[crossfire] cone damage oddity

[Mark Wedel]

  After playing a bit I noticed a cone oddity - it turns out if you are right 
next to the caster, you take less damage than if you are far away.

  Through experimentation, I quickly found that if you are 2 or more spaces 
away, you will take 3 times as much damage than if you are right next to the caster.

  If you are always at the very edge of the cone, you will take the same damage 
(as if you were right next to the caster).  Basic diagram:


    0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   1
    0   0   0   0   0   0   0   1   2
    0   0   0   0   0   0   1   2   3
    0   0   0   0   0   1   2   3   3
    0   0   0   0   1   2   3   3   3
    0   0   0   1   2   3   3   3   3
    0   0   1   2   3   3   3   3   3
    0   1   2   3   3   3   3   3   3
    1   2   3   3   3   3   3   3   3
    1   3   3   3   3   3   3   3   3
    1   2   3   3   3   3   3   3   3
    0   1   2   3   3   3   3   3   3
    0   0   1   2   3   3   3   3   3
    0   0   0   1   2   3   3   3   3
    0   0   0   0   1   2   3   3   3
    0   0   0   0   0   1   2   3   3
    0   0   0   0   0   0   1   2   3
    0   0   0   0   0   0   0   1   2
    0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   1


  Think of that table as a damage multiplier.

  I guess the first question is whether this is considered a significant flaw or 
not.  It has long been held that center of cone does more than edges, but in 
this case, center has a very broad meaning.  And the fact that being next to the 
caster does less seems quite odd.

  Now it is a very simple fix to make it so that the entire cone does the same 
amount of damage.  A side benefit of such a change is that it would also reduce 
server load - basically, reduce the number of objects used in the spell casting 
by a factor of 3.

  This would obviously weaken spells, so all cone spells would need to be upped 
in the damage they currently do.

  Trying to do any fix more sophisticated than that gets pretty complicated. 
This is basically because as the spell moves, the new objects are created, so 
you can't precalculate the damage for all spaces within the cone - you'd 
basically have to store a lot of info within each spell object, and I can't 
think of any way of doing that without things getting really complicated and messy.