Proposal: beogh reform

[XuaXua]

How about if you just pray over equipment to add it to your "orc jesus supply chest"

I like this idea a lot.

[Tiktacy]

How about if you just pray over equipment to add it to your "orc jesus supply chest"

I like this idea a lot.

I agree, this would be pretty neat and get rid of the Orc dress up mini-game.

[galehar]

it's that it's not fixing the big issues

What is the big issues? Maybe reread your own post.

Recruiting all the creatures in orcish mines feels sort of broken. While not exactly game changing, it's like the equivalent of following a good god and going through a holy branch. While by no means a huge issue

Not this one, you're saying so yourself.

The amount of orcish followers is unlimited, so that means that optimally, you will want to level up as many orcs as possible.

As I said in my previous post, I disagree with that. If you feel strongly about that, try to explain exactly what you do and why, because it seems like a completely pointless strategy to me.

Allies in crawl are generally not very smart, they can run in and attack something that can easily kill them in one shot

I don't see the problem with that. If you don't like losing permanent allies, play a summoner. You can also use the retreat command. This might be related to the previous problem, if you keep leaving your warlords behind, maybe this is why your other orcs die.
Although, I agree that poison can be quite annoying. There was an idea to have a touch range ability to cure your allies, that would be cool (and thematic). Orc priests have heal other now too, maybe it could be buffed and/or the AI improved to make it more efficient.

Equipment management is a major pain.

I agree, and I'm proposing something. This is unrelated to the other topic about recruitment and recall cap, though.

So, what are the big issues I'm pushing asides?

[Hirsch I]

and having allies seek itens will solve nothing, but having them seek the best items without changing 20 times in the same stash will.

Of course, with a price based system, it's easy to make them search through the whole stack. Currently, since they can only compare one item to the one they have, it's not that simple. So it was implied that the new proposed stash-tracker based system would also address the deep stack search.
And how can you say that allies seeking items solve nothing? That's nonsense.

we are saying exactly the same thing, but you are saying it right. i just failed miserably in expressing myself. i love your proposal, it will keep things passive (most proposals include adding new abilities, including mine, and that is not nice.), while also fixing good part of the addressed issues in 2 simple steps. elegant.
which problems do these ideas face?

[Tiktacy]

I was laughing because galahars post was huge, sorry if it came off as rude. I messaged him a response to avoid any more heated responses.

[njvack]

Well, I've never done that. Whenever I find something decent, I pick it up and throw it allies later. Or I just wait to find more stuff. It might be useful in the beginning to search for upgrades for every orcs, but quickly, they'll all have decent equipment and there won't be any upgrade behind. Especially if you keep a static number of orcs around, when one dies, the new one takes his stuff, so your squad gear stays the same.

Huh. I remember it being problematic after losing a long-timer and recruiting a knight to replace him. But I'll need to roll another Begohvite and see again what it's like; I haven't played one since priests went away.

Regardless: don't take my comments as meaning allies shouldn't intelligently seek items on your level / in LOS; that would both help with a tedious thing and make them seem a lot more "alive." Some kind of ammo-sharing amongst allies would also make me give you a big ol' hug.

[Hirsch I]

that combined with marbit's "orcs bully lesser orcs for items" proposal would make this a better world for one to live in.
it received little love, I really dont get why.

[Leafsnail]

Well, most people wouldn't stairdance their orcs since they'd rather have a manageable number of allies around them. It's true that if there's a cap on recall but not stairs, the other players (the ones which like running around with a huge army), would be encouraged to stairdance.
Probably the simplest solution is to cap recall at 12 per recall. You can always use the ability several times to call in more orcs. I think this is a good compromise which would make everyone happy and wouldn't have any balance issue.
Also, note that you can already manually cap your allies by using the stop recalling ability.

I guess that doesn't introduce any issues, but I don't think it solves any either. It's functionally identical to the current setup except that you would need one fewer command if you happen to want exactly 12 orcs and one more if you want any number above 12.

How about if you just pray over equipment to add it to your "orc jesus supply chest", and orc followers automatically use the best equipment from there, picking in HD order. I don't know how to handle arrows, maybe they take 20 at a time.

Or just make it god gifts. That way you wouldn't have to mess around with praying over things and code that perfectly evaluates how good every weapon is.

Equipment management is a major pain.

I agree, and I'm proposing something. This is unrelated to the other topic about recruitment and recall cap, though.

So, what are the big issues I'm pushing asides?

Equipment management is a major pain, but getting your orcs to stand over things is only a minor part of that. The major issue is that it encourages tedious micromanagement of every ally's inventory, and the fact that you can choose not to do that doesn't remove the problem.

[njvack]

As a reminder:

IX. When (not if) someone criticises your idea, accept it. Listen. Adapt your proposal. Admit when you're wrong. Do not belligerently make the same case over and over. Basic etiquette and the forum rules still apply. If you feel a criticism is personal or unwarranted, use the report button or pm a moderator. Be advised that the forum benefits from a certain amount of astringent criticism of new proposals, and that whining on your part will weaken or destroy your case.

X. Orange names are devs: if one of them rejects your idea, it is almost certainly dead in the water. Let it go. Blue names are highly experienced players: if one of them rejects your idea, it has sustained a hit below the waterline and is listing badly. Prepare to abandon ship.

Galehar does generally read proposals thoughtfully (there's no evidence he hasn't read this one!) but that does not mean he or the other devs need to share your point of view. In particular, my reading of this is that "optimal" weapon choice is not a design goal for orcish followers, and that making Beogh into a "gifting stuff to allies" god is not super attractive either.

[galehar]

Equipment management is a major pain, but getting your orcs to stand over things is only a minor part of that. The major issue is that it encourages tedious micromanagement of every ally's inventory, and the fact that you can choose not to do that doesn't remove the problem.

The proposal isn't only about making them go and grab items, but also to improve how they choose their weapon. With a price based system, it's easy to set some special cases, like buffing reaching for example. If they make decent choices and also go and pick their weapons on their own, it's less necessary and also harder to manage their inventory. To caricature your arguments, we could say that autoexplore is useless since it's optimal to tediously explore the level manually. At some point, the tedious optimal play becomes irrelevant because the gain is so small.
Of course, in this scenario, I'd rather also remove the ^T command, but then there's the question of how to prevent them from picking your stuff. They could compare the item with what you have and your skills to try to guess if you want it. There could be some sort of delay so they can pick it up only if you didn't. Both of these would always be somewhat flawed and unsatisfying.
There's also dpeg's proposal of gifting an item to an orc for a piety. A gift from the Messiah is cherished by the orc and it would never drop it. Unless you gift something else. You can use it to equip your orcs in a limited way, or to retrieve some good stuff you want. Combined with all of the above, that would make a good system I think.

[njvack]

Of course, in this scenario, I'd rather also remove the ^T command, but then there's the question of how to prevent them from picking your stuff. They could compare the item with what you have and your skills to try to guess if you want it. There could be some sort of delay so they can pick it up only if you didn't. Both of these would always be somewhat flawed and unsatisfying.

That was part of the thought behind praying on stuff you wanted orcs to try and grab -- realistically, you'd bless way less gear over the course of a game than you will orc corpses.

There's also dpeg's proposal of gifting an item to an orc for a piety. A gift from the Messiah is cherished by the orc and it would never drop it. Unless you gift something else. You can use it to equip your orcs in a limited way, or to retrieve some good stuff you want. Combined with all of the above, that would make a good system I think.

I like this idea quite a lot. It gives you something to do with Beogh piety (my experience is that smiting is really rarely worth the cost now, though convokers probably warrant it). It'd be kinda neat if that gift became an artefact (sometimes named in your honor) and eligible for special Beogh upgrades -- maybe only gifted items would be eligible for Beogh enchantments at all, or maybe they'd be eligible for gifted egos, either temporary or permanent. Kinda depends on whether gifting an item is 1 piety or 30

[johlstei]

Part of the problem, in my head, is I don't want to think about which orc I'm giving stuff to. I just want my good orcs to have good stuff, let the game manage which one gets the +3 chainmail and which one gets the great mace of crushing. Gifting to orcs sounds nice but still kind of micromanage-y in a way that tossing excess gear into a pool for your orcs to grab stuff from isn't. Either one is better than the status quo though, where trying to give bow guy number 2 20 arrows sometimes results in bow guy number 1 who already has 200 arrows picking them up, while bow guy 2 still has none.

[and into]

The proposal isn't only about making them go and grab items, but also to improve how they choose their weapon. With a price based system, it's easy to set some special cases, like buffing reaching for example. If they make decent choices and also go and pick their weapons on their own, it's less necessary and also harder to manage their inventory. ...
Of course, in this scenario, I'd rather also remove the ^T command, but then there's the question of how to prevent them from picking your stuff. They could compare the item with what you have and your skills to try to guess if you want it. There could be some sort of delay so they can pick it up only if you didn't. Both of these would always be somewhat flawed and unsatisfying.
There's also dpeg's proposal of gifting an item to an orc for a piety. A gift from the Messiah is cherished by the orc and it would never drop it. Unless you gift something else. You can use it to equip your orcs in a limited way, or to retrieve some good stuff you want. Combined with all of the above, that would make a good system I think.

Well, I'm glad that Beogh is getting some attention, but so long as Beogh gives you a bunch of allies and they get equipment off the floor, I think it is going to be annoying. Worrying about whether your current equipment is the best of all available options is manageable and involves interesting decisions, worrying about it for 20 followers (amongst whom most of the weaker ones will die soon anyway) is extremely taxing, even with some automation. Having the items drawn from the floor is bad because the automatic choices (even in a price-based system) will often be poor. rPois is extremely valuable if you are about to head into Spider or Snake, but not nearly so valuable in other places. An MR brand might be nice for one of your knights or sorcerers but perhaps is not needed for your warlords (who already have high HD and thus good innate MR). On my weaker orcs it might be better to have things like daggers of venom and other non-multiplicative weapon brands, because they aren't going to be doing that much base damage anyway. In many cases people might have different preferences and so even if the system always chose "optimally" (or close to it) there will still be cases where players feel like they are fighting against something that is making the wrong choices for them, which is a very frustrating experience (often times worse than not having those choices to make in the first place!)

The point I'm driving at is that if the system is not fully automated (i.e., no player input required, no player input allowed), then there will likely be cases where tedious micromanagement is optimal. And I think we all agree that the player input here does not involve exciting or interesting stuff—"playing dress up" with your orcs rather than leading an army, as you succinctly put it. However, if the system is fully automated but continues drawing equipment from the floor, any time the game picks something from the available pool for your orc that goes against your wishes, it would be very annoying, and there would still be several problems that all these recent proposals have (with varying degrees of awkwardness, tbh) been trying to address: 1.) player–follower competition for equipment, 2.) inter-orc distribution of equipment so that your strongest followers get the best stuff, 3.) some means of equipping followers that doesn't involve their standing over the items—and so on.

So I think that not having your allies' equipment taken from the floor at all is the most elegant and best solution to actually improve Beogh game play. I mean, it seems like the alternative involves multiple new, not very intuitive features anyway, like giving special gifts to specific orcs that will perma-equip them until told otherwise. Doesn't all of that itself point to a deeper underlying problem, namely that having your followers draw their equipment from the floor is a very awkward way to mediate what your allies wear?

[galehar]

Having the items drawn from the floor is bad because the automatic choices (even in a price-based system) will often be poor.

Often poor? That's quite pessimistic. I'd say that automatic choices would be often decent, sometimes poor and rarely optimal. But that's fine. The idea is that you don't have full control over your orcs equipment, just like you don't control them individually in a fight. If they often make decent choices and you have the limited ability to fix the poor ones with the gift ability, I don't think there would be much point in trying to constantly optimize their stuff by throwing items at their feet.
I just think that it makes them more "lively" if they equip themselves, even if they sometimes make poor decisions. They're just orcs after all.

The point I'm driving at is that if the system is not fully automated (i.e., no player input required, no player input allowed), then there will likely be cases where tedious micromanagement is optimal.

Of course, you can't completely remove player input as long as they pick items from the floor. And it will always be optimal to try to override the AI's decisions. I'm thinking that the tedium/gain ratio can be made small enough that the optimal tedious micromanagement becomes pointless (like the autoexplore example). Maybe I'm wrong, but we'll never know until we try.

[stickyfingers]

1. Beogh gifts of a weapon to semi-randomly chosen allied orc on the floor, with a bias towards the ones with lowest ((adjusted) weapon price/HD) ratio (invocation or, preferably I guess, gift with timeout). These obviously disappear after orc death or new gift, shot ammo too (it's given in moderate quantity along with a launcher).
2. Invocation to temporarily give your resistances to all your allied orcs on the floor, probably with moderately high cost to avoid having it active all the time.
3. No item pickup and no armor switching

That, in my opinion, would make Beogh significantly less annoying to play, while still having the theme.

[galehar]

To be clear, I do agree that having Beogh gift items to orcs is probably more realistic (in term of implementation) than my proposal. However, what I don't like is having allies behave differently than hostile monsters. If we want to prevent allies from picking up items, then we also have to do it for hostile monsters (which solve many other issues like collecting dangerous items to dump them upstairs).
What are the consequences of doing this? It limit monsters to the items they generate with. I think it would be good to give them a low chance to have a "floor item" better than what they have. What about Labs and Elf:3? Isn't it interesting that monsters pick the loot and use it against you? Are there other vaults in which that happens? Maybe we can directly generate the monsters with some of those items in their hands.

[dpeg]

My suggestion (which galehar already knows) is this:

* monsters may pick up an item, but ...
* ... only if you've never seen the item before

That way, the minotaur or Elf:3 elves are still free to upgrade their gear, and the random dungeon denizen may use the ego weapon, but you're fine to drop items without care, and you don't have to bother moving ego weapons out of the way. I don't think that this proposal needs any change in the interface: every item you see is already safe. If we disallow monster picking up altogether, some other way should be found for giving monsters sometimes an interesting item -- I just believe that hidden picking up does the job more easily.
The question about allies remains, I suggest

* allies never pick up anything

which would imply first ally blessing which equips weapon/armour-less orcs with an item by the grace of Beogh.

[Leafsnail]

I think that's a pretty good suggestion, although it could lead to some non-intuitive gameplay (like using scrying into a vault to "protect" the items inside, say).

[galehar]

If we disallow monster picking up altogether, some other way should be found for giving monsters sometimes an interesting item -- I just believe that hidden picking up does the job more easily.

Another effect of allowing monsters to pick up never seen items instead of just giving them a chance to generate with "floor items" (outside of the Labs and Elf:3 cases), is that making a lot of noise and waking monsters gives them more chance to loot the dungeon before you. This is probably minor, but it is a weird side effect. Still probably good.

[crate]

If we disallow monster picking up altogether, some other way should be found for giving monsters sometimes an interesting item -- I just believe that hidden picking up does the job more easily.

Another effect of allowing monsters to pick up never seen items instead of just giving them a chance to generate with "floor items" (outside of the Labs and Elf:3 cases), is that making a lot of noise and waking monsters gives them more chance to loot the dungeon before you. This is probably minor, but it is a weird side effect. Still probably good.

Well this is effectively already the case, since (no one actually does this because it is so obnoxious, but you could) you can just pick up every potentially dangerous item when you see it. The only difference would be if you happen to find an item but are unable to walk over to it or apport it for some reason. So this isn't even a change.

[Hirsch I]

reduces annoyance, so it is good.

[galehar]

If we disallow monster picking up altogether, some other way should be found for giving monsters sometimes an interesting item -- I just believe that hidden picking up does the job more easily.

Another effect of allowing monsters to pick up never seen items instead of just giving them a chance to generate with "floor items" (outside of the Labs and Elf:3 cases), is that making a lot of noise and waking monsters gives them more chance to loot the dungeon before you. This is probably minor, but it is a weird side effect. Still probably good.

Well this is effectively already the case, since (no one actually does this because it is so obnoxious, but you could) you can just pick up every potentially dangerous item when you see it.

We're talking about items you've never seen, so obviously you cannot pick them up. Maybe I wasn't clear. Dpeg's proposal is to prevent all monsters from picking items you've seen. The consequence is that they only pick up items you've never seen. But then, if monster item picking happens only out of LOS for items you've never seen (case A), what's the point? Wouldn't it be identical to completely removing item picking and instead give them a chance to generate with a "floor item" (case B)? Otherwise, you'll never see anymore a kobold with an artefact, a good wand or a potion.
So no, it's not identical. There is the Elf:3/Lab difference and there's the noise. Making noise wakes monsters and give them a chance to loot the level (in case A) which doesn't happen in case B. Yes, it's already the case, but if monsters don't pick items in LOS, then it becomes quite unintuitive. It's a side effect of noise that a new player might not consider. It's minor though. We'll put a line in the manual and call it a day

[crate]

I assumed that dpeg suggested his solution entirely because it was easier to implement (because yes it is nearly functionally identical to just changing monster starting inventories), but I realise that he does not do coding himself.

[galehar]

I assumed that dpeg suggested his solution entirely because it was easier to implement (because yes it is nearly functionally identical to just changing monster starting inventories), but I realise that he does not do coding himself.

Even if he doesn't code, he knows about coding and consider development efforts when designing and suggesting changes.

[njvack]

I think things like Elf and Labs would be pretty hard to exactly simulate by changing monster starting inventories, anyhow -- different vaults have different distributions of monsters and loot. I'm 100% behind this

[XuaXua]

Here is a conceptual implementation of the Beogh ability to add items to a "Beoquipment" list by "praying" over a stack of equipment to qualify those items for use by allies.

There are 2-3 Beoquipment list, initially empty lists of equipment for weapon, armor and (optionally) ammo. The equipment on these lists can only be used by Beogh Orc Allies, who can access the list at any time. These lists are filled through using either Prayer (or a specific Beogh action) over a stack of equipment.

1) if you use the ability on a stack of equipment, the equipment leaves the dungeon and is added to the appropriate Beoquipmentlist (weapons / armour / ammo; sorted by decreasing capability)
2) Beoquipment can be "directly" accessed only by your orcs at any time for an X abstract time unit penalty.
3) orcs with free / unused item slots will actively access the Beoquipment list in order of experience.
4) if an allied orc dies, equipped Beoquipment vanish back to the Beoquipment list (they are not dropped).
5) if an allied orc dies as an enemy, Beoquipment vanishes permanently and are not added back to the list (HA HA).
6) allied orc "drops" Beoquipment , it goes back to Beoquipment list; enemy allied orc "drops" Beoquipment , it's gone forever.
7) you can open up any of the 3 Beoquipment lists to purge / remove items (deleting them permanently from the game) and possibly re-order or change ordering preferences (prefer reaching over electric-branded, etc.)

NOTES
1) requires adding monster bullying to transfer weapons between monsters and enhanced evaluation of value of a weapon (consider branding as valuable over +'s)
2) this implementation affects only items you've had access to.
3) it reflects the "recall orcs from anywhere" ability.
4) action on weapon stacks is similar to prayer over corpses for most gods (including beogh)
5) Still leave the Beogh Item Blessing. If it is Beoquipment , the item is permanently enhanced on the master list.
6) ally orcs should STILL be able to equip from the floor; these items are NOT considered Beoquipment , and are treated as normal items on death/trade/drop.

[Siegurt]

One alternative to "Monsters don't pick up floor items" would be:

1. Beogh gifts your allies shadow equipment
2. The "decision making process" for picking up floor equipment always votes in favor of Beogh gifts over floor items.

That way your allies can use floor equipment until Beogh loads them up with gifts, then they blissfully hold on to their lovely God-granted equipment and spurn the use of any floor stuff, eliminating nearly all the fiddly interaction on the part of the player, yes there will still be some for new orcs at the outset, but the returns for fiddling with orc-equipment are diminishing to the point where engaging in that level of tedium isn't going to be really helpful in the long run.

And yes, I'm sure there would be cases where Beogh will grant them something that's worse than they *could* be using from the floor, but they're orcs, and orc zealots at that, you think they'll use that nice branded platemail from the floor when they could be using a chainmail given to them by their *god* c'mon

This of course is a more limited scope sort of change and doesn't fix other ally management, and "Monsters don't pick up (seen?) floor stuff" might still be a positive or negative change, but if it's decided that it's overall negative, then this would be a plausible alternative.

[and into]

If we disallow monster picking up altogether, some other way should be found for giving monsters sometimes an interesting item -- I just believe that hidden picking up does the job more easily.

Another effect of allowing monsters to pick up never seen items instead of just giving them a chance to generate with "floor items" (outside of the Labs and Elf:3 cases), is that making a lot of noise and waking monsters gives them more chance to loot the dungeon before you. This is probably minor, but it is a weird side effect. Still probably good.

It will be pretty minor overall, but the effect it does have would be good: Being noisy is bad, scouting ahead carefully is better (all else being equal). I think once implemented it will be fairly intuitive, actually. It makes sense that when enemies are disturbed by some noise and go off to investigate, they pick up any good equipment on the way, however when they actually see you, they make a beeline toward you because taking you out is priority number 1. The only somewhat strange thing is that the enemies "know" what you've seen and don't pick it up. But that fact won't be obvious or intrusive and will more or less take place "under the hood" so it is fine.

A line in the manual that enemies will never pick up an item that you can find via CTRL+F or something would be good. (This also improves functionality of the excellent find command, by the way! I've had items I wanted to go back and nab picked up by wandering hobgoblins, it is really freaking annoying.)

[XuaXua]

A line in the manual that enemies will never pick up an item that you can find via CTRL+F or something would be good. (This also improves functionality of the excellent find command, by the way! I've had items I wanted to go back and nab picked up by wandering hobgoblins, it is really freaking annoying.)

This issue would be solved by the Beoquipment concept as those items would be removed from accessibility to all but the Beogh followers.

[wheals]

The point here is to kill two birds with one stone -- orc equipping and monsters picking up things you've seen. For both of them, the optimal behavior is boring and scummy. Beoquipment solves the former, true, but combining it (or just Beogh giving his own things to you orcs) with the second thing would make things even better.