ToME WikiKhymChanur: In 2.x, an object is pseudo-id's as "excellent" if it has an ego and isn't cursed, meaning that an Indestructable Amulet of Adornment will pseudo-id as "excellent"; the automizer would classify it as "very good", as well as a Fireproof Scroll of Light. I propose that objects have a numeric quality field, which would be modified by bonuses and egos. So an Amulet of Adornment would have a quality of 0 (average), and the Indestructable ego would have a multiplying effect, so that an Indestructable Amulet of Adornment would still have a quality of 0.
NeilStevens: It seems to me that the example you give is the only case where this is useful, and even then it's not necessary. If an item has a value of 0, you might as well set the automatizer to squelch all of that item.
Just fix the automatizer to actually squelch ALL Amulets of Adornment when there is a rule set to squelch all Amulets of Adornment, and Indestructable Amulets of Adornment aren't a problem anymore.
KhymChanur: It's actually the pseudo-id that it's useful for; the automizer is just a side-benefit. The "non-cursed ego item equals excellent" pseudo-id is a real pain for Lost Souls, since there's many Indestructable rings and amulets which pseudo-id as excellent, even though they're just Amulets of Slow Digestion or Rings of Slow Digestion or whatever. Also, other modules than ToME, or ToME addons, might have ego's that don't curse an item, but do make it worse, in which case it shouldn't be pseudo-id'd as excellent.
NeilStevens: Why is this useful to the player, though? Who's going to sit around and try to pseudo-id items that they don't want?
RavenRed: Er, pardon me if I'm butting in, but could you make it a calculated field, based on PVAL + Resists + (set value for non-quantifiable bonuses) - (curse PVAL) - (Set value for non-quantifiable penalties)? You could then make it a bit more nuanced at both the creation end as well as the (psuedo)detection end. (terrible = -10, bad = -5, Average =0-5... Special = 15-20)
KhymChanur: It's mianly useful for the Lost Soul subrace, since they start at level 98, so lots of items have egos, but there's only a limited supply of Scrolls of Idetnification, and very likely no stores where they can buy new scrolls. So a Lost Soul picks up a ring, pseudo-id's it as excellent, identifies it, finds out that it's just an Indestructable Ring of Slow Digestion, and thus has wasted a precious ID scroll. And if a module using the engine has it so that true ID'ing is rare/expesnive, so that the character has to relly a lot on pseudo-id... well, that wouldn't work well with the way things are currently done.
NeilStevens: Use price then. Price already IS a scalar value representing item quality. This is a ToME 3 idea, though, because it will require checking every price, adjsting some when necessary, to come up with appropriate breakpoints for the different quality levels.
KhymChanur: Okay. How about adding a "cost multiplier" field to the ego type structure, and changing the ego cost field to "cost add", so the value for a double ego item would be base_cost * ego1->cost_mult * ego2->cost_mult + ego1->cost_add + ego2->cost_add, so that egos like Indestructable and Fireproof can only multiply the base cost, that a Fireproof Scroll of Light wont be worth too much more than an ordinary Scroll of Light?
Hmmm, I should probably make that it's own proposal.
NeilStevens: Sounds good.