[crossfire] Project: Slow down combat

[Lalo Martins]

Here's a relatively simple alternative suggestion:

Actions have a speed rating.  Essentially, this represents how often an 
average character would be able to perform that action.  So this will be 
an attribute of weapons and of skills (specially interesting for unarmed 
combat skills), and possibly spells.

A special case is walking.  Either just decide that this is a constant 
value, or make that an attribute of the living creature.

Then, on top of that, every living creature has a speed modifier: a 
multiplier that is applied to every action's speed.

While I call that "speed", we could just as well do the opposite and call 
it "time" (T for the purposes of this email), meaning how many seconds, 
ticks, or whatever the action takes.  Or call it "speed" to make 
archetype writing easier to understand, but internally convert that to T.

So when your "turn" arrives, if you have an action queued, you perform 
that action, and then your next "turn" is after this action finishes, T 
ticks(/seconds/...) later.  If there is no action queued, you're assumed 
to take the default action of "wait", which has a (low) constant T.

I believe this is simple to implement, easy for map/arch writers to grok, 
and easy for new players to understand.

best,
                                               Lalo Martins
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