The problem of hard neutrals

[SirTheta]

Hard neutrals are neutral monsters you can't attack w/o confirmation and alignment hit. Soft neutrals are neutral monsters you can attack w/o confirmation or alignment hit. Soft neutrals are fine, but...

Due to some changes, I've noticed a lot more hard neutrals that will 'soon' (for some definition of soon) turn on you. This creates a dangerous situation if you're, say, luring the mad carpenter back to Jharod, or traversing the DH, so you wind up killing them anyway/trying to avoid the alignment hit. I think this creates something of a quandary (and an annoying one) - you're basically obligated to kill them before they turn on you because they are going to turn on you and you're going to have to kill them at that point anyway.

I'd like to post an RFE fixing this, but I'm not really sure what the solution is, so let's talk it out . I was personally quite fine with the 1.1.1 behavior where they basically never turned on you - what are y'all's thoughts?

[Stingray1]

I think an RFE/bug report has been posted shortly after this behaviour surfaced for the first time, it was around the time jt did some cleaning-up of the code, I'll see whether I can locate the bug report.

Edit - I think I had this report in the back of my head. It has been fixed according to TB, but as you say hard neutrals becoming hostile is something slightly different. It however possibly is related, because making peace with a panicking monster also sets that monster to hard neutral. Or used to anyway in 1.1.1.

I think a bug report is in order or at least a RFE if the current behaviour is intentional. I think a hard neutral should just stay that way, unless you do something to change its status obviously. This would include monsters that were made peace with.