What else should not be allowed in vaults?

[fizzix]

Right now vaults get a special bitflag that prevents players from teleporting into them. I'm not too big a fan of this, as it actually allows ?phase to be a guaranteed escape from vaults. However, there are various other effects that we could make not work in vaults. Here are some options:

Destruction
Banishment
Detect objects (dobj, denchantment, clairvoyance)
Detect traps/doors
Detect monsters/evil/invis
Mapping (from clairvoyance, magic mapping and sense surroundings)
Teleport self (both phase and long teleporting varieties)
Teleport level
Teleport other/banish evil

Should these also be applied to pits/nests?

(I have a long term plan that has isolated sections of the dungeon impervious to detection and mapping, with extra treasure and monsters in them)

[Magnate]

Right now vaults get a special bitflag that prevents players from teleporting into them. I'm not too big a fan of this, as it actually allows ?phase to be a guaranteed escape from vaults. However, there are various other effects that we could make not work in vaults. Here are some options:

Destruction
Banishment
Detect objects (dobj, denchantment, clairvoyance)
Detect traps/doors
Detect monsters/evil/invis
Mapping (from clairvoyance, magic mapping and sense surroundings)
Teleport self (both phase and long teleporting varieties)
Teleport level
Teleport other/banish evil

Should these also be applied to pits/nests?

(I have a long term plan that has isolated sections of the dungeon impervious to detection and mapping, with extra treasure and monsters in them)

For detection/mapping, please clarify whether you mean:

(a) detection spells cannot be cast while inside vaults

or

(b) detection spells cast outside vaults do not detect stuff inside vaults

or both. Similarly, for teleporting, do you mean unable to teleport into vaults, or out of them or both? Similarly for destruction/banishment: do you mean these cannot be cast/used inside vaults, or cannot affect grids inside them?

There are some hugely different implications of these permutations ...

[Zyphyr]

I would assume what was meant is :

Mapping/ESP/Detection do not show anything that is inside the vault. Mapping would at most show the outer wall.

Teleportation of all types : inside of the vault can not be either start or end point of the teleport. Bansihment is a type of teleportation.

Destruction has no effect on the vault or its contents.

[AnonymousHero]

Re: Destruction and Vaults.

IMO, there are two options: Either 1) Destruction removes monsters and items and artifacts, etc., or 2) Destruction doesn't affect vault squares. (This would adversely affect Preserve:Off players, but I'm sure it could be coded such that artifacts removed by Destruction could still be generated later.)

[Sirridan]

Well about vault floors preventing phasing into vaults, I like this but it has the effect of giving a guaranteed escape from a potentially very dangerous situation. This has all been said before though, so I have one little idea for it:

if source_square is vault then allow dest_square to be a vault square as well.

potential problem: one could (in theory) teleport from a vault into a different vault on the level, and a fix for this would be to prevent landing in a vault square that isn't within a certain radius. Could still work if there were two vaults next to each other, but I think this probability is so low, its fine. Plus landing in an uncracked vault could be suicide

EDIT: Also I'd say allow destruction in vaults, but add los checks preventing the blast from passing through perm walls.

[camlost]

Do vaults have IDs? If so, the teleportation restriction could be based on vault ID rather than vault squares. Alternately, one could restrict teleportation within a vault to LOS, which would allow for a potential for escape, standing in the right places.

Vaults are both fun due to their challenge and their reward. Are we risking making them too difficult? If we incorporate changes like this, should we tone down the monsters (and/or drops) inside? Or are vaults low risk, high reward and in need to a boost to danger? Are there better fixes, like limiting teleport other that would be more suitable?

[fizzix]

I would assume what was meant is :

Mapping/ESP/Detection do not show anything that is inside the vault. Mapping would at most show the outer wall.

Teleportation of all types : inside of the vault can not be either start or end point of the teleport. Bansihment is a type of teleportation.

Destruction has no effect on the vault or its contents.

Yes, this is right. What I mean is that cave_icky floors are immune to these effects. Players can cast detection in a vault, but they won't see anything that's in the vault. They cannot map it from outside. They can't teleport in or out, and can't leave via deep descent or teleport other. (Quylthulgs and drujs suddenly become horrendous beasts)

I'm not saying this is a good change, I'm just throwing out ideas.

[Dean Anderson]

Right now vaults get a special bitflag that prevents players from teleporting into them. I'm not too big a fan of this, as it actually allows ?phase to be a guaranteed escape from vaults. However, there are various other effects that we could make not work in vaults. Here are some options:

Destruction
Banishment
Detect objects (dobj, denchantment, clairvoyance)
Detect traps/doors
Detect monsters/evil/invis
Mapping (from clairvoyance, magic mapping and sense surroundings)
Teleport self (both phase and long teleporting varieties)
Teleport level
Teleport other/banish evil

Should these also be applied to pits/nests?

(I have a long term plan that has isolated sections of the dungeon impervious to detection and mapping, with extra treasure and monsters in them)

The only change I'd make is to make the anti-teleport only apply if your start point is outside the vault. That way if you teleport or phase door from within a vault you're not guaranteed to escape because you might end up still in it.

Other than that, I'd leave them as they are. While the other changes you suggest might be fine for a variant, I think they're a bit much for Vanilla.

[pampl]

If phase door is guaranteed to pick another square in the vault, and also guaranteed to pick a square without a monster or trap, wouldn't it become the perfect ninja looting tool? While the monsters are asleep you just phase between all the squares with treasure then phase some more until you get reasonably close to an exit

[buzzkill]

I don't have any well thought out specific suggestions, but I like where this thread is going, so here's a little ramble.

Let me throw out the following. Differentiate (short range) phase door/blink from (longer range) teleport/portal.
Don't allow players to phase/blink into a vault, and allow them remain (treat vault as normal dungeon) if they phase from inside it.
Do allow players to teleport into a vault. In my estimation this would almost always be a bad choice for the player, but let it happen. It gives players without STR or STM a small chance to get inside a vault that is otherwise inaccessible.
Not allowing teleport/TO to function while within a vault??? I don't know about that. I think that it would just result in the monsters being lured out before the fight. The player must have an escape or a questionable vault will simply be avoided.
What if teleportaion, in all it's forms, was unreliable inside a vault. Maybe a 50% chance to fail (even scrolls) on top of the normal chance to fail.

[Derakon]

I think that the only changes that we should consider making to vaults are ones that prevent abusive behaviors. Specifically, Destruction and Teleport Other. Frankly, everything else people are talking about here is unnecessary; vaults are already hard enough. If you want to make them harder, put nastier monsters in them.

There's an obvious way to fix Destruction here: make it not affect icky floors (i.e. vault tiles). Voila, no more destructing vaults.

Similarly, make teleport other effects that hit monsters inside vaults teleport the monster to another vault tile. If the game is unable to achieve this after a few tries (for example, shortly after cracking a GCV) then the teleport fails. This is still susceptible to kiting monsters out of the vault and then teleporting them, but at that point you're just talking about general TO abuse which isn't going to be affected by changes made to vaults.

[fizzix]

If the game is unable to achieve this after a few tries (for example, shortly after cracking a GCV) then the teleport fails.

Actually, the way the code currently does teleporting is to:

1. pick a random square in the dungeon.
2. check if the square satisfies all the requirements*
3. if yes, put the monster there, if no repeat from 1 N times
4. If you still haven't found a square, loosen the requirements* and retry.

* the requirements are that the square is unoccupied, is a floor, open door or trap, is not a rune, and is within some proscribed distance from the player. The distance requirement is what is loosened.

[Hariolor]

How about a power gradient for vaults?

smaller vaults work exactly as now

better vaults disallow using phase/teleport (self or other)/destruct while inside (and block destruct from outside)

the mega vaults allow no @ magic inside whatsoever, no heal spells, no rods/staves/wands. Scrolls and potions should probably be guaranteed to work still just for survival's sake...but scrolls of teleport and destruct variety could be selectively coded to invariably fail.

Side thought: what effect would nerfing teleport in vaults have on angels, vampires, Q's, etc - would teleport-to and teleport-away also cease functioning?

[kingvictory2003]

the mega vaults allow no @ magic inside whatsoever, no heal spells, no rods/staves/wands. Scrolls and potions should probably be guaranteed to work still just for survival's sake...but scrolls of teleport and destruct variety could be selectively coded to invariably fail.

That would make a mage's life pretty hard IMHO.

[Derakon]

Vaults should be consistent across the board, because the player has no indication of what a given vault allows unless he's memorized vault.txt.

And again, personally I don't see the need to make vaults more restricting. Certainly not since much of the time the player can simply lure monsters out of the vault and deal with them at his leisure. And for the record, I don't support treating monsters that were spawned inside of vaults differently from monsters that weren't, again since the player doesn't have any way of recognizing which monsters are special.