[CF-Devel] Crossfire's Speeds and weapons

[Mark Wedel]

     dnh at hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au
     
      wrote:

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      * Change the displayed players moving speed to be in tiles per second on
     
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      normal terrain. Could possibly be M/s or Km/h.
     
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      * Change weapon speed (the value of the weapon.. not overall) to be ->
     
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      strikes per second. This value will be displayed when a player has
     
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      identified a weapon and will be between 0 (no hits... not really used) and
     
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      100 (although it will be able to go higher than that). Where 100 is 10
     
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      strikes per second. This value will be subject to change via the players
     
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      Dex, Str and level.
     
     
 I really have a problem with anything that is per second.

 this ties and external time unit (seconds) to the internal time scheme of
crossfire.  And since the internal timing scheme of crossfire can be changed
simply by adjusting MAX_TIME in config.h, at least all the achetypes and
internal values should be in referance to that tick time.

 If we want to change the time player sees to be per second, I don't have a big
problem with it.  But a few notes:

 Player speed is used for much more than movement - it is also used for things
like casting spells and many other operations.  Current player speed is 'actions
per tick'.  movement gets trickier in that many terrain types reduce players
movement speed (you don't move nearly as fast through mountains as you do on
roads for example), so having it too strongly suggest you should move X tiles in
X seconds just seems like something that will cause trouble.  newbie: "my speed
says 6 tiles/second.  I moved for 6 seconds, but only moved 24 tiles'.

 But as said in my AC/WC response, I really don't care too much what the client
displays, but if you are going to change it, having some option for
'traditional' values might be nice.  I personally don't have a problem with
speed and weapon speed displays.  higher equals better is all that you really
need to know.  And you pretty quickly get an idea of what is an acceptable speed
for movement and what isn't.


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      * The Big one, give players a weapons a number of hands (required and
     
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      have). Firstly, weapons like pikes and big axes will now have a required
     
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      hands of 2. Shields will only use one hand (unless someone wants to make a
     
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      special shield), and everything else will require no hands. This of course
     
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      will allow players to wield more than one weapon.. which raises a few
     
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      issues. Firstly, the damage and weapon speed will be weighted but be
     
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      slightly less than the average. When I say wieghted I mean that a weapon
     
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      that is really slow will have more effect on the overall weapon speed than
     
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      a fast one.. also a small damage will have alot more effect on the overall
     
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      damage. Thus preventing things like wielding a Bone Crusher and a dagger,
     
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      thus making the player hit really fast with a big weapon (couldn't happen
     
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      anyway because bone crusher is two handed). Secondly a player will only be
     
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      able to wield one artifactual weapon. This may also change to a player may
     
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      only wield one artifactual weapon, plus another weapon if they have a
     
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      spare hand. Importantly, what defines what weapons a player can wield at
     
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      the same time will be defined by the weight of the weapon. A player will
     
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      not be able to wield two very heavy one handed weapons, but possible one
     
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      heavy and one light, or two medium etc etc. The amount of total weight the
     
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      player can fight with will be based on the Str only, so only strong
     
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      players can wield two heavy weapons (and possibly some players may not be
     
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      able to wield even one heavy weapon due to extremely low str). Bows are
     
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      two handed, and will ne ever be able to be wielded at the same time as a
     
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      melee weapon. This idea still needs alot of work, im sure there are flaws
     
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      in my logic which i need pointed out, but I hope you get my general drift.
     
     
 Long paragraph to respond to, but various notes:
1) How do you deal with weapon attack types?  Right now, for attacks, all values
are basically grabbed from the player structure.  IF a player is using a
firebrand and frostbrand (one attack fire, one attack cold), does he now attack
with fire and cold on his increased attack rate?
2) I'm a little worried about trying to adjust speeds and damage within the
code.  Its worth trying, but I'm concerned that people will find combination of
weapons that become very powerful, and more twiddling would be needed.
3) Note that there is no easy way to know an artifact weapon from a none
artifact one.  The only really definition of artifact is really rare (or well
guarded), with really good abilities.  There is no flag that says it is an
artifact.  This also gets more difficult in many maps may just take a normal
item and mutate it into an artifact (I believe most of the weapons in tower of
demonology fall into that category)
4) I agree with Peter's comment in that I don't want to be shuffling my equipped
items whenever I want to use a bow.  And you go with that, you could make the
same argument that at least one hand has to be free to use a scroll, rod, wand,
and potentially two free to use a staff.
If that is a worry about playbalance (or try to improve it), you could perhaps
add a flag like 'in hand', and you only get the relevant bonuses when that item
is inhand, but the server will switch between the appropriate equipped items as
need.  So for example, you have a sword and shield in hand.  You fire a bow, so
your sword and shield are no longer in hand, and you lose the relevant AC and
any other benefits.  You then attack something, so your sword and shield go back
'in hand'.  But I really think that is probably more effort than its worth. 
Easier to presume that right now, it works that the item (scroll, wand,
whatever) is only in hand long enough for you to do your action, and then you
switch back to what you were doing.  If you really want to add realism, changing
armor, shields, and weapons should take much longer than they do right now.
5) IMO, the right (but hard) way to do multiple weapons would be to have the two
of them be independent.  Weapon #1 as equipped by the player may have weapon
speed 1.5, and weapon #2 may have speed 0.5  Player attacks, and the weapons do
there thing as long as they have the relevant speed.  But this is much harder to
do, as each attack you basically need to find the weapons.  But this does fix
problems of damage averaging and multiple attacktypes.

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      * Along with this change, some weapons will need to be modified,
     
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      particualarly the two handed weapons. Spears for instance will be getting
     
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      quite abit more damage, and moving abit faster relatively than they
     
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      currently do (you have two hands wielding it.. so you should be able to
     
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      attack abit faster than you would expect).
     
     
 In real life, spears are not terrible fast weapons.  The big advantage for many
two handed weapons is they have some reach, so you can kill your opponent before
they get close enough to damage you.  It would be hard to do that in crossfire.

 And note that some weapons are simply suprerior to others.  Good two handed
weapons might be a two-handed sword and two-handed axe.  But in reality, you
tend not to have seen nights charging into combat with halberds.

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      * A Big idea which I had, that isn't really important, but I thought might
     
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      be cool, is to give Q's (Quetzalcoatls) three hands. Two for the arms, and
     
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      one for the tail. Obiviously the same str, weapon speed and damage rules
     
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      would apply thus making it alittle less efficient per weapon. Also because
     
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      of the Str stuff, a Q wouldn't be able to wield three heavy swords, but
     
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      possibly one two handed sword and a dagger or similar. This would give Q's
     
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      alittle more firepower later on in the game I think.. which is still
     
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      needed as Q's currently get in alot of trouble in the later stages of the
     
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      game.
     
     
 Does this also give them an extra ring?