bel wrote:Your comments do not make any sense to me. You said in the first post that you thought all transporter vaults had transparent walls anyway. At that point, did you think that they were all just "one big box", and did not deserve to exist in the game?
Besides, transparent walls do not disallow terrain features. For instance, there is a vault (I don't know the name) where every monster is behind transparent rock walls, and there is a Deep Troll Earth Mage to dig them out. And, of course, you can have water, plants, trees and many other things.
If you allow any opaque features, then the vault's no longer transparent, and it defeats your purpose completely (it doesn't matter if a cluster of monsters is hidden in an opaque square of trees vs an opaque square of walls) If you allow any dungeon features that block sight, then you can and will have vaults that don't allow you to see all the occupants (you can have those even with transparent walls)
Your later posts made it clear that monster-obscuring features were unacceptable, and I had thought in my inital post you only meant that the *outer* walls of the vaults should be transparent (Which I had thought was the case, but was mistaken) I had misunderstood your initial intention as being able to retain hidden chambers within the vault, which it became clear later on closer reading you did not intend.
So we have a few options for possible features inside a vault:
Regular walls, block Sight, Smite targeting, LOF, Movement, destroyed by dig/shatter
Crystal/Metal/Stone walls: same as regular walls, but only destroyed by shatter
Transparent versions of above: Same as regular, but don't block Sight
Trees: same as regular walls except only destroyed by some fire/lightning spells
Iron Grates: Blocks Movement, not Sight/LOF(but not Smite targeting), only destroyed by shatter
Deep water: Blocks Movement for some creatures, can't be destroyed, fire produces steam (which can block Sight), doesn't block LOF
Shallow water: Doesn't block movement, otherwise the same as deep water.
Plants: Blocks LOF, Sight if in two deep, movement, can be destroyed by any creature with an attack.
Fungi: partially blocks LOF, movement, can be destroyed by any creature with an attack.
Floor: blocks nothing, can't be destroyed
What do you actually propose is allowed in these new types of vaults? The things that: Don't block LOS, DO block monster movement, and can't easily be removed by any/all creatures we have transparent walls, and that's it. If blocks LOS then it doesn't meet your requirement, and if it doesn't block Monster movement, then it disallows most tactics. Blocking LOS is *also* important tactically (in that you can avoid creatures interacting with you at all) but you seem to be willing to sacrifice that aspect (since "blocks LOS" is of course incompatible with "doesn't block LOS")
Things that don't block Sight, do block movement, but don't block LOF/Smite targeting suck in conjunction with ranged abilities, either you have free kills (you have range and they do not) they have free attacks (they have range and you do not) or they are irrelevant (both you and they have ranged attacks) and are futher made irrelevant if you can simply walk around the feature to get at your target.
Easily destroyable features can at best be looked at as slowing agents, ultimately they degrade into corridors, then into open space, so I suppose "kill stuff quickly before it breaks all the plants and I'm surrounded" might be viewed as a type of tactic, but that's a stretch.
Regardless of whether it's *possible* to limit transporter vaults to interesting ones that also fit your criteria, It is also *not a good idea* to do so.
It's not a good idea, precisely *because* transporter vaults are impossible for monsters to escape, and also impossible for new monsters to enter, if you have 100% knowledge of a vault (note that your criteria requires you not only know the monsters, but also the layout of the vault with 100% clarity) before entering it, and there is no chance of interacting with anything inside without positive action on your part, then you either enter when there's 100% chance of success, or you don't enter, which creates a "benefit for no risk" situation, which is a very large problem. Whereas "being able to assess the risk of entering a vault that's hard to exit, vs it's rewards" is actually *not* actually a problem at all, and your originally stated problem of "spoilers" doesn't apply to these vaults any more strongly than it does to the rest of crawl.