Explore all hatches on getting Orb


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Slime Squisher

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Post Friday, 25th August 2017, 17:11

Explore all hatches on getting Orb

It struck me just now that before getting the Orb one should use all up hatches in DUZ so that autotravel can use them to shorten the orbrun.

This is optimal, has no challenge, and boring. I suggest that touching the Orb should explore all hatches the character has seen every square in LOS of [1] to remove the desire to do something optimal and boring with no challenge.

[1] If you haven't cleared Zot, for example, or left an exclusion around a nasty in U, manually exploring those hatches you haven't seen would have some actual challenge. Conversely you don't want this feature to make autotravel send you up a hatch you only saw at the edge of LOS which has 68 draconians next to it.
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Post Friday, 25th August 2017, 17:26

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

Pleeeeeeeease just make the game end when you leave Zot:5 with the Orb, and get rid of the orbrun mechanics. The ascension run borderline ruins the endgame and adding more wacky bullshit like faster pan lords and seraphs and teleport delays and contamination doesn't help, it just makes it even worse because now you have to make a either make a bunch of (remarkably tedious) advance preparations and travel manually, or accept a ~3% chance of randomly dying to a Pan lord.

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Slime Squisher

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Post Sunday, 27th August 2017, 09:26

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

duvessa wrote:Pleeeeeeeease just make the game end when you leave Zot:5 with the Orb, and get rid of the orbrun mechanics.


I'm not saying that's a bad idea but it is perhaps of wider scope than what I propose, which is just to eliminate a bit of tedious routine which I realise now it would probably be best and boring to do every game.
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Spider Stomper

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Post Monday, 28th August 2017, 03:11

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

Alternatively, add hellcrawl's orbrun

Swamp Slogger

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Post Monday, 28th August 2017, 15:24

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

Alternatively, randomize hatch destinations every time you use them.

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duvessa

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Post Monday, 28th August 2017, 22:15

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

Hatches should probably be one-use-only. Randomizing the destination is good but consider that people might repeatedly use the same hatch to e.g. save digging charges on a poorly connected level.

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Post Monday, 28th August 2017, 22:45

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

But people will end up starving to death when they manage to teleport into a sealed area for the second time.
I suppose they can quit, and it won't happen *that* often, but somehow forcing people to quit without any "real" dangers in sight feels like something to avoid.

(I have no idea if all those islands/vaults are handcrafted including hatches, or if the game is smart enough to guarantee a hatch in (randomly-generated) disconnected areas)

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Post Monday, 28th August 2017, 23:56

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

rigrig wrote:But people will end up starving to death when they manage to teleport into a sealed area for the second time.
I suppose they can quit, and it won't happen *that* often, but somehow forcing people to quit without any "real" dangers in sight feels like something to avoid.

(I have no idea if all those islands/vaults are handcrafted including hatches, or if the game is smart enough to guarantee a hatch in (randomly-generated) disconnected areas)

The suggestion was to randomize the *destination* of the hatch, not the *entry* to a hatch after each use, I'm not sure how the second time is any different than the first here.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 29th August 2017, 03:46

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

Siegurt wrote:
rigrig wrote:But people will end up starving to death when they manage to teleport into a sealed area for the second time.
I suppose they can quit, and it won't happen *that* often, but somehow forcing people to quit without any "real" dangers in sight feels like something to avoid.

(I have no idea if all those islands/vaults are handcrafted including hatches, or if the game is smart enough to guarantee a hatch in (randomly-generated) disconnected areas)

The suggestion was to randomize the *destination* of the hatch, not the *entry* to a hatch after each use, I'm not sure how the second time is any different than the first here.
rigrig is referring to the one-use hatch idea. If you got stranded on an island once, used the hatch to get out, then got stranded on the island a second time, you'd be stuck because the hatch is now gone. So we'd need another solution for islands. Maybe Tomb-style one-way renewable stairs, since those are basically escape hatches already, or just not allowing islands.
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Post Tuesday, 29th August 2017, 04:58

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

duvessa wrote:Pleeeeeeeease just make the game end when you leave Zot:5 with the Orb, and get rid of the orbrun mechanics. The ascension run borderline ruins the endgame and adding more wacky bullshit like faster pan lords and seraphs and teleport delays and contamination doesn't help, it just makes it even worse because now you have to make a either make a bunch of (remarkably tedious) advance preparations and travel manually, or accept a ~3% chance of randomly dying to a Pan lord.


i get the feeling you did not randomly pick the number ~3% out of your hat, and am curious how you came to it.
take it easy

Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 29th August 2017, 07:18

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

duvessa wrote:rigrig is referring to the one-use hatch idea. If you got stranded on an island once, used the hatch to get out, then got stranded on the island a second time, you'd be stuck because the hatch is now gone. So we'd need another solution for islands. Maybe Tomb-style one-way renewable stairs, since those are basically escape hatches already, or just not allowing islands.


Any reason not to just use permanent, revealed teleportation traps instead of escape hatches on islands?

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Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 29th August 2017, 10:43

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

Arrhythmia wrote:
duvessa wrote:Pleeeeeeeease just make the game end when you leave Zot:5 with the Orb, and get rid of the orbrun mechanics. The ascension run borderline ruins the endgame and adding more wacky bullshit like faster pan lords and seraphs and teleport delays and contamination doesn't help, it just makes it even worse because now you have to make a either make a bunch of (remarkably tedious) advance preparations and travel manually, or accept a ~3% chance of randomly dying to a Pan lord.


i get the feeling you did not randomly pick the number ~3% out of your hat, and am curious how you came to it.


Probably from something similar to this:

!lm * orb: 62601. [2017-08-29 09:59:07] klsh78012 the Meteorologist (L27 DsGl of Makhleb) found the Orb of Zot! (Zot:5)

!lg * won: 60454. klsh78012 the Meteorologist (L27 DsGl of Makhleb), escaped with the Orb and 15 runes on 2017-08-29 10:02:33, with 18023995 points after 86542 turns and 6:16:29.

That's a 96.5% survival rate. Duvessa might have excluded people who died on Zot:5 after getting the Orb, or maybe he just rounded the killrate down.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 29th August 2017, 14:54

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

ion_frigate wrote:
duvessa wrote:rigrig is referring to the one-use hatch idea. If you got stranded on an island once, used the hatch to get out, then got stranded on the island a second time, you'd be stuck because the hatch is now gone. So we'd need another solution for islands. Maybe Tomb-style one-way renewable stairs, since those are basically escape hatches already, or just not allowing islands.


Any reason not to just use permanent, revealed teleportation traps instead of escape hatches on islands?


Or even the new one way portals...
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 30th August 2017, 16:55

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

I actually did just pick that number out of my hat. I don't pretend that Sequell data is useful for anything other than laughing at.

Swamp Slogger

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Post Thursday, 31st August 2017, 09:01

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

ion_frigate wrote:Any reason not to just use permanent, revealed teleportation traps instead of escape hatches on islands?

If all those hatches are auto generated that seems like a nice solution, but I suspect there are a bunch of vaults with pre-defined hatches, which would all need updating.

I think it would be neater to
  1. replace all escape-from-island hatches with permanent teleport traps
  2. change the code so all hatches are single-use

But going through all vaults to do 1. seems like quite a lot of work, as opposed to
  1. change the code so all hatches randomize their destination on use

Another option I just though of: leave down hatches alone, get rid of up hatches (or for horrible inconsistency: only make up hatches single-use)
(And now I'm wondering what happens on islands in branch ends?)

Slime Squisher

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Post Thursday, 31st August 2017, 17:33

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

rigrig wrote:If all those hatches are auto generated that seems like a nice solution, but I suspect there are a bunch of vaults with pre-defined hatches, which would all need updating.


I don't think that would be overly difficult or time-consuming, actually. It seems like escape hatches are just "escape_hatch_down" in vault definitions, so it would be a pretty simple matter of search-and-replace.
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Post Thursday, 31st August 2017, 18:00

Re: Explore all hatches on getting Orb

duvessa wrote:I actually did just pick that number out of my hat. I don't pretend that Sequell data is useful for anything other than laughing at.


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