Proposal: Autopickup anything Stackable you already carry

[XuaXua]

Having Sticks to Snakes or Sandblast memorized causes a player to automatically pick up the associated components from the ground, by default.

With the weight limits gone, there is no reason to not pick up ammo you can use from the ground.

Rules governing this:
- potions and scrolls are already stackable and always auto-pickup.
- ammo from spells that require ammo become auto-pickup.
- auto-pickups of ammo are sometimes set at character creation time based on profession
- there is no reason for you to be carrying ammo that you do not intend to use.
- don't pick up variants of ammo that you aren't currently carrying (don't auto-pick up that poison needle if you are only carrying curare); this will prevent inventory from becoming full and ammo you don't want picked up to be picked up. If you want it auto-picked-up, pick up at least one of it.
- leave auto-pickup of items (thrown) to "on" if the inventory slot is emptied, unless those items are explicitly dropped. Since no one picks up items from the floor anymore, there is no reason to "throw" to "drop" items (for example, throwing dangerous weapons into lava), except in the obscure event you don't want a floor jelly to randomly absorb it.

Old, unworkable, proposal (referred to by crate) in spoiler.

Spoiler: show

The rules governing this would be

1) if you are carrying a launcher, always pick up ammo for that launcher, brands be-damned.
- there is no reason for you to be carrying a launcher that you do not intend to use.
- there may be a brand that you don't want; them's the breaks?
- this might suck with blowguns

2) if you are carrying launcher ammo, always pick up ammo of that branded type.
- there is no reason for you to be carrying ammo that you do not intend to use.
- carrying ammo without a launcher is weird, but whatever.

3) if you are carrying a throwing ammo, only pick up throwing ammo of the type you are carrying (ignoring brands).
- no one wants to downgrade from javelins to tomahawks if they don't have to.
- many carry nets alone.

Yes / no / maybe?

[crate]

Really autopickup should just pick up anything that stacks with an item you are already carrying, since there's no real downside to doing that any more. This would solve the actual problem.

Do not agree with the proposal in the OP.

[XuaXua]

Really autopickup should just pick up anything that stacks with an item you are already carrying, since there's no real downside to doing that any more. This would solve the actual problem.

This is a close enough solution and probably simplest to implement.

[cerebovssquire]

1) if you are carrying a launcher, always pick up ammo for that launcher, brands be-damned.
- there is no reason for you to be carrying a launcher that you do not intend to use.

You might want to use the launcher for +Blink, evade or resists, not firing it.

[Sprucery]

Really autopickup should just pick up anything that stacks with an item you are already carrying, since there's no real downside to doing that any more. This would solve the actual problem.

This is a close enough solution and probably simplest to implement.

...and implemented in a way that keeps autopickup on also after you've fired your last piece of ammo. (This probably goes without saying.)

[duvessa]

autopickup already picks up fired missiles so that's already taken care of

[damiac]

Yeah, just auto pickup anything stackable if you already have at least 1. That would make it much simpler to only auto pickup certain ammo, rather than having 10052 normal arrows, 2 dispersal arrows, 6 poison arrows, etc...

[XuaXua]

I just put a consolidated version of crate's revision plus feedback on the brainstorm wiki because feature request on Mantis are frowned upon.

[XuaXua]

IS this concept a possibility for 0.17?

[dpeg]

crate: this is a really good idea.

XuaXua: thanks for sticking this into the wiki, but why restrict to launchers? What I have in mind that if I pick up one potion of mutation, then the game will do subsequent ones for me, which is pretty reasonable. There are some minor issues, so I will bring them up here before making this an implementable (perhaps the magic will work!).

• Items can have three auto-pick up states
  [+] selected to be picked up (via defaults or \ list)
  [-] selected to not be picked up (via defaults or \ list)
  [%] will be picked up despite not on autopickup
  The last status already exists for S2S etc. Showing it in \ would be new.
• Stackables with [-] of which you carry one become [%], so they automatically picked up from now.
• Using them all up does not clear the [%] flag. Dropping one (not necessarily all of them) clears the [%] flag.

I wonder if it would make sense to automatically toggle from [+] to [-] if you drop such an item immediately after autopickup. There are probably cases where this behaviour would be not what you want?

[XuaXua]

XuaXua: thanks for sticking this into the wiki, but why restrict to launchers?

That was just the title, based on the original title of this thread (since changed). The text wasn't ammo-specific, but did use ammo as an example. I've edited it. Also, it was ammo-biased since, of all "stackable" items, only newly-discovered ammo is the only stackable thing that isn't auto-picked-up (but IS auto-picked-up for some starting classes). Food, potions, scrolls, etc. are already auto-picked-up. Of course, UNUSABLE stackable food isn't picked up, but then why are you carrying it (a trove, perhaps?)?

At some point during the creation of this thread and this particular response, evocables (1) became stackable, (2) had stackability removed; so there was that.

There are probably cases where this behaviour would be not what you want?

Possibly if one is carrying something and drops it all off in a cache, and encounters a new one during travel?

[dpeg]

There are probably cases where this behaviour would be not what you want?

Possibly if one is carrying something and drops it all off in a cache, and encounters a new one during travel?

That's the thing: I am not sure what's a good default in this case: you opted to not carry any of them (presumably for space reasons) -- would you want to pick them up later, assuming you then have (more) space?

I guess it depends on where you are: in a portal vault, you will pick up anything remotely useful...

[XuaXua]

It's the matter of picking up "the first one" that would re-activate it then.

Currently,
- Scrolls/Potions/Food work like: always auto-pickup, unless identified as useless/dangerous.
- Ammo works like: only auto-pickup if you threw it, or if it is a spell component, or if you started with the launcher (and this is the base ammo?).

How I think it should work:
- work as above (if you dropped or used all carried potions of Curing, continue to auto-pickup them), plus

- if Scrolls/Potions/Food identified as useless/dangerous, if you are carrying one of it, regardless of use/danger, pick it up from the floor to stack it with the rest you are carrying. Otherwise, ignore it. This will cause auto-pickup of "dangerous" stackable items you might want, like Scrolls of Immolation, Potions of Ambrosia, Poisonous Chunks (because you swapped out rPois), but only assuming you already have one on you.

- If Scrolls/Potions/Food identified as useless/dangerous, and you aren't carrying it because you deliberately dropped it OR used up your last one from inventory, don't pick it up (act as current). Note that using up the last one from inventory doesn't mean it was a deliberate use for beneficial results; it could have been from a mis-identification.

- if Ammo, and you are already carrying 1+ of this specific variant, pick it up.

- if Ammo of a specific variant and you are carrying NONE of it because you either deliberately dropped all of it or never picked up any of it, don't pick it up.

- if Ammo of a specific variant and you are carrying NONE of it because you launched it all, pick it up.

This covers the 4 current types of stackables: Scrolls, Potions, Food and Ammo. The reason this is so "ammo focused" is because ammo is really the item that will benefit the most from this adjustment. What was considered the most "offensive" of the original proposal was that I had caveats for picking up ammo variants (you have an arrow, pick up all arrows regardless of brand), which is actually not a good thing.

[XuaXua]

Using them all up does not clear the [%] flag. Dropping one (not necessarily all of them) clears the [%] flag.

I guess this (dropping 1 to deactivate flag) would only be useful for (time-based) speed runners? Otherwise, I don't see any case where someone would want to not pick up more ammo.