Spell power display

Let's make up an example: Pebbles of Doom caps at 25, Throw Havoc caps at 50. It would seem like the latter is twice as powerful? Wrong! The code for each spell can treat the spell power differently.

Throw Havoc simply keeps benefitting from raising the skills longer than Pebbles of Doom. For the sake of discussion, let's say Pebbles of Doom is at full power with Conjurations skill level 5, while Throw Havoc keeps improving until Conjurations level 10.

Instead of displaying a bar of varying length that makes it seem the powers are comparable, we could simply display a word, such as “Half”, “Almost Full” and “Full” in the power column.

dpeg 2010-02-21 22:09: I like the proposal. The current system (power bars) tries to hint at different levels meaning different caps. But that's more confusion than it's worth, and something players learn without words along the way: If Magic Darts is Full at Conjuration 5, and Throw Foo can keep going; they can add this information with the observation that the Dart simply does less damage.
Next question: how many tiers do we want?

jpeg 2010-02-22 10:45: I'd say about five. One each for the very bottom of the barrel (not exactly zero, but very low), half and full power, and then two more in-between (quarter and three-quarter).

Porkchop 2010-02-24 14:51: Spell power has always been confusing to me as a player, I get that most enchantment spells as power increases - duration increases, this is pretty transparent. As far as damage spells I still get confused, how different is magic dart at ##### vs IMB at #####? How does Iron Shot damage compare to IMB if both are at #######?

On the new Tukima's Dance, from ##crawl-dev:

00:32 < tinyrodent> ok but still in a real game with Power #####..... (half?)
                    only a dagger is fast enough to keep up with regular
                    movement speed?
00:34 <+doy> at half power, any weapon with speed less than 150% should be able
             to keep up with you
00:35 <+doy> i don't know what exactly the power display on the spell menu
             corresponds to
00:35 < tinyrodent> a tukima's demon blade of flaming can't even kill a giant
                    toad. it dies in a single hit
00:35 < tinyrodent> at half power.
00:35 <+doy> well
00:35 <+doy> hp is based on weapon mass
00:35 <+doy> as is ac
00:35 <+doy> so bigger weapons have more hp
00:41 < tinyrodent> ok but even small weapons are too slow. big weapons will
                    suffer more of a speed penalty. i think from play testing
                    that the spell is no longer particularly useful. it's also
                    not very similar to the dancing weapons in hall of blades,
                    which it used to be
00:41 <+doy> at half power, that demon blade should be getting speed 10, damage
             13+13(flame), ac 7, ev 13, hp 20
00:42 < tinyrodent> well maybe the spell power display is misleading.
[ snip ]
02:02 <+sorear> ####.... is not half power, not even close
02:02 <+sorear> ####.... is sqrt(power)
02:03 <+sorear> the display is logarithmic

Long story short, spell power display screen doesn't display *potential* ranges. Ranges which could be improved with spell power increase. Note some spells are even trickier, like Sandblast where wielding stones increases range. Don't forget about that.

Using my maxed out Sandblast as an example… Currently I see @-> without stones, and @--> with stones. Here's what I would prefer to see without stones: @->. . The extra dot is for potential range.

— b0rsuk 2011-05-21 23:22