FWD: RE: [CF-Devel] PR (Partial resistance)

[Peter Mardahl]

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      Andreas Vogl wrote:
     
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      > Thats the point why i want potions: I don't want a player which have armor,
     
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      > rings and
     
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      > amulets on, giving him 99% prot in fire and cold and all the stuff. Remembe
     
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     r
     
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      > a char can wear&wield
     
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      > at the moment more than 13 items at the same time (yeah, count it!). You
     
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      > will come in some problems
     
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      > to balance it without a cap.
     
     
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Armor shield cloak   helmet  ring1    ring2  amulet   glove  girdle

10	11	12	13		14	15
boots weapon   bow  (talisman)  (holy symbol) (lockpicks)

Of these, very rarely do glove, girdle, boots, bow, talisman, holy symbol,
lockpicks grant any protection at all, and the last three ditch you
whenever you switch skills.

So that leaves 8 items which commonly provide protection.  Protections
will compete with things like STATS, DAMAGE, PATH_ATTUNED for these 8 slots
as well.

I do not see a problem here.  The player must make tradeoffs.

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       I agree this can be a problem.  Even if you put proposed caps for items at s
     
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      low value like 30, 4 items that have that level of protections gives you 75%
     
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      protection.
     
     
Yeah, so?  Do you know how fast a dragon can roast someone with only 75% 
protection from fire?  Try playing with lag sometimes.

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      > Also, when he has about
     
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      > 80%-90% natural in all (that means you can cut through a row of red dragons
     
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      > all times you want),
     
     
How do you know this without trying it?  I think this is pure speculation.
MY pure speculation is that two or three dragons can roast someone with
90% protection unless he heals a few times before he can kill them.

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       The problem here is that there are really only 5-6 attacktypes you really ne
     
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      to protect yourself again (fire, cold, electricity, physical).  So that
     
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      protection of fear is really irrelevant.
     
     
5-6 attacktypes and 8 slots to do it with.  Slots that you often also
need for things like SP_REGEN, regeneration, Pow bonus, Str bonus,
Dex bonus, Con bonus....


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       I mostly agree that the protection spells are useless.  However, I am gettin
     
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      little fearful of making this protection code too complicated.
     
     
They're useless because every protection is 50%.

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      > Real caps are shown to the player too and are simple to include.
     
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      > If you have a armor of fire res +30% and a amulet of 30% you should not get
     
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      > automatically
     
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      > 60% fire res. Every point you got nearer the cap, you need more points to
     
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      > get closer.
     
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      > If yur caps 60, you got 40 points for example. If your caps are 70, you got
     
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      > 44% from both or so.
     
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      > And if you caps are 20, you got 19.
     
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       The armor code sort of does this.  If you have two 30% items, you armor is 5
     
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     1.
     
     
Everyone who's spoken of partial protections has said, "use the armor
way of adding, not straight addition."  This alone, along with defaults
of 30% protection for "protected" items will balance things nicely,
I think.  And it is simple.  I believe that we should try it first
before going with some complex system.

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       One question is where do these caps come from?
     
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       I would think that one way this could be done is instead of using the 100 va
     
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      in the armor code, you use this cap.  I just tried this out on my demo progra
     
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      assuming a cap of 60, and with 1 item, your protection is 30, two it is 45,
     
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      three is 52, 56,58, 59, 59.
     
     
I see NO benefit at all to partial protections if we set a "cap" at 60.
60 ~= 50.  We do lots of work for an insignificant change.  I think
players SHOULD be able to arrange for 90% protection.... *if* they trade
off lots of other stuff for it.  Which they will have to do if we
use the armor adding system.

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       At least from the fix_player perspective, to implement this would require tw
     
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      arrays within the function, and in one we fill in the values are limited by t
     
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      cap, and the other has the spell effects.  Then afterwards, we apply the spel
     
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      effects to the item (capped) value, for a higher resistance that can go beyon
     
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      the cap.  Is that what you are describing?
     
     
I would make life easy for us and just make protection spells work like
the armor spell.  It seems to stop working at about 75.

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      > Also, all items automatically fits in the system, no one can give you to
     
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      > much. If they do, they get caped.
     
     
I don't think we should "fix" abusive items in the code.  Should we have
a "cap" on damage dealt?   How about weapon speed?  How about total stats
given?  How about number of distinct attack types?  

The idea of hard coded "caps" disgusts me.  Fix abusive items in the
maps.


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       I think the real solution is to prevent the super items from getting created
     
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      the first place.  If map designers put unbalancing items in the maps, I reall
     
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      don't want to try to have the code prevent that.  Simply put, that map should
     
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      fixed.  And some of that is that if a map maker really wants to put unbalanci
     
     
Hear hear!!

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       Now it may be worth while to set strict guidelines on what acceptable items 
     
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      (for example, can not provide more than 120% total protection, and no one
     
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      protection can be more than 30%).
     
     
I'm not in favor of "strict" guidelines.  A player maxes out at about 500
hp or something like that.  Monsters can get 32,000, and are often
immune to all spells, etc.  A player might *need* 90% protection in something
AND a powerful weapon to defeat a monster like that.

High order protections and great items are the proper reward for completing
hard quests.  Items are only "abusive" in their context.  We can (and should)
fix them case by case--in the maps.

PeterM