Guys who voted againts, could you please clarify how you find this command harmful and why do you think existing behavior is fine?

+1

The problem of moving=attacking has been raised many times before (including by me on the old ADOM newsgroup 15 years ago); the debate was always about how to resolve it, but I don't think a tactics solution has been proposed yet.

I really like this suggestion. Especially since you *can* already achieve similar functionality by dual-wielding shields, but that's an awkward workaround (with a weird message, as OP pointed out!)

The question is whether it is really problem. I mean from Rogue onward it has always been this way and I guess mostly cause there is no better solution.

Personally i voted "no" before reading full proposal on idea that removing weapons means hassle of adding them later on and so on. If it was just tactical setting [next after coward, f8 or whatever] and would not touch weapons it could be interesting.

Regarding tiny girl - message is different cause she cannot be swapped with. If you aggressively move into space of some small girl which refuses to move... that would be classified as assault in my country even without two-handed sword:).

Darkness and blindness are supposed to have their disadvantages, so you may ask creator, but my guess is things work as intended. In general if I needed to walk blindly in place crawling with ogres and goblins I would poke forwards with weapon periodically too.

"Darkness and blindness are supposed to have their disadvantages, so you may ask creator, but my guess is things work as intended. In general if I needed to walk blindly in place crawling with ogres and goblins I would poke forwards with weapon periodically too."

But there should be an option not to. Hell, there should probably be a *default* not to. I just killed khel after finding a ring of Djinni summoning, thanks to a dark room. I had no intention of hitting anything, I wanted to use the phial, but moving 1 square deeper in order to light the whole room was enough to kill him. :/

My thoughts on this:

Bumping a hostile monster on this mode should, at minimum, cost a turn. Otherwise you can exploit this to detect monsters that area invisible/in darkness. I'd also suggest that it shouldn't give coward bonuses. A person who is not prepared to be attacked is not in a highly defensive frame of mind.

Option not too jam Khelly is use "c"hat for tiles you try walk into.
It is boring true, but I am also sure that outside of Adom veterans 90%+ won't use new tactical setting for exact same reason.

I never played Rogue but I'm sure ADOM went far ahead from it. First of all there is no invisibility / darkness / blindness there hence player always was able to tell whether PC will move or attack. Secondly ADOM has a reason not to attack everything - there're are friendly monsters in ADOM that you really don't want to hurt, there are not only goblins and orcs - there are kittens, slaves, companions, NPCs, animals (if you're druid) or just neutral monster which you won't try to hurt on low HP.

I know that message for Tiny Girl appears because she cannot be swapped but game doesn't gives any message that Tiny Girl resists and don't want to swap! Why so? Because message is just illogical? Nope, because game assumes you want to attack her, not swap with her!

Well, I agree on your comment regarding weapons. There could be proper implementation that removes weapons on [F8] and put's them back once tactic is switched to anything else but it adds quite a lot of additional questions. I'm often pressing [F8] instead of [F7] on my keyboard even now. Don't wanna lose a couple of turns adding and removing weapons and a minute looking for them in inventory.
It still could be either confirmation before removing weapons or requirement to remove weapons manually in order to use this command.

I'll update initial RFE with these thoughts shortly.

Heck, so these 90%+ would put two shields and use chat command (ugly workarounds) if they don't want to kill nearby cats, don't want to accidentally aggravate their companions while not seeing them and while travelling through animated forest? If they would - just 'cause they used to. If I were new player I would find this command a lot more reasonable then two shields.

Then the game would give me additional reason to pick up two shields instead of using suggested tactic. Thoughts?

NPCs and slaves are not attacked on walking in, you are warned about walking in their personal space:)

Unless there is a reason for opposite to be true. Like true berserking or being blind. I see no reason why blindness or darkness or serking should not have penalty.

In my opinion 90% people never use two shields. Well, and bumping into mob with two shields does cost turn. ("c"hatting with empty space however does not).

p.s. if you try force "swap places" with tiny girls in real life I strongly suspect this might get you in problem too:).

There is a huge difference between "move into personal space" and "insert eternium sword of devastation into personal space as well as " swap" and "force swap", isn't it? So if creature refuses to swap game suggest to attack it just 'cause this creature doesn't want to do what you need? Kinda evil game then :D Makes sense for Chaos Knights.

Darkness, blindness and your opponent invisibility does have penalties:

• Invisibility: you can't see invisible monster;
• Darkness: you can't see anything withing dark area;
• Blindness: you can't see anything and don't know where exactly you are.

These penalties do make sense. Why do you think penalty " and you attack everything on your way" makes sense too? Are blind people so dangerous in a real life?

I don't really have much to say on top of what has already been said, other than the fact I agree with this suggestion in its currently proposed form.
However I don't think there can really be any reasons against this.

I think it's reasonable that this mode should exist when you enter a peaceful town.
From the player's point of view everything changes in a non-hostile environment so I don't think offensive/aggressive actions should be the default.
I have swapped places with dwarves many times and sometimes one of them gets hostile after this; I don't think that deserves a kill but it happens.
It would be nice to have this RFE introduce means to avoid this petty mistake.

As a side note, it would be better if NPCs in towns moved with more purpose (or for some of them to not move at all) rather than roaming around randomly like children in the fog, stepping right into player's purposeful stride to be swapped with/attacked.
Hell, that might even be RFE worthy.

Not sure if we play same game.
Isn't Adom in general about bashing mobs without second thoughts? I am sure you don't ask random goblin about his family or wage or whatever.
Most adventurers or personal characters in general are walking killer machines. Vanquisher, Execetor, acid ball, etc... So why it is surprising that once they run into something they can't see they react as they are used to and insert something sharp and pointy in personal space before asking questions?
Well, I would agree that to hit penalty for trying attack monster one can not see could be introduced, but troll barb being peacefully bouncing around in darkness is just wrong:).

I've played about 75% of game with Zen Monk challenge and never had any mental problem with keeping inserting weapons into my opponents. Rather contrary it was somewhat fun.

Yeah, we're! (Or not? Well, we're playing with the same piece of software but we're playing this game in a different ways). While travelling through dungeons one finds exiting bashing mobs with the most powerful melee weapon. Another will tame every animal, avoid killing any neutral monsters and even hostile cats.

As any good role-playing game ADOM doesn't force players to use concrete play style.

Although bashing monsters is very comfortable now but leaving them alive sometimes quite challenging. Why do you think that players choosing more peaceful playstyle must be penalized? According to you they're already punished because they're risking to lose a turn bumping into something unfriendly instead of just killing it.

They are not penalized, they are being challenged.

If they are not up to a challenge,it is really not reason to change game rules.

In general considering how xp is gained, or what generic goal is kill five orb guardians and so on, I would call other playstyles optional. Some optional stuff in games happens to be quite challenging, true.

I'm for this feature. Not because I like the whole concept of it, I think it would make the game more realitic, but that doesn't really mean it's good. BTW the fact that darkness should have such propertis is obvious, since there is fortune cookie that says something like "darkness is bad for your pets" or so... and I kind of like that about dark areas.

The reason I'm for this feature is solely because there exists a workaround (dual-wielding shield) what is quite tedious to use. And I don't think such boring practice shoud have any advantage what so ever (as long as it is posible to avoid them).

At the end I should add that I find this feature far from high priority though.

Voted against - The only reason you get the 'really attack X' message is because these monsters resist switching places with.

NetHack has commands for "attack instead of moving" and "move without attacking". These are useful in situations (invisible monsters etc.) where you want to specifically attack OR move, overriding default behaviour where the game decides it for you. I don't see why ADOM couldn't implement similar commands.

I'm a bit torn about this.

On the one hand, it would make sense (and in fact would be very good, and a UI simplification) in towns and around peaceful NPC's.

On the other hand, the game has been designed around the mechanic that you can accidentally kill creatures in darkness or when blind - this is interesting for example for karmics, the cat quest, etc. If we could just move in peaceful mode in darkness or when blind, the game in these conditions would become easier and less interesting.

I think it would be good to do something, but it should be done in a way that preserves the problems created by unadvertently attacking enemies that you can't see. Maybe the PC should tell you "Not in this dangerous situation" if you try to walk in peaceful mode in the darkness or blind, although this feels a bit forced. I don't know, I think this needs some brainstorming. Until I don't see a balanced solution, I'm not voting in favor of this change (although at the moment I haven't voted against either).

I never thought before reading comments on this RFE that it could be intentional. :) But your arguments sound reasonable. Unless lawful (he doesn't want to harm anyone) 50 lvl PC with 100 courage is afraid to remove his weapon/fists before crossing 3-4 dark squares :)... ... ... But behind two shields PC will feel safe enough to cross the darkness? So probably ADOM encourages players to use such a clever solution as two shields?..

It definetly needs some brainstorming :)

A separate F8 tactic setting sounds good, as it doesn't make sense I would proceed in the darkness only by sticking my sword in the place where I intend to move. But I also agree that some of the negative effects should stay.

What if moving on 'peaceful' tactic in the darkness you won't make your companions (or peaceful NPCs) hostile, but if it's a neutral character or a karmic they'd be aggravated? After all, if you bump into your dog at night, he'll still know it's you and most likely won't bite, but sneaking into a stranger's garage at 3 a.m. and bumping into the sleeping hunting dog is another story. The same for blindness. Bumping into a dwarf while blind, he might understand your situation, whereas a neutral lion would consider it at least annoying and start attacking you. And lions won't understand the hastily uttered "oops, sorry" anyway.

I like the idea except for the unnecessary aspect of having to unequip weapons.