Remove chunks and butchering, have corpses act as chunks

[some12fat2move]

Surely a lot of people would prefer to see eating removed outright, but there are also many who feel that that would be too drastic a change. This proposal is not drastic, as you are still eating the flesh of your enemies, just in a more convenient way. There may be some complaints about flavour, since it doesn't make sense to be carrying entire corpses around, but I think it is easy to imagine that your character, upon picking up a corpse, tears or butchers important pieces of flesh, so that the corpse in your inventory simply represents a chunk or collection of chunks.

This proposal suggests that you:
-Can eat corpses
-Can cast sublimation of blood on wielded corpses
-Can do anything to corpses that you could have done to chunks

Intended effect of this proposal:
-Elimination of all those butchering keypresses!
-Simplifies the game a little bit by reducing item types (no need to distinguish between corpses and chunks)

Side effects of this proposal that I foresee:
-Most importantly, we'd need values for corpse nutrition, probably a function of its average number of chunks, I think an appropriate one would be nutrition = 1000*sqrt(chunkNumber)
-Would probably have to reduce the weight of corpses, I think a 50% reduction would be appropriate
-I guess OOD and disintegration would lose the chunk effect
-Animate skeleton would have to tag corpses "boneless" or something like that so you only get one skeleton per corpse (or just make it use up the corpse)
-The c button would be free

[Amnesiac]

-Elimination of all those butchering keypresses!

  Code:

confirm_butcher        = never
easy_eat_chunks        = true
auto_eat_chunks        = true

This reduces it to one press of "c". Hope this helps. Personally I really don't like this proposal, mostly considering the flavour.

[some12fat2move]

  Code:

confirm_butcher        = never

Well, this setting is suboptimal play because if you stand on a stack of corpses and know that you aren't going to eat all of them, you waste piety (even with gods that don't care about corpses, piety decay means you lose piety from the time spent unnecessarily butchering). The fact that you suggest this setting shows that butchering is tedious enough that people are willing to pay a little piety to avoid it.

[Amnesiac]

No, you butcher one corpse this way and I even think the most edible is chosen.

[some12fat2move]

I see, I should have tried the setting before criticizing it. But unless this going to be the default setting in the next release, butchering will remain a pain in the ass for players who stick to defaults. And when possible, isn't it better to remove a superfluous action than automate it?

[Amnesiac]

I think so, too, but maybe it's about the flavour.

Here are some of MY defaults:
autopickup_exceptions +=<runes
auto_sacrifice = true(not good for Nem, I guess, but I don't worship him)
default_manual_training = true
tile_full_screen = true

runrest_ignore_poison = 1:4(this one is somewhat non-optimal for new players) (and runrest_ignore_message += You feel better.
runrest_ignore_message += You feel sick. but I'm not sure these are formatted the right way, since it from the last init.txt I manually adjusted after using the freshly extracted trunk archive)

[dpeg]

I am something of a grumpy, bearded ex-developer, but I'll propose a rule change to the devteam for the next version (for this one I already got the rune lock <3), and that will be about permafood only (no more chunks!) except for a few species with special culinary conditions (and those would happily keep chopping up corpses, although hopefully with improved init defaults). No promises anything will come of it, but that's the plan. Of course, even if it goes in, there will be plenty of opportunities for "omg, dpeg wanna makes us all starve" shouting, but I am grumpy and bearded enough to not care. There's no need to either support or trash this idea, as I will propose it whatsoever

[Sar]

Hey, unlike runelock I actually like that idea. The only problem I see is that it's going to be a nightmare to balance.
Which might actually be a really big problem, but it's probably worth a try.

[dpeg]

Sar: My suggestion will be to generously increase permafood generation (like, really generously), and then slowly reduce it (over the course of several versions) until we're happy. Dev-happy, not player-happy, that is. A change like this will affect balance (regarding food-heavy spells, or pacification, for example) but I don't see a principal obstacle.

Also: more power to me for not falling for the runelock bait!

[ackack]

Hey, unlike runelock I actually like that idea. The only problem I see is that it's going to be a nightmare to balance.
Which might actually be a really big problem, but it's probably worth a try.

It's a personal bias, but I already find the species with what I consider the weirdest food behavior - Vp - to be one of the most unfun there is. I think making it so that most species didn't mess with chunks at all and then having certain species really chunk up for flavor would make those species pretty unfun relatively.

[Sar]

As opposed to all species being unfun food-wise?
But I see your point. I still don't mind chunking on carnivores much because you can chunk yourself to engorged after a battle and then don't bother with it for a while.

[and into]

I am something of a grumpy, bearded ex-developer, but I'll propose a rule change to the devteam for the next version (for this one I already got the rune lock <3), and that will be about permafood only (no more chunks!) except for a few species with special culinary conditions

Ok, no guarantee that anything will come of it, but I'm holding you to this!

I assume kobolds, felids, ghouls, trolls, vampires will continue to have the same relationship to chunks / food as they currently have, and the rest will go on a permafood-only diet? (With spriggans eating only vegetarian permafood, naturally.)

If this could be coupled with better default init options and (though this might be more difficult to work out) some better interface to streamline sublimation of blood and simulacrum casting by automatically using chunks in your inventory, that would be amazing—as good as the removal of victory dancing. (Which was a bold change that took a few versions to get exactly right, in terms of the new skill training system that replaced it. I imagine that a fundamental change like this might take a little while to get just right, but, like removal of victory dancing, would still be an immediate improvement and thus worthwhile.)

[Amnesiac]

Would be really cool to have Vp as at bloodless all the time, but with regeneration outside the combat. This is the case for me anyway.

edit: well, maybe it's not such a good idea.

[dpeg]

I assume kobolds, felids, ghouls, trolls, vampires will continue to have the same relationship to chunks / food as they currently have, and the rest will go on a permafood-only diet?

That's exactly what I have in mind. It might backfire, but I hope that it's a simple enough change (code-wise) to test it, just like last time. That's also one (but not the only) reason to leave the nutritionally challenged/special/evolved species alone.

[Amnesiac]

Is it really worth changing, though? I mean, especially with easybutcher+autoeat I'm so used to it by now, that it almost doesn't exist for me. It will also change things in the balance between builds that don't rely on food that much, like assassins and non-berserker fighers and berserkers, healers and mages with a heavy magic use. We could as well just remove the food clock.

[Sar]

If a mechanic is so irrelevant you automate it completely and move on it should not exist, ideally.

[Amnesiac]

I'm just economistic. Someone could overuse spells with an otherwise huge hunger, probably.

[ackack]

As opposed to all species being unfun food-wise?

Right now it can't be too bad or you just wouldn't play. If you remove it for a bunch of species for not others, then it's plausible that no one will want to play those species because comparatively it is now arduous.

EDIT: for example, would you ever play a species with nausea at this point?

[Arkhan]

I'm just economistic. Someone could overuse spells with an otherwise huge hunger, probably.

Spriggan caster with orb of destruction that doesn't cost food anymore wheeeeee

[dck]

Because spriggans who know ood have so much trouble nowadays.

[Amnesiac]

Is nausea such a big deal? I would gladly play species with nausea if this was rewarded somehow(good apts/mutations)

[dck]

Nausea as a penalty that is supposed to balance something out is completely irrelevant.
That is not the reason most sane people would never play a race with nausea again.

[Sar]

Sorry, missed the question. It depends at how interesting the race otherwise is (not easy, but interesting). I would probably whine on Tavern about nausea being annoying and irrelevant, though!

[and into]

Is it really worth changing, though? I mean, especially with easybutcher+autoeat I'm so used to it by now, that it almost doesn't exist for me. It will also change things in the balance between builds that don't rely on food that much, like assassins and non-berserker fighers and berserkers, healers and mages with a heavy magic use. We could as well just remove the food clock.

So long as all of the above remain viable, why would this be a bad thing necessarily? All changes potentially do this. As it stands food use *almost* never matters due to chunk availability, except perhaps (sometimes) for healers, and in some rare cases for spriggans. Removing chunks and rebalancing around that (obviously that part is crucial!) might actually provide a means by which to maybe make hunger costs a somewhat meaningful decision. So long as eating chunks is a thing for most species there simply isn't any basis for hunger to ever matter, ever. At all.

I agree hunger should not be a huge factor in the game, but as it stands, hunger doesn't matter for any normal behaviors in game.That is, short of doing stuff like mindlessly and needlessly spamming high-hunger abilities for many thousands of turns of game play, hunger costs are not a concern. It might be nice if a mechanic that is so fundamental to the game were not *that* trivial. Spamming high hunger abilities would still be possible for some species and for =gourmand, so those things would actually differentiate those things and actually matter, which perhaps is preferable to simply removing them. — It is worth a try, at least, IMO.

[Amnesiac]

I didn't hate/care about nausea. That's all. Maybe if we make nausea almost unbearable it will make people eat permafood unless starving which might be an interesting idea to balance something I mean it would be like removing eating chunks but with an emergency option.

[Leafsnail]

Both the OP suggestion and dpeg's proposals seem like improvements over the status quo. If a mechanic's only purpose is to test a player's resilience to tedium/ ability to modify their RC file then it shouldn't exist.

[johlstei]

*Crosses fingers and hopes the proposed change and subsequent rebalancing eventually lead to food's removal*

[XuaXua]

*Crosses fingers and hopes the proposed change and subsequent rebalancing eventually lead to food's removal*

But what will we sacrifice to Fedhas or cast Sublimate on?

[WalkerBoh]

*Crosses fingers and hopes the proposed change and subsequent rebalancing eventually lead to food's removal*

But what will we sacrifice to Fedhas or cast Sublimate on?

Plants laying around the dungeon.

[Mattchew]

> I agree hunger should not be a huge factor in the game, but as it stands, hunger doesn't matter for any normal behaviors in game.

Speaking as intermediate level player, spellcasting hunger shapes my play considerably. When I am playing a spellcaster an amulet of gourmand is one of my favorite finds. When I am playing a spriggan I train spellcasting much more than I would on any other character, entirely for the purpose of managing spell hunger better. I am probably over concerned with hunger--better players are certainly more causal about it than I am--but my point is that myself and other players do play around it. (On the other hand, I have also watched another player basically starve his spellcaster to death with spell hunger.)

[TeshiAlair]

I like chunks because if I get into an intense battle against undead, I can munch some chunks I had lying around from the last worm or yak I butchered. However, I would have all chunks stack, the idea being that keeping rotting meat next to fresh meat will stank up the fresh meat, and to reduce some inventory bulk, making holding chunks a "good if you run into a giant pack unexpectedly" option but far less cumbersome than currently.

[Amnesiac]

^Nice idea, for starters. So to keep it short we stack all chunks together and maybe remove rotten meat entirely? Would be nice if sublimation of blood would automatically use chunks from inventory or something.

[johlstei]

*Crosses fingers and hopes the proposed change and subsequent rebalancing eventually lead to food's removal*

But what will we sacrifice to Fedhas or cast Sublimate on?

There are harder questions to answer than this one(pacify), but as a temporary solution you could just still spawn fruit and corpses and have most characters ignore them.

[and into]

Any rational approach to food reform has to keep clear as to its purpose and to the difference between eating chunks, and non-satiation chunk usage. Making chunks inedible for most species is not the same as chunks/corpse removal, for starters. There are certain species and spells and gods that use chunks/corpses in a non-trivial way and those can (and should) be retained even if chunks become inedible for most species. (Also: hides.)

The above suggestion to remove rotting chunks points to a real lack of clarity in terms of design understanding. There are at present only a few species whose relationship to eating chunks is somewhat meaningful in terms of game play; one of those is ghoul, and for them rotting meat is a major part of how they function. Combining all chunks into one slot and removing rotting meat doesn't actually solve anything, but would remove one of the few unique (whether one enjoys it or not, it is unique) situations in which chunks availability is a major game play concern.

Personally, I think it is better to retain those situations in which chunks matter (e.g., ghouls), while removing those situations in which they do not matter. Species for whom chunks only act as a substitute for permafood but with this annoying time-delay minigame should simply be moved to a permafood-only diet, because chunks are not actually doing anything meaningful there. The "decision" is this: "Do I have chunks?" If yes, eat them. If not, munch on permafood. There is absolutely no compelling reason not to switch that to "eat permafood" and increase the spawn rate of, and/or satiation given, by permafood in order to retain current balance.

With a switch to an all permafood diet for most species, within that set of species you can tweak food scarceness via herbivorousness and/or speed of metabolism, if that is deemed necessary. Those few species that have a special relationship to corpse-provided satiation (felid troll ghoul kobold vampire) should retain that relationship, as it helps differentiate them, and would actually differentiate them *more* than at present, if it were not the case that nearly all the other species can eat chunks when they are hungry.

Is it really that hard to see why the above is a far better framework in terms of Crawl design?

[Hirsch I]

what if we remove eating completely, and make the player get an certain amount of nutrition by stepping on corpses, or on kill? chunks, and even permafood, just add to inventory management.
crawl is not a simulation. we could add "eating" to the tasks the character do that are not shown, like pooping.

[duvessa]

That's actually a really cool idea I haven't heard before. Nutrition for stepping on corpses keeps pretty much all the implications of the current food system but makes it a lot less annoying. Maybe it should only happen with no monsters in view, though, to prevent using it for 1-turn combat eating.
Even after that there remains the issue of what happens when you get hungry after fighting; it'd often be optimal to run back to the corpse, or even carry it around, ugh. Still probably less obnoxious than butchering...

[Amnesiac]

And a new init option - autoeat corpses = true.

[and into]

what if we remove eating completely, and make the player get an certain amount of nutrition by stepping on corpses, or on kill? chunks, and even permafood, just add to inventory management.
crawl is not a simulation. we could add "eating" to the tasks the character do that are not shown, like pooping.

That is a good alternative idea. Give the nutrition upon kill, and I think that would eliminate most of the potential problems that duvessa pointed out, and would cut out all (as opposed to 99%) of the non-interesting stuff. Spriggans don't get satiation from kills and Zinonites don't get satiation from sentient creatures, etc.

[Amnesiac]

I think flavour-wise it would be strange...

[dck]

It's Zinics if you don't mind.

[Hirsch I]

Maybe it should only happen with no monsters in view, though, to prevent using it for 1-turn combat eating.

I tought the same thing. i was afraid of posting it because I was sure someone already did ^^
glad you guys like it.

[XuaXua]

what if we remove eating completely, and make the player get an certain amount of nutrition by stepping on corpses, or on kill? chunks, and even permafood, just add to inventory management.
crawl is not a simulation. we could add "eating" to the tasks the character do that are not shown, like pooping.

Alternately, we could add a pooping mechanic.

[Hirsch I]

seems fun

[Amnesiac]

Alternately, we could add a pooping mechanic.

Now characters would want to poop every 300 turns in a secluded place and if you don't find one you...

[dck]

...become vulnerable to ablutions.

[Sprucery]

Also, change Sanctuary to Lavatory.

[galehar]

permafood only (no more chunks!) except for a few species with special culinary conditions

I really like this idea. I'm not even sure permafood generation needs to be increased since it's so abundant right now. We can keep it the same and eventually increase it if needed until we're satisfied. If done this way, it wouldn't occur "over a few versions" obviously since starvation death are unfun. But I don't think it's so bad that it is unacceptable to have occasional starvations in trunk for some time.

Removing chunk eating while keeping food and nutrition has 2 goals: remove the tedium of butchering and managing chunks, but also make nutrition and hunger more important. A consequence of the latter is that starvation becomes more likely, especially for players who don't adapt their strategy and keep ignoring hunger costs. This is something we have to accept unless we want to just remove food (which we shouldn't IMO).

While we're at it, I assume this would go along with a simplification of Herbivorous and Carnivorous. I think one level of each mutation should be enough.

[Amnesiac]

How will you balance removed chunks with gourmand? It would be unfair if only Ko, Tr, and Fe will still have to butcher corpses if they want to use their advantage.

[dpeg]

Amensiac: Gourmand and sustenance might be the first casualties of that branch.

[ackack]

permafood only (no more chunks!) except for a few species with special culinary conditions

I really like this idea. I'm not even sure permafood generation needs to be increased since it's so abundant right now. We can keep it the same and eventually increase it if needed until we're satisfied. If done this way, it wouldn't occur "over a few versions" obviously since starvation death are unfun. But I don't think it's so bad that it is unacceptable to have occasional starvations in trunk for some time.

Starvations from this change would be godawful. Many of them would happen late in the game, and many of them would be disconnected by a very long amount of time from the behaviors that were responsible for the death. While some would argue this happens now with other consumables, those are different. There are often many different sorts of consumables that could work in a particular situation. There are also tactical options that you can try to maybe get lucky and get yourself out of a bad fight. There's no tricky way to deal with Starving; you just have to eat food.

Further, since some characters just end up taking longer at various stages due to luck in finding items and whatnot, this would imo introduce a substantial degree of random unfairness to deaths. For me one of the strengths of Crawl has always been that almost every game is winnable; I think this change with no permafood rebalancing would eat into that pretty heavily.

Also, reiterating and expanding on my earlier comments in this thread, changing this for most species but leaving it for a few seems perverse. Food isn't intrinsically more interesting on trolls and kobolds.