Don't close the door on Uglúk, the uruk!

[Djabanete]

Easy fix, just randomize monster energy within a very narrow window. This circumvents other silly abuses like hack-n-back and pillardancing, as well as the door trick; and in general it keeps the player on his toes. It makes the game a little harder because your margin of error becomes greater, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Hengband uses this method quite successfully. When I suicide dive in Heng, I use the door trick whenever possible; but it's not abusive, because in only a few turns the monster double-moves me, opening the door and stepping through before I can react.

[Derakon]

I hate randomized monster energy, precisely because it means that monsters can randomly double-move you. Usually this doesn't matter, but in specific instances it can be huge. What's worse, the compensatory double moves the player gets aren't as big of a deal, because the player is always closer to death than the monsters he's fighting are.

While I don't mind the occasional "What the heck was that?" instadeath, I don't like the idea that in every single fight, I'm at the mercy of the RNG if the monster decides to get a double move and use that to use his strongest attack twice. You have to be at max health all the time if you want to be certain that a given monster won't just up and kill you.

Randomized energy is the #1 reason why I don't play Hengband. I'm sure it does a lot of nifty things but I just can't get past that.

[smileyy]

Theoretically speaking, a higher energy cost "open-and-move" action by a mob could also address the issue.

[Shockbolt]

Not sure how it's handled today, and I could be totally wrong, but I would think both strength and intelligence would be the way to go for this matter:

Based on the following facts:

-NPC is hostile/aggressive towards player and wants to kill him
-Player is using a door to prevent NPC from reaching him.

NPC Intelligence: the NPC would need to know that it's a door, and the fact that the door hinders the NPC in reaching the player on the other side. The higher the intelligence stat for the NPC, the faster it will try to bash down the door if it's either shut with spikes or simply closed.

NPC Strength: the stronger the NPC, the easier it is for it to bash down the door.

[Djabanete]

Without tinkering with the speed system, it makes sense for a monster that can bash doors to do so if the player is immediately on the other side. This is the behavior that raises the most tactical problems for the player, by opening up lines of sight; and even in a one-on-one fight perspective, it makes sense for the monster to do this because it places the monster in the door tile after the door has been bashed, so it closes the distance faster than merely opening.

If it seems like bad flavor for a monster to always bash a door instead of opening, think of it this way: the player is right on the other side, presumably bracing the door shut, and the only way for the monster to get through is to body slam the door. It actually makes a kind of sense.

It's a behavior that circumvents the door abuse, but also is "smart" for the monster even if door abuse is not part of the situation.

[artes]

Thank you. I'm amazed at the many different suggestions. This really shows that in programming, a problem can be solved in many ways.

Originally Posted by Djabanete

Without tinkering with the speed system, it makes sense for a monster that can bash doors to do so if the player is immediately on the other side. This is the behavior that raises the most tactical problems for the player, by opening up lines of sight; and even in a one-on-one fight perspective, it makes sense for the monster to do this because it places the monster in the door tile after the door has been bashed, so it closes the distance faster than merely opening.

This could be an interesting improvement to monster AI.

[artes]

Originally Posted by Shockbolt

NPC Intelligence: the NPC would need to know that it's a door, and the fact that the door hinders the NPC in reaching the player on the other side. The higher the intelligence stat for the NPC, the faster it will try to bash down the door if it's either shut with spikes or simply closed.

Maybe this is already somewhat handled in that monsters with an erratic movement will spend less time bashing, I guess.

NPC Strength: the stronger the NPC, the easier it is for it to bash down the door.

Today, bashing depends on monster level. Realism would be greater if monsters had strength, yes.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by artes

Today, bashing depends on monster level. Realism would be greater if monsters had strength, yes.

Bashing depends more of speed and weight than strength. A dragon should have no problems bashing down doors, even strongest dwarf would have plenty of trouble.

Then there are swarm monsters like fire ants that probably would eat their way thru the door rather than bash it.

[artes]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

Bashing depends more of speed and weight than strength.

That's true.

[d_m]

Easy solution to this problem. Give doors a small (1-5%) chance of breaking when being opened. This way, any kind of strategy that relies upon repeatedly opening and closing doors will fail after awhile, but random doors won't break too often.

This is like Fizzix's plan without requiring that monsters that open doors also be able to bash them down.

And it subscribes to my "all actions should have some chance of failure or alternate outcome" ethos.