reduce slot size

[PowerDiver]

Timo made a suggestion that the quiver size should be reduced a lot, and I remember seeing something similar before. I think that if you can carry 99 arrows in a slot, when you try to put them into the quiver they should fit and the quiver should take only 1 slot.

HOWEVER, there is no need for 99 arrows to fit in a single slot. I suggest that we reduce all slots to be able to hold at most 50 items. You could drop that number to 40, but 50 seems rounder somehow, and I am pretty sure 30 is too low.

The first downside is that my warriors will carry only 50 ?phase to face M. I can cope with that. The second is that the general store will only sell 50 arrows per visit, and I am sure that will result in me applying a buyout button patch every time I download a nightly. I can only speak for myself, but these seem like small issues, and may not even apply to most players.

[Derakon]

My suggestion was to limit slots in the quiver to only holding 30 units of ammo each. That would allow the quiver to fulfill its original function -- not penalizing the use of small stacks of ammo -- without grossly inflating the character's carrying capacity. 30 was my suggestion of slot size because that seems to be about the average size of a stack of ammo found in-game.

I suppose that adding this without limiting the stacks of non-quiver items and without forcing carried ammo to the quiver would mean that there'd be an incentive to carry larger stacks in normal inventory, which seems weird. If we're going to go with limiting the size of all stacks, quiver and non-quiver, then the limit should probably be higher than 30. 40 or 50 would work.

[Magnate]

My suggestion was to limit slots in the quiver to only holding 30 units of ammo each. That would allow the quiver to fulfill its original function -- not penalizing the use of small stacks of ammo -- without grossly inflating the character's carrying capacity. 30 was my suggestion of slot size because that seems to be about the average size of a stack of ammo found in-game.

I suppose that adding this without limiting the stacks of non-quiver items and without forcing carried ammo to the quiver would mean that there'd be an incentive to carry larger stacks in normal inventory, which seems weird. If we're going to go with limiting the size of all stacks, quiver and non-quiver, then the limit should probably be higher than 30. 40 or 50 would work.

I'd prefer your original suggestion over Eddie's: ten lots of 30 ammo is four inv slots, which goes down to three after you lose three missiles. That's still plenty of use for the quiver, and doesn't mess with any other stacks. If you want to carry another 99 arrows in your inventory, that's up to you.

[fizzix]

I'd prefer your original suggestion over Eddie's

I prefer Eddie's suggestion...

[d_m]

Having different max slot sizes in the quiver versus the pack would probably introduce some annoying edge cases; I don't love that.

I would be fine with reducing the number of quiver slots from 10 down to some lower number, e.g. 5-7.

Reducing the max slots would screw up everyone's savefiles. I don't think that's worth doing to "fix" a new feature that is pretty controversial anyway.

[Magnate]

Having different max slot sizes in the quiver versus the pack would probably introduce some annoying edge cases; I don't love that.

I would be fine with reducing the number of quiver slots from 10 down to some lower number, e.g. 5-7.

Reducing the max slots would screw up everyone's savefiles. I don't think that's worth doing to "fix" a new feature that is pretty controversial anyway.

Hmmm. The point of the quiver is to combine ten different types of ammo, so if you don't like the edge cases I would rather use Eddie's fix than reduce the number of quiver slots.

[d_m]

It makes easy to carry tons of different ego ammunition when you find it--rather than devoting a full slot to carting around 8 arrows of slay evil you just throw them in the quiver and don't worry about it. The number 10 was just what S and NPP were using which is why I used it (the ticket Takkaria opened mentioned taking the quiver from those variants).

Changing quiver slot sizes (or all slot sizes) helps fix the problem by reducing the "compression effect" you get with the quiver. Given that the pack can still hold ammunition (albeit without compression) I think you would get a similar reduction by giving the quiver fewer slots--you could still carry 10 types but only 5 of them would compress.

If you could give a practical example of when the one would work drastically differently than the other that would help me understand. From my point of view they are quite similar, and this just seems like the easiest to understand/implement.

[PowerDiver]

One of the reasons for my suggestion instead of the others is that it allows for mindless autowielding into the quiver. I think the whole idea of shifting items back and forth from the pack to the quiver with a wield command to be bad design, and going further to make things act differently based on which 5 out of 7 stacks of ammo go in just seems wretched.

[d_m]

One of the reasons for my suggestion instead of the others is that it allows for mindless autowielding into the quiver. I think the whole idea of shifting items back and forth from the pack to the quiver with a wield command to be bad design, and going further to make things act differently based on which 5 out of 7 stacks of ammo go in just seems wretched.

Yeah, I kind of expected you might feel that way--I tried to write that patch to handle the quiver more like you wanted, but it didn't seem to catch on

Would your quiver still have a cap on how many types of ammo it could hold? If not I feel like that will end up being a nightmare to code correctly (and would probably still be buggy/confusing for the user). If so, then we're just arguing about what the constant should be.

[Jungle_Boy]

Say you have 10 stacks of 29 arrows:

Using the method of lowering the max per slot to 30 you can get all those arrows in your quiver and take three slots of inventory.

Using the method of lowering quiver slots to 5 you can store half the arrows in your quiver and the rest in inventory, taking a total of 7 slots of inventory. even using 7 quiver slots this would still be 6 slots of inventory

This gives 3-4 slots difference in amount of space taken by same items. This seems fairly significant to me.

[Daniel Fishman]

How about, limit the total number of arrows in the quiver to, say, 300 (plucking a number out of the air), but keep the large number of slots (quite possibly even increase it).
This gives the effects wanted by {30 per slot, 10 slots} but might mitigate d_m's concerns.

[Timo Pietilä]

It makes easy to carry tons of different ego ammunition when you find it--rather than devoting a full slot to carting around 8 arrows of slay evil you just throw them in the quiver and don't worry about it. The number 10 was just what S and NPP were using which is why I used it (the ticket Takkaria opened mentioned taking the quiver from those variants).

My main complaint about quiver is that it can expand to another letter in inventory pushing something out of the pack. Usually an artifact you use as a swap.

Having it restricted to 99 items total would work for me. 50 or 60 could work too (three 20 stack or four 15 stack). Rest you can carry in inventory. It would still function as designed: allow carrying many small stacks of different ammo without using unnecessary inventory space. I have no problem if it has 99 slots for those 99 items, main thing is that it should not expand to another letter in inventory (expanding quiver?)

[d_m]

Say you have 10 stacks of 29 arrows:

Using the method of lowering the max per slot to 30 you can get all those arrows in your quiver and take three slots of inventory.

Using the method of lowering quiver slots to 5 you can store half the arrows in your quiver and the rest in inventory, taking a total of 7 slots of inventory. even using 7 quiver slots this would still be 6 slots of inventory

This gives 3-4 slots difference in amount of space taken by same items. This seems fairly significant to me.

I see what you mean. Now I think I like lowering the quiver slot size is worse.

Remember that 99 plain arrows will now take 4 quiver slots, not one (3 slots if you stop at 90 arrows). That seems pretty annoying. It will certainly be a pain in the early game where you will mostly be using generic arrows.

Also, you're going to end up with some terrible UI problems. Say you have no free pack slots, 35 arrows in the pack, and 99 arrows in the quiver. If you try to wield the 35 arrows it will fail unless you drop the arrows first because there will be at least 5 arrows left over, leaving no space for the quiver to "expand." I'm trying to imagine writing an error message to explain this.

The current quiver already has some weirdness to deal with, but the nice thing is that if you can put arrows in your pack you can always put them in the quiver (until you use up the 10 quiver slots).

So I guess I do actually like Eddie's suggestion better, in that it preserves that behavior. I still think that reducing the quiver size is a fine solution (unless you share Eddie's views about correct quiver function) because we all got along fine having a size 0 quiver, so going from a size 10 quiver to a size 5-7 is still a net win).

[d_m]

My main complaint about quiver is that it can expand to another letter in inventory pushing something out of the pack. Usually an artifact you use as a swap.

I think that this can be fixed independently of any "weakening" we do. In fact, I thought I tried to make sure it wouldn't do this unless you explicitly wielded something from the floor (e.g. not auto pickup).

So sorry if this has been you driving crazy... I will see if I can replicate this, although if you give me a specific scenario where you notice it that will make it easier.

[Atarlost]

The appropriate size for the quiver is not the average stack size. That would make half of the stacks you find overflow the quiver. You want the quiver a standard deviation above the average size. Or a very rough guestimate of the same.