Problems with Fruit

[twelwe]

Edited now that this was split and made into a new thread

I have one big problem with food - specifically fruit. Let me try to explain with images:









The fedhas fruit pursuit is one of the biggest gambles in the game if you are an early worshiper. You either stumble upon enough ammunition to make 51 oklobs (the last screenshot, taken by a character at clvl4) or barely have enough to make 1/8th of a ring of plants, let alone the oklob afterwards. You either get all that fruit and hoard it for Zot:5, or you actually use it to get out of tough situations like fleeing when all other escape options have been exhausted. There are some ridiculously huge vaults and shops packed with fruit, and they are not common enough to make fedhas a reliable experience - you either get to use his later abilities or you just flat out do not get to use them. You are denied his divine abilities not because of a lack of piety, but because of a spawn rate. Not even nemelex suffers from this variability. No other god does. And fedhas is not even considered a chaotic god. We might as well call that mace randart the Freeze Dried Banana of Variability.

The Ammunition overhaul accomplished two things: it gave enchant weapon scrolls a more narrow niche in the game by making ammunition unenchantable, and as a direct consequence it eliminated inventory clutter caused by like-branded ammunition with different enchantment levels. This leaves scrolls, potions, and food as the biggest inventory clutter. While potions and scrolls have different effects and are worthy of the space and weight they occupy, food differs only slightly in weight, leaving the significant difference of satiation level and reagent potential. Here is a list of all "permafood" in crawl, in order of normal satiation satisfaction:

  Code:

Meat Ration    5,000
Royal Jelly    5,000
Bread ration   4,400
Ambrosia       2,500
Honeycomb      2,000
Snozzcumber    1,500
Slice of Pizza 1,500
Beef Jerky     1,500
Cheese         1,200
Sausage        1,200
Orange         1,000
Banana         1,000
Lemon          1,000
Pear             700
Apple            700
Apricot          700
Choko            600
Rambutan         600
Lychee           600
Strawberry       200
Grape            100
Sultana           70


Yes, that is twenty-two different item types, some of which satisfy the exact same satiation level. This is clutter. This is unnecessary. And, most importantly, most of it will not be missed if it is removed. We probably do not house grape fanatics that will throw endless blame onto whatever developer ultimately removes meat rations, beef jerkies, cheese, oranges, bananas, lemons, pears, apricots, rambutans, lychees, strawberries, and grapes from the game. People will not fork Crawl because cheese is no longer in the game. Even this change leaves 10 types of food, though three are somewhat special (honeycombs, royal jelly, ambrosia). Bread rations, not meat, could be the top food item - kobolds can take the hit, spriggans cannot.

[crate]

I have never in my Fedhas games gotten to Zot:5 with fewer than about 20 pieces of fruit--and I always chose him before running into a fruit vault--but I agree that there are some vaults that are way over the top (the sultana one in particular).

[Mankeli]

You can get fruit via acquirement also. You seem to get about 15 pieces. Not that it nullifies your point, acquirement is rare and one probably has something else to acquire most of the time.

To minmay: don't you think that 15 sultanas NOT taking 15 inventory slots is already a HUGE concession ? In all seriousness, it is extremely annoying to carry around one lychee, one banana, one grape and I agree with you (at least when fruits are concerned).

[sardonica]

While we're at it, can we make all these different food items take up only one slot in your inventory?

If you do that, you're opening up a big bag (of holding) of problems.

Where would it stop?

[One-Eyed Jack]

It would stop at fruit, probably.

Although I wouldn't be opposed to having only four food items (bread rations, meat rations, fruit, jerky) giving either "quick to eat, low nutrition" or "slow to eat, high nutrition" for either meat-eating or herb-eating characters. I guess maybe with honeycombs, royal jellies, ambrosia, too.

[twelwe]

OP edited now that this was split into a new thread

[Mankeli]

While we're at it, can we make all these different food items take up only one slot in your inventory?

If you do that, you're opening up a big bag (of holding) of problems.
Where would it stop?

Do you miss the times when runes took up inventory slots? I do not.

[inkydood]

Although I wouldn't be opposed to having only four food items (bread rations, meat rations, fruit, jerky) giving either "quick to eat, low nutrition" or "slow to eat, high nutrition" for either meat-eating or herb-eating characters. I guess maybe with honeycombs, royal jellies, ambrosia, too.

don't you dare forget pizza slices

[Tiber]

For reference, bananas, lemons, and oranges are completely identical in every way. As are apples and pears (apricots weigh 0.5 AUM less, but are otherwise identical). If nothing else, these could be consolidated with absolutely 0 gameplay changes (except a cleaner inventory).

[dpeg]

I don't care about the name(s) of the fruits. If there is concensus to shrink to all to just one "fruit" item, fine with me. (I never even approached that, because my repeated attempts to just cut pizzes were in vain.)

However, I disagree with the bit about Fedhas: yes, there is randomness built in but it's not nearly as bad as twelve makes it sound. (There are vaults with an overabundance of fruits, and that should be indeed addressed.) First, it also goes the other way around: finding an early stack of fruits makes Fedhas that much more attractive. Second, food shops and acquirement can help out. There are suggestions from time to time that Fedhas should produce fruits for those in need, but that completely counters one aspect of the good.

[dpeg]

  Code:

commit c03fb01284d2fa509ee700b0003df41c8f2846c1
Author: David Ploog <dploog@users.sourceforge.net>
Date:   Mon Sep 3 02:41:01 2012 +0200

    Strawberry reduction


[mad]

Another possible option if fruit is going to be consolidated: have a "fruit" item that stacks in the inventory. When you eat it, the flavour message says "mmm... yummy choko", "that banana was delicious!", "You eat an entire bunch of grapes in one gulp!", or whatever. This keeps the fruit from clogging the inventory whilst at the same time sort of preserving the variety.

I seem to think nethack may have done this, but the last time I played it was some 5 years ago so I fully accept that it could be my imagination.

[Roderic]

Another possible option if fruit is going to be consolidated: have a "fruit" item that stacks in the inventory. When you eat it, the flavour message says "mmm... yummy choko", "that banana was delicious!", "You eat an entire bunch of grapes in one gulp!", or whatever. This keeps the fruit from clogging the inventory whilst at the same time sort of preserving the variety.

I seem to think nethack may have done this, but the last time I played it was some 5 years ago so I fully accept that it could be my imagination.

Nethack's default fruit was a slime mold (ugh!) but you can change its name previously by something else. Watermelons do exist as a differentiated entity, maybe because you can throw them to make some damage.

[ddubois]

There's two separate issues here.

There's a clear distinction between the "big fruits" and the "little fruits", in that the latter, when it spawns, spawns in large numbers and makes Fedhas a more attractive choice (and also, that your 'luck' at getting little fruit is a major factor affecting your Fedhas experience). Whether the existence of the little fruit, and inherent variability of its spawn rate, makes the game better, or worse, is one issue.

The other issue is the number of different types of food in the game, with fruit variety being a major contributor. I agree that there is insufficient variety between lemon/apple/etc. and between grape/strawberry/etc. to make the pain they cause inventory management to be worth it. So I would be in favor of putting food into a separate inventory space like runes, because I'm a packrat, and I like to play my games like this:


If putting food into its own faux inventory space is not acceptable, then I would be in favor of either one of:

1.) Merging all the various (non-yellow) fruit and snack items, from sausage down to sultana, into one "fruit" item, while changing them so that they have a chance to spawn multiples. The goal would be to keep the "expected value" of numerical count of fruit the same for Fedhas purposes, and keeping the "expected value" of total nutrition the same. (Basically, add up all snack spawn frequencies, and with a weighted average for spawn quantity.)

2.) Merging all the larger various fruit and snacks items into one "fruit" item, keeping the expected value of nutrition the same, as above, but keeping "little fruit" as a separate item (with weighted average of grape/sultana/strawberry). This would keep the Fedhas-randomness in the game, instead of spreading out the fruit distribution more smoothly like option #1 would, if you thing that's a good thing. Also, to increase variability between big fruit/little fruit, I would make little fruit take like 0.5-1.0aut to eat instead of 2.0aut.

[neil]

Sausages/jerky should be kept separate from fruit, as they provide carnivores a relatively common and quckly-eaten food with for carnivores (honeycombs/pizza/cheese are likewise quickly-eaten, but don't have the carnivore bonus). They could probably be merged with each other, though (but then what should Simulacrum give? random chance of a cow or hog?).

As for eating time for fruit, grapes and sultanas are already eaten in one turn. If small fruits are merged, this could reasonably be extended to strawberries as well (which currently take as long to eat as an apple).

[Galefury]

As for eating time for fruit, grapes and sultanas are already eaten in one turn. If small fruits are merged, this could reasonably be extended to strawberries as well (which currently take as long to eat as an apple).

Is the small/big fruit distinction really worth keeping? I don't think in-combat eating comes up often enough to worry about it, and it's fine that there is a significant penalty to doing it. Also one part of the original complaint was the huge variability in the number of available fruit. Removing small fruit would reduce that.

[varsovie]

@Galefury

I think that if we merge small and large fruit, we will have to rebalance Fedhas. Since strawberries spawn are "stakes" and not single fruits, plus the are lighters. And in anyway we still go from 12 to 2 kind of fruits.