Food proposal

[tabstorm]

Currently, even with the existence of the chunkless branch reducing some tedium by removing the butchering of corpses, I feel that food is basically a vestigial mechanic in crawl at this juncture. I think it would improve the game if food were made to actually be a somewhat meaningful mechanic that serves to press the player onward at a reasonable pace, rather than having to just occasionally press ey and get on with playing the game, not really thinking about it. Here is what I think would be an improvement on the current state of affairs:

1. Remove chunks from the game.
2. Hunger costs are removed from all abilities and spells.
3. Tighten the food clock significantly. Ideally, the player proceeding at a reasonable pace should have a few rations on and not be concerned about starving.

There are some problems with this, though. The most obvious one is Ely. One would need to rework or remove the pacification mechanic if this change were implemented. I'm sure someone can write a post on why Ely is problematic mechanically anyway, I'm not interested in playing her, so just remove her for all I care. But someone who cares could probably create some good changes to replace these mechanics. I'm not going to worry about it for this post.

Another issue is undead races. I don't know how to resolve the interaction with corpses that these species have. Personally, I think it would be fine to just have ghouls restore rot on killing enemies that would have dropped chunks, and remove Vp's weird hunger interactions entirely and just give them regen+, batform, stealth+, rC+, torment immunity, and any other normal undead immunities I forgot. This is a buff for sure, but Vp are pretty mediocre to begin with, so I think it's fine, and also removes any annoying hunger mechanics that Vp may have had while preserving what I feel are the core properties of the species. Mummies also have no hunger clock, but you are also a mummy so, I think this is a sufficient drawback under this proposal.

Finally, some may object to the removal of hunger as a balancing mechanic to spells and abilities. I think that spells are restricted sufficiently by MP, and that it is unnecessary to further restrict them with hunger. I don't really have any logical justification for this. I think the god abilities are also fine without hunger costs, aside from the aforementioned Ely. One objection I can conceive of is berserking, but I think that the time you would spend waiting off slowing, assuming you tried to berserk very frequently, would lead you to get into food trouble, assuming we have put aside the dangers of berserking unwisely and getting slowed in a bad situation. If any readers can conceive of other ones, please post about it.

The goal of this, as I said earlier, is to push the player onward at a reasonable pace, rather than encourage tons of resting after every fight, and also remove the constant eating for heavy users of spells and abilities. There may be some problems with this proposal and regen items, however, these exist even in the current incarnation of hunger, so I still feel that this proposal is better than the existing state of affairs, and it's a problem I am willing to accept if it means that I am HUNGRY much less often and having my auto travel interrupted. Ideally, the player would have less food, but also eat much less often.

Also, I feel that starving to death is another thing that could be changed. I think it would be better if the character were to suffer penalties in a way similar to how having stats below 0 is currently implemented. What the details of this would be, I do not know.

Edit: An obvious thing I forgot about was channeling. I think that having hungerless channeling would serve to reduce the constant resting to restore MP, and I still don't feel it really needs to be restricted strategically.

[Bim]

A simpler and less radical proposal would be to remove hunger from travelling/resting and at least halving the amount of permafood around. This, combined with stat loss/whatever for starving would allow hunger to keep spells/abilities balanced whilst removing frustration from travelling and resting.

Regen is the only passive hunger mechanic I can think of (other than just hunger, which could cause all hunger costs to cost more) and this could just be changed to cause healing to cost hunger.

[TeshiAlair]

Rather than halving the amount of permafood, I'd decrease the frequency of rations and increase the frequency of jerky/pizza. This way, rations are more of a "had a massive fight, need food now" while the smaller foods are more "munch during general exploration, or in the middle of a fight in an emergency"

I love the removal from travel/resting idea.

[tabstorm]

A simpler and less radical proposal would be to remove hunger from travelling/resting and at least halving the amount of permafood around. This, combined with stat loss/whatever for starving would allow hunger to keep spells/abilities balanced whilst removing frustration from travelling and resting.

Regen is the only passive hunger mechanic I can think of (other than just hunger, which could cause all hunger costs to cost more) and this could just be changed to cause healing to cost hunger.

This would encourage an optimal player to scum for long amounts of time in Lair, for instance, if hunger were to come only from spells and abilities and from no other source.

Rather than halving the amount of permafood, I'd decrease the frequency of rations and increase the frequency of jerky/pizza. This way, rations are more of a "had a massive fight, need food now" while the smaller foods are more "munch during general exploration, or in the middle of a fight in an emergency"

I'd rather just have bread, meat, and fruit as the only food types. All the pizzas and jerkies just take up inventory space so I end up just eating them to free up that inventory slot.

[nilsbloodaxe]

A simpler and less radical proposal would be to remove hunger from travelling/resting and at least halving the amount of permafood around. This, combined with stat loss/whatever for starving would allow hunger to keep spells/abilities balanced whilst removing frustration from travelling and resting.

Regen is the only passive hunger mechanic I can think of (other than just hunger, which could cause all hunger costs to cost more) and this could just be changed to cause healing to cost hunger.

The usual reason for food in roguelikes is to keep the player moving on towards the end, not to encourage resting.

[archaeo]

tabstorm, if you do 1 and 2, what advantage is there to doing 3? I feel like if you remove all the things the food clock balances other than moving onward, you might as well just remove it altogether (and the interface screw it represents) and simply create a more aggressive OOD timer. If you removed food and other areas of development continue apace (the removal of strategic consumables, etc.), you could really tighten that OOD timer to pretty high levels.

Alternately, you could just remove monsters spawning after the level gets generated /reaches some fairly small cap. Or make the generation so slow that piety decay becomes an issue. Or buff piety gains and then tighten every piety clock.

Not that I think wholesale food removal is on the table, but I am curious; if you remove hunger from everything but the clock, the clock turns into the worst kind of vestigial mechanic.

[klink]

I'd be in support of lowering the food cost of resting and traveling, while raising the hunger cost of physical combat.

Rather than halving the amount of permafood, I'd decrease the frequency of rations and increase the frequency of jerky/pizza. This way, rations are more of a "had a massive fight, need food now" while the smaller foods are more "munch during general exploration, or in the middle of a fight in an emergency"

I second this idea.

[tabstorm]

tabstorm, if you do 1 and 2, what advantage is there to doing 3? I feel like if you remove all the things the food clock balances other than moving onward, you might as well just remove it altogether (and the interface screw it represents) and simply create a more aggressive OOD timer. If you removed food and other areas of development continue apace (the removal of strategic consumables, etc.), you could really tighten that OOD timer to pretty high levels.

Alternately, you could just remove monsters spawning after the level gets generated /reaches some fairly small cap. Or make the generation so slow that piety decay becomes an issue. Or buff piety gains and then tighten every piety clock.

Not that I think wholesale food removal is on the table, but I am curious; if you remove hunger from everything but the clock, the clock turns into the worst kind of vestigial mechanic.

Plenty of other roguelikes have food serve no purpose other than to press the player onward, indeed I believe that this is the reason that most of them have food clocks. I feel that only reason an OOD clock even needs to exist under a permafood-spawns-only system (no drops from enemies like in the current chunkless branch), where food serves only to push you onward, is because of races that don't eat and can otherwise scum forever. Let's put it this way: If races that didn't eat didn't exist, I would rather have no OOD spawns (or any spawns at all, it's quite annoying when a goblin interrupts your autotravel back up to Lair for instance) than OOD spawns and no food.

[archaeo]

Sure. I guess I'd argue for no spawns, no food, but I think that's getting way out in the weeds of things that aren't going to happen.

[johlstei]

I think all spawns should be OOD spawns to fix that "goblin interrupts travel" problem - the rate that they should spawn is left as an exercise to the reader.

[Psiweapon]

First of all, I wholly disagree with this proposal. In general, the only food simplification changes I enjoyed were downgrading sickness to nausea and after that, the eventual nausea removal. And I guess that fruit not hogging half your inventory is nice, too - I ended using fruit as "stash snacks", which reinforced a feeling of "this is my stash and it's my place to hoard useless but cool loot, store strategics, and change my gear when changing branches. But beyond that, I haven't enjoyed the recent wave of more food smplification.

But, trying to be constructive, I think this whacks racial selection (and other stuff) over the head, so it would need to be accompanied by substantial changes to several races (and other stuff) in order for it to not be a net loss.

Kobolds and felids: Nerfed. Carnivore would no longer advantageous under any circumstances but an absolute liability (in the exact same spot that herbivore was before)
Ghouls: Dumbed down. Would no longer hunger for the flesh of the living, nearly killing the flavour outright.
Vampires: Dumbed down. Would be around 1/5th as interesting as now. That, or blood potion becomes a legitimate permafood item (magically conserved!)
Mummies: Nerfed needlessly. Comparatively dumbed down. Would suck even more barber poles, because half of their signature advantage has been granted across the board, without any oftheir signature defects.
Trolls: Nerfed or dumbed down. But what troll eat now?

Invocations, Evocations, Spellcasting: Buffed, probably requiring universal cost rebalancing.

Elyvilon: Buffed like nobody's business. A terrible, ravenous hunger is what really keeps your all-powerful hippie powers in check. And that kind of makes sense...
Trog: Bufed overall, loss of synergy with felids and kobolds.

Channeling: Buffed.

Hungry ghosts: Buffed, since food would be much more precious

Vampiric weapons: Buffed and dumbed down if the hunger costs are removed (like with magic). Nerfed into undesirability if hunger costs are kept.

Starvation: Tightening the food clock, removing corpse eating and removing magic hunger only make sense if death of starvation is a threat at all - which currently nearly isn't, but I'd rather it was more of a threat than less, there is way too much permafood in the game.

Besides my dislike for the proposal, I think that following the reasons above, it is shown that it arbitrarily* buffs, nerfs and dumbs down all sorts of stuff across the board and would require major, general rebalancing efforts.

* In the sense that these things probably don't need those particular buffs and nerfs.

P.S.: We've been through all this before already.

[tabstorm]

Kobolds and felids: Nerfed. Carnivore would no longer advantageous under any circumstances but an absolute liability (in the exact same spot that herbivore was before)

For kobolds and felids, since there are two classes of permafood, it is easy enough to just have them gain twice the nutrition from meat rations, hunger less, or whatever, a trivial change. Plus, it's fine on spriggans now, it was only annoying on centaurs because when combined with fast metabolism it meant that you were constantly getting "You are feeling hungry." which was so dang annoying that Ce was near unplayable.

Ghouls: Dumbed down. Would no longer hunger for the flesh of the living, nearly killing the flavour outright.

There is not intelligence involved in eating when rotted. The change I wrote keeps the result while cutting out the butchering and eating.

Vampires: Dumbed down. Would be around 1/5th as interesting as now. That, or blood potion becomes a legitimate permafood item (magically conserved!)

I said to have them not even hunger entirely. They can keep the vamp draining from hitting enemies unaware or however it works now. Aside from that, I think a lot of players find managing vampire hunger pretty annoying as it currently stands, so I'd rather just cut out the annoying stuff and just give the species what I feel are its core properties without having to manage hunger, instead of doing something like encourage players to wait for a long time before entering an ice cave just for the rC for instance, or constantly eating just to be able to use tmuts. Besides, it's usually best to just stay at high levels of satiation for the regen. I can only think of maybe Tomb as a place where you might want the torment immunity.

Mummies: Nerfed needlessly. Comparatively dumbed down. Would suck even more barber poles, because half of their signature advantage has been granted across the board, without any oftheir signature defects.

I don't understand how this logically follows, if they have no food clock but the food clock is tighter for living races this is a nerf to mummies because _________.

Trolls: Nerfed or dumbed down. But what troll eat now?

There is not intelligence involved in eating up to engorged after every battle.

Invocations, Evocations, Spellcasting: Buffed, probably requiring universal cost rebalancing.

Elyvilon: Buffed like nobody's business. A terrible, ravenous hunger is what really keeps your all-powerful hippie powers in check. And that kind of makes sense...

I claim that all these abilities do not need illusory strategic food costs that just end up resulting in more pressing of the e button when they have tactical costs. I mentioned that I do not have a fix for ely outside of just removing her, but someone else is welcome to contribute an idea to this thread. I don't intend to ever play Ely.

Hungry ghosts: Buffed, since food would be much more precious

Easy enough to just proportionally tone down the amount of hunger they induce.

Vampiric weapons: Buffed and dumbed down if the hunger costs are removed (like with magic). Nerfed into undesirability if hunger costs are kept.

Hunger cost has never been a concern for me in using a vampiric weapon, I'm sure many players could attest the same, I am unconvinced that it is really being "dumbed down" in a meaningful way by removing the hunger cost, it will play in a way identical to the current state of affairs basically.

It seems to be the case that many of the things that I (and other players) find tedious, you find wonderful and fascinating.

[Psiweapon]

Mr. TediumSnark:

dumb something down: trivialize, sensationalize, make shallow, make superficial, make trivial, make frivolous, make less intelligent
"I know it must be tempting to dumb down news".

(emphasis mine)

Kobolds and felids: Nerfed. Carnivore would no longer advantageous under any circumstances but an absolute liability (in the exact same spot that herbivore was before)

For kobolds and felids, since there are two classes of permafood, it is easy enough to just have them gain twice the nutrition from meat rations, hunger less, or whatever, a trivial change. Plus, it's fine on spriggans now, it was only annoying on centaurs because when combined with fast metabolism it meant that you were constantly getting "You are feeling hungry." which was so dang annoying that Ce was near unplayable.

No, it's not just a trivial change. By giving them double nutrition on half, or less, of the food types that most other characters can eat you're not even bringing them up to on par with them because they have still lost access to a food item that's good quality for them, and generated at the tactical level, that for other characters to exploit required dedicating their amulet slot.

Ghouls: Dumbed down. Would no longer hunger for the flesh of the living, nearly killing the flavour outright.

There is not intelligence involved in eating when rotted. The change I wrote keeps the result while cutting out the butchering and eating.

See the definition of "dumbed down" provided above, Mr. TediumSnark

Vampires: Dumbed down. Would be around 1/5th as interesting as now. That, or blood potion becomes a legitimate permafood item (magically conserved!)

I said to have them not even hunger entirely. They can keep the vamp draining from hitting enemies unaware or however it works now. Aside from that, I think a lot of players find managing vampire hunger pretty annoying as it currently stands, so I'd rather just cut out the annoying stuff and just give the species what I feel are its core properties without having to manage hunger, instead of doing something like encourage players to wait for a long time before entering an ice cave just for the rC for instance, or constantly eating just to be able to use tmuts. Besides, it's usually best to just stay at high levels of satiation for the regen. I can only think of maybe Tomb as a place where you might want the torment immunity.

You say that managing vampire hunger is pretty annoying, I say that vampire hunger management is an aspect of the game that can be played with and which you are trying to deprive me of. If I roll a vampire, is because I want to play a character that mutates back and forth between several states between life and undeath - which is exactly their defining feature. If I don't want to deal with that, I don't roll a vampire.

Anyways, you CAN play a vampire and not worry about hunger management, it'll just stay between bloodless and nearly bloodless.

Mummies: Nerfed needlessly. Comparatively dumbed down. Would suck even more barber poles, because half of their signature advantage has been granted across the board, without any oftheir signature defects.

I don't understand how this logically follows, if they have no food clock but the food clock is tighter for living races this is a nerf to mummies because _________.

You paired it up with the wrong premise.
if they have no food clock and hungerless casting, abilities and evocations are granted across the board this is a nerf to mummies because hungerless casting, god abilities and evocations are part of their signature advantage and now it would be the baseline capacity for all characters, giving them an aspect of the only advantage mummies have.

Trolls: Nerfed or dumbed down. But what troll eat now?

There is not intelligence involved in eating up to engorged after every battle.

See the definition of "dumbed down" provided above, Mr. TediumSnark

Invocations, Evocations, Spellcasting: Buffed, probably requiring universal cost rebalancing.

Elyvilon: Buffed like nobody's business. A terrible, ravenous hunger is what really keeps your all-powerful hippie powers in check. And that kind of makes sense...

I claim that all these abilities do not need illusory strategic food costs that just end up resulting in more pressing of the e button when they have tactical costs. I mentioned that I do not have a fix for ely outside of just removing her, but someone else is welcome to contribute an idea to this thread. I don't intend to ever play Ely.

Well, maybe if you gave Ely a whirl (even once) you would see how food costs are in her case much more than illusory, and I don't think that any proposal that is a coin-toss between "buff Elyvilon through the roof or remove her" will fly very far, at least in that particular iteration; because Elyvilon is crazy powerful already, and she's pretty much stablished as one of the three good gods.

Hungry ghosts: Buffed, since food would be much more precious

Easy enough to just proportionally tone down the amount of hunger they induce.

Hey! You're saying something sensible for a change!

Vampiric weapons: Buffed and dumbed down if the hunger costs are removed (like with magic). Nerfed into undesirability if hunger costs are kept.

Hunger cost has never been a concern for me in using a vampiric weapon, I'm sure many players could attest the same, I am unconvinced that it is really being "dumbed down" in a meaningful way by removing the hunger cost, it will play in a way identical to the current state of affairs basically.

Nope, because currently vampiric weapons are very powerful, yet if you find yourself in need of using a rod (or a different weapon: say an artifact that is your only source of blinking, or a weapon that could mean a decisive advantage in a particular fight, or any ranged weapon) you can't (usually) go back to your vampiric weapon immediately afterwards. Unless you are playing a vampire, a kobold, a ghoul, a troll (highly unlikely) or a mummy, or if you are using an amulet of the gourmand, or you quaff a potion of porridge. Again, removing vampiric hunger cost would be thinning down their synergy with vampires, but that's a minor issue in my eyes relative to the slew of boring changes you're proposing.

It seems to be the case that many of the things that I (and other players) find tedious, you find wonderful and fascinating.

YES.

And that's why I'm so strongly opposed to their outright removal: because your tedium, is my normal play or even my enjoyment.

Still, even if I'm not rallying as much support as you are, I think it's safest to assume that the majority of the players are simply content with the current status quo.

It also seems to be the case that your proposal has far-reaching consequences for several aspects of the gameplay that don't fall within your area of expertise or even your usual game experience, to which you haven't (and refuse to) give much thought, because you hate hitting the 'e' key, while it's clearly evident that you love hitting the 'tab' key.

This keyboard-based reasoning is wholly uncomprehensible to me, and your ideal of gameplay seems incredibly degenerate, but you can't say I'm not taking your proposal seriously.

[damiac]

I'm totally in agreement with tabstorm, food being reduced to what it was already supposed to be, a ticking clock, makes so much sense, as long as you do what he said, and totally remove food costs from the spellcasting equation.

Now, the question is what's a reasonable pace? A reasonable pace for a HoBe is not the same as a reasonable pace for a HeCj, for example, weaker combinations are going to move slower, since they have to rest a lot more. So, while decoupling hunger from spells helps in that degree, there's still a tough tightrope to walk, to keep hunger meaningful for the faster combos, while not being just too hard for weaker and slower combos. And casters are still hit a little harder, just due to the fact that they'll probably be resting more to recover MP.

I think that's a balance that could be found, and the end result would be a lot better than the current system. It seems like the chunkless branch has accomplished removing some tedium, but at the cost of totally making food irrelevant.

[tabstorm]

I'm totally in agreement with tabstorm, food being reduced to what it was already supposed to be, a ticking clock, makes so much sense, as long as you do what he said, and totally remove food costs from the spellcasting equation.

Now, the question is what's a reasonable pace? A reasonable pace for a HoBe is not the same as a reasonable pace for a HeCj, for example, weaker combinations are going to move slower, since they have to rest a lot more. So, while decoupling hunger from spells helps in that degree, there's still a tough tightrope to walk, to keep hunger meaningful for the faster combos, while not being just too hard for weaker and slower combos. And casters are still hit a little harder, just due to the fact that they'll probably be resting more to recover MP.

I think that's a balance that could be found, and the end result would be a lot better than the current system. It seems like the chunkless branch has accomplished removing some tedium, but at the cost of totally making food irrelevant.

Well, I think the main issue for that is with MP regen, since I think characters spend much more time resting to restore MP than restore HP. You can fix this by adjusting the MP regen rate function in some way or adding a ring of MP regen for instance. This also is a decent Sif buff since it saves some turns you might have spent resting up to gain MP. You could give a corresponding buff to vehumet to have MP regenerate faster if there arises an issue with him, or something. Obviously figuring out the amount of food for a "reasonable pace" isn't a simple thing to do.

No, it's not just a trivial change. By giving them double nutrition on half, or less, of the food types that most other characters can eat you're not even bringing them up to on par with them because they have still lost access to a food item that's good quality for them, and generated at the tactical level, that for other characters to exploit required dedicating their amulet slot.

Obviously there will be no amulet of the gourmand. I guess it's fine to keep jerky as the analogue to fruit for such races.

Regarding ghouls and vampires, it dosen't with ghouls, because if you don't press on and kill enemies, all your HP will rot away. One way to do the vampire thing would just be to have vampires gain blood from killing enemies. I still claim that there was no nontrivial decision involved with ghoul hunger. Can you give an example of one? I think you eat the chunks when you find them to heal up more quickly. You could do a similar thing with vampires by having them gain blood from living enemies, keeping some kind of blood-dependent feature(s) like maybe regen rate and negative energy resistance. This could encourage some degenerate behavior around things like shadow dragons but I'm willing to accept such a minor problem in exchange for doing away with bottling.

Regarding troll hunger, see what I said about ghoul hunger. You just eat when you find chunks. If you claim that gourmand hunger made these races have nontrivial food interactions, you are wrong, because they can simply eat up at any time, there is nothing interesting about that, nor is there a decision to be made. To eat or not to eat? Obviously you eat. I can't conceive of any other decision involving chunks.

With Ely I said before that I can't offer any ideas on her aside from removal but any other contributor to this thread may have one.

Regarding vamp weapons, I made an erroneous assumption in thinking that they passively increased your hunger with use, in addition to the wielding cost. Well, it's fine to keep the wielding cost, it's a one-time thing. If anything it makes it more meaningful decision, since you can't afford to unwield it and it is a real sacrifice.

Yes, I think tabbing is better than hitting e because you are actually interacting with enemies (which is what the game is about, I think), rather than sitting and having a snack every few minutes.

[Psiweapon]

Dude, are you even aware that your proposal amounts to, basically changing half of the game to suit your tastes, with only a passing regard to current balance, by finally eradicating a whole suit of mechanics that have already been simplified in your favour?

All balanced on a buzzword: tedium.

If food is such an unbearable inconvenience, which begs the question of how did you ever begin to withstand the torture of playing crawl to begin with, I'd rather completely obliterate food and any food-related factors and mechanics and buff up formerly food-enhanced gameplay dynamics on one hand, and tone down formerly food-limited gameplay dynamics on the other; rather than chipping away at the food mechanic version by version until it becomes meaningless. Which is the direction recent development has taken, I just hope that it stops short of food actually becoming meaningless.

NOTE: From my point of view, what I described above is a comparison between two "evils", I'd rather much have food stay as it is right now - and if anything, be made scarcer so that starvation is actually a possibility for non-ely characters.

No, it's not just a trivial change. By giving them double nutrition on half, or less, of the food types that most other characters can eat you're not even bringing them up to on par with them because they have still lost access to a food item that's good quality for them, and generated at the tactical level, that for other characters to exploit required dedicating their amulet slot.

Obviously there will be no amulet of the gourmand. I guess it's fine to keep jerky as the analogue to fruit for such races.

Of course, if your removal proposal is backed up by even more removals in the same line, maybe Dungeon Crawl Tab Storm is a game that makes sense.

Regarding ghouls and vampires, it dosen't with ghouls, because if you don't press on and kill enemies, all your HP will rot away. One way to do the vampire thing would just be to have vampires gain blood from killing enemies. I still claim that there was no nontrivial decision involved with ghoul hunger. Can you give an example of one? I think you eat the chunks when you find them to heal up more quickly. You could do a similar thing with vampires by having them gain blood from living enemies, keeping some kind of blood-dependent feature(s) like maybe regen rate and negative energy resistance. This could encourage some degenerate behavior around things like shadow dragons but I'm willing to accept such a minor problem in exchange for doing away with bottling.

If there is an example of meaningful choice regarding food, that's vampires: because you can eat a lot, a little, or not at all, and it gives you different advantages and disadvantages, which in turn are suitable to different playstyles and places.

If blood intake is entirely automatic, you are actually removing that choice and the different gameplay dynamics that rest upon it.

Ghoul hunger is not only thematic, but more meaningful than living hunger by definition, it not only cures rot: it heals HP. It gives ghouls an entirely unique source of HP. But making a parallel with what you suggest for vampires, if there's no corpse eating they should get heale for kills or attacks, which not only would be too powerful, it would also step on several other character toes (vampires, makhleb followers, vampiric weapons, TSO)

Regarding troll hunger, see what I said about ghoul hunger. You just eat when you find chunks. If you claim that gourmand hunger made these races have nontrivial food interactions, you are wrong, because they can simply eat up at any time, there is nothing interesting about that, nor is there a decision to be made. To eat or not to eat? Obviously you eat. I can't conceive of any other decision involving chunks.

If trolls hunger at the same or higher rate but there's no corpse eating, trolls starve. If the troll hunger rate is adjusted or disappears, they lose a disadvantage and must be rebalanced... and I don't know where they can be nerfed that makes sense. This last problem is what applies to all carnivores.

With Ely I said before that I can't offer any ideas on her aside from removal but any other contributor to this thread may have one.

Well then so far Elyvilon stands against your proposal.

Regarding vamp weapons, I made an erroneous assumption in thinking that they passively increased your hunger with use, in addition to the wielding cost. Well, it's fine to keep the wielding cost, it's a one-time thing. If anything it makes it more meaningful decision, since you can't afford to unwield it and it is a real sacrifice.

I don't think your proposal really makes it any more meaningful, if anything it stays roughly the same.

Yes, I think tabbing is better than hitting e because you are actually interacting with enemies (which is what the game is about, I think), rather than sitting and having a snack every few minutes.

If you believe the game is solely about interacting with enemies I think you have a much too narrow concept of the game.

[tabstorm]

Food is an inconvenience because currently, you hunger quite frequently, which interrupts travel, among other things, in spite of the threat of starvation being vanishingly small for players who do not worship Ely. Food is also so ubiquitous throughout the game that it does not even serve to push the player onward. By changing to only permafood spawns and removing hunger from spells and abilities, I hope that food at least pushes the player onward in a meaningful way, without constantly interrupting level exploration to inform them that they are feeling hungry for the 500th time and that they need to butcher and eat yet again. I do not feel the current state of affairs is good because the "hunger cost" is an illusory concern due to the ubiquity of rations and chunks, does not push the player onward, and serves only to increase the frequency of butchering and hunger messages. The inexperienced player thinks that they must carefully conserve their rations in order to be able to use spells, abilities, etc. but they soon learn that it is actually the case that in both the current game and in the chunkless branch, no effort need be made due to the amounts of food present. Instead they just get lots of messages telling them they are feeling hungry. This is why I would like to change food in the way that I have outlined in the OP.

Of course, if your removal proposal is backed up by even more removals in the same line, maybe Dungeon Crawl Tab Storm is a game that makes sense.

Well, I try..

Ghoul hunger is not only thematic, but more meaningful than living hunger by definition, it not only cures rot: it heals HP. It gives ghouls an entirely unique source of HP. But making a parallel with what you suggest for vampires, if there's no corpse eating they should get heale for kills or attacks, which not only would be too powerful, it would also step on several other character toes (vampires, makhleb followers, vampiric weapons, TSO)

RIght, so as I said in the OP, you heal rot by killing living enemies, as opposed to curing rot by killing enemies, butchering their corpses, and eating them. Regarding the HP gain, it does help to offset Ghouls' slow healing. I would rather ghouls not heal slowly, so that they need not rest for even longer than other races. I had hoped that some of these implicit changes could go unsaid, just like with troll hunger, I am a bit lazy and don't want to enumerate every detail. Troll hunger is another example of an illusory disadvantage due to the ubiquity of rations and chunks. Other races have lost fast metabolism recently, see: Centaurs and Ogres, becaue it made the game more annoying when you constantly received hunger messages despite no threat of starvation. Centaur hunger was especially bad because of the frequency of Hunger with fast metabolism + herbivore.

Vamp weapons:

I don't think your proposal really makes it any more meaningful, if anything it stays roughly the same.

Yes it does. If you have to eat a ration to wield one, but much fewer rations spawn, and you can only eat rations, you can not wield/unwield them constantly like you can currently.

If you believe the game is solely about interacting with enemies I think you have a much too narrow concept of the game.

Why do spells and abilities that have uses outside of combat keep getting removed, then?

Also, I repeat that Ely's pacification abilities and piety gain would need to be overhauled if a change of food along these lines were implemented, and I have not thought out the details of this. However, I hope you and other readers can understand the motivation for writing this and appreciate that if a few changes could be made to the game with certain troublesome interactions, mostly involving Ely and Vampires, it could be better overall by reducing the constant butchering, eating, and hunger messages tricking you into thinking you are in danger of starving.

Edit: Ok, there are a few characters who may also have hunger issues that are mainly spellcasters who rush high level spells early and frequently are speed running. This change would make such characters much less dependent on finding amulets of the gourmand or staves of energy, which I'm sure would please the people who like to play these characters.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

Food is an inconvenience because currently, you hunger quite frequently

Yeah no.
You only hunger frequently if you don't eat past "full" or even up to that point, or constantly spam high level spells/god abilities.
That is if you don't play fast metabolism species.

I also think that most people who are against your "ideas" simply don't bother replying to this thread because they find your claims ridiculous.

What i can agree on, is that in the current 0.15 trunk, permafood is generated very generously, and should probably be balanced a bit.

[Arrhythmia]

You only hunger frequently if you don't eat past "full" or even up to that point,

You will notice that a full four fifths of all the races can't do this without finding equipment or wasting resources.

[One-Eyed Jack]

The game encourages you to allow yourself to become hungry so you can eat perishable food so that you can save nonperishable food so that you can "spam" powerful abilities so that you can win the game

[KittenInMyCerealz]

You only hunger frequently if you don't eat past "full" or even up to that point,

You will notice that a full four fifths of all the races can't do this without finding equipment or wasting resources.

Yes, if you eat chunks. Permafood, not so much, and permafood is quite plenty.
You won't run out of permafood unless you horribly manage it somehow, or spam hungering spells etc.
Currently my MiBe has 24 bread rations, 4 royal jellies, and 9 meat rations, and i haven't touched chunks whole game, nor bought any of the food. And this is while I'm reaching for my 1st rune in lair, at Snake 4.
(i admit this is more than i've ever had, but i've always had plenty, at least from 0.14->)

[Sar]

Well, I don't know details of your MiBe but I'm guessing it doesn't cast a lot of high-level spells, and also has good defenses and a good weapon so it doesn't have to rest to replenish HP often.

That might explain why you don't need chunks.

[Bim]

If the worry is that food acts to push things on, then I think just stopping spawns after generation (or a small cap) is fine. XP is ridiculously plentiful in crawl so there's never a need to scum, and it shouldn't be encouraged in the first place.

Permafood could be just reduced in general though, as currently there is so much it just completely trivializes the entire system.

[archaeo]

Food is currently obnoxious and, except for some builds, trivial. Tightening the food clock only takes care of one of these problems.

[Bim]

I believe tightening it up radically enough may improve crawl in general.
If all spells/abilities (as well as things like hasting, invis, might) had a high food cost but nothing else did, then food would become a vital limiter in spamming firestorm or haste. I know we have contamination as well, but contamination is more of a clean break thing, whereas food can be a bit more of a gradient.

That mixed with chunkless and lowering the amount of permafood dropped/spawned would force players to use a combination of strategies rather than just continually spamming highest level ones they can.

[archaeo]

I don't know, I'm pretty sure the vital limiter on fire storm is the fact you need an absurd about of XP to make it worthwhile. If you tighten the food clock with the express desire to crack down on spamming spells, all you really accomplish is nerfing conjurer speedruns; during normal play, it's never really a problem, and making it a problem seems like a solid way to make people not play conjurers at all.

I guess I find starving a really unpleasant and un-fun way to die. I like it when Crawl is sharp about its response to your play, and starvation has the biggest lag between mistake and death in the game other than banishment or extremely poor skilling. People can feel free to disagree with this, but I think a look at Ely's popularity is due for those who want to tighten the food clock. I'm not really sure that constantly worrying about starvation and minding the food clock is something most players want out of Crawl.

It's also worth noting that none of the devs have seemed to express any serious appetite for a "radical" tightening, though I could be misinformed. I think it'd be really hard to tighten it so that it feels non-trival but doesn't feel like you're playing Brogue and relying on the RNG to keep you from dying to starvation.

[tabstorm]

I believe tightening it up radically enough may improve crawl in general.
If all spells/abilities (as well as things like hasting, invis, might) had a high food cost but nothing else did, then food would become a vital limiter in spamming firestorm or haste. I know we have contamination as well, but contamination is more of a clean break thing, whereas food can be a bit more of a gradient.

That mixed with chunkless and lowering the amount of permafood dropped/spawned would force players to use a combination of strategies rather than just continually spamming highest level ones they can.

These things don't actually need to be balanced by high hunger cost and a tight hunger clock in addition to the XP barrier and tactical costs.

[Bim]

These things don't actually need to be balanced by high hunger cost and a tight hunger clock in addition to the XP barrier and tactical costs.

I'm really not sure that's enough, or rather, I don't think having another balancing cost is a bad thing.
Currently, once you've gotten the XP (which is very plentiful) using things like haste have pretty much no additional costs or balances. Even the other high level spells which aren't as useful as haste (or are noisy/have drawbacks) have pretty much no real cost as you can channel energy and just continually blast them out, obliterating everything.

Linking them to a less-infinite (you could still scum it in the abyss and stuff I'm sure) resource like food would mean that the player had to open their tactics away from spamming the highest level spell they can all the time.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

Imo hasting should use up ~the same satiation as berserk (maybe 500 or so), in addition to the +5 hunger/turn it already gives.

[Psiweapon]

I believe tightening it up radically enough may improve crawl in general.
If all spells/abilities (as well as things like hasting, invis, might) had a high food cost but nothing else did, then food would become a vital limiter in spamming firestorm or haste. I know we have contamination as well, but contamination is more of a clean break thing, whereas food can be a bit more of a gradient.

That mixed with chunkless and lowering the amount of permafood dropped/spawned would force players to use a combination of strategies rather than just continually spamming highest level ones they can.

These things don't actually need to be balanced by high hunger cost and a tight hunger clock in addition to the XP barrier and tactical costs.

Tabstorm, I'm not sure anymore if you even have a notion of balance.

[njvack]

Hey all, I got a report on this thread, and it's indeed starting to devolve into noise. Try and keep this content-ful, or let it drop...

[tabstorm]

I believe tightening it up radically enough may improve crawl in general.
If all spells/abilities (as well as things like hasting, invis, might) had a high food cost but nothing else did, then food would become a vital limiter in spamming firestorm or haste. I know we have contamination as well, but contamination is more of a clean break thing, whereas food can be a bit more of a gradient.

That mixed with chunkless and lowering the amount of permafood dropped/spawned would force players to use a combination of strategies rather than just continually spamming highest level ones they can.

These things don't actually need to be balanced by high hunger cost and a tight hunger clock in addition to the XP barrier and tactical costs.

>Haste
>XP barrier
>tactical costs
lel

The use of the phrase "tactical costs" implicity refers mainly to conjurations, not to every spell that costs MP, I hope this was clear. I hope you don't mean to imply that haste does not require any experience to cast, which would be wrong. Most characters can afford it, but it is not free. Do you think haste needs to be level 7-8, were it hungerless, or something? Also, contam does exist to prevent you from double hasting unless you want to risk incurring such fun mutations as teleitis, zerkitis, blurry vision, no device heal, and forlorn.

I'm really not sure that's enough, or rather, I don't think having another balancing cost is a bad thing.
Currently, once you've gotten the XP (which is very plentiful) using things like haste have pretty much no additional costs or balances. Even the other high level spells which aren't as useful as haste (or are noisy/have drawbacks) have pretty much no real cost as you can channel energy and just continually blast them out, obliterating everything.

Linking them to a less-infinite (you could still scum it in the abyss and stuff I'm sure) resource like food would mean that the player had to open their tactics away from spamming the highest level spell they can all the time.

If your character can scum the abyss, it is quite capable of winning the game already, doing so is just winning more. You can say "I think high level conjurations are so powerful that they need to be balanced by a huge hunger cost, because it is not enough to need to get near level 27 in 1-2 skills, not to mention high spellcasting, to cast these spells with wizardry, or 23-24 with vehumet + wizardry", though many skilled players would tell you that these spells aren't even worth the investment in a character not doing extended, so I don't agree with this premise. The level 9's also have their own issues in combat:

Fire storm is resisted by lots of enemies but it has the best effect overall in my opinion.
Glaciate does poor damage as a long range, which is why you invest in level 9s in the first place, it's a nerfed version of ice storm.
Many enemies are resistant to shatter, but at least it is a fullscreen effect.
Tornado can position many ranged enemies around you in a circle, inviting them to shoot projectiles, hellfire, etc. at you

The high level single target spells like iron shot, OOD, etc. have mediocre MP efficiency compared to multitarget spells and the earth spells miss quite often. I assure you, you don't cast nothing but Xstorm once you've become able to.

My point is: I think you are vastly overrating the power of high level conjurations even ignoring their experience costs. They are good effects for sure, but mana problems do come up, and they are worse when you rely on channeling, especially if you make the sacrifices defensively that you need to use level 9 spells. I hope it is clear why channeling is worse than vehumet's passive MP. You can also rely on a crystal ball, but then you need to get another skill to level 20+ in order for it to be effective. This is OK for extended, but by then most characters casting heavy conjurations will have a staff of energy or amulet of the gourmand anyway, so hunger isn't serving to balance anything at this point unless the player is quite unlucky.

Edit: I'm also skeptical of the claim that tactics are more "open" (what do you mean by this, exactly?) without level 9 spells. I assume you mean "using a lot of different spells". Well, you typically use a single target spells for enemies that resist your elemental conjuration, some kind of Bolt spell, and a multitarget like LRD, fireball, ozocubus, clouds, etc. Now, at high skill levels, you still use a single target for things that resist your elemental conjuration, you still use your bolt spell against weaker enemies, and you replace your multitarget with a level 9. So really, it is not that different fundamentally, your multi-target spell is just better, but the enemies are also.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

Glaciate does poor damage as a long range, which is why you invest in level 9s in the first place, it's a nerfed version of ice storm.

are you serious?

but by then most characters casting heavy conjurations will have a staff of energy or amulet of the gourmand anyway, so hunger isn't serving to balance anything at this point unless the player is quite unlucky.

What you just said implies that food is a balancing factor there.
if you use a staff of energy, you aren't using elemental staff to make your spells even more powerful.

[duvessa]

glaciate is awful compared to ice storm (which was already an awful spell lol)
no range, no hitting things out of los, insultingly small damage buff to "compensate" for it

[and into]

^ Edited out some needless ad hom in KIMC's post.

Also regarding glaciate/ice storm, there was a discussion in this thread if you are interested:

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12202&p=171614

If anyone wants to argue about it or defend glaciate's honor, necro that thread or post a new one in the appropriate forum. Thanks!

[Bim]

I assure you, you don't cast nothing but Xstorm once you've become able to.

I can assure you I've done precisely that!

I'm not saying that the other balances don't exist, or that they're not on the same level/more important balances than food, just that food could be made relevant again.

Giving all high end spells a food cost and having limited permafood would give you an extra strategic layer - 'Do I cast deflect missiles and iron bolt and possibly not be able to cast them later, or do I try another method?' Currently, that's never, ever going to happen - you can just spam spells until your mana runs out, retreat, recover, and repeat. At an average 50mp for a late game spell caster, that's 5 xstorms in one go, which is enough to dominate anything you're going to run into.

Again, I agree that xp and MP are good and important balancing factors, but isn't it better to get the player to be more creative rather than spamming high end spells infinitely?

I'd suggest that if we go chunkless, we make permafood rare but only used in spells and abilities. For those spells and abilities, the cost can be high enough that permafood requires strategic management rather than just eating another of your 45 loaves of bread and meat.

[nilsbloodaxe]

I'm not saying that the other balances don't exist, or that they're not on the same level/more important balances than food, just that food could be made relevant again.

Except that is exactly what tabstorm's proposal is, to make food relevant again, by using it to force you to move forward rather than being able to

just spam spells until your mana runs out, retreat, recover, and repeat.

This is because with food tighter and pushing you forward, taking the time to retreat, recover, and continue (and this includes meleedudes and rangeddudes), actually costs something. And since you have to constantly move forward due to hunger, your MP (and HP) will become more precious and you will have to decide whether "spamming high end spells" is the best use of your MP, since using it up means rest time or some other means of MP recovery.

I'd suggest that if we go chunkless, we make permafood rare but only used in spells and abilities. For those spells and abilities, the cost can be high enough that permafood requires strategic management rather than just eating another of your 45 loaves of bread and meat.

Again this will encourage rather than discourage resting, since all you need to do if running low on HP/MP is get away from combat and rest up, with no worries about pressing forward, since you won't hunger.

[tabstorm]

Compared to other level 9s it certainly does do worse damage to enemies at the edge of LoS, and certainly less than ice storm used to. Yes, it is worse than ice storm, because when you use a level 9 spell, you have done so with the goal of killing enemies at a considerable distance from you, quickly (I hope). Against resistant enemies far away, glaciate costs quite a bit of MP to actually kill anything (compared to old ice storm), due to the damage falloff, so you need to expose yourself to ranged attacks by walking closer to enemies, or waste MP that you would not have wasted with ice storm. Yes, I have used both.

What you just said implies that food is a balancing factor there.
if you use a staff of energy, you aren't using elemental staff to make your spells even more powerful.

Here is what the poster I replied to is saying:
"The XP cost of level 8/9 conjurations spells is not a sufficient restriction for their power." Many skilled players (myself included, if I can be permitted to say greaterplayer = skilled) would say that the XP investment makes these spells (level 9s, at least, and maybe even 8s) suboptimal in 3 rune games, and not worth using. The person I replied to clearly feels this is an incorrect assessment. Regardless, by disagreeing I am saying that the XP investment is a sufficient cost, and that it is not necessary to have a food cost as well, since the XP cost already makes these spells poor choices. You might think that not only is it wrong to say that the XP cost is not enough, but that these spells also need a large hunger cost. Well, that's fine, but you are disagreeing with many of the most knowledgeable players of this game. I can't really prove you are wrong, I can only assert that using these spells in a 3 rune game isn't optimal, and say "Take my word for it."

Also, I assume that it is also being asserted that even in extended (or even especially in extended), the high level spells must continue to have large hunger costs to balance them, because the XP barrier has been comfortably surmounted and you can overcome the XP you didn't invest in defense or HP in the regular game. I think that by this time in the game, there is enough food between chunks in Pan, rations, etc. that the hunger cost is still an illusory danger. Even though there are less chunks overall, as I just said, Pan has plenty from demonspawn, and also goes quickly unless you attempt to clear every floor. The Hells go quickly anyway provided you don't attempt to clear floors (which is just playing poorly), and the Tomb may well consume a few rations by this point. Basically, assuming the player has played reasonably well in the main game in terms of skill training, I think that even without items like |energy or gourmand or necromutation, I think the player would still be fine in Pan/Hell with the rations left over from the main game. All this means is that I would not be rushing my highest level conjurations early (which I have already claimed would not be a good allocation of experience), which results in there being many rations left over.

Basically, I'm saying that extended without food costs on level 9s would play like it does currently, except some characters may use an enhancer staff where they might have used energy to cut down on the annoying eating (or conserve food if they have managed it poorly). I understand that this is a buff to such characters, but I feel that the things gained (less hunger messages interrupting travel, less need to butcher/eat or write macros to do it for you, etc.) that have been outlined ITT are worth the consequence of giving a buff to high level conjuration users in extended. In the main game, I don't think it's needed to keep the excessive hunger around just as a means to punish players who have poorly allocated XP.

I can assure you I've done precisely that!

Ok, maybe I should instead say: It is better to cast, say, OOD x2 vs. a strongly fire resistant enemy than FS x2, to conserve MP. So, you probably should be using spells other than your level 9.

[zardo]

I also think that most people who are against your "ideas" simply don't bother replying to this thread because they find your claims ridiculous.

Yes I'm sure you have lots of supporters reading this thread just sitting there being too right about everything to comment...

[njvack]

OK, I think this topic has run its course. If devs are interested in further discussion of it, please unlock.