Squelch by value

[Magnate]

Hi all,

There's been a lot of discussion of squelch recently, centred around the problems with DSMs but ranging quite widely. Since squelch doesn't actually destroy anything any more (only hides things), you can always un-squelch something to get it back if you change your mind (while you're still on the same level).

There are two fundamental problems with the existing quality squelch setup:

1. It's dependent on the pseudo-ID categories, which are clunky. "Excellent with no high resists", "excellent but not splendid" etc. We tie ourselves in knots trying to categorise item flags in a sensible and intuitive way (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive), but two decades after the invention of pseudoID it's still imperfect.

2. Nobody has designed a neat, smooth-scrolling UI which can cater for all permutations of items, and again we've spent years trying to fit it onto a set of single-screen menus. IMO NPP's menus are probably the best, but even those are not so good that they've made it to the top of anybody's patch list for V.

One alternative, which was mentioned deep in another thread recently, is to squelch by value. For each item category (swords, hafted, bows, body armour, shield etc.) you specify a gp amount, below which stuff gets squelched.

This relies on quite a lot of faith in the pricing algorithm, which some people will vote against purely on that basis, but you can always immediately recover something that is squelched which you want to keep. Also, the object_power function has recently been rewritten, and further improvements to pricing can be made quite quickly when people spot anomalies (e.g. X should be worth more than Y).

Just interested to see if there's any sort of consensus that this would be a good way to do quality squelch.

[Napsterbater]

I think squelch by value is an excellent idea, perhaps you can get around the need to make values visible by defining a few ego categories, one for each phase of the game. And then you could make each individual ego defy the general rule.

So like, you could define something like "early game" which for weapons would include slays and *slays*, maybe holy avenger, too. Then you could squelch that category, but if you wanted to look at the *slays* before you squelch them, you could go into the regular squelch menu and set it to "on drop" which would keep them from being squelched out of your inventory. Then you can go look at it, and if you like it you can inscribe it, and if you don't, you could drop it, upon which game would squelch it.

That way you could work it into ID by use. If you wield a weapon, and you don't see any effects, you know it's a average, good, or a slay, and it gets squelched as soon as you wield another weapon.

[Nomad]

How about rather than expecting the player to be able to specify values, you have the option to squelch by automatic comparison of values? E.g., you find a ring of slow digestion, the squelch system checks whether you're already wearing two rings that are worth more than slow digestion, and if so, squelches it. You ID a pair of speed boots +4 when you already own a pair with +6? Auto-squelched. Find a weapon that does less damage per turn than your current weapon? Auto-squelch.

I think you'd have to combine it with the option to flag specific abilities/resistances/stat boosts as !k, though, to make sure you could still preserve things of technical 'lesser' value that you might need to plug resistance holes or to allow you to shuffle your gear.

[Netbrian]

Could someone clarify what NPP's squelching system is?

[Magnate]

Could someone clarify what NPP's squelching system is?

Well, I wasn't proposing to port the entire system (which still uses purple dots IIRC), but the menu setup for quality squelching is quite sophisticated, allowing you to specify particular egos you want to squelch on particular item types. The point is that it isn't limited to the pseudoID categories we have in V (good, excellent, splendid etc.) so it's an interesting alternative.

[Magnate]

How about rather than expecting the player to be able to specify values, you have the option to squelch by automatic comparison of values? E.g., you find a ring of slow digestion, the squelch system checks whether you're already wearing two rings that are worth more than slow digestion, and if so, squelches it. You ID a pair of speed boots +4 when you already own a pair with +6? Auto-squelched. Find a weapon that does less damage per turn than your current weapon? Auto-squelch.

I think you'd have to combine it with the option to flag specific abilities/resistances/stat boosts as !k, though, to make sure you could still preserve things of technical 'lesser' value that you might need to plug resistance holes or to allow you to shuffle your gear.

Yes, this is a neat idea. If we were to implement value squelching, one could choose "less than current" instead of specifying a gp threshold. But autoinscriptions are currently tied to base items, so it would be a little bit of work to enable "auto-inscribe anything with rpois". Not impossible though, and probably a good thing to do in any case (regardless of what happens with squelch).

[Derakon]

Ehhh, I don't really like squelch-by-value, in no small part because I'm playing with no-selling all the time now and have no idea what items are worth. Getting a good category-based squelch in would be entirely adequate:

a) squelch this item
b) squelch all Soft Leather Armor of Resist Fire
c) squelch all body armor of Resist Fire
d) squelch all excellent body armor

[Magnate]

Ehhh, I don't really like squelch-by-value, in no small part because I'm playing with no-selling all the time now and have no idea what items are worth. Getting a good category-based squelch in would be entirely adequate:

a) squelch this item
b) squelch all Soft Leather Armor of Resist Fire
c) squelch all body armor of Resist Fire
d) squelch all excellent body armor

But what is "excellent"? Do you want high resists separated? ESP? Hold Life? I take the point that value-squelch is in tension with no_selling, but I'm sceptical about the categories. If you can improve on the current quality categories, please post an alternative (don't feel bound by existing pseudoID, but don't assume there will never be any new items or flags). Otherwise I reckon we'll just separate DSMs and limp onwards, if value squelch is not wanted.

[Derakon]

"excellent" is "everything but artifacts" in that system. I don't expect it'd get used much for body armor, but for weapons, bows, boots, etc. it's still valid. Everything else you can deal with on a per-ego basis; it's not that much more work to e.g. have to manually squelch each separate Slay Foo subtype than it is to squelch all excellent-but-not-splendid egos.

Though we could of course keep the excellent/splendid differentiation if we wanted to.

[PowerDiver]

The point of quality squelch is to be able to squelch without identify. That's good vs excellent on pseudo, and splendid vs everything on wield, and artifact vs everything on pickup.

The "without high resists" is a small addition to allow for a few precious egos [permanence e.g.] after id. If you really hate it, take it away, but I don't see how it hurts to have it. A much better solution is to add something to the precious egos to make them splendid, even just lite, but I couldn't get that into V. Takkaria refuses to see that some parts of the game should be designed for squelch, because he would prefer that squelch not be necessary, but perhaps a kidnapping and brainwashing would take care of that.

If you want squelch after identify, then ego squelch has got to be a lot better than value squelch. It is vital that you know exactly what will squelch. At least, it is to me.

[Magnate]

"excellent" is "everything but artifacts" in that system. I don't expect it'd get used much for body armor, but for weapons, bows, boots, etc. it's still valid. Everything else you can deal with on a per-ego basis; it's not that much more work to e.g. have to manually squelch each separate Slay Foo subtype than it is to squelch all excellent-but-not-splendid egos.

Indeed not - that's why NPP-style is one of the options: it does per-ego squelching.

[gudjkrist]

I also play with no selling on, so I would be hesitant to squelch by value. I don't think the little bit of extra work for per-ego is that much of a problem. It should only have to be done once.

As an aside, in the nightly I'm playing ("angband-r9a0d219cc4"), after going into options and using the menu system to auto-squelch it seems that the squelching doesn't work anymore. Beforehand, when I was doing squelching manually per item it seemed to work. Is this intended, or did I find a bug?

[fizzix]

I don't think I'd like squelch by value, but that's sort of a knee-jerk reaction. I would have to try it.

I also would re-propose hard squelching. This means at some level the game stops generating certain items (only for non-flavored items!). This could be price based. The game just doesn't generate items below a certain power level. That doesn't mean it tries again to make a more powerful item, it means that it automatically destroys the item and nothing is in its place. From a reality perspective, the assumption is that monsters only care about the best treasure too, and destroy useless crap. From a gameplay perspective, this eliminates the need for id'ing (either by spell or by wield) armor and items.

Already the game sort of does this as weapons with negatives aren't available after a certain dlevel. But it needs to delete those weapons, not make them better.

[myshkin]

As an aside, in the nightly I'm playing ("angband-r9a0d219cc4"), after going into options and using the menu system to auto-squelch it seems that the squelching doesn't work anymore. Beforehand, when I was doing squelching manually per item it seemed to work. Is this intended, or did I find a bug?

Squelch should definitely still work. What kind of squelching (quality or item type) is failing, and how is it failing? Can you provide us with a savefile for debugging purposes?

[scud]

Originally I suggested 'squelch by value' because:

a. in the (fairly short-lived) early stages of the game when taking stuff of market is still an issue it would quickly separate the Potato Peeler of Slay Lice (+0, +1) from the Huge Meatcleaver of Acid (+8, +9)

b. in the later stages it would allow you to continue to highlight the very best non-artifacts, specifically (and perhaps exclusively) ego DSMs, while squelching the 99% of items that you've moved beyond.

Squelch by value seemed like a quick and easy solution which avoids the need to address the inconsistencies of the current quality squelching, or at least means I don't have to research what qualities render an item of any particular class as 'splendid', nor do I have to fret over my inability to find any arrows with high resists...

It sounds as though the NPP system would address both the above, and more importantly would allow you to target specific resistance holes etc. If it's easily integrated into Vanilla then I'd certainly like to give it a spin.