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

[i2amroy]

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.

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.

[Coolthulhu]

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

[prytoclasm]

I drew my reinforced wakizashi and stepped into the fray.

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

[Dlightfull]

[quote=“hipscumbag, post:1, topic:10097”]I drew my reinforced wakizashi and stepped into the fray.

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.

[Valpo]

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.

[StopSignal]

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!!

[Kadian]

[size=36pt]!!FUN!![/size]

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.

[Coolthulhu]

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]

[hipscumbag]

[quote=“hipscumbag, post:1, topic:10097”]I drew my reinforced wakizashi and stepped into the fray.

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.

[StopSignal]

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.

[hipscumbag]

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.

[StopSignal]

No, IMO the stunlock was the consequence, not the action. Of course, there was no message before, I give you that point. But before, you had the choice to change weapons, throw stuff or flee. Lit it on fire, throw a grenade, run it over with a car, or use a missile from the silo. You chose a direct approach. And the consequence was stunlock and death.

I hope I am not being mean, I just was to say that I think. I still think there should be a visual/textual cue, however.

Also the water thing would be a Death By Boredom. It totally should have a “dirty water!” popup.

[Coolthulhu]

The overkill zapback doesn’t really serve a purpose.

If the stun was 1/3 of the time, you’d still grab a different weapon.

[ShinQuickMan]

Since we’re on the subject… Was anything done in relation to this and martial arts? I recall a few times where I accidentally left a kung-fu style on while attacking a shocker, only to find myself locked by a counter-attack to stun loop.

[Valpo]

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:22, topic:10097”]The overkill zapback doesn’t really serve a purpose.

If the stun was 1/3 of the time, you’d still grab a different weapon.[/quote]

Its purpose is to be deadly i thought?

It serves that purpose.

The player should probably know how riot bots work. Its something they should have learned from watching tv alone. So that info should be available to everyone before testing .

[Coolthulhu]

Its purpose is to be deadly i thought?

The purpose is making it a bad idea to attack the bot with a metal melee weapon.

This purpose would be fulfilled at loss of 2 turns per attack just fine.

The loss of up to 10 turns only really results in huge punishment for misclicks and new players not knowing how much of an overkill the zapback move drain is.

Doubling the zapback damage while cutting the stun by 66% would make it serve its purpose better.

[Heruedhel]

When it comes to combat, insta-kills are bad design. Even if they are “realistic”.

Hit Points do not exist in nature, yet we use them extensively in games because the realistic alternative would make most games unplayable. I don’t see why shock damage should be treated any differently.

[StopSignal]

I think a clue about their electric nature is enough. After all, roguelikes are about choice and discovery. Choose right and it’s ok, choose wrong and learn. Thoughen up. Next time you know you will kick that thing’s ass!

This time, the bad thing was that it was not fereseeable by the player in any way. Which is a normal thing in roguelikes.
Really normal. I know the opinions of some people here that hate other roguelikes because of the learn nature of them, but I think that’s part of the fun. Like being killed by summoning enemies by mistake in Nethack’s sinks. Like opening a cavern in DF. First time stealing from the shopkeeper in Spelunky. I guess people get mad if they die in a permadeath game, but it’s worth it! How many times I died like that.
In this case, not even the description says something about the tazer or zapback.
But IMO that’s better. Next time, will you do that? No, because you learned. And you feel more powerful!

No need to nerf anything. Even more, I think there should more cops around. Why do they appear only in robbings? They should patrol.

[Sunshine]

From the other side, tazers are wildly OP in the hands of the player. The few monsters that might be frightening early game, become no problem after you get a tazer and some batteries. Likewise any NPCs with melee weapons. Just zap them and run away. And even electrical enemies, which you might expect to be immune, don’t seem to be.

Furthermore, tazers are activated instead of used as a weapon, so you don’t actually have to be holding it. You can use it from your backpack without dropping or sheathing your main weapon. Do they even need a successful attack roll? I don’t recall ever missing with one. Tazers hold 500 batteries, making them smaller and lighter than the batteries themselves. So carrying four or five tazers is not bad idea for storage and protection.

They need some kinda nerf. I’d say remove real HP damage entirely and just have them cause pain/stun. Then a zapping enemy would be dangerous when in a group with other enemies, but wouldn’t instakill you solo.

But my biggest complaint is that they are called tazers when they are clearly stun-guns.

[Belteshazzar]

I don’t mind the idea of some enemies have surprise shock-back though. Sometimes one just needs to learn from experience, that’s almost a core-concept of roguelikes now I consider it?

On the other hand loss of upwards of five turns is pretty extreme I have to say, on the enemy side or the player side. I does seem like electricity, or at least the specific taser effect needs some work to bring that into line. I’d would agree with making taser do no damage, but reducing their stun duration to a third of damage dealt or less may be in order?