[crossfire] Project: Slow down combat

[Mark Wedel]

  I decided to spend a little time playing with the code.  The 
tavern.santa-clara.ca.us server is running with these changes.  Note that I've 
only modified orcs, goblins, kobolds, and gnolls as far as AC goes.  I also made 
some server changes as far as speed goes - it turns out that for first level 
characters, movement speed isn't that much different by default, but the attacks 
are slower.

  I must say that for a few hours work, I'm pleasantly surprised.  My brand new 
human fighter no mows through the kobolds - they weren't a serious threat of 
killing him, but definitely slower - in many cases, taking several seconds to 
kill some orcs and kobolds.  I think this may still be a bit too fast, but 
probably the limit of tuning with just speed and AC.  It certainly does make the 
game a bit tougher.  I think playing with HP is next step - I still like the 
idea of upping both monster & character HP at low levels, so a few stray hits 
don't kill a character.

  Feel free to log onto the server and try things out.  Note that weapon speed 
number in client is misleading - it basically takes the weapon speed and divides 
it by normal speed.  The way it is calculated now, it shouldn't be divided.

  While combat is slower, it didn't have as much effect on exp as I might have 
expected.  This may be because more monsters get generated as you can't kill 
them as fast.

  Looking through the routines, some things stuck out at me:

Wc bonus: Currently goes up based on fixed ratio (1 wc/6 levels of
combat skill) - should this perhaps be settable in combat skill?

Also, dam goes up as combat level goes up - 1 point/4 levels. Given other
things are also improving (quality of weapon, characters strength, etc), is
that extra bonus really necessary?  I did notice that there was some
strange logic that it may go up more if you had dam bonus from strength -
it was divide that by 5.  So if your str damage bonus was 5, every 4
levels it would go up 2, but if dam bonus was 4, would still only go up 1,
because it didn't do anything clever regarding rounding.  This then
means a major benefit for high strength - a 29 str would give +10 base dam
bonus, and if level 50 in combat skill, give another 24 bonus (2 per 4 levels,
beyond the +1 per 4 levels just by itself).  I wonder if this was a way to beef 
up dragons, but has the effect of beefing up all combat.

search items - there is a speed penalty for using that.  First question - is
it even still used?  Second, should that speed penalty perhaps be removed,
since it is really more a convenience to the player?

armor speed: Currently, the speed values are hard maximums (can not
move faster than X), but if you're not moving that fast, no effect.
Should these maybe be changed, and instead this becomes sort of like a speed
penalty?  Wearing plate will slow you down some, no matter what your current
speed, etc?  It seems that a lot of them have speed around or above 1.0 - with 
the speed values I put in the system, that is going to be a lot harder to reach.

Weapon speed: The previous formula was certainly out of date - had many hard
coded values in (basically if dex was above 14, bonus increased - probably
wasn't as big a deal when max dex was 20, but with 25, bonus went up).  But
also, it factored in current loading of character.  But it also factored in
other things, like weapon weight, Strength, speed, etc.  I've simplified it
greatly - in summary:  There is a based weapon_speed.  Your dex will give some
adjustment.  the weapon_speed of the weapon itself will slow it down.  Combat
skills will increase speed a bit, character loading slow it down a bit.  Prior
to these changes, character level did not affect melee speed - not directly
(stats improve as level does, etc) - I think this makes a bit more sense.

  My rationale for not factoring in the weight of the weapon is that should be
included in weapon_speed itself.  If I set a weapon_speed of 5, that should
have clear meaning.  If the weapon is really heavy, I should put in a slower
speed in the object - if weapon is light, I put in a faster speed.  This may
require weapons to be adjusted, but I think it is more flexible (one could
have a really slow light weapon in this system, or a really fast heavy weapon)