Make Devour Food Less Strong

[The Mantis]

Here is a topic that tries to think of all the ways you get hungry: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5086

A harpy is an enemy that has a unique power. They are very rare mostly. These birdfolk appear in the Vaults, the Dungeon and in the Shoals only it is a common foe.

It is a brand that eats 10% of your rations a hit, hits twice a turn and the monster comes in packs of 5. So it's really strong, but since it's unique it's barely ever seen, the effect I mean, particularly early in the game.

Everyone knows they appear in Shoals. I saw a player lose 14/15 rations in a fight over six turns because the 10% is a chance, not a fixed amount. This was versus five harpies.

Make it less strong somehow. Maybe make it a fixed number. Food is common. It is not a problem mostly. If you're an Ogre or another dumb race it is a problem. Another case is if you use rods which make you hungry. Oh, if you're a bad player you might have low Spellcasting. Or make it more common so everyone knows about it and it is not a big shock.

[Deimos]

I think it should just be removed altogether.

[dd]

Just add a cap to it, like a fixed amount of food items that can be devoured in a certain amount of turns.

I don't think harpies are too problematic though, they're not all that common, and conservation protects against them somewhat.

[Galefury]

I usually don't lose a lot of food to harpies. I also don't usually carry a lot of food. If you're carrying 16 rations you are doing something wrong.

[galehar]

Those stats make no sense. The chance to be eaten is per item. The more you carry, the more will get destroyed, just like any other case of item destruction.
This guy who lost 14 rations, how many was he carrying? Why would anyone want to carry more than a couple anyway?

[bobross419]

Wow... I usually keep ~8 breads on me and thats more than enough. I rarely lose any at all to harpies and when I do its only 1 or 2. If you know you will be somewhere with harpies just don't take so much food. Outside of Shoals and Vaults you really don't have to worry about them.

[Tiber]

Unless I'm playing a high-food race or a Chei follower, carrying more than 3-5 rations weighs too much anyway. With shoals, you expect a lot of harpies, so you'd leave your food behind even if they only had a 5% chance to devour. So vaults are where it really matters. In that case, I could support a small lowering, but you really shouldn't be carrying enough for it to matter much.

[bobross419]

What Tiber said, too.

Also... eat more chunks... even the brown ones. If you eat at Hungry nausea won't be a problem. rPois is also a great poor man's gourmand as a lot of the poisonous chunks are white when you have rpois. If you eat chunks you'll have so much food you won't know what to do with it all.

[njvack]

Yeah. Kill the harpies, eat the harpies. I especially like it when they devour chunks of harpy meat.

[The Mantis]

Opening post updated.

[KoboldLord]

You are never going to get a positive reaction to your issue here. Food damage is capped at the amount of food you're carrying on your person, and it's really freaking stupid to be carrying a bunch of heavy crap that you don't actually need instead of some wands or something that could potentially actually be useful. Furthermore, your estimates of food damage for typical characters are completely outlandish and would cripple your persuasiveness even if you did have a legitimate grievance, because they are far enough out of whack to make it obvious that you're either making your statistics up or you're wildly misapplying them.

If you're having trouble with harpies, try killing them. They're somewhat nasty when they first start appearing, but not worse than some of the other things that appear in the same parts of the game. Their speed and damage output is worthy of your concern. Their food destruction is not.

[The Mantis]

Food damage is capped at the amount of food you're carrying on your person, and it's really freaking stupid to be carrying a bunch of heavy crap that you don't actually need instead of some wands or something that could potentially actually be useful.

Are you able to carry the items you want? If so, why not carry some food? It is good to eat some food. It makes you full. Once, I played a Tengu Priest and it ate a lot of food. Some say it ate too much food. Others argue that it did not eat enough food. I say, MANY BELLIES.

Furthermore, your estimates of food damage for typical characters are completely outlandish and would cripple your persuasiveness even if you did have a legitimate grievance, because they are far enough out of whack to make it obvious that you're either making your statistics up or you're wildly misapplying them.

They are in fact based off ouch.cc assuming 15 rations, as per the example. I downgraded this to 5 rations, which renders a value precisely accurate before the Bernouilli function is applied.

If you're having trouble with harpies, try killing them.

They're somewhat nasty when they first start appearing, but not worse than some of the other things that appear in the same parts of the game. Their speed and damage output is worthy of your concern. Their food destruction is not.

Killing something is often a way of solving its problems. Some say it is the best way to solve problems. Others say it is the worst way to solve problems. I say, MANY BELLIES.

I wish that players who are malnourished and nearing starvation, directly or indirectly, knew that food destruction was not important. That way, they could eat some food and solve their problems!

[Galefury]

I don't give a shit about what happens to food destruction. For all I care it could be made three times as powerful, removed, or just left alone. It's neither interesting nor dangerous. The mechanical effects are so negligible that it can almost be called flavour only, like dual-wielding monsters or monster speech (monster speech is awesome, though). You lost three of your five rations, so what?

Food destruction is only a problem if you carry all your food with you, which is almost always a stupid thing to do because you could be carrying something useful instead.

[BlackSheep]

Semi-related: Does conservation protect food from harpies/spores?

[dd]

It does, although not infallibly.

[galehar]

No it doesn't.

[Grimm]

It's neither interesting nor dangerous. The mechanical effects are so negligible that it can almost be called flavour only

A lot of monsters and monster attacks are regularly dismissed in these terms. The criticisms are valid, if the monster in question is regarded on its own. In my experience though it is usually not a single monster type that does me in, it is a concatenation of attacks and bad rolls that complement each other to my detriment. I have my three breads stolen, then a javelineer wounds me badly from across water, then Polyphemus shows up and I am both too weak to fight normally and too hungry to berserk, with no food to hand, oh and my last ?tele was just torched by a fluke fire attack...death swiftly follows.

Skilled players avoid these situations because part of becoming good at Crawl is becoming familiar with the huge number of permutations of threats, and which combinations are likely to appear in which areas.

Single monsters will always be trivial once their trick is learned. But if monsters come as "fireteams" and "squads" of varied types whose attacks combine to present a genuinely dangerous situation, then they are not so trivial. Ideally monsters would always be designed and positioned in the dungeon in this way.

[The Mantis]

About Conservation:

Semi-related: Does conservation protect food from harpies/spores?

It does, although not infallibly.

Partly redacted from the last paragraph:

Conservation has no effect. [...]

The trouble is that food destruction only occurs from two sources in the game, it's not that dangerous unless you have a lot of food on you, for whatever reason, and in which case it is extremely dangerous, because the only time you would carry lots of food is if you need it shortly to live through what you are about to perform. It targets a specific, rare weakness. Mostly it is harmless, sometimes it is deadly.

[Galefury]

It is deadly for extremely undeadly values of deadly.

If "what you are about to perform" includes going to a new level and exploring it, you wont have a food problem.

[The Mantis]

I edited the post at the top to make it short.

[galehar]

Make it less strong somehow. Maybe make it a fixed number.

The point of item destruction is to force players to only carry few consumables. Changing the fixed per item chance to a fixed number of item destroyed would encourage players to carry junk items to absorb the destruction and reduce the chance of good items being destroyed. This isn't good.
And there's no need to make it less strong, it's working as intended.

[pratamawirya]

Junk items being less junky is not a bad thing, is it?

[The Mantis]

Make it less strong somehow. Maybe make it a fixed number.

The point of item destruction is to force players to only carry few consumables. Changing the fixed per item chance to a fixed number of item destroyed would encourage players to carry junk items to absorb the destruction and reduce the chance of good items being destroyed. This isn't good.
And there's no need to make it less strong, it's working as intended.

I meant a fixed percentage of total food carried, which I assumed was obvious contextually.

[galehar]

Junk items being less junky is not a bad thing, is it?

I think it's wrong to encourage players to pick up and carry scrolls of random uselessness to protect their scrolls of blinking.

I meant a fixed percentage of total food carried, which I assumed was obvious contextually.

a fixed percentage of what? Number of items? Then no, don't want to carry sultanas to protect rations. Nutrition? It's a bit realistic, but I'd rather keep the current behaviour because it's consistent with other kinds of item destructions. Gameplay consistency is more important than realism.

[The Mantis]

Fixed percentage of nutrition.