Tomb Titivator
Posts: 911
Joined: Thursday, 17th December 2015, 02:36
Monday, 9th May 2016, 06:21
remove quiver
A quiver was almost necessary when you could fire multiple types of ammo. Now, launchers can use only one type of ammo, so there's no need. Except for slings, but you can just remove bullets (which are weakly branded rocks in practice) and buff the base damage of slings. The quiver is a good thing to get rid of because it takes up an entire line on the main interface, has a bunch of commands and inscriptions associated with it, and it makes it very easy to throw the wrong thing accidentally.
The only remaining consideration is Throwing. First of all, throwing can work as it normally works with the 'F' key. This normally requires 3 keypresses, which is exactly how spellcasting and wandzapping work.
However, the ability to throw things straight out of your inventory is not necessarily a desirable feature. Throwing is a very weird viable option when wielding a crappy distortion weapon or resist stick or cursed item. Wands already occupy this design space of being usable straight from the inventory. Throwing something whenever monsters are out of melee range is optimal so frequently that it's somewhat annoying to switch between melee and throwing when melee is more powerful (this is why we don't penalize using ranged against adjacent targets) (yes there's an RC file option that modifies tab to do this automatically) whereas spells and evocables don't suffer nearly as much due to being limited in MP or total charges, and generally more powerful than throwing if you have them available.
The second option is to make only wielded items throwable. (If this happens, might as well merge 'f' with 'v' and 'F' with 'V'. Prob f/v->f, F/V->v. And either all needles must be unbranded or blowguns need to be rethought/removed, e.g. remove poison needles since poison tomahawks exist.) Aside from solving the above concerns, it would be a more naturalistic (good for flavor/simulationism, however minor that concern) and foolproof way of restricting species from using javelins or large rocks. Weapons, staves, and rods should be unthrowable, since they have (or should have*) a function for pressing 'f'/'v', and also since we don't want people to accidentally throw their lajatangs into lava. Whether to let people throw stuff like potions and food for lulz is a minor, open question.
*all normal weapons, even hands, and not just polearms, should be evocable
Like the semistandardazition of ranged formulas to be like melee, removing quiver narrows the range of options one has to consider in designing further changes, which makes development easier and smoother. Just a thought.
The only remaining consideration is Throwing. First of all, throwing can work as it normally works with the 'F' key. This normally requires 3 keypresses, which is exactly how spellcasting and wandzapping work.
However, the ability to throw things straight out of your inventory is not necessarily a desirable feature. Throwing is a very weird viable option when wielding a crappy distortion weapon or resist stick or cursed item. Wands already occupy this design space of being usable straight from the inventory. Throwing something whenever monsters are out of melee range is optimal so frequently that it's somewhat annoying to switch between melee and throwing when melee is more powerful (this is why we don't penalize using ranged against adjacent targets) (yes there's an RC file option that modifies tab to do this automatically) whereas spells and evocables don't suffer nearly as much due to being limited in MP or total charges, and generally more powerful than throwing if you have them available.
The second option is to make only wielded items throwable. (If this happens, might as well merge 'f' with 'v' and 'F' with 'V'. Prob f/v->f, F/V->v. And either all needles must be unbranded or blowguns need to be rethought/removed, e.g. remove poison needles since poison tomahawks exist.) Aside from solving the above concerns, it would be a more naturalistic (good for flavor/simulationism, however minor that concern) and foolproof way of restricting species from using javelins or large rocks. Weapons, staves, and rods should be unthrowable, since they have (or should have*) a function for pressing 'f'/'v', and also since we don't want people to accidentally throw their lajatangs into lava. Whether to let people throw stuff like potions and food for lulz is a minor, open question.
*all normal weapons, even hands, and not just polearms, should be evocable
Like the semistandardazition of ranged formulas to be like melee, removing quiver narrows the range of options one has to consider in designing further changes, which makes development easier and smoother. Just a thought.
