[crossfire] tavern combat server, was Re: Project: Slow down combat

[Mark Wedel]

Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> Finally got around to testing the modified server :)
> 
> Choose a dragon/monk. Pretty easy, I must say - at level 1 I went into 
> the 'dry well' in Scorn, and made it to the ogres and level 4, after which I 
> decided it was enough testing, besides the ogres were slightly too strong - 
> meditation would have helped, of course.

  Just a note - the pixies and madman have not been modified yet, so are 
probably easier than they should be.  I should make a quick pass on all the 
monsters to set up some baselines for their AC and the lie.

> 
> So, some thoughts:
> * I kinda like the current speed (0.8 for a new char), gives some time to 
> think and such
> * high hp (I had ~30, and 30 sp/gr - didn't yet use spells) means it takes 
> longer to die

  Yeah, the higher HP slows down death.  But at the same time, as someone else 
noted, it can be more dangerous to get surrounded now, as it takes longer to 
hack out.  I don't know the tactics you used, but the dry well at least has nice 
1 space wide bottlenecks for the monsters, so you can avoid getting surrounded 
to some extent.

  At some point, I think at low levels (<3), death should almost be something 
that is caused by carelessness or over agressiveness, and not unluckiness 
(presuming player is on beginning maps).  It is sort of bad to die on a beginner 
map because you failed to properly disarm a trap or the like.

> * we'll definitely need to improve the monster's moving algorithm, so they are 
> smarter :)

  All monster logic needs improvement.

  I also think some of these changes, and the balancing involved, open up more 
possibilities.

  By default, monsters are somewhat tough to hit now (its not a sure thing). 
But this really does allow more tuning possibilities:

AC - make monsters harder to hit (or easier)
HP - how many hits it takes - this also has some effects on spells
damage - how monster damage the monster does
speed - how fast the monster attacks

  All these were there before, but I think a problem with tuning speed is that 
the range of speed for players was really high before - now it is much more 
modest, so you start to get things like a 'speed 1.0 creature will mover faster 
than the player'

  I didn't do a dragon character - I just did a straight fighter, but did find 
that with the orcs in the beginners dungeon, one still had to be somewhat 
careful.  I think they are probably a bit less dangerous before, so more 
adjustments are needed.

  It might be interesting to write up some sort of formula that takes all of 
those variables into account and gives a proposed difficult/exp rating for them 
(this would be really imprecise as it couldn't take into account things like 
spells the monster may cast), but could be useful as a quick dump to see things 
like 'this monster is way out of whack - either its combat stats needs to be 
adjusted or its exp adjusted

> Globally the changes seem ok, but need much balancing - monsters maybe don't 
> do too much damage, things like that?

  Yeah - I'll have to play a lot more with tweaking.

  Another thing to look at while doing this, which I don't think anyone has done 
yet, is archery - these changes likely have some effect as to the effectiveness 
of using bows, either for the better or worse, but not sure which way right now.