Shattered Kingdoms

This conversation has been continued from the 'variable appearance and the rules' thread, so that we can talk about targeting itself. Here are a list of ideas:

A) If there are two things with a similar appearance, the game should tell me how they are stacked. For example, if there are two 'effeminate male halfling' here, and the second one licks me, the game could return:

(2)An effeminate male halfling licks you.

If I then want to bitchslap that effeminate male halfling, I will know immediately that I should bslap 2.effeminate, instead of bitchslapping his innocent identical twin. This way, I won't have to figure out that there are multiple effeminate male halflings, fire a look, and figure out how they are stacked.

B) Enemy formation should be visible at glance or with a new command, with the same display format as 'info'. Each person should be color coded to indicate health status such as 'quite a few wounds' and such, which should also be displayed in a shorthand for colorblind players.

Formation should be immediately visible to people in the magical land of creatures with eyesight which is Pyrathia, but the text world of SK doesn't support it. The clumsy nature of the 'glance' command doesn't really allow this information to be processed efficiently in fast moving combat.

C) Action should show formation. (A gray wolf is here, in front of a rotund female gnome.)

D) Enemies should be target-able by absolute and relative position. For example, 'kill snowy.22' to kill what's at position 22 in snowy's group, or 'kill snowy.back' to kill whatever's behind snowy.

E) If you try to attack someone you can't reach, you should automatically attack the thing in front of them. If you try to backstab, hamstring or circle stab someone who's defended, you should automatically attack the thing that's behind them. Telling me that 'someone is in my way' does not help, especially if there are several stacked someones in the room.

Discuss.

or OR you could just take their relic, dispel them, roll a truth priest etc

Why is it so hard to type glance (a single command) that will tell you who is in front of who you're targeting?
Even if the same problem you had with that harlequin super sekrat ability, one glance command will tell you who is who. There is no lag on glance, it's not like you're missing much.

Also..


Don't know if you missed the memo, but have you ever read the info help file.. or just typed info [enemy]?
You should try it.

For real! This isn't something that is needed. SK is THE most dynamic mud when it comes to group combat. You haven't suggested anything that would improve that. You're essentially just complaining that it wasn't easy mode.

I like (most of) these ideas. They might not stack high on the list of priorities, but I think they're generally well-considered suggestions that could still help smooth out some of the rough edges in the game and improve some playability issues.