Ranged weapons that don't suck?

[Lummox JR]

I'm not the consummate Roguelike expert, but I've found in most of the RLs I've played that ranged combat is really only feasible with spells and wands. That is, bow-and-arrow attacks are quite nerfed. In Rogue for example, arrows do a semi-reasonable amount of damage (maybe a little less than they should), but to use them effectively you need to 1) wield the bow/crossbow, 2) go through a complex throw sequence to fire, and 3) pray you can see any other monsters coming up or that you kill your target before it gets too close. Wandstrikes don't have this problem; you fire and forget, still keeping your trusty two-handed sword in hand. #3 is a bigger concern in Rogue itself, where darkness can hurt you bad.

Have any RLs found reasonable solutions to this problem? Besides the obvious ones that is, like I suspect in Doom RL there's a lot more ranged weapons fire but simplified (I haven't played it yet).

[Adral]

That's curious - I tend to find ranged weaponry is *very* overpowered in roguelikes.

Take Nethack, for instance. You can machine-gun a stack of blessed daggers doing insane damage (even more damage than spells/melee) all of the game, and with almost all classes. You can check at r.g.r.n., one of the most advised strategies is to use that, with as much monsters as possible, since it is the less risky. In Angband, one of the easiest classes to use is the Ranger, doing absurdly high damage with his enchanted bow and arrows, while keeping yourself in safety (using Phase Doors when the enemy is too near)... even the Warriors have to use a bow or other ranged weapon for the tightest situations, to chip down an enemy's health with much less risk involved. Also, some melee enemies can destroy your equipment, which will *not* happen to you if you attack them from afar, and the ones who destroy equipment from afar will destroy that of the meleer too. If that wasn't enough, the status effect "Afraid" does not let you attack on melee, but it *lets you attack using ranged weaponry*. I think in Crawl this is the case too - meleeing is very dangerous, as you can die *quickly*, so it is always advised to soften up targets with either darts or, preferably, poisoned needles. Also, as always happens, meleers suffer from the "easy start, hard late-game" developers seem to love for them (just the contrary as spellcasters, which are very powerful later on)

So, I think the fact is ranged combat has it's intrinsic benefits - not having to risk yourself getting near an enemy/a group of enemies being the most obvious. And when enemies have brands or other special abilities that activate only on melee combat, the benefits of ranged weaponry are even higher. But it seems than in some roguelikes, to "balance" ranged and melee, forget that point and just boost damage on ranged, which leads to the fact that it is almost always the answer to everything.

Lately I am playing a lot of Angband, and I can tell you that I pick out all uniques and hard monsters with bow & arrows, at least until they get close enough for some more pain

Anyway, this post is just my opinion from what I've read and my own experiences, so it is not a consumated fact.

[Lummox JR]

I guess mostly this is coming from my experience in Rogue. In Crawl I do tend to throw stones or darts whenever I can, because the game bestows an absurdly low number of hit points for the monsters coming at you. And in Nethack, as I mentioned darkness is usually not an issue. But still, the firing sequence is overcomplicated and requires a weapon switch, which wands and spells don't. This may be much less of a concern in later games, but in Rogue itself this can kill you. Archery becomes more useful late in the game in Rogue, and at that point most of the rooms are dark.

As for the later games that have more power in their ranged weapons, I bet they're also not looking at realistic reload times. Surely you can slash a sword much faster than you can nock and fire an arrow, and for crossbows that goes triple or more. But these games generally have more sophisticated speed systems than Rogue's, so they could make up for this problem easily.

I got to thinking about this some more and wondered if maybe the general lack of parties in RLs is to blame for the oddness of ranged weapons. In some games it's too powerful, others too weak. In reality an archer would be most formidable when backed up by a swordsman who can protect him while he readies the next shot. In a game where you're on your own, making bows too weak makes them useless, so it makes sense to me that Rogue's successors would try to beef them up. But if any of them have actually considered the tradeoff in time, I'm not aware of it.

[Z]

ADOM also has overpowered missiles.

[Slash]

As it has been pointed out, I think the problem of ranged combat is the lone adventurer aproach most roguelikes have.

Taking apart clunky interface aspects which must not even exist, missile based combat  is a great challenge for defining a game's balance. Making it require ammunition, assigning reload times or making it useless against some monsters would probably help; that way you cant just rely on ranged attacks because you dont know when you will need to draw your hammer. Making reloading an action that could fail based on how "nervous" the player is would be a nice idea, probably.

[Lummox JR]

Nervous reloads? I like it! It also makes sense to me that a character with very little experience with the weapon would take longer to load it than one without.

Given the speed of combat, I think ranged weapons should generally be more powerful than in Rogue, but an arrow or crossbow bolt should take 1+ turns to load with a separate turn to fire, maybe more loading time for inexperienced characters. It should also be impossible to load in a melee setting; i.e. being hit with another weapon should interrupt it. This would also take into account the difference between bows and crossbows, since a bow must be loaded every time it fires, while a crossbow can be pre-loaded and fired (once) on a whim. And of course a double crossbow could be a possibility, which takes twice as long to load but provides 2 shots. Crawl uses blow guns, and the same sort of thing could be employed there.

[Adral]

In Incursion, IIRC, you cannot attack using ranged weaponry while on melee combat, nor you can reload your crossbow. That is a good game design to balance both kinds of combat, since you know you will not be able to still use the advantages of ranged while in melee range, and you have to think what backup gear you need for those tight situations.

Also, I just remembered that in Dwarf Fortress ranged combat is the most broken and overpowered thing EVER. I remember people killing Giants via breaking their heads or destroying their eyes by throwing *mud balls* at them. Even small insects can completely destroy your enemies

And you don't want to be an adventurer finding a lair of kobold archers, as I can assure you you'll last like one turn

[Anvilfolk]

Actually, I think Incursion allows you to fire ranged weaponry while an enemy is right next to you. What it does is give them an attack of opportunity, so if the hostile next to you has a good chance of hitting you, you might want to rethink your strategy. Also, you can bludgeon them with a bow... Shouldn't do much though

Still, it's a good way to not make ranged weapons a decent solution at close-range. The enemy has twice as many attacks as you. I also think it's Incursion that requires you to load the crossbow, so you can effectively walk around with the loaded crossbow and fire instantly.

[Slash]

In CvRL you cant attack using long range weapons when the enemy is next to you; that leaves you with two choices, switch to your secondary weapon or jump away and fire, which may be impossible in closed areas or when swarmed by enemies and is also dangerous if the enemy is faster than you.

Other things to consider when trying to balance ranged combat:

* Introduce a distance penalty (attack is weaker the further the target is)
* Allow targets to evade missiles by moving away from them (Like in Metroid and ZeldaRL)

[Gamer_2k4]

I'm guessing most of you have seen LOTR.  In many scenes (the one I remember is at the end of the first movie), Legolas is point-blanking orcs.  Being adjacent to a monster doesn't necessarily mean that you're incapable of firing a bow, and it's an easy enough matter to grab an arrow, put it on the string, and draw, all in the same move.  A crossbow would be the same, but it would require more strength.

Also, keep in mind that you're playing an adventurer, a hero.  Normal people might have to use a crank to reload a crossbow, but you're too good for that.  And if you're using a bow (especially in a game without weapon skills), it's safe to say that you know how to use it.  Seriously, how many people are capable of running through a dungeon, picking up any weapon they see, and using it with deadly efficiency?

[Adral]

I'm guessing most of you have seen LOTR.  In many scenes (the one I remember is at the end of the first movie), Legolas is point-blanking orcs.  Being adjacent to a monster doesn't necessarily mean that you're incapable of firing a bow, and it's an easy enough matter to grab an arrow, put it on the string, and draw, all in the same move.  A crossbow would be the same, but it would require more strength.

I don't think it was so "easy enough" when the first one to die when cavalry charged/infantry attacked were archers. The fact is a shield is much more powerful than movies show. A man without armor but with shield (your typical regulars) could survive much longer than a man without it (archers). Obviously, armour is another thing, since it was almost invulnerable to slashing attacks.

Anyway, roguelikes are not real life.

Also, keep in mind that you're playing an adventurer, a hero.  Normal people might have to use a crank to reload a crossbow, but you're too good for that.  And if you're using a bow (especially in a game without weapon skills), it's safe to say that you know how to use it.  Seriously, how many people are capable of running through a dungeon, picking up any weapon they see, and using it with deadly efficiency?

The number is close to zero . The fact is that you are also playing a game, and, as such, you can expect it to be at least kind of balanced and provide some kind of hard, interesting, tactical decisions. It is not a hard decision in Nethack, for instance, to kill everything from a distance with blessed +7 daggers + maxed luck, while wearing powerful artifacts (Grayswandir + silver sabre, anyone?).

I think both melee and ranged combat should have its strengths and drawbacks. If reality serves as an excuse to provide such balance, so be it.

A hard decision (in-game) is, to me, signs of good game design. If every situation has the same solution... let's say it's not as challenging

[Anvilfolk]

Ouch, let's not get started on realism, especially HISTORICAL realism. That rarely leads anywhere! Let's keep it to gameplay, please. I'm having to actively avoid commenting on what you just said, gamer_2k4

Basically, we're trying to make ranged weapons not super-duper-powerful. This is achieved by not having enormous expanses of open terrain, and by making ranged weapons less useful, maybe even dangerous at close-range.

Personally, I don't see a reason why you should forbid the player from fire point-blank. You shouldn't really forbid the player to do anything he'd be able to do in real life. However, you need to take into account dissadvantages, and balance them so that there is a real down-side to performing that action.

If you give every adjacent enemy an attack of oportunity when you fire a ranged weapon, I'm pretty sure the player will attempt to switch to a melee weapon (unless the enemy is nearly, nearly dead). The attack of oportunity isn't unrealistic either. If someone is within 5 feet of you, and you're taking an arrow from your quiver and stringing it to your bow, then there's absolutely no way you're able to defend yourself for a couple of seconds. And yes, that's assuming you're a big great fat hero like Legolas

[Slash]

You shouldn't really forbid the player to do anything he'd be able to do in real life.

What? Do you really think players are able to fire a bow?

Actually, I know one roguegirl

[tseckington]

Well, DoomRL comes to mind.

There's also the game Tower of Darkness, which has many roguelike qualities while not being strictly a roguelike.

[Krice]

I think the problem is in the one dimensional way of reducing HP which makes ranged weapons that powerful. I think there should be another kind of damage for projectiles like arrows. Sticky weapon damage. Doesn't kill you right away, but takes away HP slowly like poisoning. For added realism you could set the number of arrows sticking on body and make a command to remove them.