"Round" vs "Turn" and "Lightning" vs "Elec"

[smbhax]

A few words that as far as I can tell are used interchangeably, depending on what part of the game you're looking at:

- In the C character sheet, units of time are called a "turn" ("Blows" and "Shots" are listed as "[x]/turn")

- In a melee weapon or missile x description page, units of time are called a "round" ("[x] blows/round," "Average damage/round")--but also in the same screen, a melee weapon's rubble clearing speed is given as "[x] turns"

- In an item's list of resistances--a typical Shield of Resistance, for instance--resistance to electricity (I think) is listed as "Lightning"

- In the C,h mode screen, resistance to electricity is listed as "Elec" (perhaps to distinguish it from resistance to Light on the same screen, which might otherwise look like an abbreviation for "Lightning"?)

Are "turn" and "round" the same thing? If so, should one or the other be used throughout the game, instead of both being used in different places?

Are "Lightning" and "Elec" resistance the same thing? If so, should one or the other be used throughout the game, instead of both being used in different places?

(If "Electricity" or "Electrical" is thought to sound too scientific and non-fantasy," perhaps just abbreviating Lightning as something like "Ltng" or "Lhtng" instead of "Elec" would do.)

They may appear in other places I've overlooked. : P

[Nick]

Originally Posted by smbhax

Are "turn" and "round" the same thing? If so, should one or the other be used throughout the game, instead of both being used in different places?

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: "Turn" really kind of has two meanings. It is used to refer to the smallest unit of time in the game, so there's a main game action loop where a bunch of things happen and then the turn gets incremented. One of the happenings here is the player and monsters get some (10 at normal speed) energy, and when they have enough energy (100), they get to move. Of course, especially for the player, a move is also referred to as a "turn". So we usually talk of game turns and player turns, and at normal speed there are ten game turns per player turn, but it varies if the player is not at normal speed.

"Round" is used in combat descriptions to mean what happens when the player's move is to make a melee attack. So it kind of means "player turn"; the main reason for using it is to be clear that it's not damage per blow.

So on the character sheet possibly it should say [n]/round. It's all complicated, too, by the fact that the shots per turn is implemented by each shot using less energy rather than actually giving the player the shots consecutively like blows in melee.

On the whole, I feel like any description will be at least slightly misleading, and the current
method is fine

Originally Posted by smbhax

Are "Lightning" and "Elec" resistance the same thing? If so, should one or the other be used throughout the game, instead of both being used in different places?

They are just synonyms used in different places for flavor (like "cold" and "frost"), and again I think the current situation is fine.