in-game speed improvement

[speakyourmind]

My suggestion is easy to explain : the average speed of a player or npc is 1.00 , 0.66 and 1.25 ,i believe this is all. the problem is that ,when running the game doesn't act accordingly totally ,for example,with combat advisor on,sometimes i can act twice against a zombified dude,while the marker is yellow.I understand why,but it takes time and effort to do the maths in place of the game!So,wouldn't it be wise to make a revision on the speed system?nothing major,only this aspects bother me and may bother others...

[zaimoni]

More counter-intuitive is that when you're slowed to 0.66, it is possible for a zombie with speed 0.66 to double-move you.

As I'm such an anemic player that I'm writing a savefile viewer in Ruby for RS9, I have tracked down how this works. I can get accurate predictions as follows:
* Speed is energy recovery per time tick (of which there are 720/day), divided by 100. The savefile representation is a 32-bit signed integer.
* Once it is your turn, you can move as long as your energy counter is above 0. A normal-speed move costs 100 energy; a running-speed move costs 50 energy. Yes, this means that if your internal energy counter is 50 or higher that the first running move is "free", and nobody moves, not even that red skeleton with speed 200.

If you aren't wearing armor, then careful note taking is all you need. The day stamina cost for running is 4; the night stamina cost is 6. So your visible stamina changes will alterate: 4 (free move; "out of phase"), 2 (everyone else moves as well; "in phase") or 6 (free move; "out of phase"), 4 (everyone else moves as well; "in phase"). Of course, time works weird in the hospital, and possibly the subway.

(Current tactics on my end is to wear armor when expecting a counter-attack; e.g. meleeing skeletons. Otherwise the turn cost isn't worth it, even if would be much better roleplaying.)

[zaimoni]

While it would be more intuitive to go with a "highest energy moves first, always" (no more being double-moved at speed .66 by a zombie at speed .66), I suspect it would make the game harder.

[nope]

In that case, It wouldn't be a suspicion, here's how an example would work :

Creature 1, Speed .66, Slowed Human

Creature 2, Speed .67, Zombie

How it would work : with a .01 speed advantage, Creature 2 moves once, then, 1 takes a step and 2 moves again, Creature 2 would cover two tiles while 1 would only cover one, thus, C2 would be capable of moving twice as fast as 1 just because of a .01 speed difference, and this would mean that in a fight, 100, 66, 50 or 125 speed would mean jack shit as the one with higher speed gets two moves everytime, As a matter of fact all those numbers would be nothing unless if there's a big fight, those cases would be a bloody mismatch as the side with higher speed than the other would be capable of taking down the other side(Thus, a Force of Disciples can overpower an Army of Guardsmen) what with the advantage of two moves per turn

And by the way : Nobody wants to fucking take down notes, they just want the action, not having to remember which moves are faster or slower or whatnot, unless if they're obsessed with notes and knowing every aspect of the game, like you, Zaimoni

And Armor is a crucial item, in a fight, the last thing you have time to do is equip armor or grab equipment or change weapons, if you walk into a battle wearing armor, a 100'er would be able to get a rare two moves off, but it's not worth letting that same 100 speed mob two entire turns attacking you, and you don't even get to dish out some damage in those two turns

[zaimoni]

Jul 22, 2012 6:10:06 GMT nope said:

In that case, It wouldn't be a suspicion, here's how an example would work :

Creature 1, Speed .66, Slowed Human

Creature 2, Speed .67, Zombie

How it would work : with a .01 speed advantage, Creature 2 moves once, then, 1 takes a step and 2 moves again, Creature 2 would cover two tiles while 1 would only cover one, thus, C2 would be capable of moving twice as fast as 1 just because of a .01 speed difference, and this would mean that in a fight, 100, 66, 50 or 125 speed would mean jack shit as the one with higher speed gets two moves everytime

Do your homework On average both the current system and the proposed alteration one give the same number of normal-speed moves per 100 time ticks. I'm proposing losing the option of total immunity when breaching doors, windows, and choke points created by flaming cars.

Jul 22, 2012 6:10:06 GMT nope said:

And Armor is a crucial item, in a fight, the last thing you have time to do is equip armor or grab equipment or change weapons,

Grab equipment from the ground, yes. Wearing/unwearing armor and changing weapons are free actions in RS9 (as might be expected from one time tick corresponding to 5 minutes of real-world time.)

[speakyourmind]

I'm speechless.But i'll try to get on the track.i'm trying to say that the combat advisor could be more user-friendly,while understanding that it is hard to say when a zombie will be "running" or not but...the combat advisor only matters when you're planning a fight...

[zaimoni]

I have not observed zombies running; the high-speed ones merely walk faster.

CHAR agents and bikers definitely can run, so I'd guess any living can run.

In any case, under the current mechanics if the first move doesn't take the unit's energy (not a public stat) below threshold then it gets to move again, before anyone else gets a chance to move. If it's you, then you just got a no-retaliation move.

Combat adviser: even considering that the combat adviser does not account for when you miss a turn, it still is a far more dramatic difficulty reduction than advertised (75% difficulty factor is not remotely correct, it feels more like 25% to me). (In particular, if a move takes you below 10 stamina then your actual speed for the next time tick is 0.66 rather than 1.00, assuming you aren't sleep-short. Making the adviser account for this looks tricky.)

[speakyourmind]

I do have a question about the unit's energy;i'll assume that ,at the beggining of a turn,i have 100 energy points,after some enegy costing actions when it reaches the threshold,it's the end of that specific turn.between that :
-what is the value of the threshold?i'll assume that it's 10 and cannot be 0,and that it could even be 20,for my reasoning's sake.i can also assume that if the value reaches negative values it is reset to zero.
-can the value overlaps the 100 energy points? let's say that i do a move and wasted 90 energy points,that means end of turn:but does the system takes that ten points into account for the next turn,so giving 110 points?that would make sense to why sometimes a 0.66 speed zombie moved this turn like a 0.50 speed zombie.
Talking about mysteries,right?

EDITED: My bad ,0,66 speed means 2 moves of him by each 5 moves of mine,but it's not linear,what makes sense with zaimoni's explanation.Furthermore,beware of z-grab.

[zaimoni]

Well...on your very first turn you're SPD 1.00 so you get 100 energy before taking your turn. The energy cost of your move is either 50 (running) or 100 (normal-speed). Note that things like firing weapons or picking up/dropping items are always normal-speed even if you have the running indicator set, but melee attacks and jumping onto things do happen at running speed.

So it often makes sense to immediately run at the start of the game, if it gets you to key supplies before someone else (the AI rarely runs even when it makes sense to).

After that it gets more complicated. Getting double-moved by speed 0.66 when you're at speed 0.66 happens something like this:
* before you get energy: you're at -64, Z is at 0
* you get energy: you're at 2
* you take normal move: you're at -98
* Z gets energy: Z is at 66
* Z moves: Z is at -34
* you get energy: you're at -34. You miss a turn.
* Z gets energy: Z is at 32. Z gets move, again; you've been double-moved by a Z at the same speed as you.