Movement Speed?
 

Can someone explain movement speed to me, using little words? I just don't get how it is different from traditional speed boosts. Thanks.

The simple version is it adds to the number of steps you can take in a regular turn. So with +1 to movement speed, you can take two steps where you would have been able to take one; with +3 to movement speed, you can take four steps in place of one.

It works in exactly the same way extra shots does.

The way the game actually calculates it is instead of a step taking 100 energy, it takes 100/(1 + movement speed) energy - so 50 energy for +1 moves, 25 energy for +3 moves, etc. To see what this means in practice, I'm going to give a short description of what energy means in the game.

Every game turn, the player and monsters are given some energy - 10 points at normal speed, more or less if they are faster or slower. Then it checks who has built up energy over 100, and of those, the one with the most energy gets to move next. Once the player or monster has moved, they normally get 100 energy deducted, so have to build up energy again before they get to move again. But if a player has +1 movement speed, only 50 energy gets deducted per step taken, so they get to move again quicker.

Note that movement speed only affects the energy used for movement - energy use for spellcasting, melee, using devices etc is still 100.

Is the encumbered movement due to heavy armor the same?

My kobold ranger, Sparky, puts on Partial Plate Armour, and gets the message:

The weight of your armor encumbers your movement.

When he takes it off:

You feel able to move more freely.

I can see no differences in the stat page, nor do I notice any difference moving around the dungeon.

(He's gonna wear that randart armor for now, regardless. It's nice: [40,+11] +3 Con, protConf, and +1 Light.)

No, armor encumbrance only affects mana.

Ha - didn't look there.

Ha^2 - it reduces his cl34 mana from 39 to 38 points.

The message could be improved, I guess, but I don't see a good alternative to suggest.
"The weight of your armour encumbers your spellcasting"? "Your arms can move less freely for spellcasting"? "Casting spells feels more tiring with this heavy armour"?

As someone who shies away from technical jargon, here's my laymen understanding of movement speed vs normal speed:

Movement speed only affects how fast @ walks through the dungeon, whereas normal speed affects everything @ does from walking, to shooting, to meleeing, to quaffing. Each value of movement speed is very powerful (as I learned from personal experience when I picked up a sling with +4 movement speed):
+1 movement speed is the same as having +10 speed, except it only affects the speed at which you walk. So if you have +1 movement speed and +10 normal speed you'll walk through the dungeon at what effectively amounts to +20 speed but you'll still do all your actions (fighting, casting, activating, quaffing etc) at +10 speed.

Normal speed (or global speed since it affects your actions and your walking) stacks with movement speed. So when I found that sling with +4 movement speed I was moving through the dungeon at ludicrous speed. Faster than any amount of normal speed would be able to achieve since normal speed has diminishing returns after +28 speed. If normal speed did not have diminishing returns +4 movement speed would be said to have @ walking through the dungeon at +50 speed (assuming he had no normal speed boosts), but since normal speed does have diminishing returns +4 movement speed has @ moving at just over +70 speed.

Now here's the crazy part: since movement speed is a separate stat to normal speed they work independently of each other (ie. they stack):

That's why I thought when my @ had the +4 movement speed sling that the game was suffering a bug, because I was moving and monsters were pretty much just standing still.

If @ has + 4 movement speed and +20 speed then @ walks through the dungeon at what effectively would be a speed far greater than an infinite amount of normal speed would let you. So if @ were to walk away from a monster who has normal speed @ would move 15 squares before the chasing monster would move 1 square. If @ was running away from Sauron @ would move 5 squares before Sauron would move 1 square.

If @ moved at normal speed but had +2 movement speed and @ was running away from Sauron, then @ and Sauron would move through the dungeon at the same speed. But as soon as @ would take an action (fire a bolt from their wand, shoot a bolt from their heavy crossbow or engage in a round of melee) Sauron is going to follow @'s turn with 3 turns, because Sauron's normal speed is +20 and your normal speed is 0 and you perform one turn of actions in the amount of time Sauron is able to perform three turns of actions (or three turns of movement).

tldr: movement speed and normal speed are separate stats, the former only affects @'s speed as @ walks through the dungeon and the other affects both @'s movement and the action @ takes.

Is it really the weight, or the type of armor? (e.g., Partial Plate vs Studded Leather?)

"The bulk of your armor restricts your spellcasting."

The messages for wearing gauntlets are clear. Follow their example if you decide to change the armor messages.

(But honestly, the vagueness of the messages adds to the mystique...)

That's really useful, thanks!

It's the total weight of the armor. If you put on a heavy shield that puts you over the limit, you may be able to take off your cloak and be under the limit or closer to the limit so you lose less mana. (The further over the limit you are, the more mana you lose.)

In amy case, armor weight is only important when you don't have much mana to begin with. It is 1MP for every pound over the limit. It doesn't scale with max mana

Newb Trap
 

So Movement Speed still has not been clearly defined. It's still completely undocumented for a new-comer to Angband. This is a Newb Trap. It should be removed from vanilla and kicked back out to the off-shoots.

the answer is contained within your question. :D

The cold seeps into your bones..
 

Wow, we're being awful creative with the side effects of a lot of here-to-fore basic attacks.

Here's yet another example of how the Game Designers are inventing rather random fixes (impairments) in vain attempts to balance out the wrong point of the game.

The game was thrown into disarray long ago with Arrows (+3, +2) being boring. Now we've seen the culmination of this track in to ever more petty inconveniences to the player. No longer will it be perfunctory enough to have double-cold resist up (which used to be akin to Immunity). No, no, no.. now, we're going to let cold bust not only your potions .. through double resist .. and bust up your Dexterity. Newb Trap!!

Seriously?

This effect only happens for powerful monsters (POWERFUL flag or spell power 80 or more), and if the damage after resistance is greater than 500, and if it passes a random roll. So a player with a single source of RCold hit by a maximum strength cold breath from a powerful monster has a one in 16 chance of DEX damage. A player with double resist has zero chance.

The intent of this is a gentle warning to the player that taking a full-strength breath of one of the base elements from a powerful monster while singly resisting might not be a great idea.

I've seen some of your posts in other threads. You make some good points/suggestions occasionally. But here you really sound like a petulant child.

Nick and the others do work. You're taking shots from the peanut gallery.
Maybe take the tone down a little.

The Mother of All Reviews
 

Incorrect. I had double-resist on at the time, so the code's broken or the algorithm is.

These happen far more often than you may think.
The stench sickens you. ... and CON goes down? Seriously?

The point is not to make semi-random side-effects for POWERFUL mobs to counter what has happened over the years to player equipment.

Nick -- you've done great work in making the dungeons more interesting. The layouts of normal levels are far better compared to what we had in 3.0. Kudos for that. The cavern and vault levels are still annoying and ought to be removed completely.

But, adding in STAT damage for powerful mobs using basic elemental attacks calls into question the whole ramification for "resists". The basic argument back in 3.x was players were having it too easy with simple resists, so double-resists were required to stave off POWERFUL mobs at that point. But then player equipment ratcheted up in power to make it easier for players to have double-resists anyway.

Then came plasma... <insert_eye_roll> . The fire that could over-power RFire. Because too many players were having it too easy with double-resists. Oh, and mages were too powerful, as always.

Now we have a plethora of undefensible attacks: mana, plasma, water (one of my favorites), ice, gravity, force (because that sounds so different from gravity), and of course ... Time.

With the exception of mana, all of those should be stricken from the game. The whole paradigm of how one poses obstacles and impediments to the progress of the character needs a huge overhaul. You should not be adding petty penalties willy-nilly to players---who, for all practical purposes, play the game in a cogent manner. Some of the mob tactics have improved to make tackling them more of a challenge, that is good. I like how you've broadened their activities; the packs of unrulings are great fun.

- While player power in general, with mob power, has been in disarray for quite some time, the point of Angband is what? To make it so a player who's trudged through 50-levels suddenly get trounced by an unexpected, indefensible attack at 3500' ? or, in the case of STAT reduction, plinked away at by those over-whelming elemental attacks? Is that how you intend to improve Angband?

For me, traditionally, Angband has been about navigating the higher mobs and uniques past 2000' to get to Morgoth and finishing the game. The life-threatening part is typically < 2000'. I think that's always been the case and I'm rather fine with that. I can start over sooner. Now, I'm wondering what sort of extra-punch the U's and D's might have that here-to-fore double-resist handled because someone, some time ago, whined that his win was too-easy and mobs should be harder. Maybe next time, tell him to put down his Mace of Disruption of Extra Attacks and play without it. Why penalize everyone else because his warrior has 8-10 swings a round (I guess more with Movement Speed bonuses now) and 1200+ health?

I'm still wondering what "Movement Speed" is. I've had a character with +2 Movement speed on for some time now, and I still cannot comprehend how or what it is. I've not seen a FAQ for it. No discussion of it other than in this thread here. So... what is it?

Frankly, I'm not here to appease everyone and be all chummy. I think that's how we've seen a lot of Feature Creep happen to the game over the years. Sure, I'm in the Peanut Gallery, but aside from Nick, who isn't? Nor does it invalidate some of my data points.

Then why are you here? I understand not wanting to appease everyone, thats a fools errand. Someones going to be annoyed anout something in any group larger than 0.

But this is a forum for people to come together and discuss a game that they all love. The *whole point* is to be chummy and discuss the finer points of the game, talk about things they dont like, things they do and changes they'd like to see made (and not made) in the future, and yes even have disagreements. However, it is completely possible to have arguments without belligerence.

So if you aren't here to be chummy, I ask again, *why are you here*?

I am pretty sure all of these have been in the game since 2.4 (Frog-Knows). I wonder if any of the old Warwick people who might lurk on this forum could confirm?

As for the stat-drain with elemental breaths, I remember that being a thing around version 2.5.x or 2.6.x when Charles Swiger was briefly the maintainer. I think that was removed by Ben for 2.7.x. In any case, it's so rare that it is almost inconsequential. By the time you encounter such attacks you will have plenty of options for restoring stats.

It's like extra shots, but for movement. +1 movement speed will mean that each step you walk will take 1/2 the energy it normally does; +2 will make that 1/3. Many game mechanics don't have explicit description of how they work, just a suggestive name and the rest is for the player to discover.

Well, there's these people.

½ the energy? How much "energy" does it take to take a step normally?
For all the belly-aching about Newb Traps, how about Inexplicable Senior Moments? Where is this "energy" defined?

I could give a cryptic answer ala Nick here, but I'll give you a terse answer: to improve the game.

I don't see why being chummy is a prerequisite to that end. Seriously, how far has that gotten the game in the past few years?

Whatever your speed, 2 steps at +1 moves takes 1 player turn. At +2, you get 3 steps. I dont know why you find this difficult.

OK, here's the code for the powerful attack side-effect:context->power is the spell power of the monster, or 80 if the monster has the POWERFUL flag. context->dam is damage after adjusting for resistance - if you have double resist, that random value can only be more than 500 if the original damage is more than 4500, which is well over the 1600 cap on cold damage.

So the other possibility is that damage isn't being adjusted correctly. I can't absolutely rule that out, but that function has been essentially unchanged for 4 years, and I would expect it would have been noticed before. I've checked where temporary resists are applied, and that also looks OK.

On the other hand, maybe your temporary resist had run out without you noticing, or maybe you had a curse giving cold vulnerability.

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

The stench sickens you.
 

Confirmed. Bile demon with double-resist Poison up, still losing CON on each breath. I'll look at the code in a bit. Maybe I can locate the logic-bug.

So, how is that not Speed +10, then?

Bile demon is going to be breathing poison for 800, so single resisted would be 266 and double-resisted 88. The relevant side-effect code is As far as I can see this means context->dam must be > 200, which makes it look like damage adjustment is not working correctly. It shouldn't be a cap not being applied issue, as uncapped the unresisted damage at full HP would be 808. I don't suppose you noticed how much damage the breath was doing?

Because moves are steps, and moves are applied AFTER speed, so a +1 moves player with +10 speed. can walk or run 4x faster than normal speed. This is exactly how shots work, though shots are in units of 0.1 (4.2.0 and later only.)

The main thing is it only applies to movement, where Speed +10 applies to all actions.

These vax shots aren't worth a darn.
 

My character takes as little as 13 damage from poison and I'm still getting the Covid.

As far as I can tell..
 

I haven't gotten very far in my research, but it seems like context->dam is not reflecting ANY resists.

E.g., when I get hit with a Cold attack by anything powerful, I automatically take inventory damage. I.e., is always ringing true, regardless of resists.

Tomorrow, I'll spend some more time and have it print out what it thinks the damage value of context->dam actually is. I'm betting it's unfiltered, raw damage amounts. I don't think it is even checking for Resists, just Immunities.

NCountr, which version are you running? There was a change in 4.2.2 so that the side effects looked at the damage reduced by resistances; in 4.2.1 the side effects used the unadjusted damage. In 4.2.0 there was an indexing error that could mean a resistance was not correctly applied; that was fixed in 4.2.1.

All the old versions from frog-knows on are still on Rephial, along with release notes. The elemental stat drain happened in 2.6.2 for instance. Morgoth didn't gain breathe time till 4.2.3
I'm on my phone so I can't download and check the monster list for frog knows, but they were centainly a thing in 2.9.3 and came in bigger pack sizes. Aparently dholes almost became a thing in one of the early versions. They're around in the henglikes if anyone feels like correcting the missed opportunity.

4.2.1 -- that would explain a lot. But, I'm looking at the 4.2.2 source. So, I'd have to see where that structure's data gets populated. I assume that's in effects.c somewhere.

I’m not sure there’s been a damage type added since frog-knows. (I checked the source, and IIRC all the ones being complained about have literally always been in the game.)

Double resists have, IIRC, existed since Moria. Certainly since frog-knows. (It’s entirely possible that a temporary+permanent resist in Moria is fully redundant; I can’t be bothered to go digging to check.)

That one I don’t remember until modern versions, but there’s no guarantee I ever played anything in the 2.5-2.6 range.

Thanks for the confirmation and also the info about Moria - the main exception there being poison resistance. That wasn't available in either permanent or temporary form. Therefore the AMHD was an unavoidable instakill if it breathed poison as characters didn't get much over 400hp with stats capped at 18/100. Now THAT would be something to complain about if it was in modern Angband!

It's all happening in project-player.c - adjust_dam() for the resists, project_player_handler_COLD() (and so on) for the individual element effects, and those are called in project_p() near the end of the file.

But this is why it is so convoluted now. I think just about everyone can comprehend +20 speed and how to employ that into game strategy.

Now, you have Movement Speed +2, or whatever, and I sit there hitting the '5' key repeatedly waiting for a mob to move... like 6 times because I have a character already moving 2x as fast as the mob, but then it's compounded with the Movement speed bonus and the mobs just SIT there, except when I'm attacking. All the sudden they're moving every-other action my character takes.

That's rather obscene, don't you think? Maybe not because you put it in there, but it's not a great addition to the game, all-things-considered.

Use Rest. And make a macro (like 's') that explicitly rests 10 turns or so while the monster comes into sight. But mostly, huge movement speed is only possible with randarts, and is utterly lethal with +shots. Find a modest sized vault to run around, and Morgoth will never get a single spell off.

Since about 19-Always, Townies used to drop stuff. We also used to haggle over prices with the shop owners. And, yes, the Ancient Multi-hued D used to be something to be feared and revered... which is why we had wands of Wall Building. Poison breath attacks were nightmares and players had to be crafty about bouncing attacks off walls to damage such mobs before they had Line of Sight on the character. Well, we grew out of that and drops from Townies dissipated as well.

I don't know why or what's wrong with players who want to spend inordinate amounts of time with townies and their meager drops, but somewhere, someone decided they didn't want players hanging around town. Now we have to set a birth option just to be allowed to sell stuff to the shop keepers.

My original gripe is about the Game Designer(s) that have wanted to ratchet up Powerful Base Elemental attacks in another attempt to infuse hardship for the player. Yes, Stat Damage has been in the game in versions prior. But, my counter, so has a lot of other stuff that has been 'ruled out': like Townie drops. You can't go cherry-picking your historical references to rebut my charges. They have no value, like a lot of Level 0-1 potions. We used to get shopkeepers to buy and ID them on the cheap---that was a useful strategy back in the day.

Oh... but, but, but... . Yeah, right. Give me back shards of pottery and we'll talk.

Too many keystrokes needed here. And macros, I've never been a fan of. Call me old-fashioned .. fine.

I can see that now. Not sure how that would even be a challenge to kill off the final Uniques with such an advantage.

Here you go:
keymap: s
string: R10[Enter]$
Here [Enter] is the result of the enter key.
And not a macro, so no weird side effects. It's only certain games that still need them, like Tome (to toggle stance) and Sil (to toggle fire arrows)

Morgoth breathes time now? Oh crap lol looking forward to that.

I've had a few stat drops from breath attacks really doesn't bother me. I'm used to patching that stuff up with Mushrooms or whatever else I can find. My current character has 2 rods of restoration at the moment. If it was permanent stat loss I'd probably whine about it.

About shops I dunno why you guys have selling off by default. I love selling stuff. I miss ripping off the shop keepers with 20 unidentified rings of escaping as well that was hilarious if a little dumb haha.

Thanks for explaining speed and movement speed Nick that seemed quite straight forward - it got through my tiny brain anyway. I have two questions about speed I'd love to know the answer though to.

If you have extra energy say 120 when you move. Will the movement take 100 or do you lose any bonus energy after 100?

My next question is what is the maximum speed that will have an effect? I want at some point to create a max speed character just for the lols. I'm thinking maybe a druid as I think they have speed spell at the moment? Would +90 be max speed? So 10 +90=100 every turn. I'm assuming movement speed wouldn't make any difference at that point as you'd always fill the 100 limit.

Would need Cubragol Ringil, Feanor and rings of speed.

So basically what you're complaining about is anything you personally don't like, and your scope is the entire development of Angband from when it forked from Moria (or maybe before) until now, and also how other people play.

This clarifies things for me :)

Partially correct. I'm complaining about how the YesMen often resort to it's always been like wxyz, go split off yer own code and stick a Fork in it!. But, when I give counter arguments destroying the It's-Always-Been-That-Way argument, I suddenly get the rebuttal you just pushed -- "Yer an old foggie who can't accept change!" -- argument.

You cannot have it both ways. Either you accept that you've made changes and I can therefore critique them, or you look extremely weak otherwise. And it's the entourage of YesMen that push you into these weak positions.

I would rather hear you come back and say, "hmmm.. that point has some merit, let's look into this", "yeah, I might have over committed on that one", or, "no, I don't agree - here's why ... ", and discuss the points logically.

But, no, immediately, the YesMen circle like Time Hounds and defend the Commander with trite quips and uninspired back-talk. All-in-all a weak showing.

Mage's are too powerful moan the cliche'd crowd of YesMen. Followed quickly with the uneducated reasoning of, Dimension Door has wrecked the game!.

I recant the real reason behind what has "wrecked" the game and I see nothing but belly-aching and rants about how I don't know jack-Moria. Fine. Sit in your cubicles of Yes-ness and believe that Dimension Door is why the game is where it is.

Thank you. Someday, I'll figure out how to remap keys. I think it is in the ? help.

The ? help has been gutted, and the extensive help files are now online - keymap help is here.

The trouble is you are asking for a kind of respect you aren't prepared to give yourself. If you want discussion based on logic, start arguing based on logic rather then rambling about the Illuminati of YesMen. People only brought up "the way it is always have been-ith" because you suggested changes were introduced.

Shrug. The thing is I enjoy nonsense for its own sense, so I'll post it just for the kicks. You sound like you actually want to get a game change in. Try halving the nonsense and sticking to the actual point. At the moment I'm not sure what your point even is?

Just for the record; IMO this was a terrible idea. An off-line game should have off-line help.

I strongly agree with this. Not everyone has unlimited connectivity or data.

For 4.2.2, the .zip file for Windows and the .dmg file for macOS include the HTML versions of the help. In the .zip file, the help is in the docs directory; in the .dmg file, it is in the Docs directory.

Wand of Clone Monster bug
 

The wand only works when the mob is awake. If that is a new feature, I'm behind the times. But, it used to work regardless of mob state in 3.x.

In Project-mob.c -

/* Attempt to clone. */
if (multiply_monster(cave, context->mon))
context->hurt_msg = MON_MSG_SPAWN;

--- does not seem to work because, of bool sleep in mon-make.c's code:

* If `sleep` is true, the monster is placed with its default sleep value,
* which is given in monster.txt.
*
... */
bool place_new_monster(struct chunk *c, struct loc grid,
struct monster_race *race, bool sleep, bool group_ok,
struct monster_group_info group_info, byte origin)

In this case, if the mob is already asleep, the wand of clone monster successfully speeds up the mob, but does not clone it because the mob is asleep and generate.c cannot place a "wake", cloned mob asleep in a grid square. So, I believe the line in mon-move.c -

bool multiply_monster(struct chunk *c, const struct monster *mon)

simply returns FALSE without dropping a new mob or a dump file to debug. Good code, possibly faulty logic.

How to make Late Game Mages better.
 

I've made my suggestion numerous times, but I'll reiterate it once more.

In order to improve End Game interest / fun AND to improve Mage and spell-casters all around, I have put it to the Development Crew to have classes acquire spells in a spell-scroll system, adding them to binders.

This way, spell-casters do not crank up power in huge swaths as they currently do with the Book-at-once system. Given that the powerful books are found when the spell-casters are typically at or beyond the class levels necessary to learn them, they tend to learn the Book-at-Once. Hence, finding Raal's in 3.x or Arcane in 4.x for Mage classes equates to a phenomenal increase in power for the player ... just for picking up a copy.

Moving to a spell-scroll system, spell casters will only increase power piece-meal as scrolls are found, learned, and bound to binders. Otherwise, they're simply finding single-use scrolls, e.g., like a Scroll of Protection From Evil, read-once, consumed, gone forever. The UI knows the difference if the player "G"ains the scroll (and the system then prompts the player for a Binder to attach it to) or "r"eads it for 1-time use.

Spell-casters will be able to learn ~80% of the total spells, but the total number of spells out there should increase from the current ~40-some per class to 60-80. More utility spells. More attack spells. More defense spells per class. Say Max level 50 Mage can learn a total of 50-52 spells. Higher level spell scrolls will be rarer to find (but, should be easier to come across than the current rarity of High Level Books). Nearly all spells should be find-able by dungeon level 80.

You are not penalizing Mages. You are not bolstering other classes (warriors, thieves, etc.). You are giving the spell-casters (and abilities for thief/warrior classes, if one wishes to pursue those classes as well) more flexibility, more choice, more strategy in the game. You increase the level of interest into the Late-Game without penalizing a soul, without giving mobs yet another indefensible attack (Time, Gravity, Water, Force, Plasma, Mana, and so on) or another 10000 of health and +15 speed and 40 mob summons. You're also not giving warriors 14 extra swings per round or +3 extra Movement steps in attempt to make warriors somehow as good as mages supposedly are.

I can't reproduce that with the current development version: using a clone monster wand on an asleep monster works just as well as on an awake one. That agrees with what I see in the code: multiply_monster() doesn't check whether the monster being cloned is asleep or awake and place_new_monster() doesn't either - it's only told that the new monster will be awake when it is placed.

What can cause the cloning part of the activation to fail is not finding an empty square that's within one grid of the monster and within line of sight. So, using the wand on a monster in a dead end of a corridor when you're right next to it is guaranteed not to generate copy. With an empty space between you and the monster, it's virtually certain (1 - (8/9)^18000) that you'll get a copy.

Moreover, the raw docs are quite readable and sitting in the docs directory, and backwardsEric has included instructions explaining how to compile the docs locally yourself. Of course, the instructions are in the docs...

And I'll reiterate my answer, which is in short "Intriguing idea, I'm not totally revamping the game when the paint's not even dry on the last revamp".

Wasn't an issue with finding a grid square. Try this---the mob was not an original mob on the level, but was generated later on into the level, asleep.

Nexus Effect Altered?
 

@Wobbly prompted. I answered.


Next up, when / why was NEXUS altered to be Up/Down level only?
No more stat-scramble or just being sent away ~50-60 squares away?

Are you sure? I've seen all effects in 4.2.2.

This shouldn't matter. I've tested this too, and it seems to be working fine. The reasons for it not working are:

• Fail to find an empty floor grid (18 attempts)
• Monster is unique
• There are too many monsters already on the level

The first of these is the most likely; it's randomly choosing grids adjacent to the monster, so if a few of those are unsuitable it could be unlucky.

It was a kobold. I plain simple, lonely kobold in a hallway. Squares north & south were completely open. I nailed that thing 6 or 7 times with a wand of Clone Monster. The log said the kobold was Moving Faster, but stayed fast asleep.

I ran up to the kobold. I woke it up with bright lights. It was moving at high velocity. I hit it with the Clone Monster wand again, with 1-less square available. Now I had 2 kobolds. I repeated and got 3 more just like it.

Version 4.2.2 --- The Clone wand doesn't work when the mob is generated post-dungeon level creation (i.e., after you've spent some time on the level and mobs begin to repopulate the area) and is asleep. The code forbids it.

I'm not quite sure what your point is here. If everyone had just been "Yes Men" then Angband would still be at version 2.4 (when the Warwick creators left off), or possibly not even forked from Moria. The only changes would have been UI and bugfixes. That's not the case though, is it? Older versions are also available to play for those who don't like some of the changes in the newer versions.

For what it's worth I also think mages are well-balanced and not at all overpowered in the current version.

This is quite puzzling. Since the call to place_new_monster() in multiply_monster() doesn't depend on whether the monster is sleeping or not, there must be something else going on. If it moved between unsuccessful and successful uses, and there were ignored objects on the available grids before it moved, that might explain it.

It was 100% unsuccessful while the kobold was undisturbed. As soon as it woke up, it was 100% successful. My only conclusion is that bool sleep in the function itself was causing the Result to be false, hence the multiply_monster() call also failed.

Like I said, the mob was successfully Hastened (while fast asleep) each time I zapped it; it just didn't replicate.

In versions past, a Clone Monster wand would disturb the mob and wake it up. This time, it did not have that affect.

Moving on.. .

What if the code considers newly popped mobs to be surrounded (i.e., no open grid squares / yet undefined) no matter how open an area they reside? As soon as the kobold woke up, it was clone-able.

Just attempted again with a mob in an open room, sleeping, generated as a mob post level creation. I could not repeat the issue. Now I'm flummoxed.

Finally replicated the No Clone Event.
 

Okay, sleep has nothing to do with it. My bad.

Hopefully, my uploads worked and you can see empty hallway before / after the guardian naga, but it is now impervious to spawning while in the hallway. I'm now of the opinion that the spawn code is not looking very hard to find an open grid to place a replicate mob. 75% of the time it fails when it only finds wall...?

Does one of the two squares adjacent to the naga have an ignored item ('K' in the original keyset or 'O' in the rogue-like keyset would toggle the ignore setting and reveal those items)? For how many of the failed attempts was the other naga in the square adjacent to the naga?

If both grids were available and the cap on the number of monsters on the level hasn't been reached, the probability of the monster cloning with one wand activation is 1 - (7/9)^18 or 98.9%. If only one grid is available and the cap on the number of monster on the level hasn't been reached, the probability of the wand activation cloning the monster is 1 - (8/9)^18 or 88.0%. With the former, getting one clone in four attempts is highly improbable (.00051% chance of happening). With the latter, it's a bit more believable though still unlikely (.61% chance of happening). Without more information, I would say the code is working as expected (I would guess one of those other factors is coming into play for one or more of the attempts).

Could the code be better? Likely yes, though the current implementation has an advantage of being very simple; something that would work more reliably and more efficiently would be somewhat more complicated.

You can see in the messages the wand activation is working, the naga looks even faster. Just a moment prior, I pegged her buddy further back with the same wand. The guardian naga spawns! I then had 4 attempts in-a-row fail, while the newly spawned naga flew towards me at super-sonic speeds. And, I presume there are only 8 squares, max, for a new mob to spawn on around an existing mob. So, I calculate that to be 2 of 8 squares (hallway spots) for new nagas to spawn into. I think the code is not attempting to place new mobs with the same effectiveness as the 3.x code is/was/does/did.

I don't know how else to explain 4 failed attempts in a fairly empty hallway. No, no extra ignored-items in the hallway.

Did some testing in wizard mode and its working fairly consistently for me.

I'll keep watch over this peculiarity, see if I can pin it down further.

Yeah I have to say I'm not a great fan of this new flag--seems overly complicated and hard to understand. Seems like it was a feature mainly needed to balance rogues properly. Obv movement speed for rogues is a big deal. And probably also rangers that can back up firing Parthian shots at monsters way better with +1 movement. Well I guess and mages too. So it's really good for rogues and range attackers, not so much melee artists.

Using standarts Ive only found one item with movement speed: Boots of wormtongue. I pretty much didnt use them, but left it sitting in my home, thinking at the end game I might find them useful, but then even after I found 2x +15 speed rings, I still felt maxing out speed is best: its very nice to have 4.1 speed when facing a speed 3.0 or especially 3.8 monster (like wiruin)--the last bits of regular speed are a big deal.

Are there other items that have Movement speed flag that might be better than womtongue?

I find it amazing on melee characters. You can close distance in 1/steps the time. :) I think I had something crazy with a druid (pre nukes still melee) once like +5, all other mobs looked to be frozen in time when I was moving. XD

IIRC it was introduced for druid shapechanges, and then added to the odd item.

Any standarts other than Wormtongue?

Also regarding the prior post--well +5 is ridiculous--obviously that is something I would use LOL.

No, that's it. Of course with randarts, all bets are off :)

"Normal speed" should probably rather be called something like action speed, as opposed to movement speed, which is a modification of action speed for one particular type of action (movement).

Perhaps a limit on movement speed similar to regular speed would be in order, or at least a maximum that can apply?