Contest: Name my upcoming combat script!

[Bale]

Don't forget that not only will the Bonerdagon/NS block items, it will actually destroy them. Please don't let toy mercenaries, toy soldiers and the many types of Miniborgs get destroyed!

Gremlins are the only auto-hit monster.

The deal with Cold Hobos is that you are counter-struck in retaliation for doing more than 39 points of damage in a single hit. (Damage is based on icicle count.) Funkslinging Miniborg Destroy-O-Bot is a way to avoid death. You get one of these retaliatory strikes for every single time that you do more than 39 points of damage. (That includes familiar actions and familiar equipment actions.)

Mine crab's explode if you do more than 40 points in a single attack. Once again, Miniborg Destroy-O-Bots are awesome.

Don't forget Cunctatitis. Or at least, try to remember it eventually.

Note: I should mention that this script will be far more accurate in its assessment of values if you are using Bale's Universal Recovery script, which calculates the meat-per-MP and meat-per-HP values which this script will use to assess the cost of skills (including restoring skills -- you may have more cost-effective restoration in combat!) and player damage.

Obligatory link to Bale's Universal Recovery script.

 

[lostcalpolydude]

2) Things that block or limit item/skill use. I've included Temporary Amnesia, Black Cat, and facing the NS/Bonerdagon. Anything else?

Cunctatitis.

3) Which monsters can always hit you? Gremlins. What else? And do they hit following the regular damage formula?

Yes, regular damage formula.

 

[slyz]

And what's the deal with hobos?

Hobos also have an auto-hit attack, although they're not always using it. My experience with hobos is just kill them. Fast. Or stun them of course.

 

[heeheehee]

Quiet healer has that healing special move -- stasis is nice if you're in the clear.

Boss special abilities: Boss bat, Lord Spookyraven, and NS can steal MP. This might be incorporated as a drain on meat per round. NS and all ghuols can heal. Chester and Mother Slime prevent use of all combat items. Oscus has his tripling damage aura. Ol' Scratch strips buffs on hit if you have more than 5. Zombo unequips a single piece of equipment each hit.

Other items of note: Fish in the Briniest Deepests will flip out if you have Fishbreath active. Hobopolis bosses flip out after five rounds. The effect this has is increased damage and, for the fish, special drops. Flipped out monsters can be calmed by the 30MP hobopolis spells.

And... here's a wiki page that has a bunch of stuff (poisoning and whatnot). May or may not be helpful.

Possibly more later. (Slimes also have the same special attack as hobos, if I'm not mistaken.)

 

[zarqon]

Thanks for all the special cases everyone; I've added in some of them.

• Included item loss as part of the cost for using normally multi-usable items against the NS/Bonerdagon.
• Gremlins can always hit you regardless of your stats, but can still be stunned. (Is this correct? Are there any stuns that are ineffectual against them?)
• Included the not-fully-spaded results about Cunctatitis frequency from its Talk page -- assuming it blocks attacks/items/skills 50% of the time.
• For Mom Slime and Chester, it won't consider items.

Know how to add / will add soon:

• Once I figure out average MP drain from the specified bosses (and likelihood of occurrence) I'll add that averaged value in to the static event (happens every round).
• Add mine crabs' explosion to the cost of any action that does more than 40 damage to them.
• Add quiet healer's healing move to the static event.
• Flipping out. Can add the detection strings to FTF's action filter, set a flag, and adjust monster attack accordingly. Not sure how to factor in different drops though.
• Trophyfish resistance!

Don't know how to add / indefinitely cunctating:

• Still don't know what the deal is with hobos, exactly. Cold hobos have a mechanic, but do they also have an auto-hit that is not prompted by icicles? I know town square hobos do.
• Seems like monsters' self-healing moves have mostly not been well spaded. Further, that seems like something mafia should track since it generally tracks monster HP during combat. (Again, the all-or-nothing dilemma.)
• Oscus' damage aura. Definitely later.
• Flipping out -- additional drops / soothing. More variables to track. Later.
• Ol' Scratch / Zombo - that's just ridiculous. I'm 99% decided to abort combat for these monsters rather than handle it, actually. Not worth the bloat of scripting those very complicated effects. How do you put a value on a random equipped item being removed? You'd need a value for each item -- possible except that there are so many enchantments, particularly for the items people equip vs. bosses. Likewise, how do you put a value on each buff? First you'd have to identify buffs, then evaluate them, then... well, it's just ridiculous. Fight these dudes on your own, guys.

Any others?

Aw FRIG Pastamancer combat ghosts! I knew there was something else.

 

[heeheehee]

Zombo unequips in order. =P

 

[zarqon]

No. Just... no.

 

[Bale]

Gremlins can always hit you regardless of your stats, but can still be stunned. (Is this correct? Are there any stuns that are ineffectual against them?)

Nope. Anything that will stun will work just find on them. I do this often enough.

Still don't know what the deal is with hobos, exactly. Cold hobos have a mechanic, but do they also have an auto-hit that is not prompted by icicles? I know town square hobos do.

Nope, Cold hobos only get the icicle counterattack. That's their personal version of the auto-hit.

 

[heeheehee]

I'm fairly sure that all hobos have their auto-hit (stated as "special move" on the wiki). Icicle counterattack is their unique ability (I think hot hobos get extra damage, stinky get the stench aura based on stench level, sleazy... I dunno. And spooky hobos are resistant to elemental damage.)

Also, for killing hobos, you might want to include an option to overkill hobos or kill them regularly, depending on the type of run.

Multi-round stunners don't work on bosses only, I think. Trophyfish might count as a boss for this purpose.

There's also seal-clubbing, for which you need a club equipped (otherwise you do Frosty-type damage). They're not normal encounters, so meh.

Oh, and re: Things that block or limit item/skill use -- OAF.

Limited actions: Creepy Grin, Give Your Opponent the Stinkeye, Frosty's iceball (it actually disappears!), Summon Hobo Underling, probably more.

And completely unrelated and very limited in application: Having a whip equipped makes the Dandy Lion attack.

Also, I'm not sure if you have Jingle Jangle Whatever worked in yet. Or Stealth Mistletoe.

More special moves --
somewhat like the Quiet Healer, the Knob Goblin Mad Scientist has a chance of restoring MP, but it deals damage at the same time.
War Hippy (Elite) Fire Spinner and War Frat (Senior) Grill Sergeant can make you go up in flames.
Yeast Beast and the fruit golems can drop certain items in combat while not affecting their possible drops.
Blackberry Bush has a retaliatory attack that triggers on melee.
Dr. Awkward apparently can heal himself.
Protector spectre (the big one) gets a few specials (healing, hot damage, physical damage, and effect Tangled Up)
School of wizardfish can drop fishy wand during combat.
Pufferfish gets doubling poison damage that starts at 4 when it first attacks (regardless of hit/miss).
Mer-kin Raiders, Healers, and burglars get... possibly self-healing? Raiders also get damage resistance to an extent.
High priest of Ki'rhuss (from the agua Hyboria quest) gets mana drain.

I think all instances of mana drain are returned to the drainer as HP. This is confirmed on the wiki for the High Priest of Ki'rhuss and the Boss Bat, at the very least.

 

[zarqon]

Crap. I've had an insight for a way to optimize the main option-building algorithm. This means more delays while I restructure. It's rather overwhelming trying to keep track of everything here. I'm actually -- gasp -- commenting my code a lot!

heeheehee, thanks a lot for your help. You found a lot of the exact sort of cases I was looking to include. Assorted task lists to follow.

Resistance

• I've added the base 25% resistance for Trophyfish, but I had a question about their soft damage cap. Is the damage cap applied per damage type, or to total damage? Same question for the Mer-kin raider.
• Elemental resistance added for spooky hobos. I cheated a little -- the script will forget to raise the vulnerable elements back up to 2 damage after applying this resistance. It was that or an if check for spooky hobos every time it calculates any damage to the monster, hence the cheat. Don't think it will be too big a deal at that level.
  
  Otherwise, I'm leaving hobos for later -- the special attacks are too unspaded (attack rate? damage range?). If anyone would care to give me some decent working numbers I can go with those, though. Also, the idea of an option for overkilling is a very good one. Included in the "saving for later": Summoning Hobo Underlings.
• Seal resistance to all non-club damage added. This was trickier than you might suspect.

Familiars

• Dandy Lion added to damage familiars when you have the whip equipped. There are still damage familiars missing -- and not just the new Nemesis ones. (hint: dmg_familiars.txt is publicly editable on the Map Manager)
• BatMan is now Jingle Jangle Jingle-savvy, but it means the data file needs a bit more reworking. For familiars with a hit/miss chance, that needs to be independent of the action rate. Which means the hit/miss chance now has to be a modifier of the damage, not a modifier of the action rate itself. Again, any help in this regard is welcome.

Monster Moves

• Quiet Healer and Mad Scientist have had their restoring special moves added. Assumed a 25% action rate for the special move. Please correct me if you know otherwise.
  
• Blackberry Bush (and cactuary) have had their pointiness added.
  
• I created a project task for mafia to track monster self-heals. Several of these healing moves are still unspaded. Put on your toy space helmets / detective skulls and help! Especially if you have some free runaways.
  
• I'm not sure how monsters that drop items during combat should affect the combat. Mostly, they don't affect the monster's end-of-combat drops, so it's just a kind of bonus because hey, free item.

Limited-Use

• Stinkeye will be added to FTF -- it will share the ftf_grin setting with Creepy Grin, since they're the exact same skill.
• I'm leaving Frosty's eyeball out, since even if mafia eventually tracks it, I just know someone's going to clear their settings, or play mafia on multiple computers without porting over settings, and I don't want BatMan to throw away someone's eye even if it's their own fault. Besides, it could be handy to have it unspent for fights that you want to handle yourself.
• I am, however, adding support for Zombo's eye. If it throws the eye, it will start a "Zombo's Eye Recharge" counter. If mafia ever adds this counter on its own, I'll be happy to remove that.

Miscellaneous To-Do's

• Add Approvisamadoodad-ing turtles with hats (probably to FTF). Are these turtles disambiguated? They might need to be parsed from page text. I have a TT (bot) who hasn't done the quest yet so I should be able to figure this out.
• Stealth Mistletoe also belongs in FTF. But since it's not entirely free, its decision about when it should cast it is open for discussion.
• Boss immunity to multi-round stunners.
• OAF blocking items/skills.
• Mana drain attacks should be added to the static event.
• Picking a peck of pufferfish poison.
• Being On Fire
• Everything about flipping out.

Also, could someone who can use chefstaves post the HTML for the Jiggle form please?

 

[Bale]

Also, could someone who can use chefstaves post the HTML for the Jiggle form please?

<form name=attack action=fight.php method=post><input type=hidden name=action value="attack"><tr><td align=center><input id='tack' picurl=chefstaff2 onclick="return killforms(this)"  class=button type=submit value="Attack with your Staff of the Walk-In Freezer"></td></tr></form><form name=chefstaffform action=fight.php method=post><input type=hidden name=action value="chefstaff"><tr><td align=center><input id='chefstaffbutton' picurl=squeastaff class=button type=submit onclick="return killforms(this);" value="Jiggle your Staff of the Walk-In Freezer"></td></tr></form>

 

[zarqon]

Thanks Bale, jiggling should be fully supported now. I jerry-rigged something right now where the script is listing my top 10 monster-killing options (sorting by efficient death rather than total profit, since that's far simpler -- I just wanted to start seeing some sorted output), and it's pretty exciting. Usually it's 1) regular attack, followed by 2) rogue swarmers. But I'm high level, with very few combat skills, and fighting usually much lower-level monsters. I'm much more curious to see what it says while ascending.

 

[Bale]

If rogue swarmers are so useful (at least in the quantity you possess), the profit version of the script will be considering the chance of losing one as opposed to gaining one. That doesn't seem to be on the wiki, even on the talk page. Any idea from your own experience?

 

[halfvoid]

Woo! Thanks for the 200,000 meat! Just realized i got the kmail from like a week ago.

 

[zarqon]

Cost of losing a rogue swarmer added. Assuming 50% loss rate.

 

[halfvoid]

Looks like they made the new disco combo's trackable in mafia now. Should be easier to throw them in. Seems to be always worth the 18mp to try and cast them every time for me anyway.

 

[heeheehee]

Bump.

I screwed up -- Boss immunity to multi-round stunners is just for Hobopolis and Slime Tube bosses. You can still noodle the Bonerdagon and other quest bosses for an easy win.

I'll see what spading of monster heals I can do with my non-ascending alt once I grab the dwarvish war mattock thingy. Triple-spading fun (mattock + clockwork detective skull + astronaut helmet)!

Edit: Preliminary spading suggests a lower bound of 1 and an upper bound between 8 and 13 (inclusive).

 

[Tarko]

Did I miss any updates or any post anywhere else where the script is posted?

Although it might pass as arrogant for me to post, I have to say I *really* do start to be worried.

You OK Zarqon?

If you haven't posted because of RL, hey, I do understand.

If you haven't posted because you need help; by all means, just ask.

I'm sure many share my feelings.

[/bump]

 

[heeheehee]

BatMan hasn't been released yet, probably because Zarqon doesn't think it's good enough yet. Odds are it's probably already more optimal than our current fight strategies, even so.

I think it's partly because of RL, partly because it's going to be such a friggin' awesome script.

 

[zarqon]

RL, mainly. New semester/students and the associated craziness occupied me most of last month. This month was a two-week illness (and with it, finally reading a Song of Ice and Fire), and updating all my other scripts, which I hadn't before due to prioritizing BatMan. Aside from the familiars which could affect stasis, I think I've finally got Nemesis stuff pretty much worked in to all the appropriate places now.

I was trying really hard to get BatMan out back in February, but I didn't manage it. Partly due to time shortage, partly due to waiting for mafia to support or detect certain things. When I didn't manage it, it got temporarily back-burnered. (Due to burnout, oddly enough.)

For BatMan to work properly, mafia needs to detect/support

1) Monster level. This means if you cast a skill or use a ML-adjusting item, or a familiar delevels the monster, monster_attack() needs to return the adjusted value. The script will be quite broken for any deleveling strategy until mafia can handle this.
2) Monster HP gain. Certain monsters have healing moves, and any monster that drains your MP as an attack gains that amount of HP. If monster_hp() returns a false amount, all of BatMan's calculations will be inaccurate.
3) Scaling / variable monsters. Currently, BatMan will be fighting blind against holiday monsters, Wormwood monsters, and Molehill monsters.

I've made threads / feature requests for each of these, but not much progress has been made thus far, and one of the threads is gone. (It was feature request in the old bug report software -- I guess I'll make a new one...?) This information is not even all on the Wiki, so it's not something very easy for a dev to just plug in. If you'd like to help spade any of the missing information, it would be appreciated. Click the above links to get to the relevant thread.

My current BatMan project is a fight.php override, displaying a table of sortable combat options, with a button to perform it. It's easier than finishing BatMan since no decisions are involved, and will be ridiculously awesome for relay play. Also, finishing that up will inspire me to finish BatMan.

Don't expect it this week, though. I'm still getting rid of the dang flu (and have 940 more pages of the series to read).