On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 10:41:05PM +0200, Eino Keskitalo wrote:
> 2010/12/21 David Ploog <dpl...@mi.fu-berlin.de>:
> >> commit 44e93c5fb84afd4bbf14cc0eb7df4499e47fac2b
> >> Author: Eino Keskitalo <evkt...@users.sourceforge.net>
> >>
> >> Trampling for yaks and death yaks.
> >>
> >> Increase the size of yaks (to BIG) and death yaks (to GIANT). Make
> >> their attack trampling.
> >>
> >> I think the trampling is a great feature for yaks. They are the last of
> >> the great archetypal boring monsters of Crawl (the others being slime
> >> creatures and ugly things). Being pushed around by herds of yaks should
> >> be good.
> >
> > I am not convinced. With this change, why did we introduce elephants? Now,
> > yak bands and elephant bands look awfully the same.
>
> I think elephants are good flavour for the jungle book vault (that is
> how they were introduced), and hellephants are excellent monsters on
> their own.
Actually, dire elephants were meant for Jungle Book, ordinary elephants were
added only after someone made a Lair entry with dires which nuked everyone
into smithereens.
However, the commit that enabled generation put them into a number of vaults
with an insane frequency.
> Like I said, we shouldn't generate elephant bands.
Strong +1.
The problem is: almost all real opposition you currently find in the Lair
are elephants. They are among most frequent monsters in the Dungeon. And
in the Vaults. And the Vestibule.
It's like that old joke:
* Day 1: I turn on the TV: Lenin.
* Day 2: I turn on the radio: Lenin.
* Day 3: I buy a newspaper: Lenin.
* Day 4: I'm afraid to open a tin.
I'd reduce elephants to just that single Lair entry. If you disagree with
that, then please, for the love of Cthulhu, at least take them down a peg
from the #1 spot on main branches.
> I see this as rearranging the building blocks (gameplay elements), and
> yaks being old monsters should be priority instead of new monsters.
Beside nostalgia (keeping the monster scheme of the old Crawl), there are
theme issues as well: at the time you fight ants, rats and frogs, big
monsters would better be sheep sized... the time for colossal ones will
come later, with dragons and stone giants.
> I like the idea of herd AI (keeping together etc, possibly some other
> leader-related things, like morale), but not the stampede speed-up.
> Yaks should be something that you can run away from.
A majority of Lair-time chars have to run away most of the time, picking the
death yaks -- and early on even vanilla yaks, in choke points one by one.
Giving them stampede could be interesting but would require nerfing them
to blink frogs level or easier.
> > We now have a three elephant castes. Elephants could also grab (constrict)
> > opponents with their trunks.
>
> Well, constricting-styled effects are already proposed for a long list
> of monsters.
Indeed, it might be better to keep them for nagas, anacondas and the like.
> > By the way, I sometime proposed extra damage when trampling does not work
> > because you're standing at a wall. Something like +50%. If you're not
> > about to be pushed around, feel the pain.
>
> I like this, it'd make you consider your positioning - would you
> rather be pushed around, or take extra damage? You'd need to be
> careful to not let yourself be pushed into a corner too.
This part sounds good, but only if we can find a better solution to the
water/lava problem you mentioned.
--
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// Never attribute to stupidity what can be
// adequately explained by malice.
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