Monday, 19 January 2009

A rebalanced list of weapons for Unangband

No wonder everyone in Angband starts out wielding daggers. They are freakishly good.

Values that have been modified are in red (I've also hand modified the table after the fact, so a couple of calculations may be out):

Weapons






Description Dam/AC Wgt Lev Cost Info Average Damage Damage per wgt
Broken Dagger 1d1 0.5 0 1 1 2
Shovel 1d2 6 1 10 1.5 0.25
Gnomish Shovel 1d2 6 10 100 1.5 0.25
Broken Sword 1d2 3 0 2 1.5 0.5
Orcish Pick 1d3 18 15 300 2 0.111111111
Pick 1d3 15 5 50 2 0.133333333
Dwarven Shovel 1d3 12 20 200 2 0.166666667
Dart 1d3 1 0 10 2 2
Dwarven Pick 1d4 20 25 600 2.5 0.125
Whip 1d4 3 1 10 2.5 0.833333333
Dagger 1d4 1.2 0 15 2.5 2.083333333
Main Gauche 1d5 3 3 25 3 1
Javelin 1d6 5 5 36 3.5 0.7
Hatchet 1d6 4 3 30 3.5 0.875
Small Sword 1d6 3.5 5 48 3.5 1
Rapier 1d6 3 5 42 3.5 1.166666667
Spiked Club 1d7 13 1 10 4 0.307692308
Cutlass 1d7 5 5 35 4 0.8
Spear 1d7 7 0 30 4 0.571428571
Short Sword 1d7 4 5 60 4 1
Throwing Axe 2d3 2.5 30 80 4 1.6
Mattock 1d8 25 30 700 4.5 0.18
Awl-Pike 1d8 16 5 35 4.5 0.28125
Harpoon 1d8 6 5 120 4.5 0.75
Sabre 1d8 5 5 50 4.5 0.9
Ball-and-Chain 2d4 15 5 45 5 0.333333333
Quarterstaff 1d9 7.5 5 200 5 0.666666667
Mace 2d4 6 5 65 5 0.833333333
Throwing Hammer 2d4 3 40 125 5 1.666666667
Sacrificial Dagger 2d4 3.6 20 1000 5
1.388888889

Broad Sword 2d5 7.5 10 255 6 0.8
Long Sword 2d5 6.5 10 300 6 0.923076923
Glaive 2d6 19 15 363 7 0.368421053
Lucerne Hammer 3d4 12 5 180 7.5 0.625
Bastard Sword 3d4 9 10 350 7.5 0.833333333
Katana 3d4 6 20 400 7.5 1.25
War Hammer 4d3 9 10 225 8 0.888888889
Two-Handed Spear 2d8 20 10 230 9 0.45
Pike 3d5 16 10 120 9 0.5625
Broad Axe 3d5 12 10 304 9 0.75
Scimitar 3d5 10.5 10 250 9 0.857142857
Lead-Filled Mace 4d4 18 15 502 10 0.555555556
Trident 3d3 14 5 75 10
0.428571429

Scythe 5d3 12.5 15 400 10 0.8
Flail 2d9 12 15 353 10 0.833333333
Two-Handed Mace 4d4 12 15 450 10 0.833333333
Two-Handed Sword 3d6 12 20 775 10.5 0.875
Executioner's Sword 4d5 19.5 20 850 12 0.615384615
Halberd 4d5 19 20 430 12 0.631578947
Morning Star 6d3 15 20 396 12 0.8
Battle Axe 3d8 17 20 334 13.5 0.794117647
Great Axe 4d6 23 25 500 14 0.608695652
Beaked Axe 4d6 18 25 408 14 0.777777778
Two-Handed Flail 3d9 28 25 590 15 0.535714286
Executioner's Axe 4d8 25 25 750 18 0.72
Blade of Chaos 6d5 18 50 4000 18 1
Scythe of Slicing 8d4 25 45 3500 20 0.8
Mace of Disruption 5d8 40 55 8700 22.5 0.5625
Lance 3d8
 33 25 460 18 0.818181818
at

8 comments:

  1. Dave21 January 2009 at 03:44

    Has anyone ever done an analysis of what items people actually use in *bands?

    Something like a cross-correlation between item type, class and time spent wielding it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. kaypy22 January 2009 at 22:56

    Isn't there some minimum effective weight for the purposes of multiple hits? It might be worthwhile taking that into account in the table. Back when I last used a class that actually does melee I seem to recall the calculation being along the lines of:

    * with sufficiently light weaponry, can do N hits per turn.
    * can do N hits per turn with up to W weight
    * look for weapon with max damage for W weight

    I seem to recall a minimum effective weight actually making something around the short sword/sabre range most effective.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kavryn23 January 2009 at 02:40

    Dave said...
    Has anyone ever done an analysis of what items people actually use in *bands?

    You'd need at least two; optimum equipment changes drastically as you move from vanilla combat to O-combat. And every variant dev puts their own tweaks in, so even that would only give you a very vague outline.

    With all that said: the damage per pound on daggers does seem a bit high (darts and broken daggers, too, but those are balanced out by other factors). Maybe up the weight to 1.5, for a d/lb of 1.667? (Still very high for a melee weapon, but a bit more balanced with the others.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Andrew Doull23 January 2009 at 23:07

    Kris: There is a minimum effective weight for a weapon, between 3 and 4 pounds, depending on what class you are. Anything less than that weight is intended to be used as a thrown weapon, because the total stack weight is significant in this instance.

    I was balancing most of the weapons against a x1 damage to weight multiplier, slowly decreasing towards the higher total damage levels. Even with a minimum weight of 4 pounds for a weapon, an Angband dagger is obscenely efficient compared to what most weapons were set at (around x0.5 or worse) before I revised them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. kaypy24 January 2009 at 01:51

    My point is that daggers are less effective melee weapons than the slightly heavier ones, and a sling outperforms them for both damage and weight in the missile department.

    So why "freakishly good"?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Andrew Doull24 January 2009 at 20:59

    Kris: Prior to me updating them, most of the other weapons had a damage to weight ratio of about 0.5. The only exception being the Main-Gauche, which also sees a lot of service in the early and mid-game. The Main-Gauche and Dagger were clearly out in front in terms of damage to weight performance - which is why I balanced up everything else.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Gavin27 January 2009 at 09:09

    I've been playing a lot of steam games and Valve gets so much useful info for tuning their games from capturing and analyzing everything players do.

    How would something like that work in a game like this? Maybe log everything and at the end of the game ask: "Do you want to upload an anonymous log file? (Yes / No / Always)"

    Now, achievements ... :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Gavin27 January 2009 at 19:52

    oops... forgot to click "email follow-up" comments earlier :P

    ReplyDelete