Two code ideas.

[Anarchy]

Just two code ideas..

One for hunt - have it so trackers can tell if someone has been foraging in the area? Such as "The soil has been disturbed here" Or what have you.

Also, can it be changed so that when following someone you dont switch to their travel speed? Currently, if the leader runs/walks/sneaks - everyone else does, its a bit silly i think.

Its late, sorry if it seems untought out. Ideas? Sugguestions?

[Bestatte]

The problem with the movement thing, is if I'm following someone who's running and I'm -not- running, then I won't be keeping up with them and we'll separate. If I'm running, and following someone who's sneaking, then I'm going to out-distance them. So if you're in a group, you move with the group, at the group's pace. If you don't want to be running, you have to tell the leader to slow down, or pick a new leader next time.

[Lazloth]

Also, can it be changed so that when following someone you dont switch to their travel speed? Currently, if the leader runs/walks/sneaks - everyone else does, its a bit silly i think.

Lazloth would only ask:  how would you keep up with the leader if s/he starts to run while everyone else is moving slower..or is that the point?

[Anonymous]

One for hunt - have it so trackers can tell if someone has been foraging in the area? Such as "The soil has been disturbed here" Or what have you.

I like that.  Same idea as when a tent is pitched or someone sleeps somewhere.

Does it even need to be applied to the hunt skill, though?  I don't have any RL ability to identify tracks, but I can look at a hole in the ground and realize someone or something made it.

Also, can it be changed so that when following someone you dont switch to their travel speed? Currently, if the leader runs/walks/sneaks - everyone else does, its a bit silly i think.

If they are running and you are not, you can't really follow them.  Because they'll run too far away.

[Quo]

I think it's nice the way the code takes care of this. Otherwise noone'd dare allowing a mek to follow them around, for the fear of being overrun.

 The lean elf speeds up to a run, leaving you behind.
 Trying to follow the lean elf, you chocke in a cloud of dust.
 On the horizon, the lean elf waves you goodbye.

 The frail human slows down to a walk.
 The barrel-chested half-giant runs in, following the frail human.
 Carried by his momentum, the gore-spattered half-giant runs north, the deranged remains of the frail human marking his path.

Heh. During the hours it took me to get done with my text (beside other things), tout le monde already responded, making my reply look pretty late and pointless.

An afterthought to the foraging/hunting idea - while it would be nice to have more ways to detect traces of what had happened recently, it's something those who would be leaving those traces might take into consideration. If you plow the ground in search for tubers, you might leave something to indicate the state of the area for a while.
Laying that kind of traces might well be a sport in itself...
 

 drop tuber  In a small thicked of needle-leafed bushes, the earth appears loose and upturned, torn roots and ~ dotting the furrowed ground.

[Twilight]

If I remember correctly, walking / running speeds actually vary race to race.  To follow some races that are walking, your race might need to run.  Now, within PC races, I don't believe this is an issue.  But when you have things like, oh, mounts, it does become an issue.  So its not as simple as if they are running, you are running.  Its if they are travelling at speed X, and you are following them, the idea of the follow command being that you are, you know, following them (ie keeping up), then you are set to speed X.  Actually, I think it only goes upwards, ie will kick you from walking to running, and you have to manually adjust downwards, but anyways, you are set to the same speed rate or higher.

I also seem to remember issues with stacked lag and follow a few years back.  This could be something related to that as well.

[UnderSeven]

Hunting, yeah, I think the more information hunting can yield the better. Foraging is only one small example of things hunt could yield information wise.

The follow thing no, you'll get left in the dust.. INFACT last I checked you already can be.  I recall having a human following an elf that was walking.  The went and eventually outwalked me.  In the process I got so much movement lag tring to keep up that where they outwalked me (a room with an aggro mob in it) I got to sit there and watch rounds of combat scroll by before I could even think about reacting because I was SO movement lagged.  I dunno if that was fixed, but I remeber a long thread about it.

[Boggis]

The follow thing no, you'll get left in the dust.. INFACT last I checked you already can be.  I recall having a human following an elf that was walking.  The went and eventually outwalked me.  In the process I got so much movement lag tring to keep up that where they outwalked me (a room with an aggro mob in it) I got to sit there and watch rounds of combat scroll by before I could even think about reacting because I was SO movement lagged.  I dunno if that was fixed, but I remeber a long thread about it.

I don't think it has been fixed. I travelled with somebody to a nearby city recently and my mount was slower than theirs to the point where an emote I typed roughly half way along the journey didn't generate until we were at the gates. On the way back I suffered this again but was eventually left behind in their wake - it took a good while for this to happen though. Maybe this could be shortened by quite a bit? If you're leading somebody then you'd have to travel at the pace of the slowest person in the group which is realistic (how does my slow mount suddenly find the pace to keep up with that pacy erdlu?). And if you're trying to escape from someone then at least you have the chance to break away from them and get back to your super sekrit hideout instead of dragging them somewhere and either waiting for them to eventually fall in your wake or attacking them while movement lagged.

[UnderSeven]

I think the staff actually responded to this problem before, if someone could find the archives and post that up.  I'm pretty sure if this actually killed someone we'd never hear the end of it on the GDB, so maybe the problem isn't that killer.  Just remeber not to follow people who are that much faster.. And actually it's easily fixed if the leader is just not spamming direction.  If they actually pause a bit every room than they're not going to screw their followers.  On that note, a fast person like a delf could have a human follow them, spam a direction 20 times, get the human trapped in lag and kill them withou the human having any chance to react in any way after typing follow.  But I'd say beyond a shadow of a doubt, anyone who did that would probably get a fitting reprocussion from the staff.

[Quo]

If you're leading somebody then you'd have to travel at the pace of the slowest person in the group which is realistic (how does my slow mount suddenly find the pace to keep up with that pacy erdlu?). And if you're trying to escape from someone then at least you have the chance to break away from them and get back to your super sekrit hideout instead of dragging them somewhere and either waiting for them to eventually fall in your wake or attacking them while movement lagged.

822hp 0mv> look at me
A large withered rock.
822hp 0mv> follow elf
You start following the swift elf.
The crimson sun sets in the west.
The swift elf hobbles north, his sandcloth wet with sweat.
Rumbling and grinding and groaning, you follow the swift elf north.

I think slowing someone leading a group down by code would be flawed.
After all, unless I'm mistaken, they don't necessarilly need to consent in you dogging their steps.

One impression I got from the previous posts was that the movement delay can accumulate, and also affect emotes? That seems odd to me.

[UnderSeven]

Movement delay can accumulate and make it so you can't do ANYTHING.  Not emote, not stop following, nothing what so ever.  That is unless they  changed it since the last time this topic came up.

[sacac]

They could lead you into a death trap before you stop following someone.

[UnderSeven]

They could but that would be code abuse and the staff would find out.  It isn't lilke there arn't ways for pcs to abuse ooc info.  Wait till someone goes afk, only attack link dead players... Lots of ways to abuse the code that there isn't much that can be done for it.  but god help anyone who actually took advantage of such a thing.

[Anarchy]

I just wish we had the option to pick movement speed when following.

Just say, one off thing, an example. A d-elf wouldn't walk when following a human on a kank, they would run, but the code provents that.

[Boggis]

I think slowing someone leading a group down by code would be flawed.
After all, unless I'm mistaken, they don't necessarilly need to consent in you dogging their steps.

One impression I got from the previous posts was that the movement delay can accumulate, and also affect emotes? That seems odd to me.

Sorry, maybe I was a little unclear in my original post - I didn't mean that code would be used to slow the leader down to the pace of the slowest rider. This would have to be something that the leader would do themselves by pausing as they move along.

I still think that the time it takes for the code that forces stragglers to be left behind eventually could be shortened. Groups would absolutely have to stick together and travel a bit slower. If somebody was trying to evade a pursuer then at least they can decide to attack if they think they aren't losing them without having to worry about whether the pursuer is movement lagged or not.

[UnderSeven]

A leader shouldn't be forced to attack to get rid of a persuer, nor really should they have to have wars with follow and unhitch.  If someone is just that much faster than someone else, it makes sense that they should be able to jam in a direction and the persuer be unable to get a chance to attack..  If the leader is faster.  

Because of this reason I actually feel the current code needs to remain.
If we didn't have the lag penalities, than ALL persuits would go in favor of the persuer.  If they can just get a follow in, then they WILL be able to attack as the leader would have to stop to type unhitch.  With the lag in place, a leader has a persuiser, they don't want to be caught so they just go in a direction, the persuer is not going to be able to attack because they'll have the movement delay of tring to keep up untill they are left in the dust.

Where I have problem with this code is here:
The movement delay is cumulative.  That sucks.  You go far enough to get left in the dust and end up with a minute or more of not being able to enter any command.

A fix I would perpose would be to simply put a cap on max movement delay.  That would solve a whole host of problems related to this issue.