Smithing penalties

[Oboros]

So, I think smithing would be a more fun and creative endeavor with a system of difficulty reduction based on penalties as it used to have. I saw that it was cut out because people used it for smithing gear (gear used for smithing) mainly, but I never got to play that version myself, so I modified mpa-sil to try a game with it and the reverse problem arised, I would put minus smithing on combat gear. From where I´m standing this feels exploitative mainly because the system of taking a weakness in exchange for more/bigger benefits breaks down when considering the act of smithing, it being mostly a completely separate moment from the rest of the gameplay, when you can spend much turns as you want switching gear and getting comfortable, and then switching back when done or if a nasty creeps up. Mostly. So! I have a proposition: keep a flag internally to differentiate "smithing gear" from non-smithing gear and do not allow most difficulty reductions when the gear is, in fact, for smithing. This does not take into account edge cases like +grace equipment, but +grace equipment will only get you so far, smithing-wise.

Of course this has been coded and pull requested on mpa-sil.
At first I wanted to do the numbers symmetrically, as in if light costs you 4 skill, then darkness should reduce it exactly that. But then... it does not make sense that you could make stuff that gives you powers with 0 skill, just because you can offset it with unrelated penalties. Also, it makes you insanely powerful way too soon, if you specialize. So in keeping with the symmetry idea (because otherwise how can you f**** decide on numbers, HOW???) I opted to make each penalty reduce half of what its counterpart benefit costs, and to cap the maximum reduction at half of the pre-reduction number. I bet that half sounds like still too much for some of you, but consider this, if adding +1 light radius costs you x points, shouldn't -1 light radius reimburse you AT LEAST half as much?. Anyways, I am no game designer or even a good Sil player, but I really like this balance, both in paper and in practice. I'd love to hear what y'all think.

[taptap]

The smithing gear thing is kind of outdated. You can not wield two hammers anymore since 1.2, so smithable +smithing items are gauntlets + one hammer (and you can find two artefacts with +smithing for other slots). Gauntlets you often find as good or better than you can make them. So an independent category of items seems quite unnecessary.

For better gear (this is what you are yearning for, right?) I liked the re-forging idea (http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...ight=reforging) better than minmaxing curses.

[Oboros]

Originally Posted by taptap

So an independent category of items seems quite unnecessary.

Not really a separate category of items, what I'm doing is track when +smithing or a smithing ability is included in the artifact and flag it internally as "smithing gear" for most difficulty reductions not to take effect, not only curses, but skill/stat penalties as well, etc. Conversely -smithing won´t help lower the difficulty for you to bump other stuff.

Originally Posted by taptap

For better gear (this is what you are yearning for, right?) I liked the re-forging idea (http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...ight=reforging) better than minmaxing curses.

It's not about objectively better gear, it's about minmaxing as interesting, possibly dangerous choices. The smithing gear caveat is meant to remove that one instance when the choices are obvious as to what penalty you can take to maximize what stuff. In all other cases, you are actually taking a hit somewhere, so you can squeeze a bit more of what you want. You could think for instance putting minus archery is safe because you don't use it, but you are actually taking away the possibility to use it effectively alongside what you crafted, save the potential danger of swapping everytime you do use it. If is never I think very lightly that you can safely do away with some skill or stat or light (in the case of Darkness) or resistance to fire or whatever. At least not until the endgame I would think.