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You need to know basic code. It is a threshold requirement. But from there, combat ability is very quickly determined by combat knowledge, rather than technical knowhow.
I have a BS in computer science. The entirety of the classes that might conceivably apply in day to day maintenance of my system were my software engineering class (which was less about coding and more about how to formulate, design, and plan out software projects), my undergraduate data structures class (hashes, linked lists, stacks, queues), and the introduction to computer science class that every body had to take (logic, print "Hello world!\n").
It's really basic stuff. You can get away with appalling inefficiencies in code as long as it does what it's supposed to do. But far more important is knowing for example, the theory behind venom stacking, nuances of afflictions, the capabilities of each class, etc. Do you, for example, raze spend 1.5s to raze a shield and do 10% limb damage, or do you just spend 1.0s to raze the shield and then do 20% limb damage later? When is the best time to shoot off a paresis bolt? Where should loneliness go in mentis stack? What kind of optimizations and changes to your stat distribution do you need to make when pursuing a damage strat as opposed to something else? Does it take time to build up that experience? Yes. Does it also take time to build up the coding know how to implement some of these things? Yes, but arguably, not as much.
Having a good technical ability without combat experience will put you solidly into the mid-tier. The inverse can keep you fighting amongst the best assuming you understand you will have a little more difficulty handling/using certain offensive/defensive routes and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Also, programming an offense is a lot harder than loading in afflictions and coming up with a basic curing system. Dhuriv initial/followup/orders, Templar double weapon nonsense, mentis when you had to keep track of what you were whispering instead of having combat messages, rebounding/dodge, dealing with multilines or using states, yeah, no thanks.
Offenses and knowining when to hit someone with certain affs like @Serrice mentioned above is much harder..
Sorry but its true when it comes to Mudlet Id happy tell someone the easiest way to make a curing system well the basics.. But as mentioned in another topic, no one asks stuff on KLL no more.. or even in the topics on here .. So only so much that some people can do to help others.
There is a lot more to coding an offense than simply picking the next 1-3 affs from a list that the target doesn't have. That's like - a 4 line function (assuming you're already tracking the target's affs).
Trying to code in the stuff Serrice touched on is a hell of a logic puzzle.
Honestly, and @Lim can attest to this, we're moving into a meta where the quality of your curing is really important, and it'll take more than a four-line function to cure intelligently versus a lot of what people are capable of putting out. But that's a separate issue.
The important thing about coding an offense is to start small and build out from there. Coding knowledge isn't helpful so much as system knowledge, like @Serrice pointed out. For example, you first build a function to parse a table and check it against the target's afflictions and pick two (or three) afflictions they don't have.
For some classes, like Templar and Syssin, that's almost everything you need for like dsk/dstab. Two afflictions on a priority, and go.
Now, let's say you're Sentinel. Now you need to define your afflictions by what can be done in the first attack and what can be done in the second attack, so you work that in to your existing ipairs() functions. Great, that's done. Now you need to get the engine to recognize the attack names, so each affliction entry in the main table gets an atk = { sentinel = "dhuriv heartbreaker" } type entry, so that in your kill_them_so_unicorns_dead() function it goes like send(lib[tmp.aff_one].atk[class] .. " " .. tmp.target).
As an example. It's a slow process at first, but once you've built the infrastructure you can tweak it very very easily. Like right now, I've built a basic set of switches and manipulations into my offense infrastructure that I can do 99% of the things I'll ever want to do to a priority list almost on the fly.
Anyway, at some point I'll get around to writing a tutorial for it. Once you understand ipairs(), tables, and basic if statements you're golden. The rest is as @Lim said; learning actual Aetolian mechanics and slowly (I mean like maybe 15-20 minutes out of the time you spend playing) tweaking and adjusting your stuff.
Granted, this is if you didn't code your whole system from scratch and you're building offenses for every class in the game. This is like you've got Entropy, or Oasis or Tripwire or Mayhem or whatever you have and you're building something onto it.
the way she tells me I'm hers and she is mine
open hand or closed fist would be fine
blood as rare and sweet as cherry wine
That kind of request is intimidating, understandably.
Combat theory is harder than coding. This is what Serrice means when she describes theory underlying the code. I echo what she says about getting away with a lot of coding inefficiencies. I actually found that it's much easier to use sets of if-then commands to code an offence, rather than using complex tables that reference and check against one another. If you compare my scripts with Trager or Edain, you'll find that I write hundreds of lines more. It is primitive. I personally feel it is more flexible because even though it is long and tedious, it reads more like English.
Define your first attack. Define your second attack, ensuring it doesn't clash with your first attack. Define your third attack, ensuring it doesn't clash with your first and second attack. Compile. Send.
It is harder to come up with good curing than a good offence, but both are equally important. A good offence requires mostly an intimate knowledge of the class you're using at the time; a good curing system requires intimate knowledge of all the different classes you potentially face and how they work. When I said earlier that an offence is easier to code, I actually just meant that an offence has fewer moving parts. For curing, you need to have data tables, and incorporate 254 afflictions and their effects. For an offence, you just need to know the afflictions of your own class and how to deliver them.
The exception might be Shaman, though. Because of the strong passives/active random cures, there is less of a need to think about what aff to cure before the next. Just cure when they get too many/you pick up a crucial affliction that needs to be shrugged off.
Essentially the discussion you are having boils down to the nuances to the current combat system we have, but I, at least (and perhaps others) am saying that it's this system that I dislike and don't find super engaging. Combat didn't used to be all about curing priority and precise affliction delivery, with a hair-thin margin of error. That's why we have AI and why systems are as mandatory as they are. Making the coding aspect seem more friendly isn't going to change the fact that some of us just don't want to sit and code - we used to be able to slap together some stuff and fight on the fly and try out a range of tactics. Part of this was, yes, because coding in general was more crude. But there were also a wider range of tactics available. Aetolia's tactics never were as exciting as some games (Avalon's PK used to be incredible), but there definitely used to be more of them.
End of the day, the game is what admin want it to be, so I'm not saying "The current PK game is wrong or bad" but rather just expressing why I am not engaged, since the question was raised, and I used to PK quite a lot. A lot of people seem to be getting hung up on "coding is hard" when it's not really about that. It's about the fact that coding has become mandatory, due to shifts in combat design. I can code fine, but even when I invest the time to do it, it's just not as fun to PK anymore.
Sorry @nalor
Because @Aishia skerrs me a little (not) and because she won't let it go and because she asked nicely.... I'll amend my statement previous statement and added in a few names and where I think they stand.
Sparring against someone 35% of my might and like level 80, I just end of bleeding them to death with jugular.
Edit: Something to consider, too - don't mangle on the first restore/pre-restore. Use the opportunity to break more limbs and add more salve pressure, -then- capitalize on it.
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
http://hastebin.com/iposofutum.vhdl