Awareness

Old MUME discussions.

Moderator: Builders

Forum rules
The posts in this forum should be related to MUME.
Locked
Wobbler
Posts: 393
Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:02 pm

Awareness

Post by Wobbler »

1. Does Awareness below 95% have any effect at all, or does 94.99% equal 0%?
2. If it does have an effect, is it one that can actually be noticed by regular mortals?
Politicians are wise and benevolent and will gladly sacrifice themselves for the common good. Anyone who implies that there might exist dishonest politicians is obviously a terrorist who should be locked up indefinitely without a trial.
Cuantar
Posts: 38
Joined: Sun Feb 24, 2008 8:03 pm
Location: SC, USA
Contact:

Re: Awareness

Post by Cuantar »

I wrote about this on ER, but I should mention it here, too. I guess I'll just borrow Wobbler's thread...

I think awareness should be much more useful for detecting sneakers and should affect alertness in a concrete way. I suggested, as an alternative to a "definite" nosneak flag which disables sneaking entirely for some set time, that perhaps panicked sneakers could simply be made more vulnerable to the effects of awareness/alertness than usual.

There are five levels of alertness. There could be some bonus to an "effective awareness %" (just an example, I have no idea how these things actually work) for each level, maybe +5 or so. Thus, someone with 100% awareness + paranoid would have an effective awareness of 120. We can then normalize things and say that while the victim is standing and doing nothing else (or entering a room), 120 awareness (replace with whatever the max possible is) would equate to some ceiling (90%?) detection probability, and 20 awareness (from 0% + paranoid) would confer a low (10% ?) probability of finding the sneaker.

These probabilities assume 100%+ sneak. Someone who isn't as good at sneaking should be easier to detect, as is the case today.

Perception should probably be considered when calculating the bonus from alertness, but I don't know how this would be done. It's already required for awareness, so maybe it doesn't make sense to add per in twice.

Flushing/revealing/searching should work as they do already, since those are used if the detection check was already failed.

Now for the flee/escape bit. When panicked, rather than suffering a binary nosneak flag, the thief could see his effective sneak % drop by some (semi-random) % within experimentally determined boundaries. The effect should be tweaked such that sneaking is still possible, but depending on his opponent's awareness + alertness, the sneaker is much easier to spot while panicked.

I hope everything is clear. Naturally, what's actually going on in the code is probably *much* different than what I've outlined. :)
Finwë
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed Feb 27, 2008 11:57 pm

Re: Awareness

Post by Finwë »

Yes, awareness below 95% does have a noticeable effect. It increases vision, hearing and smell. This is what is used to detect sneakers, hidden people and backstab attempts. Perception already affects these and the awareness skill, so it doesn't need triple-counting.
Wobbler
Posts: 393
Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:02 pm

Re: Awareness

Post by Wobbler »

Finwë, have you actually seen someone with high awareness save backstabs at a reasonable rate?
Politicians are wise and benevolent and will gladly sacrifice themselves for the common good. Anyone who implies that there might exist dishonest politicians is obviously a terrorist who should be locked up indefinitely without a trial.
Finwë
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed Feb 27, 2008 11:57 pm

Re: Awareness

Post by Finwë »

I never said awareness was as effective as, possibly, it should be, or at least as effective as you might expect, vs backstab, but yes, I have seen high awareness people save backstabs at a higher rate than people without it practiced. Others might be more qualified to comment on this.
Azazello
Posts: 119
Joined: Sun Feb 24, 2008 12:09 pm

Re: Awareness

Post by Azazello »

The cumulative effect of 2-3 pracs in awareness, 1 prac in search, 3-4 pracs in sense life turns a blind, deaf mage into the pretty much good and sensitive fighter.
If you also change your alertness to paranoid in addition you can hunt those sneaky bastards in closeables at least. i.e. you see through sneak-hide.

Each option alone was not really enough. Each option simply adds a few points to your perception parameters.
Locked