How to combine stacks?

[Magnate]

Yes. His point is that arrows in V are highly unlikely to stack with each other.

... which is precisely why the quiver was introduced in the first place. Choosing to limit the variety of enchantments in order to do without the quiver seems completely perverse (but fine for Sil of course).

Given how rarely arrows stack in V, ten stacks in the quiver seems not overpowered. It was with slots holding 99, but now that's reduced to 40 it's about right. (I initially reduced it to 25 and people complained!)

[half]

... which is precisely why the quiver was introduced in the first place. Choosing to limit the variety of enchantments in order to do without the quiver seems completely perverse (but fine for Sil of course).

I think the V style quiver is a pretty reasonable solution -- especially if you aren't prepared to change the underlying items you can find. However, I think that limiting the enchantment types is better still, even in V.

You don't need 1,000 different types of arrow in a game.

It may seem odd to restrict this from a status quo where they already exist, but I can't see any good design principle which would advocate having 1,000 types of arrow in the first place -- even in a game which is just about arrows!

In fact, as Timo has shown, it is even more than that. He has 39 types of arrow (and 39 types of bolt, stone). If you consider all +ve enchantments (+x,+y) up to +15, that makes 8,775 types of arrow, 8,775 types of blot, 8,775 types of stone. There is no way V (or any other game ever created) needs this kind of granularity. If I were maintaining V, I'd shift it to:

arrow
seeker arrow
arrow of fire
arrow of ice
arrow of poison

So 1 normal type and 4 kinds of upgrade. I'd increase the damage to compensate. Even just allowing the standard 39 types would seem much better than also having all the other pluses. Then again, I'm thankfully not maintaining V, so no need for anyone to worry.

[Derakon]

What are the gains from making arrows (bolts, shots, etc.) so limited, though? Aside from stacking, of course. Consider that we need to match archery to melee, in terms of capability to deal damage, and Vanilla melee has similar levels of complexity as its arrows do. Especially we run into trouble if we want to remove slays from arrows, because then we lose a big part of the matching-ammo-to-target gameplay. Of course, just moving the slays to the launcher would make them overpowered, and a bit thematically weird (I could accept a launcher that got more crits against specific monsters, but one that launches its missiles harder against them would strike me as odd).

Sil can get away with not having slays because elemental brands are more relevant; Angband cannot. Sil also gets away with having generally very low pluses on its gear, and making those pluses much more significant. These are both major changes to how the game plays, though, and I don't think you could just blindly transplant them into Vanilla and expect things to stay balanced.

[Timo Pietilä]

Sil can get away with not having slays because elemental brands are more relevant; Angband cannot.

I actually wouldn't mind if we reduce the selection a bit. Nobody actually collects arrows that slay giant for the sake of it having slay giant (might use for bigger enchantment), and acid as brand has not been there from the beginning, so just to reduce clutter we could remove some of the selection.

Also ammo types have increased by one (mithril ammo didn't exist from beginning).

My suggestion from removals are

Seeker arrows (make mithril 4d4 for arrows)
Slay giant and slay animal.
Wounding. (These are crap compared to just about any other ego)
Acid brand (no more Sauron-killers), maybe also elec brand.
Holy might (I complained about these when they were introduced, we just didn't need shooters to become even more powerful than they were).

Leave poison, fire, cold, undead, demon, dragon.

(cold actually doesn't make any realistic sense for arrows, acid and electricity are more realistic, but cold as element doesn't really make realistic sense anywhere else in the game too so I could argue that it is some magical element that just doesn't exist in real life).

[Magnate]

Would you do the same for melee though? IMO a large part of Angband's charm is the vast number of different items you can find - some junk, some awesome - and a lot of work has gone into helping people enjoy this (squelch, attacking TMJ etc.).

Sil takes an entirely different approach which works for it, but would Angband without Slay Animal arrows still be Angband? (How would we kill Huan ?!)

[Mikko Lehtinen]

No need to go overboard, but I'd say that removing the most boring third of arrows, egos, potions, scrolls, devices, everything really, would make the game more enjoyable. (For example, remove CLW and Bless since better versions become available so soon.) The drops would become more useful, so they should be reduced a bit. I've done something like this in Mist.

[debo]

One thing from Sil that could be usefully transplanted to Vanilla ammo, potenitally, is the clumping of slays.

Weapons of Doriath slay spiders and wolves
Weapons of Gondolin slay orcs and trolls
Weapons of Nargorthand slay demons and dragons

etc.

Having just 3 type of Slays arrows that each have multiple slays might be more worthwhile than just slapping a singular slay on each arrow.

But IANAGD

[Timo Pietilä]

One thing from Sil that could be usefully transplanted to Vanilla ammo, potenitally, is the clumping of slays.

Weapons of Doriath slay spiders and wolves
Weapons of Gondolin slay orcs and trolls
Weapons of Nargorthand slay demons and dragons

etc.

Having just 3 type of Slays arrows that each have multiple slays might be more worthwhile than just slapping a singular slay on each arrow.

But IANAGD

Brands act pretty much like multiple slays. Only slays that are interesting are evil, demon, dragon and undead. IMO single slays could be more powerful than brands just because they are specialists while brands affect anything that is not resisting.

Lumping slays from three interesting ones would make three types demon/dragon demon/undead and undead/dragon, and we are back in three types.

[Timo Pietilä]

Would you do the same for melee though?

No, but melee-weapons are not consumables found in stacks like arrows are. I don't see anything awesome in arrows of slay giant or arrows of holy might even. They are items to use like potions, some better than others. Removing some junk would just make game speed up a bit. "Junk" in this is "too many types", not just the weak ones but also the powerful ones.

So acid brand (because it is overpowered IMO) and holy might (too rare to collect, too weak to be awesome find that you sacrifice slot just for them, still break when used), slay giant and wounding because they are useless.

Also melee-weapons "what is better" is often absolute. If you have five blows with HA longsword (five being max) and find HA dagger it's very likely that this longsword is better than that dagger in every way and you just discard that dagger. Not so on arrows. If you find another stack of useful arrows you want to keep it even if it is weaker than the previously found stack, so too many different types becomes issue there.

[fizzix]

I guess my opinion are probably closest to Timo on this topic (in other words, halfway between Magnate and Half). Although as usual I don't agree on specifics. I think the quiver is fine the way it is, but I also think that we can reduce some of the granularity in V (and certainly in v4). Having melee plusses on ammo is fine, but we can always increase the granularity to multiples of 3 or so. I would also approve of the same idea for weapons. I don't agree about eliminating holy might or acid, but I could get behind eliminating slay giant or better yet letting it slay ainu also.

Fundamentally though, the quiver with 40 slots is not broken and not overly cumbersome to use, these would be the main reasons for fiddling with it. I don't think we should.

However, we certainly should have a discussion on exactly how many variations of items we should have. Do we want the full v4 system with hundreds of thousands of possibilities, or something closer to the current angband system with its mere thousands of possibilities, or the Sil system with perhaps tens of possibilities. A lot of this is personal preference and opinion, there probably is not a right answer, but it's worth talking about.

As a side note, my ideal system would have a quiver like system for every item type. So you'd have a single spellbook for spells. A magic case for rods and wands, a scroll case for scrolls etc. You'd buy or find these containers as you progress and these would determine how much you can store both in your pack and at home. Right now we've gotten away with just sub-containering the arrows because they were the most problematic and even that was a pain in the current V codebase.

[dos350]

i havnt even played 3.4 enough to get a stack of 40 tbh

nn 4 fix wat is great already and is not an improve unless is unanimous agree which it isnt atm

[emulord]

I agree with dos350. <- It always feels weird to say that.

Another way of increasing granularity would be to have +tohit and +dam be the same number for arrows.

I like the +3 granularity better tho. Then enchanting arrows with scrolls becomes viable if its to condense 2 stacks, or even to make them better. Since arrows are a temporary item, enchanting needs to affect it more than a permanent weapon.

Ok I agree with removing wounding, but acid and holy avenger arrows are the defining arrows of endgame. Its what make Morgoth hunts interesting when all your extra inventory space are stacks of random holy avenger arrows.

[Timo Pietilä]

How about compromise: five quiver slots, 99 stack size? Ten different types sounds a lot to me, usually I end up using same arrow types in several of them (usually large stacks of branded arrows).

Follow-up thought.

Maybe we could get rid of random to_dam and to_hit bonuses completely and change dice for base arrows a bit bigger. Maybe make seekers automatic +10 to_hit.

I actually like the idea of having several (many) different base arrow types and a bit less melee-weapon like egos. Ammo in general should not be precious treasures to collect with several different random abilities.

Maybe "arrows of flame" could be just more rare arrow base type.

[emulord]

The problem with having fewer arrow types is that rangers have a very balanced type of dungeon crawling.

Instead of a priest/mage being constrained by short-term mana costs, you're constrained by entire dive arrow quantities. If we have fewer types than the damage per round is going to vary all over the place during a dive when you have to downgrade from steel arrows to regular or something. Having several types of "good" arrows and slowly switching to worse ones is kinda cool. Makes the dive increasingly dangerous as your arrow stacks run out.

[Scatha]

The problem with having fewer arrow types is that rangers have a very balanced type of dungeon crawling.

Instead of a priest/mage being constrained by short-term mana costs, you're constrained by entire dive arrow quantities. If we have fewer types than the damage per round is going to vary all over the place during a dive when you have to downgrade from steel arrows to regular or something. Having several types of "good" arrows and slowly switching to worse ones is kinda cool. Makes the dive increasingly dangerous as your arrow stacks run out.

But there's a lot of room to be more coarse grained than currently while still smooth enough for your desired behaviour.