Damage Calculation (always visible)

[Zero_G]

After playing some battle with Wesnoth, I think that a player typically found that the damage calculation window is very useful to have a guess on the outcome of an attack, but he/she has to press the "Damage Calculation" every time he/she wants to see it, and even more times if the attacking unit has multiple weapons and he/she needs to compare the outcomes.

I found this thing a bit annoying for an advanced user, and I think that it would be very handy to have this statistics always present in the attack panel (maybe redefining its layout and putting them on a left column) or at least display them in an overlayed window when the mouse passes over a weapon type, just like a mouse-over tooltip:



This a mockup collage made by me only to illustrate the visual effect, but in fact only a window at a time should be displayed in this case! However I think I would prefer to have those statistics always displayed on the right side, but maybe this is subjective... what do you think about it?

[JW]

I actually like this idea, but as an option. I imagine it could become annoying in, say, a long campaign. In a MP match it could be rather useful though.

[Zero_G]

I actually like this idea, but as an option. I imagine it could become annoying in, say, a long campaign. In a MP match it could be rather useful though.

Yep, adding an option to enable/disable the "inline" calculations would be an even better solution!

[Jozrael]

As a note, most of the time I don't bother to check the damage calculations in a normal fight (where neither combatant will die before the other finishes their strikes, berserk, drain, or other complicating factors are put in). This is the majority of fights. This is simply because I've played wesnoth frequently enough that I can ballpark the figures pretty accurately. Thus, I would not want to make this standard and 'clutter up' the interface for myself. Keep in mind I'm also a campaign player by and large: In MP where each move carries significantly more weight, I check the damage calculations the large majority of the time.

Thus, I like JW's solution of making this an option, even if OAB.

[Turuk]

I have the same feelings as Jozrael, but making it appear in an overlay window as part of a mouse-over seems to be a simple solution as well. The player will already have the mouse in that box to choose an attack and click okay, so it's not as if they are moving around a great deal, and will remove clutter. Though an additional option as well to make it persistent would not hurt as long as it was not default.

[Lord Ork]

I find this idea quite annoying. It complicates the interface, and give too much info not requested. KISS should apply also to the interface, I think. Maybe it should better show a brief statistic like % of death of each opponent. If you need more, press the button.

[Simons Mith]

How Wesnoth obtains the damage each blow is going to inflict isn't very relevant, and can safely be relegated to a secondary window. The percentage chances of no, one, two, three hits and the hitpoint outcome for each is much more useful, and could be displayed in the main window in a relatively succinct form. I suggest moving the existing '60% hit chance' or whatever-it-is elsewhere and put it in a smaller font, and replace the current big 60% with a mini-table with the probabilities and hitpoints for all possible outcomes. It would make the main attack window a bit larger, but not as much as if you tried to import all the damage calculations window into it.

[Soliton]

The detailed damage calculation is quite costly so putting it directly into the attack dialog is a bad idea. It is however a good point that one often wants to compare the damage calculation of different attacks. The simplest solution that works well for most cases is probably to have an additional "all damage calculations" button which would show a dialog where you can compare the calculations for all possible weapons. If there are more like 4 or so possibilities it'd get problematic though.

A nicer solution would be to allow opening several damage calculations at concurrently but I don't know how much work that'd require for our current GUI implementation. Or maybe easier would be to allow selecting several attacks before clicking damage calculations but then what to do if the user presses "Okay" to attack instead...

[Simons Mith]

'Costly'? How could that possibly matter for a pop-up with a human involved? Besides, how costly can it be? It's only a variation on a Poisson distribution. Is Wesnoth calculating every possible combination of hit or miss?

[Soliton]

'Costly'? How could that possibly matter for a pop-up with a human involved? Besides, how costly can it be? It's only a variation on a Poisson distribution. Is Wesnoth calculating every possible combination of hit or miss?

That's the point?

You're right though the trivial case is of course not costly. What I meant is that it can be costly. Think about slow, drain, berserk and the like on higher HP combatants.

[Wintermute]

A nicer solution would be to allow opening several damage calculations at concurrently but I don't know how much work that'd require for our current GUI implementation. Or maybe easier would be to allow selecting several attacks before clicking damage calculations but then what to do if the user presses "Okay" to attack instead...

That would be great. I think that it would be very intuitive if all attacks were listed, and then clicking on an attack expands the dialog and brings up the statistics. Then you can still just compare one attack with one click, and two attacks with two clicks.

[Velensk]

I would not like to have to see the damage calculation windows every time there is a battle. As long as you can turn it off I don't mind there being an option to show them.

[Zero_G]

An alternative solution could be having the "Damage" button to show the previsions of all the attacking weapon in order to compare them... this wouldn't be possible with the popup approach.

[Gambit]

why not a semi transparent overlay on hover?

[ADmiral-N]

Maybe display the overlay window only while the user holds down the right mouse button on the selected weapon?