Why is food needed?

[Tiburon Silverflame]

I think what we're saying is that we need to start by being clear: what is the desired role of food in the game? What does it add, how do we want it to affect play? Then we move to the other points such as eliminating Satisfy Hunger, as a spell, as a scroll, or both; adjusting food values of potions; food rations in town; and so on. Without a goal in mind, we can't plow a path towards it.

[Hariolor]

I think what we're saying is that we need to start by being clear: what is the desired role of food in the game? What does it add, how do we want it to affect play? Then we move to the other points such as eliminating Satisfy Hunger, as a spell, as a scroll, or both; adjusting food values of potions; food rations in town; and so on. Without a goal in mind, we can't plow a path towards it.

I propose that the primary effect of food should be to act as a timer for early-through-mid-level characters, limiting the length of dives and adding another opportunity for careless death.

A secondary effect of food should be to provide secondary benefits/penalties, particularly at lower DL/higher CL.

--

Some thoughts:

1) limit the number of plain ol' rations in the game to maybe 20, available from the general store, once gone, they are gone. As an aside this would make glutton ghosts and rot jellies really scary early on.

2) increase the nourishment of potions/shrooms/molds/etc, as others suggest

3) tweak the base time it takes to starve to death, I propose tripling or more the timer, but adding more stages of increasingly severe penalties as starvation slowly takes hold. Conversely, I can see the benefit ofs a faster timer as well.

4) keep slow metabolism, but eliminate magical nourishment, increase the availability/variety of food items to compensate if necessary

5) perhaps as CON increases, the timer shortens proportionately (maybe this is how it works already?). Done right, this would keep food relevant through stat-gain, as magically increasing con offsets the effect of slow_metabolism items and the availability of more nourishing foods.

[PowerDiver]

I propose that the primary effect of food should be to act as a timer for early-through-mid-level characters, limiting the length of dives and adding another opportunity for careless death.

I entirely disagree. The game should be in the dungeon, not in the town. Anything that is designed to force the player back to town is a mistake IMO.

[d_m]

I entirely disagree. The game should be in the dungeon, not in the town. Anything that is designed to force the player back to town is a mistake IMO.

I agree with this.

I am not hardline, in that I think many people find the town fun and like going back to it, so I don't want to make the town useless or force everyone to play ironman. But there should be enough food in the dungeon to allow people to keep playing if they want, and to make ironman plausibly possible for warriors.

I haven't played enough ironman recently to have an opinion on whether edibles are too common or rare right now. I anticipate the work by fizzix and myshkin on Monte Carlo simulation will help us analyze what's currently going on.

[Hariolor]

I entirely disagree. The game should be in the dungeon, not in the town. Anything that is designed to force the player back to town is a mistake IMO.

See point 1) that I made

My assumption is most players will make at least a few trips back to town during the early CLevels. Hence food should be available there until the better food starts showing up around stat-gain levels.

My concern with taking a food-from-the-dungeon-only approach early on is that angband relies on the RNG to produce food. As such, it would be necessary to set a "target" amount of food production to make levels survivable. However, the nature of statistics is such that either you make the range very narrow (and thus neuter the mechanic), or you face the likelihood of streaks of games where you simply run out of food and die in the first couple levels due to sheer bad luck. I don't think that would be fun for anyone.

In short, if food is sparse and thus a real concern, it limits the length of dives. If food can be reliably scavanged during the early game, then the mechanic becomes less threatening. I'd rather see young characters punished by having to recall back to town. Let the established characters worry about starvation while clearing vaults and whatnot.

Just my $0.02

[HailEris]

I think I died more often because "gorged" let Morgoth double move me than from lack of food. Given that not all characters make it that far, Id prefer healing potions to not nourish. Having to make sure that Im hungry enough before tackling M is a bit silly

Another poster mentioned carrying extra potions around to free up the "food slot" which IMO is a clever solution to having to carry food around. I think the better solution is to make it so that the healing potions can't gorge you, while still providing nutrition.

I think another "neat" starvation penalty would be CON damage due to malnutrition, but i dont know how well that would be recieved or how hard it would be to implement.

[Dean Anderson]

I am perhaps the loudest advocate of removing satisfy hunger from mage-casters. I cannot speak for the others, but my opinion is that *if* food is part of the game, then at least half of the classes should have to deal with it.

Saying it's a bad idea, but that's OK because we have a quick hack for spellcasters, seems selfish and lazy to me.

I'd rather see the food mechanic removed entirely, of course.

I like the fact that in the early game you have to worry about food, and then later when you've got the spell you can stop carrying it and free up the inventory space.

It adds a lot to the feel that your character is progressing and getting more powerful.

I'd make exactly the same argument for light, too. You start off having to manage torches, but eventually you'll find a perma-light object and can ditch them.

I think it would be a real shame to take out that aspect of character progression - it would make the game much blander.

[Derakon]

I'd argue the reverse: the game is blander because every class but one stops having to worry about food after clvl 15 or so.

Take a counterpoint: priests and paladins don't get an identify spell until they find a dungeon spellbook. Until that point, they keep having to dedicate slots to identification items. Does that make them blander? No; it just means that they have to wait awhile for a payoff. In the meantime there are alternatives, so it's not like meeting that requirement is especially hard. It just requires an extra inventory slot.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

I propose that the primary effect of food should be to act as a timer for early-through-mid-level characters, limiting the length of dives and adding another opportunity for careless death.

Two points here.

1. This isn't the kind of 'careless' death that much appeals to me.

2. Food's cheap, and IIRC reasonably lightweight, so even mages can pick up enough of a supply that initial dives aren't particularly limited. You're much more likely to run out of light, before you run out of food; torches *are* heavy, and don't last as long.

Also, philosophically, I'm not thrilled with a goal that is so short-lived.

[Philip]

1) Limit the number of plain ol' rations in the game to maybe 20, available from the general store, once gone, they are gone. As an aside this would make glutton ghosts and rot jellies really scary early on.

2) increase the nourishment of potions/shrooms/molds/etc, as others suggest

3) tweak the base time it takes to starve to death, I propose tripling or more the timer, but adding more stages of increasingly severe penalties as starvation slowly takes hold. Conversely, I can see the benefit ofs a faster timer as well.

4) keep slow metabolism, but eliminate magical nourishment, increase the availability/variety of food items to compensate if necessary

5) perhaps as CON increases, the timer shortens proportionately (maybe this is how it works already?). Done right, this would keep food relevant through stat-gain, as magically increasing con offsets the effect of slow_metabolism items and the availability of more nourishing foods.

It seems that 1) punishes people for not playing high-elves because of the Glutton Ghosts. I appreciate the aspect that makes you think about regen stuff.
2) people are complaining that they are gorged during the final fight, so really potions should either act like mini-satisfy hunger or not at all practically(two turns or so)
3) with your previous suggestions it makes sense.
4) I was about to suggest that 1 kills warriors but please keep scrolls, because ironman is dead without them
5) you mean like regen. Nice idea, but I think that regen penalty is enough

[bio_hazard]

Not really complaining about how food works now, but a couple of ideas.

I think a change that might make food more relevant would be to make poison attacks have a chance to destroy food in the pack. To compensate, humanoids should have a better chance to drop food.

I also think the satisfy hunger spell/scroll could be changed to 'summon food'- with chances at deeper DL's to get the magical foods. Food would appear at the feet of the character, maybe with an auto-prompt to eat now/put in pack. It always seems like a cop-out that satisfy hunger didn't have a chance of causing gorging.

[Estie]

Not really complaining about how food works now, but a couple of ideas.

I think a change that might make food more relevant would be to make poison attacks have a chance to destroy food in the pack. To compensate, humanoids should have a better chance to drop food.

I also think the satisfy hunger spell/scroll could be changed to 'summon food'- with chances at deeper DL's to get the magical foods. Food would appear at the feet of the character, maybe with an auto-prompt to eat now/put in pack. It always seems like a cop-out that satisfy hunger didn't have a chance of causing gorging.

Poison ruining food would affect everyone in the very early game and only the warrior in the middle + late game, who is already the prime victim of food mechanics.

The spell summoning food seems like it just increases keypresses needlessly, increasing tedium. Whats the game effect ? As for gorging, that is about the only drawback of the spell currently - casters cant choose to stay somewhat hungry to be able to drink more healing potions without getting gorged. The warrior can do that, by eating just one ration when hungry.

[Timo Pietilä]

The spell summoning food seems like it just increases keypresses needlessly, increasing tedium. Whats the game effect ? As for gorging, that is about the only drawback of the spell currently - casters cant choose to stay somewhat hungry to be able to drink more healing potions without getting gorged. The warrior can do that, by eating just one ration when hungry.

"satisfy hunger" used to be "create food". That would be reverting things back to ancient times, but suggestion did seem to indicate creating "better" food-items with greater CL. I find that interesting.

Now to figure out what kind of food-items could we have.

[Lord Fell]

I think I read a suggestion that whenever players take out a group of humanoids (orcs, kobolds, novice rogues, trolls, etc) that a chest of consumables be dropped: food, torches and/or oil, and some of the common potions and scrolls.

Thematically, this is appropriate: a tribe of kobolds or an orcish war-party is going to have supplies. In terms of game-mechanics, this helps to ensure that players who are diving don't have to return to town.

Alternatively, any target which is humanoid could have a chance to drop consumables (primarily food). Also, any mushroom(,) or mold(m) could have a chance to drop Slime Molds & Mushrooms.

[Bostock]

Also, any mushroom(,) or mold(m) could have a chance to drop Slime Molds & Mushrooms.

Un has precisely this mechanic for mushrooms. It's kind of cool, but I'd be worried (if I played V and thus had a right to worry ) that this would undermine the educational function of , and m.