Feature - Implemented Bonehead Steel Organ Protection
- Thread starter NardoLoopa
- Start date
muczachan
Member
I believe that's why there are two versions of Desert in locaton list: "Beach: Desert (Ultrahydrated)" and "Beach: Desert (Unhydrated)".
StDoodle
Minion
Well, there are two locations as far as KoL itself is concerned as well (different snarfblats). I actually agree with RT on this, but I can understand why it's coded that way; otherwise, too many extra server hits could be generated by all the farm-bots after they get negative status effects.
bumcheekcity
Active member
My affixed patch on the previous page should serve as a reminder without RTs auto-using problem.
If you are automating your adventures and select "Desert (Ultrahydrated)" as your location, KoLmafia will make sure that you are Ultrahydrated by visiting the Oasis as needed.
If you are automating your adventures and select "Desert (Unhydrated)" as your location, KoLmafia will not visit the Oasis.
That looks correct to me; if you are automating, you hardly want to get stopped every 5 turns so you can decide that yes, you do want to get Ultrahydrated and continue automation.
Therefore, I assume you are complaining about adventuring in the Relay Browser and what happens when you press the "Adventure Again in the Desert" link.
If you just adventured in the Unhydrated Desert, that link will take you to the Unhydrated Desert and KoLmafia will not visit the Oasis.
If you just adventured in the Ultrahydrated Desert, that link will take you to the Ultrahydrated Desert, and KoLmafia will not visit the Oasis if you are still Ultrahydrated.
The controversy, apparently, is what happens when you press that link and your Ultrahydration has run out. KoLmafia will silently visit the Oasis for you. Apparently, you would prefer to unintentionally go to the Unhydrated Desert. I can't imagine ANY circumstance in which that is desirable. (No. Do not mention anticheese in Bad Moon. If you claim that you always go looking for that immediately after your Ultrahydration runs out and KoLmafia screws you, I don't believe you.)
I don't think it's worth my time to add a preference/nag page/whatever to allow people to shoot themselves in the foot by accidentally adventuring in the Unhydrated Desert. If it's important to ou to be allowed to screw yourself that way, use the raw browser - or kolproxy. Both will happily let you suffer.
Agreed. I see no reason to leave this issue open.
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RoyalTonberry
Member
Yeah, I know how it handles things in the relay browser, which is the way I play. What I was saying is that i would prefer a thing that happens like with semi-rare counters in the relay browser, to warn you that you're about to spend a turn without ultrahydrated on, rather than silently getting it for you (and possibly using an adventure that you didn't want to use). It's fine as it stands, and I can deal with it easily enough. Just saying that if more things like this come along, providing options rather than assuming what the player wants to do is a good thing. I do NOT want to adventure unintentionally in the Unhydrated Desert. I also do NOT want mafia burning adventures that I may not have wanted to burn.
It'd be like if you were a Myst class in the bathroom, and came up on The Grudge, and mafia assumed you wanted the Myst boost, and just took it for you. Sure, that may be true in 99% of cases, but there's a reason mafia does not automatically do this for you when relay-browser adventuring. These are things like why mafia doesn't auto-select the 'correct' choices for quest non-combats/adventures. Perhaps a better example is how mafia doesn't auto-assume you want to go to the Ballroom when the dance card counter runs out. Might be true in the vast majority of cases, but every once in a while, you don't want to go to the Ballroom.
It's not that I think Mafia should do what I want at every step. It's that I think mafia shouldn't do what I don't want, at any step. I use mafia for the relay browser, and its counter/tracking system (as I'd imagine a very great deal of people do); fairly rarely for its automating capabilities. It's a gloriously powerful ascension aid, and I just don't want to see it make more and more assumptions about how you want to play the game.
StDoodle
Minion
The thing is, if mafia didn't handle the Oasis / Desert as it does, on the whole it would be more likely that you'd waste extra adventures. Ie you'd click to adventure again at the Desert, get a negative status effect, have to burn it off, then you'd still need to re-Ultrahydrate first before going back to the Desert. Even if you get rid of the negative effect in some other way, you're spending at least the same number of turns as mafia does automatically.
If mafia automatically re-upped Ultrahydrated when it ran out, I would agree that it was a Big Deal; but it only does the auto-adventure under very specific circumstances in the RB:
1) You just ran out of Ultrahydrated
2) You just clicked to adventure again at the Desert
3) Your previous adventure was the Desert with Ultrahydrated
My only reason for wanting another way to handle this is that things in KoL constantly change. If a KoL-change were made such that the Desert had combats instead, where you got the negative effects during / at the end, it would be better in many circumstances to use free runaways for a while, and not bother with Ultrahydrated. If instead a counter warning fired when you attempted to adv. in the Desert under said circumstances, it would be possible to get by with extra clicks. Not fun, but no harm.
I think a good part of the issue is that Veracity doesn't seem to understand how indispensable KoLmafia is for many players (especially those of us that dislike playing horribly sub-optimally). If I could no longer use KoLmafia, I would be done with KoL. That's not vague hand-waving, that's a fact. There is simply too much micro-management in KoL for it to be tolerable without the many benefits of KoLmafia. "Not gonna do it, wouldn't be prudent at this juncture" to play vanilla KoL. This is why behavior I have no control over, and sub-standard patches bother me. Because I LOVE this program, and I can't imagine not using it. I SERIOUSLY wish I was in a better financial position, so I could support the main devs the way I think they deserve. I REALLY wish my business was doing well enough financially and had a need for some major custom coding, so I could offer first dibs to Veracity and / or jh.
Also, I REALLY wish the software my business paid thousands of dollars for had developers who were 0.01% as responsive to their user-base as KoLmafia.
I think -- and please correct me if I'm wrong RT -- that the major issue isn't that this particular situation (Desert / Oasis) has any real detriment; it's that those in a certain group (the "filthy optimizers") don't want anything done during an ascension without having any input in the matter. The "just don't use mafia for that" arguments are akin to the "just don't care about speed" and "if you don't like the pollution, just don't breathe" types of arguments. More an more lately, the "filthy optimizers" are major users of this program, which was once mostly for Icy Peak farmers & shorebots.
Hell, if I was Veracity or jh, I'd be really damned proud that such a diverse base finds my efforts to be absolutely indispensable.
Mostly, I think a lot of us just worry about what would happen come the day when we could no longer rely on KoLmafia to help with the fidgety bs that's built into KoL.
/rant
If mafia automatically re-upped Ultrahydrated when it ran out, I would agree that it was a Big Deal; but it only does the auto-adventure under very specific circumstances in the RB:
1) You just ran out of Ultrahydrated
2) You just clicked to adventure again at the Desert
3) Your previous adventure was the Desert with Ultrahydrated
My only reason for wanting another way to handle this is that things in KoL constantly change. If a KoL-change were made such that the Desert had combats instead, where you got the negative effects during / at the end, it would be better in many circumstances to use free runaways for a while, and not bother with Ultrahydrated. If instead a counter warning fired when you attempted to adv. in the Desert under said circumstances, it would be possible to get by with extra clicks. Not fun, but no harm.
I think a good part of the issue is that Veracity doesn't seem to understand how indispensable KoLmafia is for many players (especially those of us that dislike playing horribly sub-optimally). If I could no longer use KoLmafia, I would be done with KoL. That's not vague hand-waving, that's a fact. There is simply too much micro-management in KoL for it to be tolerable without the many benefits of KoLmafia. "Not gonna do it, wouldn't be prudent at this juncture" to play vanilla KoL. This is why behavior I have no control over, and sub-standard patches bother me. Because I LOVE this program, and I can't imagine not using it. I SERIOUSLY wish I was in a better financial position, so I could support the main devs the way I think they deserve. I REALLY wish my business was doing well enough financially and had a need for some major custom coding, so I could offer first dibs to Veracity and / or jh.
Also, I REALLY wish the software my business paid thousands of dollars for had developers who were 0.01% as responsive to their user-base as KoLmafia.
I think -- and please correct me if I'm wrong RT -- that the major issue isn't that this particular situation (Desert / Oasis) has any real detriment; it's that those in a certain group (the "filthy optimizers") don't want anything done during an ascension without having any input in the matter. The "just don't use mafia for that" arguments are akin to the "just don't care about speed" and "if you don't like the pollution, just don't breathe" types of arguments. More an more lately, the "filthy optimizers" are major users of this program, which was once mostly for Icy Peak farmers & shorebots.
Hell, if I was Veracity or jh, I'd be really damned proud that such a diverse base finds my efforts to be absolutely indispensable.Mostly, I think a lot of us just worry about what would happen come the day when we could no longer rely on KoLmafia to help with the fidgety bs that's built into KoL.
/rant
Well, I suppose we could provide preferences. That goes contrary to holatuwol's vision - he repeatedly REMOVED such, to make it simpler to configure - but, not only is he no longer contributing, the game is much more complex and people are using KoLmafia in much more complex ways and not everybody wants to play the same as holatuwol wants (wanted) to...
Given the lack of a preference, I would much rather that the desert behave as currently coded: when I am doing the desert part of the ascension, it would drive me batty to have to click on an icon every 5 turns in order to get KoLmafia to go get me Ultrahydrated again so I can go back into the desert. Yes, there are times when I simply want to use up my Ultrahydration and go elsewhere before coming back to the desert. In those situations, I keep an eye on the charpane and simply don't click "Adventure Again" when Ultrahydration runs out. I expect you do exactly that, yourself, since you "deal with it easily enough".
Writing a new nag screen - like counter expiration, or the "are you done with the coinmasters" screen on the battlefield - is not horribly difficult, but it does take time to code up - and potentially turns in game to test. Putting something under control of a preference is similarly not difficult, but it does take time to edit (at least) three files - defaults.txt, the Preferences GUI, and any place where the setting is actually used.
I don't feel that I have time to add a preference for the desert, at this time. I'll keep your final admonition in mind.
StDoodle
Minion
There are times when it would be better to be given a warning so one could go off and do other parts of the level 11 quest and come back later. I find that quest is when I need to be the most fiddly with Olfaction & combat rate modifiers, and having just run out of Ultrahydrated is a very good point to re-asses what order you want to do things in.
Granted, in this situation, one has already clicked to adventure again, so Oasis is better than UnUltrahydrated; however, sometimes, a heads-up beforehand would be even better.
For what it's worth, I think (and I'm fairly sure RT would agree) that if ONE preference controlled any and all situations that may now or in the future exist similarly, that would be fine, if the options were current behavior or counter-style warning.
Granted, in this situation, one has already clicked to adventure again, so Oasis is better than UnUltrahydrated; however, sometimes, a heads-up beforehand would be even better.
For what it's worth, I think (and I'm fairly sure RT would agree) that if ONE preference controlled any and all situations that may now or in the future exist similarly, that would be fine, if the options were current behavior or counter-style warning.
RoyalTonberry
Member
Veracity and I are both saying that it'd be a preference that you would be able to turn on, that would nag you once turned on. Not that it would just nag you all the time. A lot of people like how it is now, and that's fine, I wouldn't even mind keeping that as the default behavior [since it has acted like that for a long time, and i'm sure people rely on it], just so long as I am told about it and have the ability to turn it off.
Sometimes you don't want to continue with ultrahydrated desert at the time when Ultrahydrated runs out. If I were to accidentally click adventure again, mafia would assume that I want to use two adventures (one in the oasis, and one back in the desert), rather than what I am asking for, which is it to ask if I am sure I want to go there ultrahydrated. That would allow me to not waste any adventures, and go elsewhere for the time being. If mafia's "go get hydrated" behavior nor any kind of "are you sure?" warning weren't there, I would waste one adventure in the Unhydrated desert, sure, but I wouldn't waste two. It would be my mistake for wasting the adventure, rather than my mistake coupled with mafia's assumption, causing me to waste more than one.
Again, it just boils down to mafia being a feature-rich engine that a lot of players use to play the game. Not [as i see it] something that a lot of players use to play in the same manner as one of the mafia devs does. (After all, would you want to play the KoL the same way as Jick, or Skully, or even myself?)
I completely understand Veracity's aversion to adding the prompts / preferences for this particular case. As I said earlier, that's perfectly fine, this is a case where I can deal with it. I just do not want to see a lot more of these assumption type things get put into mafia. I actually end up running mafia with a very great deal of the Preferences stuff turned off. If a mistake is made, I do not want it to be because of mafia; I want it to be because I made a mistake, and it was my own fault for messing up. And I most definitely don't want mafia to magnify my mistake.
Handholding features are good. Features which play the game for me without me asking them to do so are not desirable.
I don't want to step on other people's toes that are expecting that behavior, and i'm not saying that this case's default behavior should be changed. What I am saying is that for similar things like this in the future, I would hope to see options, rather than assumptions about what I want to do. Similar to the dance card example I stated earlier, while I would want to go to the Ballroom in the overwhelming majority of cases when the dance card counter is up, that doesn't mean I want mafia to automatically do it for me.
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bumcheekcity
Active member
Whilst that's fine, it doesn't help if you type "eat foodname" into the CLI or something. An "are you sure" prompt would solve more of the problem, plus, it's 99.99% certain that the person ALWAYS wants to use their steel item, so the prompt won't be ridiculously annoying.