feature request: remove food from stores

[Donald Jonker]

We oughta pick a lane: either remove food from stores or remove hunger from the game. I favor the former.

See, e.g., this recent thread for details.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Nay! Let the ale and wine flow... and the biscuits be plentiful. Even if you remove hunger there should at least be ale and wine. I mean, cmon, how can you even start an adventure without these things?

[buzzkill]

We oughta pick a lane: either remove food from stores or remove hunger from the game. I favor the former.

Yep. I could live without food in the stores. Put a few rations in the home at the start of the game and live and let die (not that anyone will).

EDIT: OK, birth option.

[Nick]

We oughta pick a lane: either remove food from stores or remove hunger from the game. I favor the former.

IMHO it's better to let people pick their own lane. This is a game, and it's meant to be fun, and who finds what fun depends on the who. Any change which is made solely for the purpose of narrowing the game should not be made.

[Mondkalb]

We oughta pick a lane: either remove food from stores or remove hunger from the game. I favor the former.

See, e.g., this recent thread for details.

Never!

If you don't want to buy food, simply don't buy it.

[LCC]

In hack you ate monster corpses for sustenance, sometimes with side effects. Add monster corpses! Let use dine!

[Magnate]

In hack you ate monster corpses for sustenance, sometimes with side effects. Add monster corpses! Let use dine!

Definitely not. Food spast is what prevents me playing more of games like Nethack and Crawl - please let's not introduce it to Angband. I wouldn't be gutted if food/hunger was removed altogether, but let's at least keep it simple.

[pndrev]

No. Leave food in stores as it is.

[takkaria]

We oughta pick a lane: either remove food from stores or remove hunger from the game. I favor the former.

See, e.g., this recent thread for details.

I hope this is a modest proposal.

[PowerDiver]

We oughta pick a lane: either remove food from stores or remove hunger from the game:

The point of the food mechanic in the original rogue was to force people not to spend a lot of time on a level. That's opposed to the current sentiment here.

The current point of food is solely to put one more annoyance on the warrior class.

I say remove hunger from the game and make all food be mushrooms. Failing that, a fairly cheap, say 100 cost, food item that has less than a third the food difference between hungry and satiated and that gives the same effects as current !CCW would partly make up for the lost slot. That is, assuming it is as available in town as rations currently are.

[Marble Dice]

We oughta pick a lane: either remove food from stores or remove hunger from the game. I favor the former.

Angband already supports this option: ironman.

Angband supports two exploration philosophies (fast vs thorough), and while I favor one of them, I don't resent the other. As a gameplay mechanic, food in its current form is basically dead weight: a minor tedium penalty for people who play with the thorough style.

The real question in this debate is how would you work inventory slime molds back into the game if you removed food?

[Donald Jonker]

The point of the food mechanic in the original rogue was to force people not to spend a lot of time on a level. That's opposed to the current sentiment here.

To clarify: I presume you mean that while food in other roguelikes encourages exploring deeper in the dungeon (in order to find more of it before starving), in Angband it actually forces you to go more slowly, by making you return to town to buy more. It's a strange paradox, which is why I think there is ample justification for reform, one way or the other.

There are plenty of good reasons to return to town without hunger. There are plenty of reasons to dive besides needing food - but I'm not convinced any of these are very good reasons. Finding better loot faster is a good reason. Device fail rates and boredom aren't. Finding food in order to survive would be a splendid new reason. Due to non-persistent levels, however, you would have to rig things so that food would only be generated on new floors.

As Eddie says, food at present is merely an inventory nuisance, with no gameplay function. So you can either add a mechanic or remove some empty calories. Perhaps the sanest thing would be removal.

I hope this is a modest proposal.

As you know, Tuesday was Soylent Green day.

[PowerDiver]

To clarify: I presume you mean that while food in other roguelikes encourages exploring deeper in the dungeon (in order to find more of it before starving), in Angband it actually forces you to go more slowly, by making you return to town to buy more. It's a strange paradox, which is why I think there is ample justification for reform, one way or the other.

I don't disagree with what you wrote, but that wasn't really my point.

Clearing a greater vault or dealing with a demon explosion is generally not feasible with the kind of food available in the original rogue. The choice to put such things into the game is a choice to make massive amounts of food necessary, *except* that everyone besides warriors gets unlimited food without costing an inventory slot, so it only matters to warriors.

Personally, my warriors eat until bloated in town and recall back when hungry. No precious slot is wasted. However, I doubt that would be satisfying for most players.

[Hariolor]

how about ?WOR are not sold in town anymore - instead the starting inventory of ?WOR increases to 2 from 1.

Thereby requiring a first dive to go deep enough to obtain more ?WOR, or to learn satisfy hunger. If you fail in this endeavor, you are only penalized by having to race down to the depth from which you last recalled.

This may require tweaking the frequency/level of ?WOR occurrence.

It also makes fire and acid more deadly.

It is really not a very good idea.

I just wouldn't want to see food go away.

[Donald Jonker]

how about ?WOR are not sold in town anymore - instead the starting inventory of ?WOR increases to 2 from 1.
<snip>
It is really not a very good idea.

I just wouldn't want to see food go away.

Believe it or not, I have advocated such measures elsewhere.