) but the falcon (at 5.5 skill) deals with enemies a lot faster than the sling (at 11.5 skill). Ammo management, meanwhile, is trivial. There are enough stones (though very few bullets so far), so I just press 'o' after every battle.

Here's the current character dump:
https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/pete ... 205857.txt
  Code:
 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.23.0 (webtiles) character file.

petercordia3 the Slinger (Halfling Abyssal Knight) Turns: 13096, Time: 00:48:31

Health: 65/65      AC: 13    Str: 16    XL:     10   Next: 7%
Magic:  14/14      EV:  8    Int: 10    God:    Lugonu [****..]
Gold:   482        SH:  6    Dex: 15    Spells: 9/9 levels left

rFire    . . .     SeeInvis .   b - +0 hunting sling
rCold    . . .     Gourm    .   z - +0 buckler
rNeg     . . .     Faith    .   D - +0 plate armour
rPois    .         Spirit   .   (no helmet)
rElec    .         Reflect  .   (no cloak)
rCorr    .         Harm     .   F - +0 pair of gloves
MR       .....                  (no boots)
Stlth    ..........             (no amulet)
HPRegen  0.20/turn              (no ring)
MPRegen  0.14/turn              (no ring)

@: no status effects
A: small, mutation resistance 1
a: Depart the Abyss, Bend Space, Banish, Corrupt, Renounce Religion


You are on level 7 of the Dungeon.
You worship Lugonu.
Lugonu is greatly pleased with you.
You are not hungry.

You have visited 2 branches of the dungeon, and seen 8 of its levels.
You have visited the Abyss 1 time.

You have collected 482 gold pieces.

Inventory:

Hand Weapons
 a - a +1 falchion
 b - a +0 hunting sling (weapon)
Missiles
 d - 208 stones (quivered)
 s - 9 throwing nets
 y - 27 sling bullets
 C - 88 arrows
Armour
 k - a shield
 z - a +0 buckler (worn)
 D - a +0 plate armour (worn)
 F - a +0 pair of gloves (worn)
Jewellery
 e - an encrusted ivory ring
Wands
 w - a wand of random effects (19)
 H - a wand of digging (7)
Scrolls
 f - 3 scrolls labeled WEELLU CIAFENI
 h - a scroll labeled SESOUGH UGYAT
 j - 3 scrolls labeled DUVVOACIZI
 l - 2 scrolls labeled AZOCSUWASUQ
 m - 4 scrolls labeled OTUNUW WOUHIJO
 p - a scroll labeled DEUPHEUZICU
 q - a scroll labeled IKHAKO QEGUR
 r - 4 scrolls labeled VODORU JE JUE
 t - a scroll labeled YTSIEQ LEECZU
 u - 2 scrolls labeled OCETHR YMULIPH
 x - 2 scrolls labeled KOCUPRUOCA
 E - a scroll labeled YPSYGO ALOICIST
 G - a scroll labeled AKETUA WUINYCA
Potions
 g - 2 fizzy brown potions
 i - a glowing red potion
 o - a potion of berserk rage
 v - a potion of agility
 A - 2 blue potions
 B - 2 fizzy puce potions
Comestibles
 c - 19 rations
 n - a chunk of flesh


   Skills:
 + Level 4.7 Fighting
 + Level 5.5 Long Blades
 * Level 11.5 Slings
 + Level 5.1 Armour
 + Level 2.9 Dodging
 * Level 3.0 Shields
 * Level 5.7 Invocations


You have 9 spell levels left.
You don't know any spells.

Skill      XL: |  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 |
---------------+-------------------------------+-----
Fighting       |  3                    4       |  4.7
Dodging        |        2                      |  2.9
Long Blades    |           3     4     5       |  5.5
Armour         |           3        4     5    |  5.1
Slings         |                 3  6  9 11    | 11.5
Invocations    |                       4  5    |  5.7
Shields        |                          2  3 |  3.0

Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 || total
-------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------++-------
Melee: Falchion          |    99 |   225 |   386 |    34 ||   744
 Fire: Hunting sling     |       |   106 |   515 |    16 ||   637
Throw: Stone             |       |     3 |     4 |       ||     7
Invok: Depart the Abyss  |     1 |       |       |       ||     1
       Bend Space        |       |    18 |    59 |       ||    77
       Banish            |       |       |     1 |       ||     1
  Use: Potion            |       |       |     1 |       ||     1
  Eat: Chunk             |     2 |    10 |    25 |     2 ||    39
       Ration            |       |       |     2 |       ||     2
Armor: Ring mail         |    26 |       |       |       ||    26
       Scale mail        |    12 |   101 |    91 |       ||   204
       Plate armour      |       |       |    99 |    10 ||   109
Dodge: Dodged            |    83 |   201 |   205 |    11 ||   500
Block: Buckler           |       |       |    33 |    11 ||    44
Rpst.: Falchion          |    26 |    54 |    50 |     5 ||   135

Spider Stomper

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Post Saturday, 9th February 2019, 04:34

Re: New launcher system

petercordia wrote:yes I like the concept of hunter (and AM), although I do find them very difficult to play.

I agree there's a constraint that launchers must be worth using at the starting skill level, but that seems ok. Say accuracy is rubbish below skill level 4 (the Hunter starting skill). Most of my melee dudes don't train a launcher to skill level 4. Hunter would be fine. Melee dudes wouldn't use launchers.
For the AM it would lead to the interesting situation where they actually need to Corona everything they want to kill. Since wizards need to Magic Dart everything they want to kill, I don't think it'd be a disaster.

If you're worried that it will become optimal to train launchers to skill level 4, don't worry. A level of usefulness which is good enough to survive D:1 is not even enough to be a significant buff in D:15. If it's balanced well it may be just as effective to put skill points in a launcher as in armour.

If nerving launchers nerfs Hunters and AM, I think there are nice ways to buff these. eg, Give them 100 bolts instead of 20. I'm not sure that would be balanced, but I think it'd be fun. Currently my hunters use a dagger until they get into an emergency, then switch to the crossbow. If they had a 100 bolts they could just pepper everything from a distance. Even if the hit chance of each bolt was only 1/3, they'd probably still survive D:1.

All the above also applies to my suggestion of making the mulch rate skill dependent.


I understood what it meant. This can be one of the solutions.

petercordia wrote:Ammo management, meanwhile, is trivial. There are enough stones (though very few bullets so far), so I just press 'o' after every battle.

That's the point. At present, Ammo item's system forces auto-exploration. If we increase the amount of ammo, we'll waste more turn than we do now.
In hell, during exploration, you must have a hell effect of nearly 1.5 to 2 times as much as a melee/magic. Also, this figure increases in proportion to the increase in ammo. :(
This problem cannot be avoided as long as ammo is an item. Well, if you have to insist on the form of an item, there's one way. Increase the creation of ammo to more than 100, and destroy the ammo fired.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 9th February 2019, 06:35

Re: New launcher system

petercordia wrote:The thing is, the falcon and the sling have the same stats (+2 to hit, 7 damage) but the falcon (at 5.5 skill) deals with enemies a lot faster


You're incorrect, you might have percieved that to be true, but you're wrong. The difference in damage per attack is actually pretty small, and if you were counting "number of attacks" it might have indeed seemed faster, because with randomization, the difference in average damage per attack is not really visible from observation, however the falchion does in fact on average do slightly less damage per hit.

However with the stats you've listed, the falchion attacks every 10-11 auts (1.0-1.1 standard turns for a monster of speed 10) and the hunting sling every 6 to 7 auts, which means you're attacking almost twice as fast, and doing and doing slightly more damage per hit on average (although the difference in average damage isn't really something you could observe reasonably)

If you mean "faster" in terms of real time (Like it takes less keypresses or what have you) then you're probably right, and even more so if you don't use autofight (tab) for ranged weapons (of course the point of this discussion is that ranged weapons are more powerful, but also more annoying to use)...
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Spider Stomper

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Post Thursday, 4th April 2019, 01:59

Re: New launcher system

I brought a new opinion. The range is proportional to the skill level. Like this.
Skill level:Range
0:2
3:3
6:4
9:5
12:6
15:7
18:8(For Ba)

This eliminates the need to slow down the weapon switching, make noise from the weapon, and oddly lower the weapon's accuracy. If this is the case, there is no problem even if the bullet is unlimited. For Hunter Start, penalty can be compensated through +3 weapons or higher skill levels.

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Post Saturday, 6th April 2019, 00:34

Re: New launcher system

I was thinking about the issue of ranged combat allegedly being uninteresting, and I had the following idea that I wonder if it's any good: what if all ranged weapons used Smite-targeting? That is, the purpose of ranged weapons would not be to extend range, but to specifically target enemies that can't be reached in melee.

I imagine it as being like a skilled archer deftly firing arrows past or over enemies to hit their target.

This is similar to duvessa's idea of the tactical possibilities of penetration, but more general (and could still support a penetration tactic with the right equipment). I think it would differentiate ranged weapons from being just "extended melee" into a playstyle that a pure melee character would be unable to match. Ranged tactics would involve having to choose the most appropriate enemy to attack in a given situation. Possibly there could be a chance of failing to strike the target that increases with the number of enemies between it and the player.

Advantages:
* Makes ranged combat more interesting/satisfying/desirable
* Allows more tactical decisions in multi-enemy situations
* Feels realistic

Disadvantages:
* Doesn't solve the issue of melee characters carrying a launcher just to soften enemies up
* Skill level scaling would probably still be difficult?
* Probably breaks the game in ten different ways I never thought of

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Post Saturday, 6th April 2019, 06:00

Re: New launcher system

hawthornbunny wrote:I was thinking about the issue of ranged combat allegedly being uninteresting, and I had the following idea that I wonder if it's any good: what if all ranged weapons used Smite-targeting? That is, the purpose of ranged weapons would not be to extend range, but to specifically target enemies that can't be reached in melee.

It's pretty good. I think This mechanism suits bow or xbow.

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Zot Zealot

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Post Saturday, 6th April 2019, 13:58

Re: New launcher system

I think it suits the bow most. Might be interesting to differentiate it from slings. You can already get smite-targeting though with portal-projectile.

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Snake Sneak

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Post Saturday, 6th April 2019, 14:52

Re: New launcher system

Allow me to remind you how dangerous orc priests are in early D levels and then apply that template to every enemy Centaur as well. That is all.

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Post Saturday, 6th April 2019, 15:35

Re: New launcher system

PseudoLoneWolf wrote:Allow me to remind you how dangerous orc priests are in early D levels and then apply that template to every enemy Centaur as well. That is all.

Admittedly I was only thinking about player archers, I didn't consider extending it to enemies too. The asymmetry in behavior could possibly be handwaved by suggesting that enemies aren't confident enough to fire past each other, the same way that centaurs won't fire point-blank even though the player can.
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