Thinking about suggesting new missile behaviour

[Stingray1]

Currently missiles fly, hit something or miss and fall to the ground. I'm thinking, rather than fall to the ground when they miss, they should continue flying.
The same way dodged missiles fly past an Archer.

Do you guys think this makes sense?

[Eric-the-red]

I for one think it makes sense. Why not? Realistically arrows don't do that. Maybe have some sort of arch/ drop so they don't hit walls all the time (especially in hallways for instance.)

[Grey]

I could see this being quite annoying for when you want to pick your arrows back up. Sometimes realism isn't convenient!

[BlitzerkidSix]

I think it's also worth mentioning, that a "miss" in ADOM is not necessarily a literal miss. Shields, weapons, armor and magicks such as rings of defense all increase DV. In my imagination, misses either fall at the feet of the target (poor aim), are deflected and downed by weapons/shields, or strike a part of armor that simply isn't penetrable and then flop to the ground. ADOM currently checks if a shield was used ("you block/deflect"), but determining exactly what "piece" of the target's DV caused the attack to miss seems like a lot of work for the occasional thudding sound, in my opinion.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I for one think it makes sense. Why not? Realistically arrows don't do that.

That's not entirely true. They don't do that if you shoot them straight like a bullet, which can be done and is what an archer will do if the target is quite close. But if the target is farther away, the archer will fire a parabolic shot.

[Silfir]

If you're shooting straight ahead and miss, you're unlikely to hit whatever's behind since you already managed to shoot past the closer target, unless the farther target is significantly bigger. If the target you're shooting at is small, you're also unlikely to shoot straight ahead - you'd have to shoot downwards to hit in the first place. So it should be impossible to aim at a rat and hit whatever's behind it; it should be possible, though, to aim at a guy of your own size and hit the humongous dragon just behind him. To properly simulate the entire thing, you need to add monster height and width to the game as a game concept and have it be checked in missile combat checks alongside PC height, which right now only exists as flavor. That's a bit too much effort for an ADOM enhancement at this point that could seriously change missile combat as we know it. ADOM II, on the other hand, could definitely aim for it; but even then it's a bit too much of a burden on the abstraction level required of a roguelike game if you ask me. "One shot, one target, except if you're an archer" is easy to grasp tactically and strategically, once you have to factor in monster heights that you can't see in order to make the correct decisions, you're asking something the graphics simply can't deliver.

At most, you could add the ability to shoot over very small monsters to hit the larger monsters behind them, such as rats; but that would expose one of the game's more exploity features: Monsters blocking each other's way. Realistically, the Ancient Chaos Wyrm should stomp the rat and take your head off with its chaosy claws; in ADOM, it waits politely for the little guy's demise by fire. The Ancient Chaos Wyrm could be helped out by giving it the same ability - not so much, say, the Snake from Beyond or the Ancient Stone Beast.

Finally, I don't think anyone could argue missiles aren't strong enough in the game already just the way they are...

[Stingray1]

@Eric: Yes I was thinking maybe Tactics setting should affect range. As the harder a pc shoots the better the chance of a hit as the missile is moving faster. Experienced pc's need not be too concerned about missing, they can go berserk all the time.

@Grey: Yes, as it is now it already annoys the crap out of me.

@Blitz: Yes, I'm refferring to missiles that miss entirely. Those that hit thin air.

@Silfir: ADOM is a simplistic 2 dimensional game. Yes I don't think we can ask for it to become too complex. I think in a fantasy game we can ask for things to be sensible, maybe not realistic. If I was to suggest this I would suggest that the to hit actually be decreased after the first target and with range.

To conclude. I won't suggest this, as too many technical questions will be posed.

One must ask about the dodging by archers? So the code has already been written.

Edits: typos