merfolk avoiding shallow water

[petercordia]

I'm looking through the code, and noticed this snippet:

  Code:

        // Higher cost for shallow water if species doesn't like water or if
        // they are merfolk, since those will prefer to avoid melding their
        // boots during travel.

It seems to me that merfolk should not be avoiding water, since water gives them bonus EV, speed, and stealth.
anyone disagree?

changing the behaviour is a matter of a simple deletion of a half-line of code.

[nago]

Too specific case for a rc file option?

[petercordia]

I'd be happy for someone else to put it in a rc file option, but I don't think I could do that. I'm having trouble even making a pull request.
(the relevant file is travel.cc btw)

[rigrig]

I'm thinking "Your boots of Awesomeness {rEverything+++ Clarity etc.} meld" might come as a nasty surprise...

[Shtopit]

I'm thinking "Your boots of Awesomeness {rEverything+++ Clarity etc.} meld" might come as a nasty surprise...

Personally, I'd remove this flavour and just give them a sinuous body that makes them swim fast in the water. I just don't think it's something fun to keep track of.

[vt]

I'm thinking "Your boots of Awesomeness {rEverything+++ Clarity etc.} meld" might come as a nasty surprise...

You do autoexplore into water as a merfolk right now, by default. This line seems to disincentivize it somehow, but it does not disallow it.

If you want not to autoexplore into shallow water there is already an rcfile option for that:

  Code:

travel_avoid_terrain = shallow water, deep water

edit: if OP's change is done it might also make sense to change that function not to disincentivize going over shafts, since there's not really a cost to just walking over one.

[petercordia]

I hadn't expected there to be so much support tor making merfolk prefer travailing for water. I've tried to code that up, but the effects of such a change where very hard to see through, and I don't think I can implement it without bugs. (An integer-valued thing had to become a float, or else its out-put had to be multiplied by some constant, but it is called by another function which compares it with constants, etc...)

As such, I have submitted a pull request to at least have merfolk not avoid water.

[chequers]

Remove merfolk boots slot!

[duvessa]

remove merfolk water bonuses

[PseudoLoneWolf]

remove merfolk water bonuses

Merfolk without water bonuses become bad tengu with no wings, if you went this route it would be equivalent to "remove merfolk" because that's the obvious next step after removing their defining feature.

[duvessa]

There are levels in Crawl right now that have no water on them. Are merfolk bad tengu with no wings on those levels?

Luring monsters to water is not good gameplay, making water branches trivial is not good either. If merfolk's only defining feature is that they get bonuses for camping in one terrain type, then yeah, merfolk should be removed. I always assumed that their aptitudes were supposed to be a defining feature, not just their water bonuses. At least one of their water bonuses (the melee damage bonus) has been removed already!

[petercordia]

I actually thing that making certain branches easier is good game design.
Supposing the merfolk bonus is enough to make Swamp easier than Orc, and a merman does Swamp before Orc, that's changed the way the game was played in an interesting manner.

Does anyone know when this pull request might be accepted or rejected?

[Shtopit]

Personally I would remove small puddles and add a 4% chance that any level is completely flooded with shallow water. I don't know what it would do to stealth, however, or how it would play out for something like Elec.

Such a change would also give more meaning to different sizes.

[duvessa]

Electrocution hasn't interacted with water since like 7 years ago, so no need to worry about that.

[petercordia]

The change which makes merfolk not avoid water has now been accepted into the crawl trunk