How important is a finite ammo source to the game?

[eldiablo1989]

Ill be honest, i can see the usefulness of unlimited arrows, but i still think they should be finite, namely to add weight to the character, and make the game more tense. just imagine if skyrim had unlimited arrows

[Quazifuji]

Ill be honest, i can see the usefulness of unlimited arrows, but i still think they should be finite, namely to add weight to the character, and make the game more tense. just imagine if skyrim had unlimited arrows

Skyrim and Crawl are such completely different games that I don't think comparing limited ammo in the two of them makes sense.

As for weight, do you mean inventory weight, or something else? Because inventory weight is gone, and I can't think of what else it could mean.

For tension, the problem is that right now, at least in the case of arrows and crossbows, plain bolts and arrows are so plentiful that there's never really any tension involved. Occasionally there's tension in running out of a particular branded ammo an enemy's weak to, or running out of sling bullets and having to resort to stones for sling ammo, but it seems like a lot of the people in favor of infinite ammo still support branded ammo being limited and just want infinite plain, possibly weaker unbranded ammo, which I don't think would remove any tense situations outside of the early game before ammo is plentiful.

[damiac]

I played a lot of skyrim archers... I don't remember arrow quantity ever being an issue... plus crawl and skyrim have approximately 0 in common.

And once again, if you've played a bow/crossbow character, you'll realize ammo is not really limited in crawl, after a certain point in the game, at least not in 3 rune games.

[LJFCAT]

Okay, this is the BASE for an idea... what if ranged weapons got weaker the closer an enemy gets? That way we can just make ammo infinite, and there is still a use for melee weapons. In fact, I think this could really change things up. I'm sure someone will come up with a reason it's a stupid idea, but maybe tweaked it could work?

[XuaXua]

Okay, this is the BASE for an idea... what if ranged weapons got weaker the closer an enemy gets?

I've thought about making ranged weaker at shorter ranges, but the thing is that if I hit someone point blank with an arrow from a bow and do the same at long range (adjusting for dungeon height) it's probably going to be the same amount of impact; in fact, I'd say the damage would decrease with range as acceleration decreased, but the range in the game is so conceptually short to not matter.

I considered making ranged have worse aim at shorter range since dodging would be easier, but then-again, it could be harder to do and dodging at range might be easy since you could see it coming in some instances.

There are pros and cons at both ends.

Perhaps some version of scaling the applicability of dodge at different ranges, and balancing damage and aiming at ranges (at long range, decrease damage but increase aim? At short range increase damage but decrease aim?) could work, but would make ranged less reliable and predictable.

[and into]

I'd say we should not undo all the changes that made ranged combat easier to understand and compare with melee.

[wheals]

Didn't we discuss this exact idea on the previous page of this thread?