tweak: only spells, abilities, and death cobs cause hunger

[mps]

Just wanted to suggest a simple tweak to the hunger system. Since the only things that make you have to eat a lot are high level spells, certain evocations, god abilities, etc., and death cobs, I thought it might make sense to dispense with satiation decreasing over time.

This would have the advantage of maintaining the current situation where players who cast spells heavily, spam certain god abilities, and melee death cobs have to carefully consider the hunger cost, while freeing players who currently need not worry about starving from lugging around tons of food, butchering things to conserve permafood they won't run out of anyway, and having to babysit their dudes' digestive tracts.

[kuniqs]

Hunger certainly will not go away because it would encourage 'optimal play' - PC standing on stairs and waiting indefinitely for monsters to stumble upon him.
Besides, MP, success chance and piety are already things that limit ability and spell spamming. Having hunger as yet another factor is unecessary IMO, because hunger has the biggest impact in the early game (when your Spellcasting is low)... but early game has plenty of chunks. There are Hells of course, but hunger is your smallest problem there.

[mps]

Hm, well, I'd be willing to allow an exception where satiation decreases on turns that players spend idling on stairs. I'll even go you one better: If the player stays within a given 15x15 region for 200 turns, the juice starts running again.

I'm puzzled, though, to hear that you think spell hunger, hunger from abilities and so on could be profitably removed. Perhaps we should meet each other half-way and just agree that death cobs should be the only source of hunger in crawl.

But here's one point we already agree on:

There are Hells of course, but hunger is your smallest problem there.

Absolutely! :^)

[dowan]

Hunger certainly will not go away because it would encourage 'optimal play' - PC standing on stairs and waiting indefinitely for monsters to stumble upon him.
Besides, MP, success chance and piety are already things that limit ability and spell spamming. Having hunger as yet another factor is unecessary IMO, because hunger has the biggest impact in the early game (when your Spellcasting is low)... but early game has plenty of chunks. There are Hells of course, but hunger is your smallest problem there.

Yeah! That's why there will NEVER be a race in crawl that doesn't have to eat... well certainly not two! Well I mean, two is enough, certainly not more than that!

[/sarcasm](I was pointing out here that mummies and vampires can already stand on stairs and wait indefinitely, and yet, both races are still in crawl, so therefore, waiting on stairs for monsters must not be a problem, even without hunger)

[archaeo]