Cap/warn/interrupt high move penalties

[fairyarmadillo]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/1d490hn/maybe_there_should_be_a_limit_to_move_cost_penalty/ - This post outlines a reasonable complaint. The player attempted to crawl one tile over, not realizing that their move cost was over two minutes long. This could easily cause a game over for a player who didn't realize how dire their situation was.

Solution you would like.

There are four choices, all of which sound fine to me.

1 - Warn the player, like when they try to make an attack with a preposterous move cost. This could get annoying if you really had to go somewhere and it kept popping up, but that's a solvable problem. 2 - Make movements over a certain cost, like 5 seconds or something, interruptable, the same way crafting and other activities are. I'm not sure where you'd draw the line, but it would probably be a less obtrusive way to do it. 3 - Cap move cost at a high but not unreasonable number, like 15 seconds. Long enough to simulate an agonizing crawl. This runs the risk of letting characters off too easy if they're trying to belly crawl with no limbs while carrying a refrigerator on their back. 4 - Prevent movement entirely if it's slow enough. If you're that busted up, maybe you just can't move. Risks unwanted issues where multiple slow effects that aren't injuries stack up to prevent the player from moving.

Describe alternatives you have considered.

None, but I'm sure something else might work.

Additional context

No response

[Spicyshadow]

I think the third solution is the best. It is the least annoying in having to deal with a thousand popups. The forth is really bad. It runs the risk of creating a situation where you can only watch you character slowly die of thirst and starvation. Another problem might be the fact that some terrain has more movement cost so you might end up in a situation where your character can't cross tall grass becease the movement cost is to high.

[Brambor]

I like the first. It can be just one popup. Just like safe mode, remember the choice for an (in-game) hour, 15 minutes or something.

Unlike the third, the player is notified before the action. Once they move already, they have no clue, if the character will move for another second or minutes. So they don't know when to interrupt.

[PGR-14]

The third is good, I've had to close the window 'cause I had a character w/ full broken limbs take an hour to move.

[fairyarmadillo]

The third is good, I've had to close the window 'cause I had a character w/ full broken limbs take an hour to move.

The strongest argument for this IMO is that action speed loss is also capped, so it'd be better UI/UX to maintain parity, as people will naturally expect these similar things to work similarly.

Maybe instead of a flat cap it should be a multiplier on top of your base move speed, modified by your posture (treating running as walking). So a slow gastropod's cap would be higher than a fast spider's. That'd prevent weird cheese with slow characters avoiding reasonable consequences for injury and burden.

[dominic-dimico]

I have another solution in the spirit of #1, less annoying than a pop-up that gets the job done, but I'll let you decide. It resuscitates a feature from HTML 1.0 which I think is still to this day unfairly hated on: blink.

When the movement speed drops below a certain threshold, highlight the speed (the number) in the sidebar by inverting its foreground and background colors, then cause it to blink 200ms on / 200ms off five times for 1 second before it returns to normal. You get your warning, but you don't have to press a key to make the pop-up go away.

Speed is a mechanic and a number which is so crucial though, that it seems better to condition the player to pay attention to it, rather than let the player ignore it except when it becomes so bad as to result in death.

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