Tele-other, GV clearing.

[PowerDiver]

Why? I think it makes sense for vaults to have some magic defences, making some spells less effective/behave differently..

Special casing is the enemy.

Generally speaking, a game is better when it has fewer rules that are designed to act interestingly when they combine.

In a game with a terrible manual, this becomes vitally important.

The changes suggested to permanent walls, if done consistently, are a much better approach. I would quibble over details, but that would be good design rather than bad design.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Well, it helps when the flag name shows at least some semblance of its role....

And I agree with PD...don't use this flag. It's not hard to write the path trace, and it works a lot better.

Also: what's the point of the ICKY flag? From what you're saying, it's a floor flag...not a wall flag. So one could use it to do the Reinforced...but one shouldn't. Reinforced would be *a* flag; the notion of "in a vault", if it has any meaning at all, is separate. Don't link the two.

[fizzix]

Teleportation effects are not allowed to land you inside a vault, period. They don't care if you start in a vault -- that's why Phase Door is such a good escape when clearing vaults, because it'll dump you right outside.

well yes, of course. I was talking about the proposed change that would have teleporting from an icky floor force you to land on an icky floor.

[Derakon]

Also: what's the point of the ICKY flag? From what you're saying, it's a floor flag...not a wall flag. So one could use it to do the Reinforced...but one shouldn't. Reinforced would be *a* flag; the notion of "in a vault", if it has any meaning at all, is separate. Don't link the two.

It's a tile flag -- it applies even to walls in vaults that you end up digging out. It serves the following purposes:

* It marks tiles that the player can't enter the level from.
* It marks tiles the player can't teleport onto.

It also used to prevent monsters from being teleported onto it, although that appears to now be commented out.

I think you'll agree that the first item on that list at least is desirable. Appearing in the middle of a vault would be an odd way to start a level, and could easily screw with the vault's intended flow.

Basically, icky floors are a convenient way for the code to recognize a vault after it has been placed.

The idea of permanent walls blocking teleport effects sounds interesting, but I'm concerned about how you'd handle grouping. For example, say the monster you try to teleport away hits a permanent wall that's right next to a group of orcs. Where does the monster land? What if the entire vault is full? I'd hate to think of the confusion caused by trying to teleport away a group of monsters and have the teleport work on some (because they chose teleport destinations that had an empty "landing zone") but not on others for no reason that the player can discern.

Otherwise, I like the idea.

[PowerDiver]

The idea of permanent walls blocking teleport effects sounds interesting, but I'm concerned about how you'd handle grouping.

The approach that seems obvious to me is to teleport to the furthest available square along the path from source to destination that is before all permanent walls along the path.

[PowerDiver]

Upon reflection, I am opposed to breaking teleport other in vaults.

The problem is that teleport other is a necessary tactic to deal with summoners.

Currently, checkerboard vaults are fun. If a summoner brings in a dozen wyrms or greater demons or time hounds, and phase and teleport self/other do not move out of line of sight, you would be forced to use destruction or teleport level, and I bet people want to stop those in vaults as well. That means it would be too dangerous to clear a checkerboard. The result would be less fun.

[EpicMan]

Maybe we need a different (alternative, not replacing TO completely) way to counter monster factories.

In ToME (2) there was an artifact called the anchor of space-time. It could be activated to prevent teleportation and summoning in some radius around the wielder.

Perhaps we could bring this idea over to Vanilla, albeit with some more-in-theme name. Gauntlets of Grounding or something like that. An ego that activates to prevent or allow teleportation and summoning in a radius (LOS?) around the player. Use them to handle out-of-control summoners at the cost of requiring an extra turn to escape (which translates to having to escape when half as hurt as normal). Turn them on, kill the summoners, turn them off when done or when you've decided to escape.

Probably uniques should be resistant to the effect, so you would still need TO to deal with them, otherwise Morgoth seems less powerful and the angel uniques are MUCH easier to defeat.

Make the ego items/devices whatever they end up being significantly more common than sources of TO so the player will probably have them before he gets any sort of TO to avoid redundancy. Maybe make TO somewhat less common. To throw warriors a bone (as they will be more affected by rarer -TO than others) add some artifact gauntlets that a warrior would want (i.e. + STR, DEX and/or CON) that activate for TO.

[AnonymousHero]

In ToME (2) there was an artifact called the anchor of space-time. It could be activated to prevent teleportation and summoning in some radius around the wielder.

It's still there ... and it "only" prevents all teleportation.

[fizzix]

The problem with summoners is that they can produce too many powerful monsters. Do not consider friends or escort tags for summoned monsters. And then reduce the number to 2-3 monsters per summon. *Then* start mucking with TO, phase, etc.

Yes, this makes Morgoth less powerful, but there are ways to beef him up. Same with other top end uniques. Summoning should not be their most powerful attack, but it pretty much is.

[Derakon]

Ehh, I've never really been a fan of the player carrying around an area denial aura. Especially if it requires wearing equipment specifically to achieve that effect. It's a clumsy way to "solve" the "summons get out of control" problem without actually addressing the root cause -- a patch job, nothing more.

[buzzkill]

Just throwing this out there. Could in-vault summoning just summon non-vault monsters from elsewhere on the level (mostly, maybe conjure forth one or two big baddies from limbo). Thus if you took the time to cleat or mostly-clear the level, the summons wouldn't be so bad. Chain summoning situations wouldn't get so crazy, so easily.