Proposal: beogh reform

[Tiktacy]

I think many people will agree that beogh has some major issues. His orcish follower interface is unpleasant, tedious, and frustrating. I am by no means saying "this needs to be fixed and needs to be changed into this now" but merely throwing out an idea that I think will greatly improve beogh-follower gameplay as a whole. If you think something doesn't work or doesn't fit, feel free to say so and offer an alternative idea, but please don't throw my entire idea out the window just because one part of it is questionable.

First, before I get into my proposal, I would like to get into more detail on the issues I am trying to address:

• 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, it's a problem worth mention.
  
• The amount of orcish followers is unlimited, so that means that optimally, you will want to level up as many orcs as possible. However, this leads to some problems, since recall only recalls your strongest allies, so you have to go all the way back to your barracks and do a series of Orc dancing maneuvers just to make it so exp isn't going to waste.
  
• Allies in crawl are generally not very smart, they can run in and attack something that can easily kill them in one shot, and since you are unable to dismiss your followers, you can easily lose several of your most powerful follwers(or more likely, several followers you have spent a long time working on leveling up) in one battle that you usually could have handled on your own with a few good maneuvers. This is incredibly frustrating, and all around feels unfair since you can only do so much to prevent this.
  
• Equipment management is a major pain. Let's say you want a specific Orc to wear something in particular, in this case: a branded bastard sword and a large shield. So first you have to make sure the Orc is adjacent to you, then you have to drop the sword and shield on the ground and switch places with the Orc. After that, you need to adjust the settings to make it so they pick up everything, then wait for them to do so. But as you leave, you suddenly see that branded triple sword you gave your warlord a few levels back sitting on the ground, you warlord switched it out for a mundane great mace that just dropped off the ettin you killed a minute ago. This issue regularly interrupts gameplay and is incredibly frustrating sometimes. This is just a rough example off the top of my head, but I think I've made my point.

Now, I don't know about everyone else, but all these things combined make for a very unpleasant gameplay experience, especially by the time you hit midgame. However, the idea of recruiting allies, equipping them, and making a powerful entourage sounds incredibly fun to me, and I think it has a lot of potential. So here is what I propose:

• Remove beogh pacification: This would be replaced with an alternative method to recruit your orcish entourage.
  
• Give beoghites "resurrection": This would be the replacement for beoghs pacification(recruitment). You may target any fresh orcish corpse with a new invocation called "resurrection", upon resurrecting an orcish corpse, you get a message along the lines of;"You are truly must be the messiah!" And they will become your ally. This may also be used on orcs who were already resurrected and happened to die in battle. Making it so followers dying results in piety loss might also be a good idea to make it so you are still being penalized for making bad decisions(but not quite as brutally). Also, adding a limitation along that stops you from using it in combo bat might be a good idea as well.
  
• Set a limit to # of followers(5?): For the most part, having more than 5 at one time is a pain anyway. Doing this wouldn't affect balance too much, since you would be able to revive you followers indefinitely. It will however, make the path of a beoghites less messy and mesh together a bit better. (However, this is mostly just to make it so the above proposal doesn't let you have 50 warlords stockpiled since they would always be revived)
  
• Allow smite to kill orcs without penalty: Since you would have a limit to your followers, being able to dispatch one in order to obtain a better one(ex: kill one of your five warlords to include Saint Roka). This would be a one hit kill, and would just be an alternative use to the current smite.
  
• Remove equipment management: Although giving unused equipment to allies sounds fun in theory, it is very redundant in practice. Allowing beogh to gift them stronger equipment(based on kills maybe?) over time sounds much more simple and removes the Orc-equipping minigame. Making equipment a bit easier to distribute is also another alternative if this becomes too similar to yred.

I am aware that this is kind of a hefty order, but it makes crawls most frustrating and over complicated god much simpler and easier to use, all the while not affecting game balance too much. Even though it's pretty wordy, I don't think that these things would be too difficult to implement. Thoughts?

[Leafsnail]

I acknowledge all of the problems you list (except to some degree the third one - that applies to all perma-allies), but I don't like your proposal. It seems to just increase the amount of micromanagement - in order to get the most out of Beogh I'll have to select and maintain the inventories of 5 orcs. That sounds really dull - you'd have to keep checking all of their equipment to see if something new you found is better.

My proposal would be to replace Beogh conversions entirely with increased orc gifts. Those orcish gifts can't pick up items (although maybe Beogh could give them better weapons as gifts) and their equipment would disappear when they die. This would address all of the annoyances that are unique to Beogh. It removes the equipment managing minigame, but I'd argue that mechanic is highly tedious in its current form and would basically always amount to unwelcome micromanagement.

[Tiktacy]

I acknowledge all of the problems you list (except to some degree the third one - that applies to all perma-allies), but I don't like your proposal. It seems to just increase the amount of micromanagement - in order to get the most out of Beogh I'll have to select and maintain the inventories of 5 orcs. That sounds really dull - you'd have to keep checking all of their equipment to see if something new you found is better.

My proposal would be to replace Beogh conversions entirely with increased orc gifts. Those orcish gifts can't pick up items (although maybe Beogh could give them better weapons as gifts) and their equipment would disappear when they die. This would address all of the annoyances that are unique to Beogh. It removes the equipment managing minigame, but I'd argue that mechanic is highly tedious in its current form and would basically always amount to unwelcome micromanagement.

I considered that, but then I remembered yred exists.

[Leafsnail]

I think "like Yred" is an improvement over "like Yred, only annoying"

e: That said, I guess making his allies few but super-permanent as per this proposal would be one way to differentiate Beogh from Yred. I'd still ditch the inventory management aspect.

[Tiktacy]

I think "like Yred" is an improvement over "like Yred, only annoying"

I don't think beogh is any more like yred right now than vehumet is like sif muna, or okuwaru is like trog. Beogh is different because he allows equipment optimization, which can be fun IMO, but if they are going to change it to that than ide rather just remove beogh entirely.

Edit: fair enough, having beogh gift new weapons sounds fine to me.

[Tiktacy]

I think "like Yred" is an improvement over "like Yred, only annoying"

e: That said, I guess making his allies few but super-permanent as per this proposal would be one way to differentiate Beogh from Yred. I'd still ditch the inventory management aspect.

I edited the op and changed the bit about equipment management reforming with your edit.

[twelwe]

upon resurrecting an orcish corpse, you get a message along the lines of;"You are truly must be the messiah!" And they will become your ally.

Well I agree this should go in right away

[Hirsch I]

yeah, this is better than my proposal. it is a micromanaging hell, but is thousands of times better than managing 30 allies. I just think, when you ressurect an powerful orc's corpse, it will have a chance of coming back hostile, or having the corpse sacrificed instead. that chance would go up with target's HD, and down with your piety or Invo. that way, only because you killed saint roka does not mean you will have him as an ally, and this will reward
high invo. (after all, loving the person that killed you is pretty hard.)

[duvessa]

yeah, this is better than my proposal. it is a micromanaging hell, but is thousands of times better than managing 30 allies. I just think, when you ressurect an powerful orc's corpse, it will have a chance of coming back hostile, or having the corpse sacrificed instead. that chance would go up with target's HD, and down with your piety or Invo. that way, only because you killed saint roka does not mean you will have him as an ally, and this will reward
high invo. (after all, loving the person that killed you is pretty hard.)

Remember that corpses only have a 50% chance to drop in the first place.

Beogh is different because he allows equipment optimization

Yred allows that too. Ghouls are like stronger orc warlords (okay, they have slightly less accuracy) and can be equipped the same way.

[Tiktacy]

yeah, this is better than my proposal. it is a micromanaging hell, but is thousands of times better than managing 30 allies. I just think, when you ressurect an powerful orc's corpse, it will have a chance of coming back hostile, or having the corpse sacrificed instead. that chance would go up with target's HD, and down with your piety or Invo. that way, only because you killed saint roka does not mean you will have him as an ally, and this will reward
high invo. (after all, loving the person that killed you is pretty hard.)

Remember that corpses only have a 50% chance to drop in the first place.

Beogh is different because he allows equipment optimization

Yred allows that too. Ghouls are like stronger orc warlords (okay, they have slightly less accuracy) and can be equipped the same way.

I had heard that this was the case , but I tried it semi-recently and the ghouls didn't pick up anything, even when I set it to "pick. Up. EVERYTHING." Maybe I was just doing something wrong then.

yeah, this is better than my proposal. it is a micromanaging hell, but is thousands of times better than managing 30 allies. I just think, when you ressurect an powerful orc's corpse, it will have a chance of coming back hostile, or having the corpse sacrificed instead. that chance would go up with target's HD, and down with your piety or Invo. that way, only because you killed saint roka does not mean you will have him as an ally, and this will reward
high invo. (after all, loving the person that killed you is pretty hard.)

Thank you, much appreciated.

I agree it is quite a bit of micromanagement, but it's better than beogh currently is, and I think the amount of micromanagement will go away over time, both in game and in game-development. I think the first place to start would be to get rid of some of the big issues(equipment managing and Orc dancing) and then work from there.

[galehar]

Allies in crawl are generally not very smart, they can run in and attack something that can easily kill them in one shot, and since you are unable to dismiss your followers, you can easily lose several of your most powerful follwers(or more likely, several followers you have spent a long time working on leveling up) in one battle that you usually could have handled on your own with a few good maneuvers. This is incredibly frustrating, and all around feels unfair since you can only do so much to prevent this.

This is the whole point of permanent allies. You train them and try not to have them die. There's a new "retreat" order which helps to get them out of trouble while covering their retreat. If you can just raise them back when their dead, there's no incentive to protect them, there's no tension anymore.

Remove beogh pacification: This would be replaced with an alternative method to recruit your orcish entourage.
Give beoghites "resurrection":

This completely destroys Beogh's theme for very little gain (if any). Your supposed to be the Messiah, not some orcish necromancer.

Set a limit to # of followers(5?):

I think 12 would be a better limit. I've heard some people enjoy walking around with a huge army. Maybe setting a cap to recall would satisfy everyone (you can always use the ability several times if you want more allies). You can already "stop recalling" though.

Remove equipment management:

How about improving it instead? It shouldn't be too hard to have them make better decision. Currently it goes like this: does this weapon has a higher base damage? Yes, I take it, no I leave it, it's the same, let's see the brand. Which is why they drop good brands for a higher base damage plain weapon. I think attributing a value to items could work well. Maybe add a monster boolean parameter to the shop price function to account for difference between player and monster value.

[Tiktacy]

Allies in crawl are generally not very smart, they can run in and attack something that can easily kill them in one shot, and since you are unable to dismiss your followers, you can easily lose several of your most powerful follwers(or more likely, several followers you have spent a long time working on leveling up) in one battle that you usually could have handled on your own with a few good maneuvers. This is incredibly frustrating, and all around feels unfair since you can only do so much to prevent this.

This is the whole point of permanent allies. You train them and try not to have them die. There's a new "retreat" order which helps to get them out of trouble while covering their retreat. If you can just raise them back when their dead, there's no incentive to protect them, there's no tension anymore.

Remove beogh pacification: This would be replaced with an alternative method to recruit your orcish entourage.
Give beoghites "resurrection":

This completely destroys Beogh's theme for very little gain (if any). Your supposed to be the Messiah, not some orcish necromancer.

Set a limit to # of followers(5?):

I think 12 would be a better limit. I've heard some people enjoy walking around with a huge army. Maybe setting a cap to recall would satisfy everyone (you can always use the ability several times if you want more allies). You can already "stop recalling" though.

Remove equipment management:

How about improving it instead? It shouldn't be too hard to have them make better decision. Currently it goes like this: does this weapon has a higher base damage? Yes, I take it, no I leave it, it's the same, let's see the brand. Which is why they drop good brands for a higher base damage plain weapon. I think attributing a value to items could work well. Maybe add a monster boolean parameter to the shop price function to account for difference between player and monster value.

Beoghs allies are different, they are very weak for most of the game and losing a wizard because he blinked into a yaks mouth is completely unfair, especially considering the amount of time it takes to turn them into a sorcerer.

It does not destroy his theme, messiahs have often been known to raise people back from the dead. Also, orcish necromancer? It's divine resurrection, not animating a corpse. Also, the gain is that it gets rid of the frustration of losing your orcs you have spent several floors trying to level because they don't stand a chance. As duvessa said, they have a 50% chance of not spawning a corpse, so that should be balance enough.

That limit sounds like way too much to me, but I can see why you might want to set it a bit higher for more freedom. But that doesn't accomplish what I was trying to, maybe a little, but not by much.

I said improving it was another good idea, I even had an idea to improve it, but the majority says equipment managing is frustrating so I changed it and made improvement a side option. This leads me to believe you didn't actually read my entire proposal, so please, go back and reread it. Thank you for the response anyway though, much appreciated.

[twelwe]

hahaha wow

"you don't appreciate how great my ideas really are, just keep reading it over and over until you agree with me, then put this in right away you stupid dev. oh and appreciate the reply "

[Tiktacy]

hahaha wow

"you don't appreciate how great my ideas really are, just keep reading it over and over until you agree with me, then put this in right away you stupid dev. oh and appreciate the reply "

Wow, what kind of jerk would say that? I sure am happy I never did.

[Tiber]

While I've played very little of Beogh, I agree with some of your ideas. However, I have a problem with this:

Set a limit to # of followers(5?): For the most part, having more than 5 at one time is a pain anyway. Doing this wouldn't affect balance too much, since you would be able to revive you followers indefinitely. It will however, make the path of a beoghites less messy and mesh together a bit better. (However, this is mostly just to make it so the above proposal doesn't let you have 50 warlords stockpiled since they would always be revived)
Allow smite to kill orcs without penalty: Since you would have a limit to your followers, being able to dispatch one in order to obtain a better one(ex: kill one of your five warlords to include Saint Roka). This would be a one hit kill, and would just be an alternative use to the current smite.

The limited followers isn't bad on its own, but the whole killing your own guys to replace one of them seems counter to Beogh, and is its own kind of micromanagement. I have a couple counter-proposals:
Option 1) Instead of killing current/would-be followers, you dismiss them. When your allies die and Beogh sends reinforcements, he may send dismissed soldiers instead of new orcs.
Option 2) Again, you dismiss allies, however, you have recall options for each tier of orc. For instance, you might be able to recall only a few warlords, but many regular orcs. Using a different recall sends the previous group away. If you do not have enough orcs of that tier to reach the cap, you draw from the lower tier.

[Hirsch I]

2) Again, you dismiss allies, however, you have recall options for each tier of orc. For instance, you might be able to recall only a few warlords, but many regular orcs. Using a different recall sends the previous group away. If you do not have enough orcs of that tier to reach the cap, you draw from the lower tier.

that brings micromanagement to a whole new level. and if we will use the dismiss allies option, maybe my proposal in CYC would be better. I think ill post it here.

[njvack]

I think 12 would be a better limit. I've heard some people enjoy walking around with a huge army. Maybe setting a cap to recall would satisfy everyone (you can always use the ability several times if you want more allies). You can already "stop recalling" though.

12 would be a good limit (practically and thematically), especially if the others would go to Orc or be available to Beogh for reinforcements or something. Calling a huge army was useful to me once or twice, but you can't reasonably walk around with one; your orcs just get murdered and then you have a small army again.

Remove equipment management:

How about improving it instead? It shouldn't be too hard to have them make better decision.

Hm, I'm somewhat skeptical that ally gear management can be made non-frustrating*... but as far as valuing weapons goes, could an orc fsim hitting a generic monster with its own AC and EV with the weapon and choose the one with higher damage?

The other main irritation I remember from my last Beogh game was that in the late game, sorcerers and high priests felt weak compared to warlords. They're relatively hard to keep alive (they seem to blunder into melee just like hostile monsters do) and don't use their abilities in a particularly smart way. And sorcerers spamming Animate Dead** was annoying enough that I remember getting them killed on purpose.

It might actually be sane to have another tier of orc spellcaster -- warlords have similar HD (15) to vault elves, while high priests (11) and sorcerers(9) are significantly weaker.

* Bringing your army to good gear so they'll pick it up is tedious and carrying around a couple extra plate armours and great maces to hand out is impractical. Maybe a "recall armour and weapons" ability would help, but that's silly.

** Probably orc casters shouldn't come with animate dead anyhow, because in actual practice they wind up raising a bunch of orc corpses and Beogh hates that.

[XuaXua]

Remove equipment management:

How about improving it instead? It shouldn't be too hard to have them make better decision.

Hm, I'm somewhat skeptical that ally gear management can be made non-frustrating*

Orcs making better decisions:
eyeball the entire stack they are standing on before trying anything and THEN pick the conceptually best weapon;
- swap out if the base + BRAND of another seems better than TOTAL of current + BRAND
- if 'ta', actively seek out (travel away from the player towards) better equipment when combat isn't going on.
- add orc bullying / jockeying / auto-inter-ally-trading for better equipment.

None of those ideas require any NEW behavior from the player that the player isn't currently doing.

[njvack]

All those help, but I remember the most frustrating part being:

Oh cool I converted a knight, but he's wearing leather and wielding a flail.

^F, search for plate, find a glowing plate three levels up. Walk to a staircase, tell my dudes to wait. Go get the plate, wear-ID, uncurse if necessary, remove and drop plate. Recall good followers, get someone to wear it. Probably the new guy, but if someone else takes it that's fine; they needed it too.

^F, search for good melee weapon types (a few searches). Go to the closest or best one. Recall. Swear quietly if it was cursed (though Beogh will eventually help out).

It it wasn't cursed, ^F, search for a good ranged weapon. (only 2-3 searches, thank god). Go to the closest or best one. Recall.

^F, search for a reasonably-sized stack of ammo. Recall. Try to make sure no one ganks your orc's ammo.

Go back to where you were and kill some monsters.

Actually shuffling the dudes on to the gear and getting *someone* to be holding the bardiche of flaming is pretty trivial compared to this.

[Siegurt]

Yeah, I think Beogh just giving your orcs weapon/armour upgrades (that disappear when they die or are dropped) would eliminate much of the hassle and not make them significantly worse or better if done right.

I remember the last Beoghite I played, I carried around a stack of decent melee and ranged weapons just to have a couple on hand for new guys, when someone would die I would just carry the leftovers around until I found someone to give them to. That seemed like less of a hassle then going back to find equipment every time, I'm not sure in retrospect that it was any less annoying.

[partial]

maybe the game needs a more robust interface for controlling summoned monsters to make the micromanagement less tedious

[Leafsnail]

A double digit cap on the number of orcish followers doesn't really address any of the problems, it just makes Beogh weaker.

All those help, but I remember the most frustrating part being:

Oh cool I converted a knight, but he's wearing leather and wielding a flail.

^F, search for plate, find a glowing plate three levels up. Walk to a staircase, tell my dudes to wait. Go get the plate, wear-ID, uncurse if necessary, remove and drop plate. Recall good followers, get someone to wear it. Probably the new guy, but if someone else takes it that's fine; they needed it too.

^F, search for good melee weapon types (a few searches). Go to the closest or best one. Recall. Swear quietly if it was cursed (though Beogh will eventually help out).

It it wasn't cursed, ^F, search for a good ranged weapon. (only 2-3 searches, thank god). Go to the closest or best one. Recall.

^F, search for a reasonably-sized stack of ammo. Recall. Try to make sure no one ganks your orc's ammo.

Go back to where you were and kill some monsters.

Actually shuffling the dudes on to the gear and getting *someone* to be holding the bardiche of flaming is pretty trivial compared to this.

Yeah. I don't think micromanaging over a dozen inventories will ever be remotely fun, even if the micromanagement were less fiddly.

For follower equipment management to be a good mechanic I think you'd need a big change in how Beogh operates. Like possibly if he just gave you a single "champion" (a strong orc, Beogh can either gift you a new champion if yours is dead or upgrade your current one) who you can play dress-up with.

[and into]

maybe the game needs a more robust interface for controlling summoned monsters to make the micromanagement less tedious

A little while ago there was some discussion and a lot of support for a proposal I posted that would let the player set some useful parameters for ally behavior:

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9645&p=132283&hilit=Ally+interface+options#p132283

But having control over ally behavior seems reasonable to me—it is basic management. Manually equipping items on your followers is going to involve levels of micromanagement that people will find annoying, even if the interface to do so is improved. So really I think automation is the only sensible path, and you could take that in two directions: completely automate your allies' picking up stuff on the floor, or else don't allow Beogh and Yred followers from picking up stuff at all and have these allies recieve their equipment divinely.

I think there are too many weird cases to make the first path work. Difficulty in comparing base damage vs. brand is really just the tip of the iceberg. Is distortion a good brand for your followers to use? Yes and no. Electrocution doesn't work well in shallow water when you have a bunch of friendlies around. There would still be cases where you'd want to step in and dictate who uses what off of the floor. You will still be invested in what the RNG provides, not just in terms of what *you* can equip (which is reasonable), but also what any one of your dozen or more allies could equip. That's what is so exhausting about playing Beogh right now. Having to hit a few extra keystrokes every now and then is annoying but comparatively minor, in my experience—and so interface improvements and half-way automation don't really cut to the heart of the matter, at all.

So I think Siegurt and duvessa are right. As I said when HirschI initially posted about this in CYC, just have the god automatically take care of this stuff for you. Your followers do not pick anything up. Your army automatically gets upgrades to their weapons and armor the longer they stick around, with quality scaling up based on your ally's HD and your piety. For Beogh, new recruits should receive at least some basic equipment automatically upon joining your cause. For Yred, servants should simply always spawn with good equipment scaled to their HD and your piety. When your followers die, they are absorbed back into the darkness (Yred) or they are taken bodily into Valhalla (Beogh)—leaving behind neither corpses nor items.

The above would completely remove micromanagement while also making Yred and Beogh a bit more interactive and flavorful. You can even have the ally-gifted weapons and armor be skewed to give thematically appropriate items and brands (which would also further differentiate these followers from other types of allies).

[Marbit]

Allowing beogh to gift them stronger equipment(based on kills maybe?) over time sounds much more simple and removes the Orc-equipping minigame.

Having Beogh gifting equipment makes it too strong if the equipment stays when the follower dies. If the equipment is ethereal, either the equipment in the dungeon or the gift will become irrelevant depending on which equipment is stronger.

Also it is not hard earned equipment, I feel proud when being followed by orc warlords wearing golden dragon armour that I hunted and enchanted... it wont be the same if Beogh gifts it.

[Marbit]

So I think Siegurt and duvessa are right. As I said when HirschI initially posted about this in CYC, just have the god automatically take care of this stuff for you. Your followers do not pick anything up. Your army automatically gets upgrades to their weapons and armor the longer they stick around, with quality scaling up based on your ally's HD and your piety. For Beogh, new recruits should receive at least some basic equipment automatically upon joining your cause. For Yred, servants should simply always spawn with good equipment scaled to their HD and your piety. When your followers die, they are absorbed back into the darkness (Yred) or they are taken bodily into Valhalla (Beogh)—leaving behind neither corpses nor items. [/quote="and into"]

The above would completely remove micromanagement while also making Yred and Beogh a bit more interactive and flavorful. You can even have the ally-gifted weapons and armor be skewed to give thematically appropriate items and brands (which would also further differentiate these followers from other types of allies).

Propossal:
Beogh takes weapons/ammor/ammo from another dungeon level and equips the orc followers. This happens upon conversion and by chance when the player or the orc kills an enemy. Beogh evaluates which is the best equipment for the level and the orc and decides which changes to make. Beogh wont take equipment from the level in which the player is present.

Current problems:
Orcs have problems evaluating which brand is better because some of them ar circumstantial (holly wrath, poison resistance... etc).
Looking for equipment is tedious, after on conversion the player has to look for good equipment that may be far away.

Benefits:
The player will avoid going thorough the dungeon and collecting equipment or carrying an obscene amount of equipment.
Orcs will have smarter choices of equipment as the choice algorithm can be weighted towards certain brands depending on the level (reach, holly wrath... etc)
Orcs will still be wearing hard earned equipment.

[galehar]

The other main irritation I remember from my last Beogh game was that in the late game, sorcerers and high priests felt weak compared to warlords. They're relatively hard to keep alive (they seem to blunder into melee just like hostile monsters do) and don't use their abilities in a particularly smart way.

Maybe we could tweak their AI a bit so they keep their distance. I'm not talking about orb spider AI, not even ranged AI, just tweak some chances so they are more likely to use ranged attacks or just don't move instead of approaching their enemies. That is, as long as they have buddies to do the melee in their place. This could even be added to hostile orc bands (maybe only starting from a certain level).

maybe the game needs a more robust interface for controlling summoned monsters to make the micromanagement less tedious

No, the game needs less micro-management, not more convenient one. This is why all proposals to improve the ally equipment interface have been rejected. Playing Beogh is about commanding an army, not playing dress up with your orcs. They should handle their stuff themselves.

I think there are too many weird cases to make the first path work. Difficulty in comparing base damage vs. brand is really just the tip of the iceberg.

Maybe. Some keep saying that, but we haven't even tried to improve it. And it really doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough. Your orcs aren't rocket scientists anyway, so you wouldn't expect them to make the smartest decisions. But you can expect some common sense from them. This is why a price based system should be good enough IMO.
The other problem is to make sure they step on items so they have a chance to pick them up. This is trickier to solve. You can't really have all your orcs constantly scanning all stacks of items in their LOS, that would be very CPU intensive. Maybe it could work with the stash tracker. When something gets added to it (ie: you've spotted it or you've stepped on a stack), all orcs evaluate the items in descending order of HD, the first one which wants it get some kind of greedy flag. As soon as it's not busy fighting, it goes grab the item. As it drops its previous weapon, it gets added to the stash tracker so lower level orcs have a chance to evaluate it.
Yes, this is ambitious, but I think it would lead to a more organic and realistic gameplay. I'd like to have the feeling that my orcs are autonomous and that I'm commanding an army, not baby-sitting them.

just have the god automatically take care of this stuff for you. Your followers do not pick anything up. Your army automatically gets upgrades to their weapons and armor the longer they stick around, with quality scaling up based on your ally's HD and your piety.

Well, that would be easier to do and would work well, sure. But it would be weird if they suddenly stop picking stuff from the ground as soon as they join you. Unless all monsters stop picking stuff from the ground, but I wouldn't like that much.

[Leafsnail]

Having Beogh gifting equipment makes it too strong if the equipment stays when the follower dies. If the equipment is ethereal, either the equipment in the dungeon or the gift will become irrelevant depending on which equipment is stronger.

The equipment in the dungeon would never be irrelevant, because you can still use it. It be irrelevant to your allies, though, since they wouldn't be able to pick it up.

Propossal:
Beogh takes weapons/ammor/ammo from another dungeon level and equips the orc followers. This happens upon conversion and by chance when the player or the orc kills an enemy. Beogh evaluates which is the best equipment for the level and the orc and decides which changes to make. Beogh wont take equipment from the level in which the player is present.

I don't like this at all. It's functionally identical to just having Beogh gift stuff to allies, except that it means Beogh will mess with your items and possibly force you to kill your own orcs/go hunting for a piece of equipment he took and gave to some random orc.

I'm not even seeing the rationale behind it. Why is "stuff I found on the floor" more "hard earned" than "stuff my allies got given in exchange for piety"?

Well, that would be easier to do and would work well, sure. But it would be weird if they suddenly stop picking stuff from the ground as soon as they join you. Unless all monsters stop picking stuff from the ground, but I wouldn't like that much.

Hence the "replace conversions entirely with god gifts" idea - your allied orcs never pick things up and come with/receive "summoned" equipment that disappears when they die. I actually think this solves another problem with Beogh - the fact that he incentivizes leaving some orcs in the mines alive as a "backup army", and that after your orcs get wiped in Zot he becomes almost useless.

e: Having orcs stop picking stuff up when they join you is an actual problem, because it means you could try and give hostile orcs weapons so they'll be better when converted.

[pubby]

They should handle their stuff themselves.

And they will ALWAYS handle it sub-optimally.

A solution I would be happy with is to have orc allies magically use whatever you're wearing or wielding. If you're wearing a platemail of fire resistance then they'll have a 'spectral' platemail of fire resistance. If you're wielding a dagger of poison then they'll wield a 'spectral' dagger of poison. Beogh would be so much more pleasant to play this way.

[njvack]

The other problem is to make sure they step on items so they have a chance to pick them up. This is trickier to solve. You can't really have all your orcs constantly scanning all stacks of items in their LOS, that would be very CPU intensive. Maybe it could work with the stash tracker. When something gets added to it (ie: you've spotted it or you've stepped on a stack), all orcs evaluate the items in descending order of HD, the first one which wants it get some kind of greedy flag. As soon as it's not busy fighting, it goes grab the item.

If you and Blodwig are both in LOS, the problem is manageable right now. Would you propose a new follower nip off to Lair:2 to grab some plate after you convert him in Vaults?

If monsters picking up items is indeed good (you know my view on that ... what if, instead, Beogh ganked stuff from around the dungeon and gave it to followers? Say: The player can step on a stack and pray to bless it, marking the armour and weapons as available to followers. Then, as followers are added, Beogh gives them the highest shop-value blessed item. And when you bless something that's better than what a follower is wearing, Beogh gifts it to the "best" (highest lifetime exp?) follower and shuffles the replaced item to the next-best orc. (Really: Both gaining a follower and blessing a stash would trigger the Beogh Magic Inventory Shuffle.)

Then your dudes still rely on floor items and they can even pick stuff up if they want because Beogh will generally override their choices anyhow.

[crate]

Unless all monsters stop picking stuff from the ground, but I wouldn't like that much.

Well this would be one of my most-liked changes in crawl ever, so I suggest this solution.

[Tiktacy]

They should handle their stuff themselves.

And they will ALWAYS handle it sub-optimally.

A solution I would be happy with is to have orc allies magically use whatever you're wearing or wielding. If you're wearing a platemail of fire resistance then they'll have a 'spectral' platemail of fire resistance. If you're wielding a dagger of poison then they'll wield a 'spectral' dagger of poison. Beogh would be so much more pleasant to play this way.

I love this idea.

Edited op on equipment.

[BlackSheep]

Were I an orc elementalist, I'd greatly prefer if my warlords would not wear leather or wield staves.

[Leafsnail]

And they will ALWAYS handle it sub-optimally.

A solution I would be happy with is to have orc allies magically use whatever you're wearing or wielding. If you're wearing a platemail of fire resistance then they'll have a 'spectral' platemail of fire resistance. If you're wielding a dagger of poison then they'll wield a 'spectral' dagger of poison. Beogh would be so much more pleasant to play this way.

This idea is kindof appealing, but leads to degenerate gameplay (switching away from your elemental staff when your orcs are about to attack, switching to a ranged weapon to make them shoot even if you don't use a ranged weapon, etc). I guess it could work if you were allowed to create a "uniform" for your orcs, but that still leaves power issues. A dozen orcs with freezing executioner axes and crystal plate would be unreasonable strong, for instance.

If monsters picking up items is indeed good (you know my view on that ... what if, instead, Beogh ganked stuff from around the dungeon and gave it to followers? Say: The player can step on a stack and pray to bless it, marking the armour and weapons as available to followers. Then, as followers are added, Beogh gives them the highest shop-value blessed item. And when you bless something that's better than what a follower is wearing, Beogh gifts it to the "best" (highest lifetime exp?) follower and shuffles the replaced item to the next-best orc. (Really: Both gaining a follower and blessing a stash would trigger the Beogh Magic Inventory Shuffle.)

Then your dudes still rely on floor items and they can even pick stuff up if they want because Beogh will generally override their choices anyhow.

Why is this preferable to having Beogh gift them weapons? As far as I can tell there's basically zero gameplay difference other than the fact that you're now encouraged to pray over every piece of armour you find if you want to have an automode. Or alternatively you can get a better result by not praying over anything ever and micromanaging the equipment of all your orcs, as in the status quo (except that Beogh would undo your choices and force you to remanage your stuff on a regular basis, I guess).

[njvack]

Why is this preferable to having Beogh gift them weapons?

Yes, this is the solution I would prefer as well, but galehar doesn't sound excited about it.

This would mean you pray over stuff you might like an orc to have someday (so probably plate and good weapons -- probably a few dozen items in a game) and pretty much let Beogh sort out the details. No one would steal stuff you wanted, and you could choose not to give elec or disto weapons to followers. You'd never need to run across the dungeon to get some plate for your new dude. Ammo would still need some thought.

Shuffling gear between orcs doesn't matter much to me, as long as in general the better orcs get the better gear and everyone gets a ranged weapon.

[Leafsnail]

I guess that proposal would be ok for most players (although I'd get annoyed by having to make lots of trivial decisions about whether to put a piece of armour in Beogh's rotation), but it's still firmly in the realm of "make the problem a bit easier to ignore" rather than "fix the problem". In fact I'd say that it makes the core problem worse, since you can still get an advantage through tedious micromanagement, only it's even more tedious because Beogh is performing a fairly brainless shuffle every now and then.

[galehar]

They should handle their stuff themselves.

And they will ALWAYS handle it sub-optimally.

And it really doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough.

If you and Blodwig are both in LOS, the problem is manageable right now. Would you propose a new follower nip off to Lair:2 to grab some plate after you convert him in Vaults?

I think you misunderstood me. Yes, the "player problem" is manageable, you can make sure that some orcs step on an item by switching places. The "game designer problem" is that it is very tedious to do so, especially if you're trying to play optimally and make sure all orcs had a chance to step on and evaluate each good item you find. What I'm proposing is that orcs (on the current level) would automatically evaluate items when you find them (added to the stash tracker) and they go grab them without requiring you to dance around with them.

[Hirsch I]

this change will make beogh much less annoying, I hope it is implemented. while we are at it, cant we limit the number of followers to 8, enough to surround your character? managing a huge army is too annoying, and you have no way to say "hey, stop following me, you are going to get killed, you idiot!". if those get in the game, most issues with beogh will be solved, and the overly complicated parts of Ticktacy's proposal, or mine, can be ignored safely.

[I want to believe]

this change will make beogh much less annoying, I hope it is implemented. while we are at it, cant we limit the number of followers to 8, enough to surround your character? managing a huge army is too annoying, and you have no way to say "hey, stop following me, you are going to get killed, you idiot!". if those get in the game, most issues with beogh will be solved, and the overly complicated parts of Ticktacy's proposal, or mine, can be ignored safely.

If we can only get 8 followers, how will we get the ones we want? Does this mean even MORE constant stair dance-recall-wait-follow-wait-follow-recall-stair dancing to get just the right followers you want?

[galehar]

If we can only get 8 followers, how will we get the ones we want? Does this mean even MORE constant stair dance-recall-wait-follow-wait-follow-recall-stair dancing to get just the right followers you want?

If the cap is implemented by being a cap to recall, then you automatically get the highest HD orcs.

[Hirsch I]

yeah, that would work.
EDIT: an option to dismiss allies would be nice too, but if it adds too much micromanagement, then its ok.

[XuaXua]

yeah, that would work.
EDIT: an option to dismiss allies would be nice too, but if it adds too much micromanagement, then its ok.

'tw'

[Leafsnail]

I still don't see what the cap is meant to do other than bringing back orc stairdancing.

[Hirsch I]

yeah, tw will work if the recall cap is added. that would work very nicely.

[galehar]

I still don't see what the cap is meant to do other than bringing back orc stairdancing.

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.

[johlstei]

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.

[Tiktacy]

I still don't see what the cap is meant to do other than bringing back orc stairdancing.

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.

This is wrong, having a cap on recall will do nothing. I'm sorry, but it just won't. You need to cap number if allies or you aren't addressing anything. That's worse than putting a bandaid on the problem, it's like putting a bandaid in the wrong spot.

I'm sorry if I sound harsh, but I don't even understand what would you think capping recall would fix. This might actually make Orc dancing worse.

Maybe I'm getting a little too heated over nothing, but it's incredibly frustrating to see something suggested(by a dev no less) that completely misses the mark. It makes me think you STILL haven't read the full op, and that more than anything is what frustrates me. But maybe there is just something I am missing, could you explain what one of the problems I stated are being addressed and how exactly it addresses it?

[njvack]

I think you misunderstood me. Yes, the "player problem" is manageable, you can make sure that some orcs step on an item by switching places. The "game designer problem" is that it is very tedious to do so, especially if you're trying to play optimally and make sure all orcs had a chance to step on and evaluate each good item you find. What I'm proposing is that orcs (on the current level) would automatically evaluate items when you find them (added to the stash tracker) and they go grab them without requiring you to dance around with them.

Yeah, I think we're talking past each other. My point is that while the "in-LOS orc item shuffle" is indeed frustrating, it's mostly because it make your followers look dumb. My memory is that it didn't actually take a large amount of time or turns.

The thing that makes me exhausted when I think about following Beogh again is the thought of running all over the dungeon on a scavenger hunt to actually bring orcs and gear together into LOS. It superficially feels a lot less broken because it isn't exposing Crawl's limited monster inventory management systems and the stash tracker is honestly pretty great. But the stash tracker works a lot better for kitting out a single player (who changes weapons and armour very rarely) than it does to get a dozen followers set up.

tl;dr Making orc followers seek items would make them look a lot more real but I don't think it would save much actual time or frustration for me.

[Hirsch I]

chill out ticktacy. the recall cap will help you to make an elite force, without messing with the people that enjoy huge armies. that, combined with the fixing the allied equipment problem, will make beogh much more interesting.
getting all heated will make things worse. something good is coming out of this, and this is good, dont you think?
EDIT: and having allies seek itens will solve nothing, but having them seek the best items without changing 20 times in the same stash will.

[galehar]

This is wrong, having a cap on recall will do nothing. I'm sorry, but it just won't. You need to cap number if allies or you aren't addressing anything. That's worse than putting a bandaid on the problem, it's like putting a bandaid in the wrong spot.

I'm sorry if I sound harsh, but I don't even understand what would you think capping recall would fix.

Well, if you don't understand, maybe you should ask for explanations instead of saying it does nothing. We probably play differently and don't see the same issues. I don't see any balance problem with unlimited orcs, I just find it annoying. I also think it is a suboptimal way to use your army. The more you have, the less control you have over them and more die. It's better to keep them behind so they can be called in to replace stronger orcs when they die. If you have a couple of low level orcs, they have a chance to level up while being somewhat protected by the stronger ones (XP is shared among all allies now). If you have 50 orcs on the level, the weak one will just die offscreen.
So I'm saying recall cap is just a convenience (as I said, you can already manually stop recalling). Making it not a hard cap (can use the ability several time) allows players to have huge army if they want to, without having to stairdance. Yes, it will be a bit more tedious for them, having to use the ability several time, but it's less annoying than having to use stop recall. And they are probably the minority (especially since it's mostly bad play).
Also, it might be useful to be able to call in a second squad occasionally.

It makes me think you STILL haven't read the full op

Well, I did but I disagree with some of your statements. I didn't bother answering them, because you're just saying thing without giving arguments.

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

What does that mean? When you have a warlord, you stash it? Optimally, you want to have your stronger orcs around you. I have never been able to get 12 warlords, but if I do, I won't bother leveling up other orcs, I'll just go storm Zot:5.

Well, that's it, your OP doesn't say anything else about why recruiting orcs is bad. You're saying that losing them is frustrating and you're proposing a resurrection feature. This is a roguelike, we can have the same argument over this than over permadeath.
If you want to convince people, you should focus on explain what's wrong with the game and how your proposal fix them. You explain how, but your OP lacks the why. Rereading it doesn't change that.

Yeah, I think we're talking past each other. My point is that while the "in-LOS orc item shuffle" is indeed frustrating, it's mostly because it make your followers look dumb. My memory is that it didn't actually take a large amount of time or turns.

It's annoying, and I sometimes have the feeling that maybe one of my orc could have picked something up, but it didn't step on it. Unless you put items in a corridor to make sure everyone does.

The thing that makes me exhausted when I think about following Beogh again is the thought of running all over the dungeon on a scavenger hunt to actually bring orcs and gear together into LOS.

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.

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.

[Tiktacy]

chill out ticktacy. the recall cap will help you to make an elite force, without messing with the people that enjoy huge armies. that, combined with the fixing the allied equipment problem, will make beogh much more interesting.
getting all heated will make things worse. something good is coming out of this, and this is good, dont you think?
EDIT: and having allies seek itens will solve nothing, but having them seek the best items without changing 20 times in the same stash will.

I still don't quite understand what exactly a recall cap of 12 is going to solve, it's not that nothing is being done, it's that it's not fixing the big issues, it's pushing them aside.

Maybe I'm wrong though, it's something, and something is better than nothing I guess.

Edit: holy crap galehar.