Bring back poisonous chunks

[Berder]

THESES

1. There are characters who need to eat poison chunks in lair and lair branches and wouldn't have enough food otherwise. For example, blaster mages casting bolt spells with int around 20, who didn't luck out with a stack of royal jellies or something. Also, weak fighters who have to rest a lot (thinking octopode melee for example).
2. These characters almost always had access to a source of rPois, whether from armor, jewelry, their race, their god, a staff of poison, an artifact weapon, or even a transmutation. They were able to depend on poisonous chunks as a reliable food source.
3. There are branches with few non-poisonous chunks. Spider and snake fall into this category. Lair and swamp also to a lesser degree.
4. Now that poisonous chunks are removed, these mages are far less viable and have to get lucky with a stack of royal jellies or a food shop.
5. On the other hand, simple melee bruisers are unaffected by this change.
6. There is a cadre of players who seem to hate advanced spells and only want to play simple melee bruisers. That's fine for them, but please accept that there are other ways to play the game that are fun for other people.
7. The reduced viability of the medium-int mage playstyle reduces the depth and diversity of crawl. That's a bad thing.
8. The patch cited annoyance for a small number of characters who had to swap poison resistance to eat chunks.
9. The characters who had to swap poison resistance to eat poisonous chunks were exactly the kind of characters this patch penalizes.
10. Because of that, the patch did not achieve its stated purpose of reducing annoyance for any characters. Metaphorically, it's like observing that it's annoying to wait in line at the DMV, and solving this problem by closing the DMV.
11. If you want to actually reduce annoyance for characters who had to swap poison resistance to eat chunks, you should simply turn poisonous corpses into normal corpses. Since characters who needed rpois to eat poisonous chunks almost always were able to get it, this would not upset game balance significantly.

[johlstei]

I don't understand, I thought the change did just make them normal corpses...

Either way, if you bring them back, also add electrified chunks and fiery chunks and let me eat red chunks if I have rRot.

PS can we remove red chunks now?

[Sar]

Weren't it said in the previous thread that is just one of upcoming food related changes? Aren't we supposed to move to chunkless Crawl at some point anyway?

[CanOfWorms]

I think it's neat that the no poison chunk change makes the poison branch rune an actual decision for certain builds.

[Berder]

I think it's neat that the no poison chunk change makes the poison branch rune an actual decision for certain builds.

An actual decision for certain builds that were hurt by this change, and a no brainer for anyone else.

[basil]

Kablastinators were hurt by the gourmand change a good while ago. I still think it was a good change.

Anyway, that first premise is pretty sketchy so the conclusions that hinge on it sort of fall short.

[CanOfWorms]

From the perspective of hunger, any build that relies on chunks aren't severely affected, although I might agree that Lair is a bit imbalanced on edible/inedible chunks (Maybe death yaks could become edible or something.) For the poison branch though, those builds aren't affected outside of creating the "Should I try for this branch's rune" decision. Chunks rot so you're not missing out on a secret cache of poisonous permafood, and you can avoid starving to death in Snake/Spider by not going into Snake/Spider. The only mandatory branches for any character are Dungeon, Depths and Zot and those all have a reasonable amount of edible chunks.

[johlstei]

I'm so confused, everyone's talking like this change has been made and taking it for granted, but the change that merged just makes the monsters drop regular corpses. None of those arguments make sense given that.

Look at the code if you don't believe me, they have the CE_CLEAN flag, when they'd have CE_NOCORPSE if they dropped no corpses. This is explained in a comment in that file:
http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... e6b88b74d9

[CanOfWorms]

This one is the inedible (both metaphorically and literally) commit.

[johlstei]

This one is the inedible (both metaphorically and literally) commit.

Okay thanks, that makes more sense now, I thought that patch was just renaming something but it also does a stealth partial revert of a previous change.

[jejorda2]

I played a game last night where kobolds gave me inedible chunks while wearing a ring of poison resistance.

[Berder]

Anyway, that first premise is pretty sketchy so the conclusions that hinge on it sort of fall short.

It is absolutely true. I've played blaster mages who go from satiated to starving before they run out of mp, and they absolutely need to eat the chunks that result. Casting level 6 spells in lair and lair branches will do that.

But you claim that removing poison chunks hurts no one because everyone has plenty of food. By that logic, adding infinite food wouldn't help anyone either. So just give 50 meat rations on d1 in each character's starting inventory! Or put the 50 meat rations on lair:1 if you want to keep the (very minor) early game food pressure. Why don't you want to do that? Limiting food penalizes particular play styles that you don't personally care for.

I'm so confused, everyone's talking like this change has been made and taking it for granted, but the change that merged just makes the monsters drop regular corpses. None of those arguments make sense given that.

It's possible there was another patch? Or maybe you're misinterpreting it. In cszo trunk they do leave corpses, inedible corpses.

[johlstei]

It's possible there was another patch? Or maybe you're misinterpreting it. In cszo trunk they do leave corpses, inedible corpses.

Yeah, there was a second patch lurking after the first one, the patch text tricked me. You're right.

So....how about those red chunks? ...and the white ones?

[CanOfWorms]

But you claim that removing poison chunks hurts no one because everyone has plenty of food.

Who claimed that?

[Berder]

But you claim that removing poison chunks hurts no one because everyone has plenty of food.

Who claimed that?

Basil did, by denying that there are characters who need to eat poison chunks.

[njvack]

I... I don't see anything in the commit logs suggesting making spider stop having chunks was intentional. The first commit says:

  Code:

Remove poisonous chunks.

They're mostly a hassle if you have rPois but are not wearing it all the
time, or may as well be clean if you permanent rPois. In Lair branches,
the only place where they're really concentrated, you can just as well eat
some of the tons of permafood that generates; food is certainly not a
problem in most games that get that far. And if we want to limit the
number of chunks you can get, restricting them behind a random resistance
is not the right way to go. No other resistance has any kind of strategic
effect in this way.

Ignite poison checks for innate poison spells now, so monsters nagas will
still be affected.


and the second:

  Code:

s/CE_ROT/CE_NOXIOUS/, s/CE_POISONOUS/CE_NOXIOUS/ (|amethyst).


I think it's a bug.

[wheals]

I originally made poisonous chunks clean, as per that first commit, then made them totally inedible in the second commit, which I definitely admit could be better-named/described.

I'm willing to revert back to the state of 7e18a9b639e8, but I think it might be fair to test out this new change in the meantime first -- that's what trunk is for, anyway. I have done Spider with a very casting-heavy character and no rPois before (a deep elf, admittedly), so I know it's possible, but you may be right it's too far.

[CanOfWorms]

But you claim that removing poison chunks hurts no one because everyone has plenty of food.

Who claimed that?

Basil did, by denying that there are characters who need to eat poison chunks.

That's not a reasonable conclusion to draw. If you say "This meal tastes like shit wrapped in fertilizer baked in a charcoal mine" and someone else says, "No, I don't think so", they are not necessarily saying "I don't think there's anything wrong with this meal." (Not that I'm trying to equate the arguments to these descriptions.)

I would agree that removing poisonous chunks has a clear negative impact for characters that rely on chunks; However I wouldn't agree that it is bad enough to require bringing them back. Like I mentioned before, you're not required to do the poison Lair branches, and all the mandatory branches have enough sources of edible chunks.

I also looked up the Lair spawn list:

Iguana
Black Bear
Wolf
Giant Frog
Blink Frog
Porcupine
Crocodile
Hippogriff
Komodo Dragon
Yak
Sheep
Wyvern
Elephant
Griffon

River/Hell Rat
Scorpion
Basilisk
Water Moccasin
Black Mamba
Death Yak
Wasp
Spiny Frog
Boulder Beetle

These monsters are common spawns in Lair (there are rarer spawns I omitted in both lists) and it certainly looks to me that there's a reasonable source of chunks. The weight might be skewed as you go deeper, but you could fix that by making death yaks edible (since there's no flavourful reason they should have poisonous chunks to begin with.)

[bel]

Why are there two threads about the same thing? Ah I see now, this one's in GDD while the other's in CYC. Couldn't you have asked a mod to move the other thread here?

Basically, TL;DR. I think the change was just a tweak to "reduce hassle". It talked about no large game balance issues like spellcasters starving in spider. So, make the chunks clean and all will be well in this world.

[njvack]

I'm curious: in the first message, it looks like you specifically don't want to gate the number of chunks people get. What changed your mind?

I am also not sure this change is a bad thing; ultimately, putting some delicious monsters in Spider (Snake already has the occasional adder and anaconda) could lessen the bite somewhat if needed. But making food relevant to some characters in some games doesn't seem inherently horrible.

@CanOfWorms: I think there are plenty of chunks in Lair itself; the poison lair branches are a little more spare.

[wheals]

I was really thinking about keeping the amount of food the same. It seems that the implicit first assumption ("you usually have rPois by poison branch") is more correct than the implicit second ("the original design intention of poison chunks is to lower the amount of food you have in poison branches"). I guess the second has a more basic assumption that there was a real design intention, which seems false.

As such, I'm reverting back to making poisonous chunks clean. Happy eating!

[njvack]

Thanks!

FWIW, as a complete coincidence, I just did Spider the other day with an Ogre with no rP, casting a lot of Animate Dead with terrible int and low spellcasting. I burned through most of my permafood (I'd cleared D, Lair, and Orc) and it was actually kind of interesting. The branch ran out before my food did (I had maybe 4-5 rations left), but I was reasonably close to the "rush or go somewhere else" point.

[Berder]

Thanks!

[wheals]

Happy April Fool's everybody!

[PleasingFungus]

chaos reigns........

[Berder]

Sorry, what? Which was "april fools," making poisonous chunks inedible or the reinstatement of them as clean chunks? I'm still seeing inedible chunks from iron trolls.

[Arrhythmia]

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... a8387e9aa7

[Berder]

Well, I just finished a game with this change and I can confirm: it's short on food!!! I played an OgHu who just bashes things. I also had rods of clouds but didn't use them a ton. I ate unpoisoned corpses whenever possible. I finished with 6 bread rations (bread rations were what I was carrying for most of the game). When starting zot5 with IIRC 8 bread rations I decided I needed to go back and get the meat rations I'd left behind, so I finished with 6 bread rations, 11 meat rations, and 18 fruits. Here is the log: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Berder/morg ... 083420.txt

During this game I ate 223 chunks, 13 pizza, 18 royal jelly, 7 meat rations, 19 bread rations, and 1 fruit. Total nutrition used:
223 * 1000 + 13 * 1500 + 18 * 2000 + 7 * 5000 + 19 * 4400 + 850 = 397950, the equivalent of about 80 meat rations.

Now let's take a recent 3 rune mage game where I remember having food concerns. It was a FeFE: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Berder/morg ... 000144.txt
During that game I ate 544 chunks (with carnivore 3), 5 royal jelly, 11 beef jerky (carnivore 3), 14 pizza, and 20 meat rations (carnivore 3). Total nutrition used:
544 * 1300 + 5 * 5000 + 11 * 2100 + 14 * 1500 + 20 * 6500 = 906300, the equivalent of about 181.26 non-carnivore meat rations, over 100 rations more than the OgHu.

Now what does that mean? It means spell hunger for the FeFE cost 100 rations beyond what the OgHu was using. That's how much hungrier a hungry mage is than a basher. Did the OgHu have 100 rations of food remaining in the game? Absolutely not! The conclusion is that the FeFE or similar characters would have starved to death under the new regime.

BRING BACK THE CHUNKS

[Sar]

wait how do you starve on a Fe they can still eat corpses in every other branch than spider

Edit: also it seems like some spider monsters have been made edible: orb spiders, tarantellas, beetles, snails.

[Berder]

By casting spells in every fight without amazing int, and becoming hungry. How else?

Here's another recent game of mine, a FoVM. Unlike the FeFE, this one had strong non-magic combat (an arbalest) which he used more than magic
http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 024405.txt

And yet he ate 95 meat-ration equivalents, 15 more than the OgHu I just won. Did the OgHu have 15 meat-rations remaining in the game? Yes, but barely. It's quite conceivable that the FoVM could have run out of food under the new regime if the RNG had gone another way.

[Sar]

I don't know, I played a FeFE some time ago, and my experience was that I pretty much never had to eat permafood (at least that's how I remember it) and had big stacks of meat and jerky. If I had to dip in these stacks for Spider that probably would not kill me.

[Berder]

And of course there's channeling. Here's the most recent Sif win, an OpIE. http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/Bo ... 161235.txt This fellow ate a whopping 494 chunks. Total nutrition used: 140 meat-ration equivalents. He would not have had enough food if he only had the food available in my OgHu game.


Here's the most recent OpCj non-sif win. Chunks eaten: 404. Meat ration equivalent: 163 meat rations. Wouldn't have had enough food in the new regime. http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/ma ... 174641.txt

[nago]

I sincerely don't see the problem.
This new bad regime affects the monsters (and most , but not all!) of one branch.
If some player manage to starve to death (but I end 95% of my char with 20+ rations and often I starts to eat only permafood after depths because it's less annoying!) just by exploring ONE branch, maybe they can learn to not cast lv. 6 + spell in every trivial fight with terrible int and low spellcasting.
Or just go in another branch of the other 14 if they really can't avoid to do that

[Berder]

This new bad regime affects the monsters (and most , but not all!) of one branch.

Wrong! It affects the entire game. It affects spider, snake, swamp, lair, and the whole game.

For instance, what happens if you just killed some dangerous poisonous things and are now very hungry, near starving, or starving? You have to eat a ration, even if the branch contains other things that are edible. And now that you've eaten the ration you probably aren't hungry enough to eat the chunks resulting from your next fight, even if those are edible; they just rot. So because some fights don't produce edible chunks, you keep having to eat rations and aren't able to make use of many of the chunks that you do get.

In the previous couple posts, I presented evidence showing there are games where there wouldn't be enough food in the entire game with reduced chunks. The game now may only provide around 95 meat-ration equivalents including chunks, and some characters need almost twice that.

maybe they can learn to not cast lv. 6 + spell in every trivial fight with terrible int and low spellcasting.

"terrible" int? Let's say 22 int. That's not terrible! It's about what you get if you're an xl12 OpCj that has sunk all points into int. "low" spellcasting? Let's say 10. 10 spellcasting is decently high for lair and lair branches!

Now here's reality. From the bottom of "satiated," with 22 int and 10 spellcasting, it takes... six casts of bolt of fire to become starving. Or five casts if you then rest afterward to regain MP.

And what if you're walking around hungry because you hope to be able to kill something and eat it, and not have to eat a ration? Then it takes even fewer casts to become starving. I think you don't play this kind of character often enough to understand this.

"Oh don't use level 6 spells" - if they are your most powerful attacking option and you are fighting dangerous things, you don't have a choice. It's either use the bolt spell or poison arrow, or just be weak. That's how this kind of character plays. You'd have to play it more to understand.

[asdu]

I think it's neat that the no poison chunk change makes the poison branch rune an actual decision for certain builds.

I would question how interesting of a strategic decision is one that forces me to delay entering a branch that I'm strong enough for but can't sustain in, and then go back to it when I have more int and spellcasting and/or more permafood, and the difficulty of that branch is now below trivial.

[bel]

No idea what long discussions the commit refers to. Perhaps on crawl-dev.

Obviously making poisonous chunks inedible makes no sense at all for a tweak which was only supposed to reduce hassle. (And I see that nobody has defended it on that basis here). The arguments are over whether it matters anyway: there is plenty of permafood or not. If it doesn't matter, why not just make them edible? Let the people who think it matters eat the chunks, let the others eat permafood.

I suppose the idea was to test how reducing (or perhaps removing) chunks would change the game. Why not just do it then, instead of tacking it onto a totally unrelated thing? I guess it was just easier. Whether it makes sense or not is not too important for this issue.

[njvack]

@Berder: What do you do in 0.16 if you don't find rP until late? I'm willing to bet your blaster mages don't starve in those circumstances.

My glib response is "you adapt somehow" because that's what Crawl is, but maybe that situation is insanely rare...?

I suppose the idea was to test how reducing (or perhaps removing) chunks would change the game. Why not just do it then, instead of tacking it onto a totally unrelated thing? I guess it was just easier. Whether it makes sense or not is not too important for this issue.

This limits food in a single branch of the dungeon, so it can be tested somewhat by a lot of players without hugely changing the entire game.

[Sandman25]

@Berder: What do you do in 0.16 if you don't find rP until late? I'm willing to bet your blaster mages don't starve in those circumstances.

Those become extremely annoying games where you avoid some Dungeon/Orc levels to use them as food farm and spend much real time trying to save food. I played Vp in Spider during last tournament and it reminded me instantly why I hate the species without Kiku.

[dowan]

Food adds nothing but tedium to crawl. Making the food clock more random by making players more dependant on permafood doesn't make it less tedious.

On top of that, level 6 spells already cost 6 MP. Why is food tied into magic again? It's supposed to provide an incentive to keep moving, but to have spellcasters require more food, when they already require more resting, doesn't make any sense.

Also, rod hunger. Why?

[duvessa]

And of course there's channeling. Here's the most recent Sif win, an OpIE. http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/Bo ... 161235.txt This fellow ate a whopping 494 chunks. Total nutrition used: 140 meat-ration equivalents. He would not have had enough food if he only had the food available in my OgHu game.

Or maybe they ate 140 meat ration equivalents because there were 140 meat ration equivalents available in the game? I don't need to quaff heal wounds 200 times but you can be damn sure I would if there were 300 heal wounds potions in the game.

In the previous couple posts, I presented evidence showing there are games where there wouldn't be enough food in the entire game with reduced chunks. The game now may only provide around 95 meat-ration equivalents including chunks, and some characters need almost twice that.

Holy shit, the game doesn't need to change just because you suck at it. Can Tavern, devwiki, etc. just have a rule against "difficulty argument"? It would prevent threads like this one at least since "people as bad at crawl as I am will find crawl too hard" seems to be literally the only problem you have with this change.

I suppose the idea was to test how reducing (or perhaps removing) chunks would change the game. Why not just do it then, instead of tacking it onto a totally unrelated thing? I guess it was just easier. Whether it makes sense or not is not too important for this issue.

DCSS development (many other OSS projects too) is similar to how things work in the United States government: the way the politics work, the best way to affect change (or prevent it) is often to attach something unrelated to an existing change.

Food adds nothing but tedium to crawl. Making the food clock more random by making players more dependant on permafood doesn't make it less tedious.

The idea behind chunk reduction is that chunks are more tedious to manage than permafood, and I agree with that. Obviously it doesn't fix the design issues with chunks until you remove chunks completely though.

On top of that, level 6 spells already cost 6 MP. Why is food tied into magic again? It's supposed to provide an incentive to keep moving, but to have spellcasters require more food, when they already require more resting, doesn't make any sense.

Also, rod hunger. Why?

Legacy. It was probably originally intended either as a strategic restriction or a nod to NetHack (or maybe other similar games). Obviously it does not function as the former unless you are a spriggan, since chunks exist. There is resistance to changing it in DCSS because many people believe it functions as a good tactical restriction.

[Sandman25]

Or maybe they ate 140 meat ration equivalents because there were 140 meat ration equivalents available in the game? I don't need to quaff heal wounds 200 times but you can be damn sure I would if there were 300 heal wounds potions in the game.

I am sure you know it is impossible to eat food when you are engorged or to eat chunks when you are not hungry (without gourmand) so it is a bad analogy. If character ate that many rations, it means it spent that many nutrition points. Not every character has choice which staff to use (energy/wizardry/enhancer), sometimes you should either cast a spell with high hunger or effectively become a melee character with some magic support. Do we really want to make casters more melee-oriented?

[Jeremiah]

Is this all part of a conspiracy to make everyone play mummies?

[dowan]

In the previous couple posts, I presented evidence showing there are games where there wouldn't be enough food in the entire game with reduced chunks. The game now may only provide around 95 meat-ration equivalents including chunks, and some characters need almost twice that.

Holy shit, the game doesn't need to change just because you suck at it. Can Tavern, devwiki, etc. just have a rule against "difficulty argument"? It would prevent threads like this one at least since "people as bad at crawl as I am will find crawl too hard" seems to be literally the only problem you have with this change.

Berder is demonstrably NOT bad a crawl. That's not to say his analysis is necessarily correct, but your ad-hominem attack certainly doesn't disprove his argument. What Berder actually said is that this change only serves to limit playstyles, including the mid int hybrid spellcaster in his example.

Of course, it's easier to attack an argument if the person presenting it gives reasoning behind their statement. If you just make baseless claims without backing them up in any way, it's a lot harder to refute, since people aren't even sure what you're actually claiming half the time.

[PleasingFungus]

Those become extremely annoying games where you avoid some Dungeon/Orc levels to use them as food farm and spend much real time trying to save food. I played Vp in Spider during last tournament and it reminded me instantly why I hate the species without Kiku.

Vp doesn't have permafood.

[PleasingFungus]

Or maybe they ate 140 meat ration equivalents because there were 140 meat ration equivalents available in the game? I don't need to quaff heal wounds 200 times but you can be damn sure I would if there were 300 heal wounds potions in the game.

Pretend I'm 'thank'ing this specific part of the post. (Wasn't 'thanks' supposed to be removed, anyway...?)

[dowan]

Those become extremely annoying games where you avoid some Dungeon/Orc levels to use them as food farm and spend much real time trying to save food. I played Vp in Spider during last tournament and it reminded me instantly why I hate the species without Kiku.

Vp doesn't have permafood.

Sure they do! If I leave a bunch of orcs alive in the mines, that's all VP permafood.

[Sandman25]

Those become extremely annoying games where you avoid some Dungeon/Orc levels to use them as food farm and spend much real time trying to save food. I played Vp in Spider during last tournament and it reminded me instantly why I hate the species without Kiku.

Vp doesn't have permafood.

Yes, I know. I imagine playing high hunger casters in a branch with few editable monsters will quickly make me run out of permafood (I've actually almost starved with one of my Sp casters who was unlucky with RNG for permafood).

Also "optimal play" (c) would require making those food farms.

[PleasingFungus]

Yes, I know. I imagine playing high hunger casters in a branch with few editable monsters will quickly make me run out of permafood (I've actually almost starved with one of my Sp casters who was unlucky with RNG for permafood).

Here's a suggestion: play trunk, right now, with a high hunger character, and see if your imagination is right or wrong.

[Sandman25]

Here's a suggestion: play trunk, right now, with a high hunger character, and see if your imagination is right or wrong.

Sorry, I cannot do it, I retired and am playing only my own crawl version. But I can merge the latest trunk into my branch later so I am still interested in trunk staying sane and feel impudent enough to take part in the discussions.

[plantaspoon]

IMO, low int casters should use Staff of energy more.