Removed guaranteed loot spawn, part I: mapgen palettes

[Night-Pryanik]

Summary

SUMMARY: Balance "Removed guaranteed loot spawn from most locations that use mapgen palettes."

Purpose of change

Make loot lists in most locations that use mapgen palettes more "natural" and balanced.
IMO there should a VERY important reason to place guaranteed loot of any kind (i.e. with 100% chance to spawn), like the loot being an Easter egg. For example, making every house with a fridge always spawn it filled to the brim with food despite the Cataclysm breaks immersion, feels very unnatural, and, more importantly, makes the task of finding food trivial.

Describe the solution

Changed 100% chance to spawn to 80% for several item groups. The most notable impact probably is SUS_fridge item group in standard_domestic_palette because it directly affects most of the houses in game. Now there won't be a guaranteed spawn of food in fridges in most houses despite weeks of maraudering and civil unrest.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Make chance to spawn even lower, for example 10% for aforementioned SUS_fridge item group. Honestly I'd prefer this variant as I think it will make the game much more plausible and interesting, but I also feel this is too radical change, so I decided to use "safe" 80% variant.

Testing

Checked several houses with this change. Food is still is very abundant in houses (80% is a very high chance), but at least sometimes I was able to find a house with an empty fridge, yay!

Additional context

I also plan to remove guaranteed spawn in most locations which use mapgen without palettes in part II.

[gkarfakis19]

I've never worked with map gen code, but I think the fact that there's a 80% chance of fridges being filled with food and 20% chance of them being completely empty is very gamey. Is there a way to add a sparse_food item group, and split into 70% chance of them being full, 15% chance of being partially emptied and 15% chance of them being completely empty?

[curstwist]

Please leave TV and stereos at 100% in place_loot if you change mapgen. Electronics like that should be ubiquitous.

[Night-Pryanik]

Is there a way to add a sparse_food item group, and split into 70% chance of them being full, 15% chance of being partially emptied and 15% chance of them being completely empty?

Yes, of course. It's just a lot of json-work.

[Night-Pryanik]

Electronics like that should be ubiquitous.

In normal circumstances. Prior to the Cataclysm I guess marauders should primarily loot TV and stereos.

[I-am-Erk]

Where are marauders and looters looting stuff to? It doesn't just vanish.

It would be quite reasonable to make a "depleted" fridge SUS variant, but having one in five fridges empty for no apparent reason is a strict downgrade.

[Night-Pryanik]

It doesn't just vanish.

We already discussed that, see #41468 (comment) for example. I think "looted and transferred somewhere" variant is acceptable for now, and in any case is better than "remain intact despite marauding, because we don't have a working mechanics to actually transfer loot to somewhere to simulate marauding".

It would be quite reasonable to make a "depleted" fridge SUS variant

@gkarfakis19 and @I-am-Erk: done.

[kevingranade]

IMO there should a VERY important reason to place guaranteed loot of any kind (i.e. with 100% chance to spawn), like the loot being an Easter egg.

Thst doesn't follow, if something is ubiquitous, it's ubiquitous.

For example, making every house with a fridge always spawn it filled to the brim with food despite the Cataclysm breaks immersion, feels very unnatural

I'm pretty sure "to the brim" is hyperbolic here, but even it it is, any number of completely empty fridges is uncalled for. The plan is to stock structures with essentially pre-cataclysm levels of items, and then add systems both to remove some to simulate during-cataclysm activity such as people packing for evacuation, and then remove more over time to simulate looting. The item group system does not have the appropriate context to make those decisions, they need to happen in a word-processing step.

more importantly, makes the task of finding food trivial.

This PR doesn't and can't change that, very early game food looting is definitely going to be trivial, it's only once food rot and further looting kicks in that there's any chance for it to become difficult.

[Night-Pryanik]

if something is ubiquitous, it's ubiquitous.

Agreed, but we have to take marauding into account. After marauding the only things that still should be ubiquitous are the ones that even marauders didn't look on, like potato mashers or corkscrews. Any other useful stuff after the Cataclysm marauders will take in the first place, so it won't be ubiquitous anymore.

I'm pretty sure "to the brim" is hyperbolic here

Not at all. Yesterday I stumbled upon a random fridge in a random house, and I was frustrated when I realized that my own RL fridge with food enough for my four-members family is stocked worse than that fridge in the game. This discovery was essentially the reason I started this PR.

The plan is to stock structures with essentially pre-cataclysm levels of items, and then add systems both to remove some to simulate during-cataclysm activity [...] and then remove more over time to simulate looting.

I'll be the first to revert my changes from this PR when we'll have the system you're describing. But until then I think it's better to have no-context item groups change than to have unrealistic fully-stocked fridges in every house like there's no Cataclysm happened at all.

We had non-ideally implemented mechanics in the past, like the need for painkillers to install CBM, since we didn't have proper anesthesia and a machine to conduct surgery. We used that mechanics as it was still better than unrealistic manual install. But as soon as we had autodoc and anesthesia, we got rid of that old mechanics in favor of a better one.
I think this could be an analogue: we use non-ideal item group changes until we have a system for simulating marauding and the like.

[I-am-Erk]

The way you have it set up now looks fairly reasonable, can you post a few examples of a partially empty fridge spawn?

Side note, we should make another pr that makes a few variant fridges like a vegan fridge, a gluten free fridge, and a rare cannibal fridge.

[Night-Pryanik]

can you post a few examples of a partially empty fridge spawn?

Yes, sure, will do it tomorrow.

[Night-Pryanik]

Here we go:

[I-am-Erk]

That works for me.

[I-am-Erk]

Ah crap, premature merge. I didn't realize you'd also reduced spawn rates in all that other stuff to a random 80%. Houses still shouldn't be spawning without common household stuff. Clearly I shouldn't be merging PRs when on painkillers

Would you like to open an adjustment PR or shall I just remove those?

[I-am-Erk]

There, apologies for the confusion on that. A wide-sweeping change to spawning is going to require more than a single PR just dropping rates to 80%, you'd need item groups like partial_fridge for basically everything you're planning to implement... and empty fridges are still not a thing that should be spawning. Fridges with a bag of apples and a pack of lutefisk are friggin excellent, that's the kind of stuff we would want. Not just a barren fridge or empty silverware drawer or filing cabinet for no apparent reason.

[kevingranade]

This pull request has been mentioned on Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/no-hope-mod-v0-7/24971/1