Flight and Aerial Combat

MOVEMENT
There are the following movement commands: fly and land, up and down, and then movement directions. For the movement directions there is the 'speed' command which lets you input how many rooms the beast will travel during each movement. The maximum speed is be determined by each beast. The maximum altitude for all beasts is 4. The beast must be in flight before it can move.

When the beast moves, the rider will see the 1-line short description of every room travelled over. Each room on the ground will get a message "You see a XXX fly overhead." Other aerial beasts will get a "XXX flies above/below/by" dependant upon respective altitude.

When the rider types 'landscape', he will receive a small little map, the size of which is dependent upon altitude. A landed beast will only see the character for the room which it is in.



The various 'landscape' responses will be something like this

Altitude 1:   Altitude 2:     Altitude 3:   Altitude 4:
  -           /---\              -            /-\
 / \          |^ ~|             / \          /^  \
|^~ |         |^~ |            /^ ~\        /^^ ~ \
 \ /          |~  |           |^^~ *|       |^^~ *|
  -           \---/            \~  /        \ ~   /
                                \X/          \ XX/
                                 -            \-/

NOTE: The actual representation of the landscape command may differ.

Each character represents a landform on the ground: ^ is hills, ~ is water, * is a town. The character X always represents an unenterable room. If one of the rooms is occupied by a creature or object, it will appear bold on the display. The center room of the map will always be in bold.

NOTE: to see bold you must have "set color on"

While mounted on a flying beast, you cannot look at or pick up any ground-based objects. Similarly, they cannot look at you (only your mount). This is because of the increased distance from you to the object you are trying to look at - you just can't get a closer look than to know they're in the room




COMBAT
Air combat is more than a stationary fight like with monsters, it is a three-dimensional combat system. The beasts will still fight stationary if in the same room and at the same altitude. However, the beasts also can attack while moving provided that combat has already been initiated with the 'kill' command.

Movement attacks are the 'dive' and the 'scrape'.
* A dive attack is when a player at a higher altitude dives down on his enemy, doing a dive damage bonus attack.
* A scrape attack is when a beast moves into or through a room with the enemy (provided both are at the same altitude). The beast will scrape the enemy with its talons and keep flying. If it is flying through (moving many rooms at once) it will just attack and leave. If it stops in the room, it will get a scrape attack and then combat will continue as before.

During combat, the rider will take damage a portion of the time and the beast will take the damage the rest of the time. Even though the goal is to kill the beast, sometimes the rider will receive a blow or two.

Some monsters will have special attacks, like Dragon's fire breath and tail sweep. These will have their own commands and are purely based on the beast in question.




DEATH
If the rider dies while on the beast, he becomes a ghost and floats down to the ground.

If the beast dies in combat, it will begin falling to the ground. The rider will receive damage based on the height of the fall and the weight of the rider (in equipment). This damage will be very high and will likely kill the rider.




CONTROL
A general skill will be used for the control of the beasts. If the rider is low in this skill, he will not be able to use his beast to its full capacity. This means that the beast will not fly at full speed and will be less likely to hit/do less damage in combat, etc.




ENDURANCE
All beasts tire while in flight. If your beast begins to tire, you will be told of this. It would be best for you to land quickly, for you wouldn't want to be on it if it fell out of the sky...