Proposal: Launchers with Infinite Unbranded Ammo

[snow]

Can bows, slings, and such come with an infinite supply of unbranded ammo? I've seen this suggested a few times and I think it's a really good idea.

[pratamawirya]

Holy longbow + infinite ammo = @#%$%

[snow]

In my experience running out of ammo has never been the problem. The problems are the tedious methods of conserving ammo... which often involve swapping to a melee weapon you have no skill in on popcorn enemies. The constant weapon swapping and stashing of 100s of unbranded arrows are some of the reasons ranged combat isn't very popular at the moment.

Have you ever played a hunter? If you melee the easy stuff you end up with a pile of 300+ unbranded arrows in the temple while you're fumbling around with 5 different types of branded arrows in your inventory.

[galehar]

I don't like the idea. It makes no sense and doesn't actually improve anything. Also, if you have so many arrows, why do you bother switching to kill popcorns? Things could probably be improved by reducing the amount of popcorn monsters and ammo stacks.
Managing ammo is part of the hunter playstyle, if you have infinite unbranded ammo, you still have to manage your branded ammo, so nothing significant is changed. And it's much easier now with the removal of enchanted ammo and the autopickup menu.
Also, if switching weapons is too annoying, maybe try the auto_switch option.

[sardonica]

In my experience running out of ammo has never been the problem. The problems are the tedious methods of conserving ammo... which often involve swapping to a melee weapon you have no skill in on popcorn enemies. The constant weapon swapping and stashing of 100s of unbranded arrows are some of the reasons ranged combat isn't very popular at the moment.

Have you ever played a hunter? If you melee the easy stuff you end up with a pile of 300+ unbranded arrows in the temple while you're fumbling around with 5 different types of branded arrows in your inventory.

Have you ever played a wizard? If you melee the easy stuff you end up with lots of extra mana after every fight.

Have you ever played a stabber? If you stab the easy stuff you end up with lots of extra HP after every fight.

maybe mulch rates etc need to change, but infinite ammo is a cure worse than the disease

[njvack]

In my experience running out of ammo has never been the problem.

To me, this says there's too much ammo, not that the game needs more ammo.

Reducing ammo supply is also an alternate way to address the "ranged combat is OP" calls.

[galehar]

or maybe increasing mulching but only for unbranded ammo

[njvack]

... yeah, that'd have a similar effect, though you'd probably want to increase starting ammo somewhat to compensate. I sometimes have a hard time with the ammo game early-on. Maybe more post-endgame implications, as ammo stops being particularly renewable once you've murdered the footaurs.

[snow]

Sardonica, you've never seen me play a wizard, have you?

[cerebovssquire]

!tv sky hewz zin killer=boris


it's priceless

[One-Eyed Jack]

Ranged has to be distinct not only from melee but also from conjurations. Infinite ammo makes the two closer which isn't a good idea.

[dd]

I hate the idea. It just doesn't make any sense. There are merits to streamlining the gameplay, but this just feels like dumbing it down.

But perhaps there could be some kind of "summon ammunition" spell. It should be pretty high level though.

[bobross419]

I hate the idea. It just doesn't make any sense. There are merits to streamlining the gameplay, but this just feels like dumbing it down.

But perhaps there could be some kind of "summon ammunition" spell. It should be pretty high level though.

Necro/Tm Bone Arrows - convert a skeleton into arrows

[cerebovssquire]

I hate the idea. It just doesn't make any sense. There are merits to streamlining the gameplay, but this just feels like dumbing it down.

But perhaps there could be some kind of "summon ammunition" spell. It should be pretty high level though.

Well, it would really have to be restricted to "summoning" ammunition, if the ammo was actually permanent or particularily long-longlasting it would encourage scummy behaviour. Not that I'm convinced of the need of this spell, but in the case of implementation it would have to be restricted to this.

[JeffQyzt]

We could call it "bone shards", and make said ammo not permanent by tying it to skeletons in inventory....wait...

[eeviac]

For some first hand experience, I decided to all-rune a pure launcher dude (or as pure as possible). No melee training allowed.

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/eevia ... 030154.txt

What you see in my inventory is nearly every arrow left in the game. I ran low in two spots:
1. Orc was rough (trunk Oka doesn't gift there). I was down to <20 arrows, but got through with mighty red drac breath and pikel's elec whip. I got flooded when the centaur packs started showing up.
2. Extended game. My massive stockpiles were steadily eaten up. Despite carefully collecting after every fight and 90k turns worth of Oka gifts, I would have completely run dry, but I started abusing inacc/angels/sacred fire and ninja'd tomb.

It might not be possible to make it through extended with just a launcher. You have to branch out to some renewable damage or start skipping fights, and you'll probably have to worship Oka for a while. (Oka only gifts branded ammo though - his arrows didn't work very well with my holy longbow).

If this is a problem that needs fixing, my solution would be to tie mulch rates to weapon skill. At 0 skill, ammo mulches at the old +3, and at 27, it mulches at the old +9. If I'm going to spend all that XP on a launcher skill, I should have some guarantee that I'll be able to use it for the whole game.

[kefir645]

trunk Oka doesn't gift there

Well, Oka is pretty useless in trunk: I'm not sure what Okawaru's current niche is to be honest now that you have to ration Hero...

[crate]

Um, new okawaru piety is basically the same as old oka piety (maybe faster gain!) other than in orc, in my experience.

If your character needs heroism in orc other than against the end vault or a warlord band or such, you probably have other problems.

[dpeg]

eeviac: Interesting to see you pull this off.

However, I am not sure that a "pure ranger" style needs to be supported, just like "pure healer" isn't. You can try to pull it off as a challenge (like eeviac did!) but the idea of ranged combat (bows etc.) is something much weaker: you have something to shoot from afar, in a way really different from spells:
(1) you have fewer skills to train (only one),
(2) you have to deal with items (launcher, missiles), improve them and manage them,
(3) you don't have to manage HP, spell hunger, skill success, slots etc.
(4) no worries about resistances and range, but also no area/bolt effects

Some players expect that a **Hu should be able to kill everything with the bow which was never intended.

[kefir645]

Some players expect that a **Hu should be able to kill everything with the bow which was never intended.

Why wouldn't they? CeHu is one of the three recommended (by the game itself) combos for beginners for Trog's sake

Plus, pure melee (except Ziggurats, I guess, not sure how to deal with them without summon spam or storm spells, but those are optional, so it doesn't matter too much), pure conjurer, pure summoner are all well-supported, though. The point about "just one skill" is weird: there's more then enough xp to go around even in a 3 rune game.

If your character needs heroism in orc other than against the end vault or a warlord band or such, you probably have other problems.

/offtop
It's not like you need it, but you get swarmed a lot in Orc and for squishier dodgy hybrids like HESk or MfSk or SETm Hero helps. I'm not talking about MiGl or HoFi or something like that. And being able to use Finesse in nastier Orc ends helps a lot, too.

[dpeg]

Instead of trying to guarantee that your starting trick will carry you to the orb, isn't it much more appealing to have conjurers etc. think more during their games? However, I believe that a conjurer has more occasions to think than a pure ranger: choices of spells (memorisation, god, books (in shops), skills.

One skill is relevant: whereas the dedicated has a number of skills to train and must usually make painful [1] choices, including adaption to what's available in books, the ranger is happy with a single skill. This means that she can dedicate a lot more xp to other interesting activities, like Fighting, melee, Evocations a little casting on the side etc.

[1] If this is not true (anymore?), something's off and I vote for a flat xp cut

[kefir645]

Instead of trying to guarantee that your starting trick will carry you to the orb, isn't it much more appealing to have conjurers etc. think more during their games? However, I believe that a conjurer has more occasions to think than a pure ranger: choices of spells (memorisation, god, books (in shops), skills.

One skill is relevant: whereas the dedicated has a number of skills to train and must usually make painful [1] choices, including adaption to what's available in books, the ranger is happy with a single skill. This means that she can dedicate a lot more xp to other interesting activities, like Fighting, melee, Evocations a little casting on the side etc.

[1] If this is not true (anymore?), something's off and I vote for a flat xp cut

Choices aren't necessarily all that painful. Conjurer of Vehumet, for instance, is probably the most deterministic character build in Crawl.

And you can also win pure melee. Your starting trick will carry you all the way through the game and (most of) the postgame content. Melee has other problems (the popularity of TAB is the symptom of the biggest one: it's just not very interesting, and with the exception of short blades and, perhaps, polearms, all weapons are practically the same. I hope maneuvers will help with that. The same can be said about autoexplore, but that's going too far off-topic...)

[crate]

Cj of vehumet has plenty of choices about where to put xp, and usually more difficult ones in that regard than melee builds. If you want a character with a straightforward xp allocation probably you should think of MiBe or such, though even there there are some choices (rods/ranged combat in particular).

I agree that crawl has too much xp right now, and I think that is getting gradually trimmed (branch shortening etc.).

I think it is fine if you are not capable of using arrows/slings/crossbows on every single enemy you run into because of ammo limitations. I don't see why it is important that there be enough arrows for you to be able to waste a bunch on rats and goblins and imps and other weak enemies all game long. Already without Okawaru or Trog there are enough arrows/crossbow bolts for you to use bows/xbows against very nearly all of the difficult enemies in the game.

[kefir645]

Cj of Vehumet have choices, but you're guaranteed to get books that will carry you through the game. And in general, in crawl whenever you face the choice, putting your xp into the thing that makes your enemies die faster is a pretty good rule of thumb. Once you're sufficiently familiar with the game, you generally know when you need to get your dodging, fighting, utility spells, etc. up at the expense of your damaging spells.

MiBe is pretty straightforward strategically, but if you go pure melee (no ranged option route), it can be interesting tactically. With ranged option you just turn into unstoppable killing machine and steamroll everything. It's even better with Okawaru, since you can add some utility spells to the mix and the only thing that can kill you is boredom.

[eeviac]

Pure launcher should be doable if you stick with Oka for the whole game, and use slings/crossbows so he'll gift non-elemental ammo. If you pick a race that doesn't worry about mutations (halfling/undead) you can easily keep faith on for more fun.

[dtsund]

This is planned for Light, and actually near the top of my to-do list.

[snow]

I'm not seeing the big deal about being able to use arrows on rats instead of using a random floor trash melee weapon that you've invested no skill into. You have to pick Oka or Trog as a god to get ammo gifts if you don't feel like doing something slightly annoying all game like swapping weapons for trivial things? Really?

The VAST majority of enemies you run into have a threat() of 0 or 1... which can be killed without any thought by just using the TAB key. You could probably just modify hit_closest() to melee those and ranged everything else and never have to worry about ammo again.

Look... most players expect hunters to be able to use arrows on everything because that's how it is in like... every other game ever. To tell them that they have to melee easy things for no other reason than to annoy them and force them to micromanage arrows is just silly.

[sardonica]

I'm not seeing the big deal about being able to use arrows on rats instead of using a random floor trash melee weapon that you've invested no skill into. You have to pick Oka or Trog as a god to get ammo gifts if you don't feel like doing something slightly annoying all game like swapping weapons for trivial things? Really?

The VAST majority of enemies you run into have a threat() of 0 or 1... which can be killed without any thought by just using the TAB key. You could probably just modify hit_closest() to melee those and ranged everything else and never have to worry about ammo again.

Look... most players expect hunters to be able to use arrows on everything because that's how it is in like... every other game ever. To tell them that they have to melee easy things for no other reason than to annoy them and force them to micromanage arrows is just silly.

ALL of the things you want from ranged can be accomplished by using conjurations. So use conjurations. Don't try to make ranged into a sort of MP-free magic.

[pratamawirya]

I'm not seeing the big deal about being able to use arrows on rats instead of using a random floor trash melee weapon that you've invested no skill into. You have to pick Oka or Trog as a god to get ammo gifts if you don't feel like doing something slightly annoying all game like swapping weapons for trivial things? Really?

The VAST majority of enemies you run into have a threat() of 0 or 1... which can be killed without any thought by just using the TAB key. You could probably just modify hit_closest() to melee those and ranged everything else and never have to worry about ammo again.

Look... most players expect hunters to be able to use arrows on everything because that's how it is in like... every other game ever. To tell them that they have to melee easy things for no other reason than to annoy them and force them to micromanage arrows is just silly.

1. Crawl isn't an AAA game, so it doesn't need to try to fulfill every expectation of the would-be players.
2. Comparing the game to any other game doesn't make the most convincing argument.
3. "Every other game"? Ever heard of a Resident Evil player using a knife to conserve his ammo? (That's one example, and I'm sure there're many others.)

[Deimos]

3. "Every other game"? Ever heard of a Resident Evil player using a knife to conserve his ammo? (That's one example, and I'm sure there're many others.)

To be fair, thats not what he is saying. You don't go into a horror game expecting to use guns on everything, but you probably will expect to go into a dungeon crawler with a archer and use archery on everything, or at least that's his argument.

Not that he is right; I see no reason why crawl has to conform to this specifically. His argument of it being tedious to switch all the time is sound, though.

[pratamawirya]

3. "Every other game"? Ever heard of a Resident Evil player using a knife to conserve his ammo? (That's one example, and I'm sure there're many others.)

To be fair, thats not what he is saying. You don't go into a horror game expecting to use guns on everything, but you probably will expect to go into a dungeon crawler with a archer and use archery on everything, or at least that's his argument.

But both Crawl and RE have strong survival feel (a lot of things aren't guaranteed, and you need to always be ready to adapt to new tools and tactics). To expect to be able to run a pure hunter game every single time is silly in the context of such game.

[dd]

What if you could assign a missile weapon so that it would automatically be switched to when you press f?

[dpeg]

dd: That's a really neat idea. Assigment would best be done with item inscription, I think. Please make sure the idea does not get lost.

[Galefury]

Another idea that came up at some point was having a dedicated launcher slot that could hold physical launchers and possibly also rods. So you wouldn't have to switch to shoot, you could have both a launcher and a melee weapon equipped all the time.

[dpeg]

Galefury: That's even better but also a bit further away. dd's suggestion is only an interface fix.

[galehar]

What if you could assign a missile weapon so that it would automatically be switched to when you press f?

Put a melee weapon in slot a, and a launcher in slot b and activate the auto_switch option.

[Deimos]

But both Crawl and RE have strong survival feel (a lot of things aren't guaranteed, and you need to always be ready to adapt to new tools and tactics). To expect to be able to run a pure hunter game every single time is silly in the context of such game.

While this holds true for RE, I can't say the same of Crawl. You can go through and smash everything with an axe and win just fine, and you can 15-rune without touching a weapon as a mage, but try the same thing with ranged and you will be out of any combat power before you know it. You dont need to adapt to new tools (unless you count different spells) unless you go ranged. You are forced to at least somewhat hybridize.

On the other hand, I think in this case its warranted because of how overpowered ranged is. If we cut off one of the only drawbacks ranged has, why would anyone go melee?

[bobross419]

Could't oki and trog just gift more non branded ammo? And maybe increase the starting ammo. You would be shoehorned into one of them if you wanted to play dedicated ranged, but it would't be too bad. When i trid CeHu i used branded ammo to conserve my main stack... However, I haven't played trunk, so reduced mulching on starting ammo could tip the scales.

[nago]

Could the idea of a semi-infinite source of arrow, but with significant drawbacks in comparison of normal ammo, be a solution to help hunters? From my (little) experience, the biggest problem about ammo is that Trog or Oka are almost a necessity to have a guaranteed supply of ammo - I'm not saying this is an obligated choice, but while archers may find enough arrows since early game , xbows' users need to go a loot deeper to find guarantee source of ammo (aka yaktaurs' pack) and finally slings' user have no guarantee they'll find any sling bullet at all, so those two gods are usually seen as the best (almost nonbrainer) solution to the problem.

I'll elaborate a little more my idea: the quivers I have in mind could have two properties.
The first one is that they always deal lesser damage than normal ammo - the damage could vary, for example, from 25% to 75% in base of evo skill (they would be magic item, after all). I'd say they could be also enchanted from +0 to +9, but ammo enchantment is gone in trunk, so never mind. Anyway, the could be branded (fire, cold and so on).

The second property is that they are an infinite yet not unlimited source of ammo: like rods' they store a "charge" of ammo (let's say 50); after it has been depleted, time is required to be charged again. Furthermore, the "charge" rate, could increase according quivers' enchantment and evo skill (like, again, rods). Obliviously, those magic ammo couldn't the stocked over the quiver limited, neither picked up after they've shoot (they magical exist only for the time required to reach/miss the target).

It's evident those two properties aren't mutual exclusive, so there shouldn't problem to think of a quivers which have "charges" and deal lower damage than normal ammo...

Hunters could start with the weaker quiver of this kind, and hope to find a better one in the dungeon (or enchant the one they have) - probably this is the biggest problem of my idea, because it would give a starting item which would be absolutely useful until endgame...

[nicolae]

If finding ammo without divine intervention is a problem, tweaking the item generation code would probably be a much easier solution than implementing an entirely new item class with significant effects on ranged combat balance.

[crate]

If you use bows or crossbows you will have plenty of ammo even without okawaru or trog gifts once you start running into centaurs/yaktaurs. You will have to use some other method of killing easy enemies, but you will be able to shoot down the majority of the threats in the game.

I have a game where I worshipped Fedhas and still killed almost everything with bows: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/crate ... 090353.txt
I had several hundred arrows left around the dungeon in various places.

[cerebovssquire]

I played a Slings user of Chei who didn't melee at all and still had no problem. The key is to not forget that stones exist for the easy stuff. Really, god gifts aren't necessary. I often end up not using them (not as much now that enchantment doesn't exist, thank god) because they are of little use.

[Midpoint]

Agree that mulching is rarely the problem (but Snow prefaced with that anyway). As for having to carry around a popcorn killer melee weapon? I dunno, I frequently do that anyway with some of my casters, so I only slightly noticed. I sort of enjoy the "you are not worthy of my bow, so eat this randart whip of squishing, tiny rodent" moments with popcorn. It has encouraged me to pick up cheap investment options like quickblades and whips much more often than I otherwise would. It leads to some interesting choices - do I blow ammo indiscriminately because I have a ton this game and holy hell is the DPT nice or because the floor is stingy do I use this randart whip and slowly build to where I can use all these branded great maces or these demon whips? I have to make similar choices with casters with poor spellcasting apts and abundant/sparse food.

I felt it was similar to the difference between your no-hunger-kill-it-eventually-but-maybe-spend-more MP conjurations and the AGH-KILL-IT-NOW-DAMN-THE-COSTS nukes. Before the trunk changes, I used to carry a stack of trash arrows (low enchantment or poison), some stack of fire, ice, and highly enchanted plain arrows (and dispersal if it was a lucky game). Same strategy, but "limited" ammo. After the depth felt right, I would just stop carrying the trash arrows. Now I never really have to worry about stacks, I have more ammo overall, and I'm a lot more liberal with arrows on trash. Sometimes I don't feel like walking over to the orc, I just want him to not wake up and shout.

If you have high apts (HE or Ce) you hit high damage so quickly you might as well use the ammo on popcorn because nothing is going to stand up to many hits anyway. If you have poor apts, congratulations, you have to think. Your mulch rate is higher (if I understand the trunk changes, which I doubt, it scales with max(+3,27/3), but I can't find the relevant change right now in the code), your damage takes longer to scale (more shots per kill = even more chances to mulch). Seems... almost balanced. Getting there at least.

[galehar]

Your mulch rate is higher

No it's not. Mulching is constant and is equal to how old +3 ammo was mulching. The max(+3,skill/3) is for accuracy/damage and is just temporary until the ranged overhaul (which has been postponed to 0.12).

[Midpoint]

Ah. Doubt confirmed. That's why they were all set to constant values then. Gotcha. So the effective loss of missiles over time would flatten out once you can one-shot your foes (e.g., Pan popcorn). Guess the choice really would just boil down to availability vs. strategy once you're skilled enough to one-shot most of what you encounter (or can't get any more skilled if it takes more than one shot).

[ldierk]

My recent YASD did not train any weapon skill until Zot. I used untrained randarts to conserve ammo until Lair. Beginning from Lair until Zot I used the bow exclusively. From Zot until after Pan and 10 Zig levels I mostly used the bow and had no ammo problems. I worshipped Oka with an amulet of faith for a long time though. (Although I didn't use much branded ammo). But even when I had 500 arrows in my stash, I still had to overcome the feeling that I should preserve ammo.

[ldierk]

I have a game where I worshipped Fedhas and still killed almost everything with bows: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/crate ... 090353.txt.

Off-Topic, but why did you train Inv to 27 for Fedhas?

[edit]
I should really think before posting. The bots answered my question, of course.

The rate of fire of oklobs is increased by invocations.

[crate]

I have a game where I worshipped Fedhas and still killed almost everything with bows: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/crate ... 090353.txt.

Off-Topic, but why did you train Inv to 27 for Fedhas?

[edit]
I should really think before posting. The bots answered my question, of course.

The rate of fire of oklobs is increased by invocations.

Why not? I had all the skills I needed to win, so I wanted a fedhas invo title.

[Thurman]

Have you ever played a hunter? If you melee the easy stuff you end up with a pile of 300+ unbranded arrows in the temple while you're fumbling around with 5 different types of branded arrows in your inventory.

What would be a good idea would be once you have picked up that many arrows, all those fetches cause your character tile morph you to look like a big chicken .

[Fergy]

Phantom <Ranged Weapon>
- When evoked, shoots a ranged projectile that uses phantom ammo.
- Phantom ammo can be quivered, making this ability automatic.
- Phantom ammo deals (40 + 2*evocation)% damage compared to regular ammo (40-94%).
- Phantom ammo works with branded <Ranged Weapons>.