Proposal: remove chunk-eating for satiation purposes

[dpeg]

mikee: good stuff, although there is some clash (at least flavour-wise) with fruits for Fedhas. Of course, fruits could be abstracted too ("You carry 16 fruits.") and maybe that's the right way to go. It just feels .... less flavourful.

[nicolae]

mikee: good stuff, although there is some clash (at least flavour-wise) with fruits for Fedhas. Of course, fruits could be abstracted too ("You carry 16 fruits.") and maybe that's the right way to go. It just feels .... less flavourful.

What about combining the current system and the abstract food system? You can have weightless, slotless generic food rations, but food with special effects (fruit, ambrosia, whatever) takes up slots, so you still have to think about how much special food to carry, without hampering your basic food supply. (Though it might be worthwhile to condense fruit into a single slot and do the variation when you eat it, like with pizza toppings.)

[njvack]

And fruits are delicious! They can't lose their flavour! Also, there's ambrosia which is kinda half-food, half-potion.

The other thing is you wouldn't be able to drop food around harpies. If food destruction is to continue to be a thing, that has heightened significance if you can't eat the harpies anymore.

Pizzafying fruit sounds cool, though I'd be a little sad if they were all generic on the ground. There are some amusing fruit-based vaults.

[and into]

And fruits are delicious! They can't lose their flavour! Also, there's ambrosia which is kinda half-food, half-potion.

The other thing is you wouldn't be able to drop food around harpies. If food destruction is to continue to be a thing, that has heightened significance if you can't eat the harpies anymore.

Pizzafying fruit sounds cool, though I'd be a little sad if they were all generic on the ground. There are some amusing fruit-based vaults.

You can keep the colorful tiles, etc., and just have it accumulate in your inventory under a single "fruit" category that takes up once space. Each fruit gets a numeric value that it adds to the generic "fruit amount," which is distinguished by its quick eating speed (but it gives lower nutrition). Also Fedhas use.

Continued food destruction is fine.

Things like ambrosia and royal jellies and the like would continue to operate the way they do already.

[XuaXua]

4) Remove ring of sustenance and amulet of gourmand. The staff of energy is better in this regardand can stay.

I say keep the Gourmand and Hunger-/-- effects for artefacts.

[zugundertherug]

Something worth mentioning in regards to the current food system is the difference between using autoexplore and not using autoexplore. Currently if you don't autoexplore then Crawl already can be played as a permafood only game for many characters. However many (most?) players find manually exploring the dungeon to be tedious and end up eating chunks due to increased travel time.

[sanka]

I really like ideas in this thread to use food as a more abstract resource and get away with chunks.

The only thing which bothers me is that because of item destruction/weight limits you are encouraged to create stashes of various items, and this creates a lot of tedious travels, which can cut into your food supplies. Currently an other annoying feature, the random monster generation on already empty levels makes it much less harsh, since you are likely to meet with some edible monsters.

If no chunks will be implemented, I think one of two things should be added:
1. Either make travels do not cost too much food. Spriggans has this, that's why they are not annoying with permafood only.
2. Make stashes suboptimal, so you are less likely to travel a lot. Currently I usually travel for two reasons:
a) Because of item destruction, it's usually better to leave all strategical and some tactical resources on the ground.
c) Books are heavy, and you are not likely to memorize anything in combat, so I simply leave them behind.
I'd really hate to optimize my travels because they cost too much food. (Travelling too much also decrease your final score, but I'm less concerned about this since I'm not very good anyway.)

Or somebody can tell me that I play stupidly, and I simply should not stash.

[Lasty]

2. Make stashes suboptimal

Done.

[and into]

The only thing which bothers me is that because of item destruction/weight limits you are encouraged to create stashes of various items, and this creates a lot of tedious travels, which can cut into your food supplies.

I don't think backtracking is a major food cost or problem. Removing chunks won't make it more of one, because in general you have to eat food when you get hungry backtracking (unless you get lucky and stumble upon a quokka during autotravel) even as things stand now. So taking out chunks is not going to make backtracking cost more food than it does now, and the amount of food it takes now is very low. Also, whereas chunks are a part of the game that is foisted upon you, setting up the usual Lair 2 stash and making the trek back there every time you get a scroll of EW I is optional, which is why the former is more of a design issue than the latter.

If you really find backtracking to be tedious, Sanka, maybe the way you stash is creating some problems that you can address by changing game play a bit.

Without getting into the whole "is setting up a stash good play," I'll simply say that even if you *do* the Lair 2 stash, there are some easy things you can do to streamline things a bit. For instance, set up "mini-stashes" for valuable items in out-of-the-way places (like corners of a large room) every couple of floors, then go back to them and see what you actually want to keep, and take any really valuable items (like Cure Mut and acquirement scrolls that you want to save) back to a primary perma-safe stash on Lair 2. Works particularly well to do this in dungeon just outside of the Vaults staircase, for instance, for everything you get in vaults 1 to 4 and Crypt/Forest.

Even for those super-paranoid about item destruction, I think this will give a good balance: The comforting illusion of safety ("My items of safe, so I am safe... My items are safe, so I am safe... My items are safe, I am safe....") without all the tedium.

[ackack]

Courtesy of fast travel, the actual location of the stash is fairly irrelevant in terms of backtracking tedium. Sure, you are more likely to encounter respawns on a longer trip. But even if you leave everything on the floor and only have to go back a few floors, it is very irritating. I would not have guessed how irritating it is until I tried it, and I wonder how many of the people of the mindset that it's fine have really tried it.

I like mikee's suggestion. (Frankly, I'd probably be happy to get rid of weight limited inventory and only do slots, as in practice all the weight ever seems to do is introduce tedium.)

[dpeg]

ackack: I think it will be much easier to get a change on the way if the steps are small. Item weights are a separate issue, and may need thought. However, that matter is not clear cut (think about wands, javelins, large rocks). Getting rid of food will be easier if weights are left out of the picture. (Okay, reducing weights of rations could be part of the patch, but I am unable to see that a first permafood version with current ratio weights should be unplayable. In other words, food weight can be addressed later (or not), when we're able to play chunkless games.)

[and into]

ackack: I think it will be much easier to get a change on the way if the steps are small. Item weights are a separate issue, and may need thought. However, that matter is not clear cut (think about wands, javelins, large rocks). Getting rid of food will be easier if weights are left out of the picture. (Okay, reducing weights of rations could be part of the patch, but I am unable to see that a first permafood version with current ratio weights should be unplayable. In other words, food weight can be addressed later (or not), when we're able to play chunkless games.)

I hadn't quite thought of it like that. Removing permafood weight would be functionally similar to making wands, etc., weigh less. You can carry much more of them... Of course their weight could be increased, in turn, but already then this quickly spirals out into other areas that need to be dealt with separately.

So, my earlier post notwithstanding, one major change at a time is probably wise. Tweaking weight could be fine, but there would be too many other considerations if it were removed.

EDIT: Also keep in mind that not having to carry around chunks (except sublimation and simulacra, unless/until that mechanism is changed—again, separate topic!) would already mean less annoying juggling and you could carry at least one, maybe two extra wands, on average, compared to now. (Or, alternately, one or two extra pieces of permafood.)