Recharging

[Timo Pietilä]

Allow activation from inventory?

This actually makes sense. If you allow charging in inventory you should be able to activate it too from inventory. Make those item really rod-like.

So if you go to that direction, go all the way.

[Derakon]

+1
I mean, if you carry objects, they got the same speed as you, no?

I don't care about justification. I'm just sick of waiting three times longer for my rods to recharge just because I'm at +20 speed.

[Magnate]

I don't care about justification. I'm just sick of waiting three times longer for my rods to recharge just because I'm at +20 speed.

I used to think that too. I looked into this yesterday, and it is a *massive* change. It's about two lines of code cut from process_world() and pasted into process_player(), but it's a huge, fundamental change. That's why I started this thread, really - I wanted to think about it a bit more.

The thing about rods on the ground recharging really bugs me. If they're going to keep doing that, it's *got* to stay in process_world(). My favoured solution is to set recharge times in energy, but that's a lot more work - and it still doesn't really make sense for items on the ground.

Unpleasant though it is, rods taking longer to recharge for faster chars is the most logical situation. Anything else changes the absolute recharge time. The only solution for that (the "time bubble" concept described so well by Timo) doesn't apply to rods on the ground, which leads us towards two different recharging rates. That's not really feasible, I think.

[fizzix]

I don't care about justification. I'm just sick of waiting three times longer for my rods to recharge just because I'm at +20 speed.

get another rod?

[PowerDiver]

The only solution for that (the "time bubble" concept described so well by Timo) doesn't apply to rods on the ground, which leads us towards two different recharging rates. That's not really feasible, I think.

It's trivial to do. All you have to do is embrace floating point arithmetic. Even subpar compilers for the slowest devices now have got to produce faster code than the best integer arithmetic in the 1980s.

[Derakon]

get another rod?

Right, I'll just hit up the stores for another Rod of [Trap Detection|Treasure Detection|Detection|Teleport Other|etc.].

I think the bottom-line problem here isn't so much the recharge times as that there are infinite-use items that perform tasks that aren't particularly time-sensitive. Most of the time it doesn't make a huge difference if you have to wait 10 turns before you can detect traps again, so people just mutter and bear it rather than do without entirely. I'm beginning to think that the entire concept of non-time-sensitive rods is flawed. They should either have zero recharge time (and possibly cost something other than time to recharge) or only make sense to use in time-sensitive situations, e.g. the attack rods.

[fizzix]

Right, I'll just hit up the stores for another Rod of [Trap Detection|Treasure Detection|Detection|Teleport Other|etc.].

I think the bottom-line problem here isn't so much the recharge times as that there are infinite-use items that perform tasks that aren't particularly time-sensitive. Most of the time it doesn't make a huge difference if you have to wait 10 turns before you can detect traps again, so people just mutter and bear it rather than do without entirely. I'm beginning to think that the entire concept of non-time-sensitive rods is flawed. They should either have zero recharge time (and possibly cost something other than time to recharge) or only make sense to use in time-sensitive situations, e.g. the attack rods.

I actually don't have a problem at all with the recharge times for the utility rods. They all seem reasonable. The only ones that are problematic are -healing which is WAY too long and -restoration which is pointless unless you allow it to recharge at home. By the time I have +10 speed, I usually have more than one of the standard detection rods. (-dall usually take a while to find more than one, but with the new changes, they're much more available than in the past)

I do have a problem with the attack rods though. They're useless unless you have multiples. By the time I've found them, missiles are doing as much damage anyway. I don't know what the solution is beyond doubling or trebly charging the rods, something that's unappealing to me.

[Derakon]

I should note that I'm assuming that ewert's rarity changes will be recorrected towards something a bit scarcer. Currently consumables and rods and so on are rather too common.

[Timo Pietilä]

I should note that I'm assuming that ewert's rarity changes will be recorrected towards something a bit scarcer. Currently consumables and rods and so on are rather too common.

Maybe have drops weakened even further and increase floor item creation? I rather like the way less junk equipment I'm getting, but I do get now too much consumables, so that adds up as simply getting too much stuff.

Also reverting that creation to average of mlevel/dlevel or mlevel whichever is greater affects this.

[ewert]

If rods and so on are rather too common, then how can you have troubles with their recharges ... One needs to carry more of them if one wants them to be at-will powers. Weight management issue. I carry minimum 3 usually, if have speed items already then 5, and don't have problems with the utility rods. Getting the basic rods 5 pieces each is not bad, it is not instant of course but not bad. -Detection of course trickles in instead of already having enough when you get speed upgrades. Don't see a problem with that either tbh. Yes carrying 15 rods is funky, but nowadays I'm even getting rid of door/stair ones and using staves of magic mapping instead, get so much more information with those.

Another small downtune of the end fight consumables, healing/*healing*/life/rMana and ?*destr* maybe. Or increase unique HP across the board, and people should learn to start using consumables again instead of waiting until the unique is a pushover. I think I'll ponder the current status of consumables/rods/staves, go through the object.txt again, and see whether targeted reduction or overall item drop reduction would be a good next step. Right after I code pseudo/id streamlining and unlimited home option.

I haven't properly tried to gather attack rods or wands in early/midgame, but I have successfully had some drain life and annihilation stuff for endgames, not enough of them but useful amounts nonetheless. I think I killed Tarrasque with a priest with anni wands. (3 or 4 wands I think so very low recharge fail rates).

[ewert]

I think of the high end recharging items, only healing is the one with a big problem.

Magic mapping, use them, love them, until find a couple more it is still useful but situational in that I don't just fire it off everytime but only when see dangerous monsters / interesting items.

Speed rods, I fought one Morgoth fight where I had to rely on was it 2 rods of speed. Definitely do not reduce their recharge time. 3 would have been a breeze, I had a lack of !speed (yes, imagine that, a lack of such a basic consumable for the final fight =)), with 2 rods I had to -teleO couple of times to wait for recharge. I think that is fine.

Restoration, if at home I just rest it up, if carrying with me, usually one is kinda enough. Gives sustains and careful play some value still, if it recharged faster (ie. speed bubble time) I think it would reduce the effect of stat drains and thus sustain gearing quite much.

Now healing, frankly with current !ccw, it having fail rate, I think it should have a faster recharge. This rod is the only one I don't really find a use for if I find it ...

My 2 cents.

[ewert]

As for artifacts, how about: can activate from inventory + half recharge rate if carried, not worn. Again the healing activations, they have failrate so are not much more than super !ccw, lower their recharge times. The rest I think are mostly fine.

[Timo Pietilä]

Another small downtune of the end fight consumables, healing/*healing*/life/rMana and ?*destr* maybe. I think I'll ponder the current status of consumables/rods/staves, go through the object.txt again, and see whether targeted reduction or overall item drop reduction would be a good next step. Right after I code pseudo/id streamlining and unlimited home option.

I think overall drop reduction is the right way to go, because armor/weapon rarity is now pretty much spot on, but you just get too much other clutter. You can't fix that by just tweaking with rarities, because lowering some rarity basically increases rarity for everything else and vise versa.

You should reduce drops instead. Maybe increase floor items so that levels are not quite as boring as they are now. Reducing drops reduces junk. With this you can then increase odds to get weapon/armor a bit and see how it works out.

In pre- item stacking -era this was not an issue because there were no extreme drops by angel and/or demon explosions and dragon pits. If you killed the young and mature dragons there were no space for ancient dragon drops. In order to maximize Tiamat drop you needed to lure it to open space and then deliver the kill-blow (which could cause you to face a lot of summoned dragons). There were way less guaranteed excellent drops.

[ewert]

I think overall drop reduction is the right way to go, because armor/weapon rarity is now pretty much spot on, but you just get too much other clutter. You can't fix that by just tweaking with rarities, because lowering some rarity basically increases rarity for everything else and vise versa.

You should reduce drops instead. Maybe increase floor items so that levels are not quite as boring as they are now. Reducing drops reduces junk. With this you can then increase odds to get weapon/armor a bit and see how it works out.

Thing is, ego's rely on the good/great item drop routine, so it won't be changed much with rarity tweaking but will with item drop reduction if we touch good/great dropping. I guess could see how it would work out if general drops are reduced (leaving good/great ones intact as is), and increase floor general drops (to also somewhat prevent floor scumming for artifacts etc.) ...

[Timo Pietilä]

Thing is, ego's rely on the good/great item drop routine, so it won't be changed much with rarity tweaking but will with item drop reduction if we touch good/great dropping. I guess could see how it would work out if general drops are reduced (leaving good/great ones intact as is), and increase floor general drops (to also somewhat prevent floor scumming for artifacts etc.) ...

With your change to rarities lesser vaults have now a lot more rods, spellbooks and stuff like that. Especially DLV:s (both varieties obviously) are a good source for consumables.

Problem with weakening general drops is that those are affected a lot by revert to ((average of mlvl and dlvl) or mlvl) whichever is better. That moves novice ranger/rogue/mage/warrior and troll and orc group drops a lot shallower than they are now. You need to change that too to see if it works like it should work. Otherwise you end up doing all that over again after that is repaired.

It might be that drop frequencies do not need to be tweaked at all with this change done (IIRC there were way less problems with too much junk with that as average of two).