Page 1 of 1

[b23] Can someone explain speed/movement definitively?

Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 1:08 pm
by jenx
I mostly play Temporal Wardens, even though in b23 they are somewhat tamer than b21. But I still can't figure out speed for the life of me.

I have found 8 sources of speed boosts:
boots, chronomancer staves, weapons, one particular racial, Temporal Warden (Celerity, Haste, and one more I forget), speed runes, and movement runes.

I think it would be possible to have all of these firing at once, but I"m not sure what would happen. These are my questions/ideas:

1. Nowhere can I find does it indicate your cumulative speed. IT would be nice to have the simple angband line of speed +25.
2. Nowhere can I figure out the relationship of this total speed to attack speed. How does this work? Does unused speed from one turn add to the next, so that it spreadsout over several turns for instance? That is, if you have normal speed and a 0.9 attack weapon, does this mean you get an extra hit every 9 or 10 turns? I just can't determine this from watching the messages.
3. Why do some things give you negative movement (like armour) but celerity gives you increased speed? I find this very counter-intuitive, even though I know that they are both speeding you up.

Temporal Wardens seem to have huge advantages dues to their speed, which makes them fun to play.

Re: [b23] Can someone explain speed/movement definitively?

Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 1:52 am
by Hedrachi
From what I've been able to tell, in b23 and earlier, there's two speeds(movement and attack), and a meta-speed (global). Things that affect your global speed are easiest to explain: If your global speed goes up, you can do more ... anything, really, before the calendar (ctrl-T in Windows) time changes. Movement speed affects only your movement (like Infusion: Movement, Lightning Speed). An enhanced movement speed will only allow more movement between calendar time increments. Attack speed does the same, but for attacks instead: quick weapons without precise strikes will allow you to attack more often than without either. Not sure exactly how projectiles are handled, but near as I can tell, they have a movement speed and are in essence kamikaze things that do their damage/effect when they hit the square you're in.

So, iirc, a 0.9 weapon will hit one extra time out of every 10, global speed is just an addition to movement speed and attack speed. Negative speed on armor might mean "You take -10% extra time to move," so yeah, it is a bit counterintuitive. Might also be that two different people did armor movement and celerity coding.

But, in the interest of completeness, you'll probably want to ignore this when the next beta comes out, since apparently speed is being completely redone.

Re: [b23] Can someone explain speed/movement definitively?

Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 9:33 pm
by Mushroomhermit
This is how it works to the best of my knowledge.

Every "game turn" everything gains energy (for convenience, lets say you get 100 energy).

Actions (attacking, moving, casting a spell) all take a certain amount of energy. We'll go with 100 energy for normal actions to keep things simple.

When it's your turn, you perform actions until your energy goes negative. Your turn then ends, npcs act in the same way, and when all the actors have burned up their energy the game turn ends and the cycle starts all over again.

The various speed effects influence this in 2 ways: increasing the amount of energy you get per game turn and reducing the amount of energy an action burns.

Global speed increases your energy per turn (+35% global speed will give you 135 energy per turn) while movement/attack speed reduce the amount of energy used up by their respective actions (a quick weapon will reduce the energy used per attack to 90). The multiplicative nature of the interaction between these two effects can be pretty heavily abused by certain classes if you make speed your focus.

As of b23 the interaction between things like Precise Strikes, which slow your attack speed by a percentage, and effects like the flat bonus from a quick weapon or enraging amulet is bugged and can return some odd results.

I assume movement speed from inscriptions and flat bonuses from boots/armor/staves are similarly bugged but I haven't actually tested it and there is no convenient display of effective movement speed.