Talk:Arch-vile

Arch-vile can't target certain monsters in vanilla, but friendly arch-viles can
The most recent series of edits excises all mention of friendly monsters from the main text and footnotes. I have no opinion on that as a broad guideline (port-specific information has been added to articles without disruption in some cases), but here it is inconsistent because the new numbers in the "shots to kill" table presuppose friendly monsters. That deterministic method of calculation can never be correct when a direct hit is forbidden (possibly excepting the barrel which has less than 70 hp). So what do we do? IMHO those lines should be blank, as before &mdash; a great many stochastic assumptions would be required to create a damage distribution, and AFAIK there is no preexisting research to refer to, so we just have to wait patiently for a more defensible analysis. Ryan W 18:14, 3 October 2008 (UTC)


 * "Friendly monsters" kind of confused me at first glance because that's the name of a feature in some ports, that allow monsters that aid the player and such. But I see you mean those that can't or won't hurt others (harmless or non-targeting monsters).


 * I think the table should be consistent with what's possible in the game, and impossibilities should be addressed. In the case of the bosses, applying only the base damage, and in the cases of the monsters that aren't targeted, a value dependent on blast damage exclusively. With blast damage perhaps using about half of full damage may be convenient, as any hits that hurt the monster would range from the minimal to (almost?) the maximum, creating a mean somewhere between them. Perhaps it could be noted that a value for varying splash damage has been assumed somewhat arbitrarily just to give an idea because it depends on locational and random factors. Mainly because I don't think that is measurable in the same way as with targeted attacks. Who is like God? 20:02, 3 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh wait, doh, you are talking about friendly monsters (as per the title of the section). Normally, articles deal with "as is" data. Non-standard, usually impossible data could be included as notes to the table. The problem is that if you assume (use) arbitrary class monsters in the table the information overlaps with the normal behavior. The normal info for the arch-vile against arch-viles is different than that of an archvile attacking an arch-vile with a different class applied to it. We could mention the info for the latter in the note, right after it explains that arch-viles don't target each other. Who is like God? 20:16, 3 October 2008 (UTC)