How do electrified enemies work? Can you turn that &%(! down, please!

I took a nap in my car and an eyebot took a million pictures of me as I slept. I woke up to a bunch of police sirens: 6 police bots and one riot control bot. Looking forward to a bit of challenge, I drew my reinforced wakizashi and stepped into the fray.

Unfortunately, because police bots and riot control bots have the same pale-blue R, I hit the riot control bot with my sword, was stunlocked for 12 consecutive turns, and somehow died instantly from concentrated torso damage (Does “The Police Bot shocks you!” ignore armor and always do torso damage or something? Their attacks couldn’t seem to otherwise pierce my armor.)

I realize this will sound like a noob’s lament and that I will probably be told to smarten up and not bring a knife to a bat fight. Still, the harm the player suffers by accidentally hitting an electrified enemy with a metal weapon seems outrageous.

So, I ask you: How does the electric counter-attack work? And could you please turn that &%(! down?

YASD transcript, for those interested:
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thank you for self-censoring, as i am extremely sensitive to swears.

The Copbot has a special ability that allows it to either warn you to comply or attack you with its tazer every 3 turns. The Tazer causes 5-25 (uniformly distributed) damage and stops the target from moving for number of turns proportional to damage (equal to damage for a speed 100 monster, more for slower and less for faster). If used against the player, will always damage torso.

I dragged all this off the wiki. So it may or may not be up to date. But in my experience you can very easily stunlock and kill monsters with the tazer (assuming you have enough batteries of course). A Copbot doesn’t have to deal with this first issue, so if you had a bunch of them on you all at once it’s conceivable that they could gang up on and continually taze you as each one’s cooldown wore off. That stacking torso damage would definitely put you into cardiac arrest. Talk about police brutality…

Yeah, that stunlock could use a rebalance - maybe now it could be reduced to a huge speed hit rather than move cost. That way it would affect faster creatures just as well as it affects the slower ones and wouldn’t completely take away player’s control.

Currently it works like this: for attacking a zapback enemy, you take 2-10 electric damage. Each point of damage from electricity drains an entire turn (more if your speed is below 100) from you, meaning you can potentially spend an entire minute standing there, getting wrecked.

Robot tazer is much weaker against the player - while it deals 5-15 damage, it only drains 1 turn per 4 damage (it doesn’t actually deal electric damage). It can still easily get you stunlocked if you get 2-3 robots zapping you.

Honestly while I feel like it should be toned down, it still feels like that if you have enough robots zapping you at once you should still be basically losing your turn. I mean if you have a handful of people hitting you with tasers simultaneously in real life you aren’t exactly still going to be getting up and walking around, you’re going to be lying on the ground not able to do much (heck, in reality even a single taser will make that happen, since regardless of how strong and quick you are the electricity it delivers is perfectly tuned to disrupt the electricity in your nervous system, meaning that as a human it’s impossible to “resist” a real taser hit). Maybe the answer here is just to give each bot only so many shots with the taser, and make it actually roll to see if it hit or missed you when they shoot it since real life tasters have to be reloaded with new cartridges after every few shots and aren’t just magical auto-hit weapons (right now the only way to dodge it is with the uncanny dodge CBM).

Yes, being stun locked and killed is horrible, but it’s rather realistic too. I wouldn’t expect the player to just be magically granted some extra form of electricity resistance (unless maybe they have a bionic or mutation doing so) just because they are the player.

i think some armor/clothing should protect from electricity.

It should check environmental protection imho. A suit of survivor gear has to protect from electricity, it would only be realistic in my opinion, although it would make survivor gear even more overpowered (which is not bad from my point of view :))

[quote=“Dlightfull, post:6, topic:10097”]i think some armor/clothing should protect from electricity.

It should check environmental protection imho. A suit of survivor gear has to protect from electricity, it would only be realistic in my opinion, although it would make survivor gear even more overpowered (which is not bad from my point of view :))[/quote]

Eh… From what little I know on the matter, no amount of regular clothing would really won’t help against getting zapped (short of, maybe, a ridiculous stack of clothes). Convential body armor might give a better chance at deflecting those prongs fired from tasers, but in cases where the prongs do attach themselves or against other forms of transmissions it won’t do much good. Since survivor armor are derived from such gear, they likewise should not have special protection against electricity.

But, in reality, there are specialized armor made of materials that help buffer against electric weapons (including shocks from tasers). Well, still in developement that is, last I checked. Take that for what you will.

[quote=“ShinQuickMan, post:7, topic:10097”][quote=“Dlightfull, post:6, topic:10097”]i think some armor/clothing should protect from electricity.

It should check environmental protection imho. A suit of survivor gear has to protect from electricity, it would only be realistic in my opinion, although it would make survivor gear even more overpowered (which is not bad from my point of view :))[/quote]

Eh… From what little I know on the matter, no amount of regular clothing would really won’t help against getting zapped (short of, maybe, a ridiculous stack of clothes). Convential body armor might give a better chance at deflecting those prongs fired from tasers, but in cases where the prongs do attach themselves or against other forms of transmissions it won’t do much good. Since survivor armor are derived from such gear, they likewise should not have special protection against electricity.

But, in reality, there are specialized armor made of materials that help buffer against electric weapons (including shocks from tasers). Well, still in developement that is, last I checked. Take that for what you will.[/quote]

well, i know that, but survivor suits are made out of a lot of plastic and duct tape, neither of which conducts electricity, so they should give a chance at ignoring electrical damage, as if it hit a part made of plastic.

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:4, topic:10097”]Yeah, that stunlock could use a rebalance - maybe now it could be reduced to a huge speed hit rather than move cost. That way it would affect faster creatures just as well as it affects the slower ones and wouldn’t completely take away player’s control.

Currently it works like this: for attacking a zapback enemy, you take 2-10 electric damage. Each point of damage from electricity drains an entire turn (more if your speed is below 100) from you, meaning you can potentially spend an entire minute standing there, getting wrecked.

Robot tazer is much weaker against the player - while it deals 5-15 damage, it only drains 1 turn per 4 damage (it doesn’t actually deal electric damage). It can still easily get you stunlocked if you get 2-3 robots zapping you.[/quote]

Losing 10 consecutive turns seems a little much. I think it’s reasonable to take damage from attacking an electrified enemy with a conductive weapon, but to be stunlocked for so long is a little ridiculous.

[quote=“i2amroy, post:5, topic:10097”]Honestly while I feel like it should be toned down, it still feels like that if you have enough robots zapping you at once you should still be basically losing your turn. I mean if you have a handful of people hitting you with tasers simultaneously in real life you aren’t exactly still going to be getting up and walking around, you’re going to be lying on the ground not able to do much (heck, in reality even a single taser will make that happen, since regardless of how strong and quick you are the electricity it delivers is perfectly tuned to disrupt the electricity in your nervous system, meaning that as a human it’s impossible to “resist” a real taser hit). Maybe the answer here is just to give each bot only so many shots with the taser, and make it actually roll to see if it hit or missed you when they shoot it since real life tasters have to be reloaded with new cartridges after every few shots and aren’t just magical auto-hit weapons (right now the only way to dodge it is with the uncanny dodge CBM).

Yes, being stun locked and killed is horrible, but it’s rather realistic too. I wouldn’t expect the player to just be magically granted some extra form of electricity resistance (unless maybe they have a bionic or mutation doing so) just because they are the player.[/quote]

I’d never noticed taking stun damage from Police Bot tasers before. I thought that “The Police Bot shocks you!” just dealt some amount of damage and/or pain. If the stun damage had been more clearly reported (perhaps with text output for each missed turn, e.g. “Your muscles convulse uncontrollably.”) I might have known the potential for stunlock.

I also think that the taser should not auto-hit. Even bullets have to make hit checks and may be deterred by armor. It makes sense for both gameplay and realism purposes that the taser electrodes would not be guaranteed to hit the torso and penetrate armor.

This was a strong character – she had narrowly defeated a Jabberwock about a month or two prior. That was a fun and exciting combat with obvious dangers that required deliberate action. Here, the hazard was not apparent until it was much too late. It’s one thing to spend several turns spending valuable resources, running away, etc. trying to win or escape a tough fight; it’s another to make a single move at full health and have your next opportunity for input be the eulogy prompt. Frustrating instagibs are also a common criticism of milspec turrets, as I understand it.

Anyway, realism or no, stunlock should be used with extreme caution in single-player games with permadeath. Taking away the player’s ability to have inputs to the game often feels unfair, cheap, or frustrating. I would have been glad to die in battle, but here I died instantly due to one fatfinger.

I would suggest any or all of the following: reducing the duration of stun, making the duration of stun more obvious, providing ways to prevent or recover from stun, giving electrified enemies a more distinctive ASCII symbol (perhaps blue highlighting), offering a prompt when attacking an electrified enemy with a conductive weapon, making sure stun durations do not stack.

That’s almost certainly something that should go in, yeah. If people aren’t knowing that stuff can stun you with shocks then that’s something that needs to be converted better.

Converting electric stun to an effect would give it “for free”.

Wrong weapon choice. There is nothing wrong with electrified enemies.

Wrong weapon choice. There is nothing wrong with electrified enemies.[/quote]

Well, to be honest, AFAIK, a wakizashi and other such weapons, have non-metallic handles that should not electrify you if you hit some electric monster.

I would say that every weapon that is not made purely from metal, should not transfer electricity to the wielder. As it is right now, if i am not mistaken, if a weapon has at least some metal in it, it will shock you when you hit an electrified monster.

Killed a shocker brute with a hand full of sugar…

Its simply deadly taking shock paralysis in the middle of a fight. I also see no reason to change that.

At least if you survive you can say that you are a tough cooky.

No reason to change anything IMO. Robots should actually make you not move or pass out from the electricity, and then they should take you to prison. That was before the robot reconfiguration in the lore. Now they are programmed to kill.

Also, if you never encountered the creature before you must be careful around it, as all monsters are different and this is a roguelike.

Even more, an open sandbox roguelike. And you have choices and consequences! And you broke a window, got an eyebot, and it called the police bots. It all happened like it should have! It’s part of the !!FUN!!

fix’d
Also, never say that again, or you summon the blood God by accident.
shiver bad memories…don’t hurt my dwarves anymore, i didn’t mean to breach into the caverns and release 4 megabeasts… ;-; starts crying

Jokes aside, Stop is correct. There are enough ways to deal with a locked door/window without calling an eyebot. In fact, you should always have at least 2 or 3 improvised lockpicks (or better) on you as well as a makeshift crowbar/crowbar/halligan bar. Helps to get rid of a lot of noise and annoying eyebots.

Few problems with just leaving it as it is:

[ul][li]Attacking zapback monsters is a noob trap. No warning, no nothing, but if you do it next to a lot of monsters, you’re dead. This isn’t fun, not even the first time. Anyone who knows about it will just grab a plank/credit card/plastic bag and beat the zapper with it.[/li]
[li]Tazer bots are balanced for 1v1, at which they aren’t all that good. Stacking multiple tazer bots breaks the balancing, making them possible insta-kill for anything that doesn’t resist.[/li]
[li]It affects slow survivors A LOT more than it affects the healthy ones. As if the speed penalty alone wasn’t already a giant problem. This contributes to the whole insta-kill things: if you are healthy, you ignore it, but if you are hurt, you die.[/li][/ul]

Wrong weapon choice. There is nothing wrong with electrified enemies.[/quote]

You don’t think that it’s a little disproportionate, having a little fatfinger mistake like that be more dangerous than a Jabberwocky? It may be fair (clearly I would’ve switched to tonfa for the riot bot, had its ASCII been distinct from the cop bots!) but it’s certainly not balanced.

I think we should just make more obvious the fact that they can zap back. Making them make a “energy crackles from the robot” would be enough IMO.

The warning is useful in one regard, but the balancing is more important, I think.

Consider this: Last night, by accident, I drank my toilet water instead of my clean water. My strength immediately shot downwards and I doubled over in pain. I decided to handle it by eating my one and only dose of royal jelly.

In that case, my mistake had serious consequences, but I was able to make a choice (to jelly or not to jelly) to modify the consequences (wait it out, or be out my royal jelly). In Crawl, a similar mistake might cost you valuable potions or scrolls as you struggle to correct your mistake.

But here, in the stunlock example, there’s no choice, no play. You are stunned for 15 consecutive turns: proceed directly to YASD. I don’t think that’s particularly interesting or fun.