melee: Make sure that melee weapon accuracy improves hit rates

data/mods/TEST_DATA/items.json

@@ -451,5 +451,56 @@
     "storage": "15 L",
     "material_thickness": 2,
     "flags": [ "FANCY", "OVERSIZE", "BELTED", "RESTRICT_HANDS", "WATER_FRIENDLY" ]
+  },
+  {
+    "type": "GENERIC",
+    "id": "test_clumsy_sword",
+    "name": "TEST clumsy sword",
+    "description": "A poorly balanced sword for test purposes",
+    "category": "spare_parts",
+    "weight": "1250 g",
+    "to_hit": -1,
+    "color": "dark_gray",
+    "symbol": "/",
+    "material": [ "steel" ],
+    "volume": "1 L",
+    "bashing": 32,
+    "cutting": 32,
+    "price": 7500,
+    "price_postapoc": 300
+  },
+  {
+    "type": "GENERIC",
+    "id": "test_normal_sword",
+    "name": "TEST normal sword",
+    "description": "A sword for test purposes",
+    "category": "spare_parts",
+    "weight": "1250 g",
+    "to_hit": 1,
+    "color": "dark_gray",
+    "symbol": "/",
+    "material": [ "steel" ],
+    "volume": "1 L",
+    "bashing": 32,
+    "cutting": 32,
+    "price": 7500,
+    "price_postapoc": 300
+  },
+  {
+    "type": "GENERIC",
+    "id": "test_balanced_sword",
+    "name": "TEST balanced sword",
+    "description": "A well-balanced sword for test purposes",
+    "category": "spare_parts",
+    "weight": "1250 g",
+    "to_hit": 3,
+    "color": "dark_gray",
+    "symbol": "/",
+    "material": [ "steel" ],
+    "volume": "1 L",
+    "bashing": 32,
+    "cutting": 32,
+    "price": 7500,
+    "price_postapoc": 300
   }
 ]

doc/GAME_BALANCE.md

@@ -99,35 +99,52 @@ A measure of how well-suited the item is for being swung/thrust/etc. This factor
 
 ## Damage
 Weapon's relative strength is based on an approximate formula involving its damage, to-hit, techniques and few other factors.
-This strength will be expressed in "points" or dpt (damage per turn) as damage per turn is the most significant balancing factor.
 
-### Damage per turn
-Melee weapon's relative strength is measured by damage per turn (more precisely: damage per 100 moves). The damage is sum of all damage types (average of min/max where random) from the weapon alone, without including strength in the calculation.
-For bashing weapons, it is assumed the character can achieve the maximum damage, but this strength isn't added to damage (or critical damage).
+### Damage per second
+A melee's weapon damage per second (dps) is calculated past armor against a sample group of monsters with a range of dodge and armor values: a soldier zombie (low dodge, high bash and cut armor), a survivor zombie (medium dodge, some bash and cut armor), and a smoker zombie (high dodge, no armor).  This should correctly weigh accuracy, criticals, and damage without over valuing any of them.
 
-### To-hit
-While not a direct measure of damage, to-hit bonus has to be included in the calculations, as it has a significant effect on actual damage output (through hit and crit rate).
+In code, this is calculated using the item::effective_dps() function, which takes a character and a monster.  It calculates the relative accuracy of the character and weapon against the monster's defenses and determines the hit rate from a table lookup.  It also determines the number of critical hits.  Number of hits is hit rate * 10,000, and number of misses is 10,000 - number of hits.
 
-Each point of to-hit is "worth" roughly a 10% increase/decrease in damage per turn or 2.5 points of damage per turn (whichever is higher).
+For both critical and non-critical hits, average damage is calculated based on the weapon's stats and the user's skill.  Monster armor absorbs the damage, and then the damage is multiplied by the number of hits: either critical hits for the critical hit case, or total hits - critical hits for the non critical hit case.  If the weapon has the rapid strike technique, the total damage is halved, and then the average damage is recalculated, multiplied by 0.66, and absorbed by monster armor again to account for rapid strikes.
 
-### Techniques
-Rapid strike technique increases damage per turn by 0.66 / 0.5 = 132%
-Other techniques are generally too situational to be worth any points here.
+Number of moves is calculated as attack speed * ( number of misses + number of non-critical hits + number of critical hits ) for weapons without rapid strike, or attack speed * ( number of misses + number of non-critical hits / 2  + number of critical hits / 2  ) + attack speed / 2 * ( number of non-critical hits / 2  + number of critical hits / 2 ) for weapons without rapid strikes.
+
+Damage per second against a particular monster is total damage * 100 / number of moves (100 for the 100 moves/second).  Overall dps is the average of the dps against the three reference monsters.
+
+### Critical hits
+A double critical can occcur when a second hit roll is made against 1.5 * the monster's dodge.  Double critical hits have a higher chance of occurring than normal critical hits.  For each hit, the chance of achieving either a double critical hit or a normal critical hit is calculated, and then if a random number is less than the critical chance, the critical occurs.  Both double and normal critical hits have the same effect, but the chance of them occurring is different.
+
+**Note** The critical hit system is stupid and complicated and produces weird results.  Double critical hits should have a chance of occuring when the original hit roll is more than 1 standard deviation above the mean, which is simple and faster to calculate than the current system.
+
+### Other factors
+Reach is worth +20% at reach 2, +35% at reach 3.
+
+A weapon that is usuable by a known martial art is worth +50%.
 
 ### Weapon tiers
-Damage per turn should put the weapon into one of those categories:
+Relative value should put the weapon into one of those categories:
+
+<2 - Not weapons. Those items may be pressed into service, but are unlikely to be better than fists. Plastic bottles, rocks, boots.
+
+2-5 - Tools not meant to strike and improvised weapons. Two-by-fours, pointy sticks, pipes, hammers.
 
-<10 - Not weapons. Those items may be pressed into service, but are unlikely to be better than fists. Plastic bottles, rocks, boots.
+6-11 - Dangerous tools or crude dedicated weapons. Golf clubs, two-by-swords, wooden spears, knife spears, hatchets, switchblades, tonfas, quarterstaves.
 
-11-15 - Tools not meant to strike and improvised weapons. Two-by-fours, pointy sticks, pipes, hammers.
+12-15 - Good dedicated weapons or the most dangerous of tools. Wood and fire axes, steel spears, electric carvers, kukris, bokken, machetes, barbed wire bats.
 
-16-25 - Dangerous tools or crude dedicated weapons. Golf clubs, two-by-swords, wooden spears, knife spears, hatchets, switchblades, tonfas, quarterstaves.
+20-35 - Weapons of war, well designed to kill humans. Wakizashis, katanas, broadswords, zweihanders, combat knifes, battle axes, war hammers, maces, morningstars.
 
-26-35 - Good dedicated weapons or the most dangerous of tools. Wood and fire axes, steel spears, electric carvers, kukris, bokken, machetes, barbed wire bats.
+35+ - Sci-fi stuff. Diamond katanas, monomolecular blades, lightsabers and chainswords.
 
-36-45 - Weapons of war, well designed to kill humans. Wakizashis, katanas, broadswords, zweihanders, combat knifes, battle axes, war hammers, maces, morningstars.
+Specific weapon balancing points:
+20 - combat knifes
+22 - short blades
+24 - long blades, short axes, and short flails
+26 - two handed blades, long axes, most spears
+28 - two handed axes and polearms
+30 - combat spears
 
-46+ - Sci-fi stuff. Diamond katanas, monomolecular blades, lightsabers and chainswords.
+Improvised weapons generally have about 75% of the value of a real weapon.
 
 ## Other melee balancing factors
 ### Attack speed

doc/melee_weapons/MELEE_BALANCE_SPREADSHEET.md

@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
+## Overview
+This is documentation for the 'Melee Weapons Evaluation.md' spreadsheet.  This is the spreadsheet that drove the 0.E experimental melee weapon rebalance project.  The original spreadsheet is available as a [google doc](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14eQIe4AO_f6OxCt1XcB4NLAs6-5R1wQW-ydZG0orYdY/edit#gid=1787713396) but the static copy is preserved in case stuff moves.
+
+This is a complicated spreadsheet, with a lot of moving parts. The following are the tabs and the data flow:
+
+### Raw
+Raw was the initial data dump, taken from some October 2019 version of the 0.D experimental using mlangsdorf's usual mods (hence all the Blazemod stuff).  Raw was slightly annoyed with some extra categories:
+* Weapon Class - this is a simple numeric rating.  0 is not a weapon, 1 is an explosive device, 2 is a ranged weapon or gun, 3 is a tool that makes a poor weapon like a cooking pot, 4 is a helmet, 5 is a tool that makes a good weapon like a sledgehammer, 6 is an improvised or fake weapon, and 7 is an actual dedicated weapon
+* Category - this is a categorization of items as weapons, to make it easier to compare similar weapons.  Melee weapon categories are Ax, Ax2, Club, Club2, Flail, Flail2, Knife, Polearm, Spear, Staff, Shortsword, Sword, and Sword2.  Categories that end with 2 are two-handed weapons.
+* Acc - this is a recaluclation of weapon accuracy based on the accuracy factors below, because review of the data showed that a lot of weapons have accuracy values that are not supported by the criteria in GAME_BALANCE.md.
+* Grip - the item's grip, as described in GAME_BALANCE.md
+* Leng - the item's leng, as described in GAME_BALANCE.md
+* Surf - the item's striking surface, as described in GAME_BALANCE.md.
+* Bal - the item's balance, as described in GAME_BALANCE.md.  Additional categories beyond Clumsy were added and assigned by eye.
+
+### Filter
+Filter takes the initial data from raw and a weapon class (in cell B1) and filters out items with a lower weapon class to make further analysis easier.
+
+### New Formula
+This calculates the new weapon evaluation formaula on the inital stats.  This is complicated.
+
+The first 7 rows have some header data.  The bulk of the calculation starts on row 8.
+
+The weapons were evaluated using a Strength 10, Dexterity 10, Perception 10 survivor with skill 4 in all weapons.  The base hit, stat crit, skill crit, bash mult, cut mult, and stab mult values are derived from the relevant bits of src/melee.cpp.
+
+* Columnn A "Average" is the new weapon evaluation value for the weapon, on the edge of the sheet for easy reference.
+* Columns B-J are the weapon's original stats, taken from the Raw tab via the Filter tab.
+* Column K "roll_hit" is sum of the evaluator's base_hit and the weapon's acc.
+* Column L "Wpn Crit" is weapon's contribution to critical hits.
+* Columns M-N "3 Crit" and "2 Crit" are the chances of a triple and double critical hit occuring, based on skill, accuracy, and stats.
+* Columns O-Q "Average Non-Crit" damage are the weapon's calculated average damage before armor for non-critical hits in each of the 3 categories.
+
+All that is pretty straightforward.  The next three blocks are where it gets complicated.  Columns S-Z are repeated as AB-AI and AK-AR with different monster stats.
+* Row S "Hits" is the expected number of hits per 1000 attacks, calculated against a normal distribution with a mean value of 5 * ( roll_hit - monster Dodge ) and a standard deviation of 25.
+* Row T "Crit %s" is the percentage of those hits that should be critical hits.
+* Row U "Dmg" is the average expected damage past armor.  This is simply the sum of max( 0, damage type - armor amount ) for each of the 3 damage types.
+* Row V "Crit" is the average expected critical damage past armor.  This is the sum of the critical damage - armor amount for each of the three damage amounts, but the formula is substantially more complicated because the 3 damage types have different critical damage multipliers and reduce effective armor by different amounts on a critical.
+* Rows W-Y repeat damage and critical damage, but for rapid strikes where the base damage is multiplied by 2/3rds.
+* Row Z "Dmg/Turn" is either:
+** 100 * ( Dmg * ( Hits - num crits ) + Crit Dmg * ( num hits ) ) / ( 1000 * Moves ) - ie, sum of damage per hit for each normal hit + crit damage for each critical hit divided by the number of moves in 1000 attacks, multiplied by 100 moves/second, OR
+** 100 * ( Dmg * ( Hits - num crits ) / 2 + Crit Dmg * ( num hits ) / 2 + rapid strike Dmg * ( Hits - num crits ) / 2 + rapid strike Crit Dmg * ( num hits ) / 2 ) / ( 1000 - ( hits / 2 ) * Moves + Hits * 0.33 * Moves ) - same as above, but accounting for rapid strike reduced damage and movement cost.
+
+Finally,
+* Column AT "Weapon" is a repeat of the weapon name for refernce
+* Column Au "Value" is the average of columns Z, AI, and AR, multiplied by 1.5 for Reach 2 weapons and 1.75 for Reach 3 weapons.
+
+### New Formula Sorted
+This compares the old weapon values versus the values from the new formula, and sorts weapons by decreasing new value by weapon category to make it easier to spot weapons that are unsually good (I'm looking at you, broadsword) or bad for their category.
+
+### Proposed Values
+This repeats the New Formula tab, except that Columns C-J were copied over and pasted as values, and then adjusted to make the numbers nice.
+
+* Accuracy was adjusted to the new values based on grip, length, striking surface, and balance from the Raw tab.  That means a bunch of previously accurate weapons like bionic claws got a nerf, and inappropriately inaccurate weapons like katanas got a buff.
+* Weapons in the same category were generally adjusted to have roughly the same evaluation, though with different values.  In general, European weapons get more of their damage from bash and less from cut, and are often heavier and slower, than Asian weapons.  This is a little arbitrary and not entirely realistic, but everyone seems to expect it.  As a case in point, the Japanese two-handed sword "nodachi" has 164 attack speed, bash 6, and cut 47, while the European two-handed sword zweihander has 169 attack speed, base 18, cut 39.  They both have values of about 26.
+* Inferior weapons got a 1 step penalty in balance compared to the real weapon, and half of the cut/pierce damage is moved to bash, and the cut/pierce damage is 1/4th's the real weapons.  Ie, an inferior pike does Bash 30, Stab 11 to a pike's Bash 8, Stab 44.
+* Fake weapons are as badly balanced as the inferior version of a weapon, but are basically blunt so the striking surface usually got upgraded to "every", ironically making them as accurate or more accurate than the real version of the weapon.  Bash damage was halved from the inferior version, and cut/pierce damage was again reduced to 1/4th of the inferior version, which is 1/16th the real version.  A fake pike does Bash 15, Stab 3.
+* A lot of weapons got damage boosts to bring up their evaluated value.  A lot of low damage weapons with rapid strike were being drastically overvalued, but the damage past armor tests showed that rapid strike often just lets you bounce off armor twice as fast.
+* Spears got some rough formula for pierce damage based on weight that I can't recover anymore, but in general the differences between spears are more minor than they used to be.
+* Polearms got the same rough damage as Ax2 at range 2, but got a separate balance line at range 1 with the raw damage reduced by 0.7.  This makes polearms very impressive at range, but slightly worse than quarterstaffs against adjacent targets.
+
+### Poposed Values Sorted
+This is another comparison tab like New Formula Sorted, but used the data from Proposed Values.
+
+### Comparison
+This is a summary tab.
+
+In columns A-P, each weapon from the filter tab gets it's current and proposed stats, it's original value, value under the new formula, and value under the new formula using the proposed values.  For proposed values, values that improved are highlighted in green and those that got worse are in red.  Ideally, this will make it easy to compare changes and catch mistakes.
+
+Columns S-AH repeat the process, but cells S1, T1, U1, and V1 can be used to specify category names, and then the subtotal shows a selected subset of weapons that match those categories.  This simplifies comparing things.

src/avatar.cpp

@@ -1249,9 +1249,6 @@ void avatar::reset_stats()
         }
     }
 
-    // Hit-related effects
-    mod_hit_bonus( mabuff_tohit_bonus() + weapon.type->m_to_hit );
-
     // Apply static martial arts buffs
     martial_arts_data.ma_static_effects( *this );