Re: CF: Cone spells

[Peter Mardahl <>]

a)  lots of people think that mages are *under* powered compared
to other classes.

b)  I noticed the cone oddity a long time ago.  However, I didn't
fix it because the cone oddity has this side effect:  yeah, it
triples in the center of the cone, but the edges have only 1 to 2
cone objects.  I liked the idea of the center of the cone
being stronger than the edges, so I left it like I found it.

Fixing this bug would have a major, major effect on the game:
*all* the cone spells would get a lot weaker.  For example, it might
become practically impossible for a cleric to kill any undead when
he is at low level with the holy word spells.

At one point I went through all the spells and imposed some sort
of order on them:  their sp cost was brought in line with the
damage they inflicted to the map.  I did this by creating special
objects that would take damage from spells, and then report the
total of the damage they took.  This balancing *included* the
tripling of cone spells at their centers.  I similarly modified the
ball spells and bolt spells which existed at the time.

However, many new spells have been made since then, and perhaps it
is time to re-balance the sp/dam of the spells.

Keep this in mind as you do your patching.

PeterM




> I think that's not the real problem with cones though.  Cones are 
> currently hyper-powered because a cone spell in fact fires three 
> overlapping cones, one from each initial square, due to some odd 
> behavior in cast_cone(), which also causes cones in flight to chew up 
> 3 times as many active objects as necessary (which can make a server 
> drag if you're being spammed by a mob of skulls or the like).
> 
> John, you might want to try the attached patch and remove 
> NO_CONE_PROPAGATE.  It removes this triple overlapping behavior, and 
> depending on whether you #define BALANCE_CONES, either leaves the net 
> damage as before (by tripling the damage from each cone cell), or cuts 
> it to 1/3 (by leaving the damage numbers alone).
> 
> Any comments, questions, flames, lightning bolts, or other feedback? 
> :-)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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