[crossfire] Plan to commit combat changes to trunk

[Mark Wedel]

  I've been playing with the rebalance of melee combat for crossfire for a 
while, and while not 100% done, I think it is complete enough to warrant 
committing it to the trunk and hopefully getting more exposure.

  Now for folks running trunk servers, while the change will not cause anything 
to actually break (or it shouldn't), it will cause a change in game play, so 
folks may find combat tougher.

  In particularly, I have not rebalanced the high (20+) level monsters, so they 
may still be quite deadly.  I also have not rebalanced the spells (next step), 
and balancing the high level monsters sort of goes hand in hand with balancing 
spells.

  I've also created a new exp table (table D), which has slower progression. 
While not a requirement to use that table, I think it makes for a better play 
experience.  I think it should be the default, and I'm not really sure how well 
a game can be balanced if there are 4 different exp tables out there, but I 
suppose this is more an effect of balance between the classes.

  I have also limited the generators, via arch change, to only generate 5 
monsters before the generator dies.  I'm sure some maps need updating - that 5 
monster limit is actually a pretty good compromise - it tends to fill up those 
empty dungeons that rely on generators to fill them up, but also keeps monsters 
at a reasonable level.

  I could do all this work in a branch - I'm just don't think that is really 
worthwhile - the main point of the trunk is to work on the big projects like 
this.  I'd say that where things are now, it has moved beyond expiremental code 
to code that will be used, but some more work is still needed.  I'll start 
another thread about future changes for balancing.  But I'm willing to discuss, 
and for folks to see this as a heads up if you are running a trunk server.