De-Randomized Damage

Discussions about possible changes and new features that might happen someday.

De-Randomized Damage

Postby Ferret » Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:55 pm

Currently, when you deal damage with an attack ability, the damage is randomized between 80 and 120% of the actual damage value that comes out once everything is figured in.

Are there any major objections / reasons I shouldn't just do 100% each time? I'm not sure anyone usually notices the randomization much: it isn't the sort of randomization that can easily cause sudden swings in combat the way, say, a status effect landing or non-landing can. It's true that damage randomization *is* a big part of other roguelikes (DCSS for example has much more randomized damage), but it has never been a part of Demon, nor do I really want it to be.

But, what it does do is make me have to soft-pedal damage a bit planning on unrealistic worst cases that, while quite rare, would result in a player being able to be killed by a high-offense same level encounter in one turn from full health. Since that must be avoided at all costs, I have to make sure it can't happen even if the RNG decides to give every enemy attack the 120% result.

That said, if there are any arguments in favor of keeping it 80-120%, I'm happy to listen. :D
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Re: De-Randomized Damage

Postby wizzzargh » Tue Jan 17, 2017 12:15 am

Would this lead into damage displays like 'You Hit the Malingee for 7 damage?'

I'm neutral on the whole subject either way, so I'm just curious
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Re: De-Randomized Damage

Postby Ferret » Tue Jan 17, 2017 12:26 am

Well... the two aren't really related. :D So I guess the answer is no, but on the other hand, that's something I want to do at some point anyway, next time I'm in a UI mood maybe. (I could just plug in it now, but the message log itself needs some love if putting useful information is going to be anything but frustrating for people. :P )
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Re: De-Randomized Damage

Postby Gaswafers » Wed Jan 18, 2017 12:48 am

If you get rid of randomization, don't forget to change the targeting rules on Snuff Out and the spells like it so that you can only select targets they are sure to kill.
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Re: De-Randomized Damage

Postby Ferret » Wed Jan 18, 2017 4:11 am

Yeah, I'll keep those fixed up. :) Of course, now it's going to be a special sort of dread when you see an enemy use one...without randomization, the AI will be somewhat better about figuring out when it will work. :D
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Re: De-Randomized Damage

Postby Ferret » Fri Jan 20, 2017 2:06 pm

Went ahead and did this, :)

Note, there is still one very minor random component to damage: when a damage result, after all the math, has a fractional component, the fractional component is dropped and converted to a chance of +1 damage. i.e.: 3.23 becomes 3 damage 77% of the time and 4 damage 23% of the time. So you will still see this tiny bit of variance.

Snuff Out's AI will be tweaked to assume you're always going to lose that die roll. Since the UI basically is just asking the AI its opinion when deciding whether or not to suggest a target, this should make the UI reliable at indicating when Snuff Out is a good plan.
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