Pre-emptive spawning on Orb run?

[Psieye]

During the orb run, it's not unusual to never see a demon on many of the floors you run through. Correct me if I'm wrong but it feels like the pan denizens get spawned at periodic intervals so on some floors you can run to the up staircase without the spawn timer expiring. Perhaps the "spawn some demons" event should automatically trigger 1~2 times when you enter a new D floor during the orb run?

[Psieye]

Hmm well, given the current flavour of the orb run is "pan doesn't like what you're doing and is trying to stop you", demons is what we get to keep the orb run interesting. If we need more variety, perhaps some 'only for orb run' monsters are in order? No I don't mean more orb guardians, something new that you don't even see in Zot.

The only other idea I have that wouldn't bias certain builds over others would be "2 of the 4 up staircases (including the escape hatch) on every floor have been replaced with mimics for the orb run".

[JeffQyzt]

Basically, either you ninja'd the orb and the existing opponents are already a threat, or your steamrollered through Zot, and only the Pan Lords and 1s are a threat. It's hard to balance for both.

See the dev wiki here: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:dungeon:orbrun

...and this thread here: https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5141

...for lots of pre-existing brainstorming on the topic.

[Psieye]

Hmm, yep the dev wiki has the "scale the orb run with number of runes" as a priority idea. Ok I can let this thread RIP now, though with this closing comment:

either you ninja'd the orb and the existing opponents are already a threat, or your steamrollered through Zot, and only the Pan Lords and 1s are a threat. It's hard to balance for both.

I recall a different dev wiki page which discussed keeping track of conducts to add more god flavour - e.g. switching to TSO after having used a lot of poison would net a message on the lines of "mortal, do you repent your venomous past deeds?" Perhaps in the far future if that feature is implemented, the orb run could tap into it too. The game would know whether you were a ninja or a bulldozer, which would give extra data (beyond number of runes) to balance the orb run around.