ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

- Remove all combat and spell speed modifiers. They add nothing to the game beyond being a vague bonus to the character. I repeat - combat and spell speed add *nothing* to the game. Unless perhaps they're going to be given in very high amounts that make a rael difference to play.

As an interim compromise, how about any non-100% global speed invoking a buff on the player along the lines of "you are moving exceptionally fast. Whenever this counter reaches 0 (every X turns), you will receive an extra turn. Note: talents will not cool down during extra turns), or an analogous debuff?

Incidentally, why *do* talents not cool down during extra turns? Seems like this is both inconvenient and counter-intuitive.

Grey wrote: I don't mind rare and significant modifiers to speed, but the commonness, smallness and variety of speed modifiers in the game at present makes it a horrible mess. ToME is a turn-based game, and the cooldown system especially requires clarity of turns - anything but large modifiers gets in the way of that of that clarity. ToME has perfect clarity in so many other areas, but speed, something we rely on innately in the game, is now obscured.

What can be done to alleviate this:
- Remove most speed modifiers from egos and artifacts, especially those less than 20%
- Remove all combat and spell speed modifiers. They add nothing to the game beyond being a vague bonus to the character. I repeat - combat and spell speed add *nothing* to the game. Unless perhaps they're going to be given in very high amounts that make a rael difference to play.
- Reconsider any talents and status effects that modify speed by less than 20% or that modify in non-round numbers. Ideally everything should be in multiples of 10/20.

SageAcrin wrote:

Velorien wrote: As an interim compromise, how about any non-100% global speed invoking a buff on the player along the lines of "you are moving exceptionally fast. Whenever this counter reaches 0 (every X turns), you will receive an extra turn. Note: talents will not cool down during extra turns), or an analogous debuff?

The short answer to that is that it could work. Someone with more knowledge of the internals of speed would be able to give a more honestly thorough answer to this, though.

Grey wrote:Note that everything below is my opinion etc etc, and when it comes to design stuff I can be very strongly opinioned. Some will doubtless disagree strongly!

skein wrote:No, no, no. You do not remove the speed effects. They are fine and work right. What you do is give a timer counter that tells you precisely how much energy you have. This makes everything transparent and lets you plan your chess moves.

It already does this in the background, all you need to to do is make it visible on the hud or character sheet.(Both would be nice).

NEHZ wrote:Considering that with different movement, attack and ability use speeds the game can't know exactly how long your next turn is going to be, I suggest a slightly adapted version. (the game won't know beforehand if you're going to move thrice in a row or attack as well)

-- @energy_to_act how much energy does an entity need to act
-- @energy_per_tick how much energy does an entity receives per game tick. This is multiplied by the entity energy.mod property

function _M:init(keyhandler, energy_to_act, energy_per_tick)

	self.energy_to_act, self.energy_per_tick = energy_to_act or 1000, energy_per_tick or 100

	engine.Game.init(self, keyhandler)

local arr = self.entities
	for i, e in pairs(arr) do
		e = arr[i]
		if e and e.act and e.energy then

if e.energy.value < self.energy_to_act then
	e.energy.value = (e.energy.value or 0) + self.energy_per_tick * (e.energy.mod or 1) * (e.global_speed or 1)
end

if e.energy.value >= self.energy_to_act then
	e.energy.used = false
	e:act(self)
end

--- Use some energy
function _M:useEnergy(val)
	val = val or game.energy_to_act
	self.energy.value = self.energy.value - val
	self.energy.used = true
	if self.player and self.energy.value < game.energy_to_act then game.paused = false end
end

Parcae2 wrote:The problem is that that wouldn't tell you how quickly you're moving relative to your opponents, which is what matters. It also wouldn't tell you if you have 1 free movement actions left or 10.

Parcae2 wrote: A notification in the game log (foo has 1 free action/movement/attack next turn) strikes me as the best way to get around that,
[snip]
Maybe your character sheet should show you how much energy an action costs, while the log tells you how much energy you have left after accomplishing an action? But that wouldn't solve the monsters-with-enhanced-speed problem.

Parcae2 wrote: Come to think of it, I still don't know what happens when a player with 300% global speed is fighting a monster with 300% global speed. Do they alternate or does each one go three times in a row?