Player turns and extra shots

[Timo Pietilä]

Hello.

In new angband there are two new turn counters: player turns and active turns. I think first one calculates every action you do and second does count only non-resting turns.

How about extra shots? Do I use extra turn for each extra shot?

I started to think this because of current competition. Maybe I'm better off not shooting everything, but meleeing those monsters instead. Speed is useful in avoiding monsters but it doesn't reduce player turns directly. Maybe I could use swaps for melee instead of relying to missile weapon.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

Hello.

In new angband there are two new turn counters: player turns and active turns. I think first one calculates every action you do and second does count only non-resting turns.

How about extra shots? Do I use extra turn for each extra shot?

I started to think this because of current competition. Maybe I'm better off not shooting everything, but meleeing those monsters instead. Speed is useful in avoiding monsters but it doesn't reduce player turns directly. Maybe I could use swaps for melee instead of relying to missile weapon.

That's a very interesting point - yes, each shot is one player-turn, so an extra shot launcher will increase your player-turn-count. But since extra shot launchers are so useful, this is tolerable. In fact it's not dissimilar to the treatment of speed: more speed means more player turns, but that's helpful too. It's altogether a fairer count than game turns.

You have raised a worrying thought though: when we move to fractional blows, player-turns might need re-thinking - unless we're all happy with a player-turn per blow ...

[Derakon]

There's two ways to handle fractional blows. One is that when you attack an enemy, you make as many attacks as you can without using more than 100 energy; the other is, that each time you attack an enemy, you hit it once. Both can work, but they'll play out very differently, and of course will affect player turns differently as well.

Ultimately I don't think this is a huge deal since player turns aren't really comparable across classes anyway. For purposes of competition, it's perfectly fine if some classes have higher player-turn counts than others.

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

How about extra shots? Do I use extra turn for each extra shot?

Not only do you use a turn for each shot, irrespective of shot speed, you use a turn for each ammo autopickup even though that takes only 1/10 of a turn, i.e. 10 energy. Anything that causes the code to change the energy counter counts as 1 action irrespective of the amount of energy used.

I maintain that if you want a measure independent of player speed, total energy used is a better metric than what is currently computed.

[Sirridan]

Could you just count a player turn as every time the player has recovered 100 energy?

EDIT: Beaten by Eddie, although his idea is a step better than mine.