[Announce] New variant: Tactical Angband

[PowerWyrm]

I'm wondering how it would go if consumables were reworked the way ToME 4 did: instead of potions of cure wounds/healing and scrolls of phase door/teleportation you would have infusions of healing/runes of teleportation that would be engraved in limited slots (2-5 depending on character level) and have cooldown of a few turns so you couldn't spam them and have to carefully plan when to use them. I think this would be a good variant to try such feature.

[Kodiologist]

Having scratched the surface of this variant, it seems pretty cool. How do you cheat to get full monster memory, though? Copying `monster.txt` to my user `lore.txt`, as described here, works fine in vanilla 4.2.4, but in Tactical Angband, it seems to get ignored and then overwritten when I next save my game.

[tom]

Originally Posted by Kodiologist

Having scratched the surface of this variant, it seems pretty cool. How do you cheat to get full monster memory, though? Copying `monster.txt` to my user `lore.txt`, as described here, works fine in vanilla 4.2.4, but in Tactical Angband, it seems to get ignored and then overwritten when I next save my game.

Hm, I thought this was a known bug of 4.2.4, but you say it works on 4.2.4. Next tactical angband release I may pull in vanilla master branch, and this might be fixed (?).

[edit]I can confirm this is fixed by pulling in vanilla master branch. If you are willing to use a pre-release version, here it is: https://github.com/tomm/tactical-ang...243-gc20ff8342

[Van]

Monster summoning and extremely strong and reliable escape options are two of Angband's biggest problems. Got high hopes for this.

[tom]

Tactical Angband 0.6

https://github.com/tomm/tactical-ang...leases/tag/0.6

The main thing this release is an extensive item rarity rebalance, this time using the wizard stats generator, to closely match V drop rates for essential speed items, dungeon books, stat potions, and others. This should mean that stat gain ends about when it does in V, speed turns up roughly as in V, the last dungeon book does actually appear at some point, etc.

You could say it's Scientifically Balanced for a Smoother Finish (TM).

* Extensive rebalancing of monster drops to match vanilla angband stat gain, speed items, dungeon spellbooks, end game staves and rods, gold.
* Phase door reduced from 7 to 5 tiles, to match the general rescaling of distances.
* Restore the ability of most monsters that could teleport themselves to the player, or teleport the player to them (in V).
* Monster group sizes adjusted from 1/2 Vanilla to 2/3.
* Paralysis is now measured in player turns, which means the higher your speed, the shorter absolute game time you will spend paralysed.
* Pulled code from vanilla master branch up to 4.2.4-232-g6e34fd35f. Many fixes.

[Sauken]

As others have echoed, this seems just like what Angband has needed for a while. Can't wait to try it out! Will be back with feedback.

[Kodiologist]

I just had a frustrating and cryptic death on c7c436539201f8eac652a489f4607a12804b160f (from January 8th) around dungeon level 34 or so, and I wonder if it's a bug. I had see invisible and yet I was fighting something I couldn't see ("You miss something" etc.). Then I got "You have been knocked out." despite having no stun previously, which seems like a huge amount of stun in one hit. I lost a lot of turns to being unconscious and was killed. Here's a character dump, since the oook.cz ladder can't handle it.

Aside from that weirdness, I've been enjoying the variant. Thanks for doing this.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Kodiologist

I just had a frustrating and cryptic death on c7c436539201f8eac652a489f4607a12804b160f (from January 8th) around dungeon level 34 or so, and I wonder if it's a bug. I had see invisible and yet I was fighting something I couldn't see ("You miss something" etc.). Then I got "You have been knocked out." despite having no stun previously, which seems like a huge amount of stun in one hit. I lost a lot of turns to being unconscious and was killed. Here's a character dump, since the oook.cz ladder can't handle it.

From the dump it looks like you were killed by a trapper, and that you didn't have see invisible (at time of death, at least). Trappers have two 15d1 blows, which have a 1 in 7 chance of stunning you for 20-40 if they hit (knocked out is 100).

[Kodiologist]

Originally Posted by Nick

you didn't have see invisible (at time of death, at least)

Ah dang, you're right. It looks like I'd confused myself by swapping out multiple pieces of equipment that provided see invisible around the same time.

Evidently I didn't appreciate how dangerous trappers can be, since I've blown past them without issue previous. Thanks. It's a bit of a shame that free action doesn't protect against stunning.

[tom]

Profuse apologies for the unfair death, Kodiologist. It was entirely my fault. Trappers can be nasty, but the way I reduced monster blows to 1 per round caused knock-out monsters to be ultra-deadly. I've fixed it in a 0.6.1 release:

https://github.com/tomm/tactical-ang...ases/tag/0.6.1

But something about how I pushed the tag prevented binaries from being built... so if you need a binary you could pick up the latest master build:

https://github.com/tomm/tactical-ang...6-3-gf6a4c32d0

This build contains an additional change planned for 0.7: blindness and confusion are non-stacking and with duration measured in player turns (like 0.6 did for paralysis). Easy cures for blindness and confusion are removed. Duration of the effects are reduced (mostly a fixed 3d2 player turns). The intention is to make blindness & confusion more than just "next turn is a forced potion quaffing". The duration might need tweaking for balance.