• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


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Mods and Game Difficulty

what i would do is make the stronger swords unused by regular foes, but purchaseable at a high price at a shop and/or aquirable from really strong hostile quest characters. the lack of strength in the enemies you would get as a result would be countered by high swordfighting skills. one thing that should be mentioned is that i remember very well how much effort you had to put into getting the money to buy a good ship in the stock game. you would be scraping cash together for weeks, trying to get enough money to buy a decent ship. and then there was the maintenance. anyway, ship prices should be increased, and the loot from foes greatly decreased.
 
Back to making "stronger swords" a relative term. If they were rescaled such that even a cheap and clumsy weapon might be deadly, or a fine and expensive rapier be fast but not much on stopping power. That would both rescale the whole good/bad weapon thing, and make some of the lower-end bad guys a threat, without having to build unreasonable stats into them.

That plus a rescale of ship value such that a pistol doesn't cost more than two cannons.

We still have too many loose ends to have a single solution to the whole balance problem.
 
Perhaps we could do something where the damage applied to an enemy is scaled both by fencing skill and the blade's stats. So a character with 10 fencing will do ten times the damage of a character with 1 for fencing with the same blade, for example.

There's not much purpose in "better" blades anyway. If the player has a better blade and so do the enemies, then on average there is still no advantage for either party. When enemies and player all have extremely good blades, the game is just as hard as when player and enemies have bad blades. The sole difference is that you yield more loot and thus get the "too much money" problem.

The only "better" vs "worse" blade distinguishing that we need are the quality levels. A badly worn Saber is worse than an excellent Saber. But an excellent Solingen Rapier is not nescessarily better than an excellent Saber.

I think there should be advantages and disadvantages to any and all blades. That way all blades would have some use and none would be particularly better than the others. But then the question would be: How to make all 25 different blades unique in one way or another? It seems we have a bit too many of them. What kind of characteristics could any one blade have anyway?

We could give the current "high end" blades a "+1 leadership" bonus. You can then only get those blades by being awarded them for services to the crown. IF you choose to use the blade you have been awarded, you get the leadership bonus. Otherwise you don't. But if the blade's stats are such that you prefer to use another blade, you can then choose to use the blade you prefer and skip the bonus.
 
<!--quoteo(post=227552:date=Dec 24 2007, 05:36 AM:name=Pieter Boelen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pieter Boelen @ Dec 24 2007, 05:36 AM) [snapback]227552[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Wow! I already had it at <i>0.001</i> as the Build 14 default! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />
...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
But that is still only a partial fix. Those on adventurer still make more than those on easy.
Swashbuckler still makes way more than all the other levels.

Pieter, again I say that a big part of fixing the money issue is to make looting opponents and ships equal across all difficulty levels.

Do that first, and then tweak the value and rarity of items if need be.
 
i think some blades should still be stronger than others, but that the difference should be very minor. now, there are huge gaps between the stats. i think it would work better if the difference would be only one or two points between the blades, thus increasing gradually. therefor, the difference wouldn't be that great, but would still leave the player with a reason to prefer a certain blade above another.

one random thought i just came up with:

what if you can't increase your fencing skill yourself, but the blades increase it instead? i'm not at all sure if this is such a good idea though. it might make the differences in combat too great. besides, it's not very logical.
 
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->i think some blades should still be stronger than others, but that the difference should be very minor. now, there are huge gaps between the stats. i think it would work better if the difference would be only one or two points between the blades, thus increasing gradually. therefor, the difference wouldn't be that great, but would still leave the player with a reason to prefer a certain blade above another.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Sumfink like this?


<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Right now you´re forced to have an excellent F100/cardinal´s guard/Bosum´s choice in the endgame and this isn´t exactly my cup of tea (and your crew needs locker full of these weapons, too).

The idea behind this that a Bosum´s Choise is basically an excellent cutlass and there shouldn´t be any major stats
differences between the two if both are forged by a master smith.

Every average rapier-style weapon gets 85 piercing 85 blocking and min damage/max damage 15/30
Every average sword-style weapon gets 80 piercing 80 blocking and min damage/max damage 20/35
Every average curved blade weapon gets 75 piercing 75 blocking and min damage/max damage 25/40

Every quality over average gets + 4,5 in p and b (due better balance of the weapon) and 4 points in min/max damage. For an excellent - or perhaps even fine- quality you would have to bring some kind of high quality iron/steel (which should be very rare) to a smithy and hope that he gets the job done (should be dependend on your luck). Another idea would be that each smith is specialized in, say, 3 weapons (i.e. is able to produce fine and excellent quality) and you´d have to find the smith that makes the weapon of your choice first.

Unique weapons like the F100/cardinal´s guard/Bosum´s choice get a slight buff (perhaps +2) but shouldn´t
be upgradeable (as they already are of excellent quality ).

With this system the player wouldn´t be restricted to two or three weapons if he invests the time and - of course- a lot of money to get his favourite weapon in the desired quality ( my fav is the new snakehead, btw). Successfully fighting with a cutlass in the endgame without editing the stats in initItems.c would be a possibility.

The major disadvantage is that enemies might be overpowered at the beginning of the game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->


Dang. Wrote half a page of additional comments and accidentally closed my browser. Too drunk right now. Merry Chrismas <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/buds.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":drunk" border="0" alt="buds.gif" />
 
Correct way to approach the blade issue is by weapon size and type. Heavy blades have huge damage, and relatively high block penetration (you can bash the enemy weapon aside), but are lousy on defense (because they're too heavy and slow). Rapiers have low damage, some block penetration (due to speed) and greatly improved defense. Medium-weight swords (sabers and narrow longswords) get some damage and can be used on defense, but get hurt on block penetration (they are both slower and not heavy enough to just batter defenses aside).

Within each category, some blades are a little better than others. Say, the rapier is not as nice as the Solagen rapier. However, they are both rapiers, and so will never do as much damage as even the cheap broadswords. Also, within each category, there are some random variations - say between "rapier" and "needle", one could be considerably higher on penetration, while the other had slightly higher damage. One is "better", but not uniformly better across the board ... its advantages come at some cost.

This is getting back close to what I've been doing with "Mount & Blade" - putting some real difference between weapon types.

And with that approach, 25 weapons (or a hundred) is not a problem ... some will look very similar on stats, but that's not a problem. It also does not hurt the quality issue - we can keep the variations in quality without unbalancing anything.
 
okay, so first the group has to be hacked into several groups, like rapier, saber, axes, etc. then we'll have to determine which one;s better than the other and adjust the stats accordingly. sounds good!
 
Not "better" though. Define which group is better at which things.
 
i meant which sword within each group is better at the things it does. i don't have that much knowledge of swords though, so i couldn't give you any details.

and with this very post i pass catalina! now for meigger.
 
Just for a quick two cents before I put too much brainpower into this, seems to me any items that ad +'s to a stat tend to be obsolete eventually because we all max out every stat and all stats cap out at 10. Also, all captains will focus on Melee along with Leadership and possibly Luck because we can find crew to use other stats effectively for us. So a blade that offers a +1 Melee or Leadership, especially a rare or unique item intended to be useful in the endgame, isn't going to benefit from the stat bonus.

For items giving bonuses to have alot of relevance we need to have a reason for a Captain not to max out in certain stats. It might be an easier fix just to remove stat bonuses from items. I'm really finding certain elements, along with this one, in Build 12 to be good ideas. Lower gold values for items and weapons, a fraction of what they are in Build 13, really balances things. Also removing weapon decay and gunpower/bullets is a plus. Generally speaking, futzing around and manually doling out these things to each officer I'm with (even if I have a gunner handing out an initial allotment) isn't all that much fun nor does it lend itself to real strategic thinking. It just tends to be inconvenient.
 
The bladedamage, weapons quality and gunpowder mods can all be turned off in BuildSettings.h. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/yes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":yes" border="0" alt="yes.gif" />

I don't remember if you use Build 13 or one of the Build 14 Alpha versions. In any case: In the Alpha we have an Automatic Skill System which makes your skills increase the more you use them. So a lot of swordfighting gives you a higher fencing skill. Right now getting a high leadership skills seems to be rather challenging, so a bonus here wouldn't hurt. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/whistling.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":wp" border="0" alt="whistling.gif" />
 
I'm using Build 12 currently. Build 13 has alot of neat stuff but the game part isn't really well tuned yet. We'll see how Build 14 works out. Daggerfall/Morrowind/Oblivion had skill based, learn as you use them, systems like you mention but they tended to be kind of unbalanced because some skills were very easy to build up if you could figure out optimal tricks while others could be very difficult. It's definitely worth an experiment. Still cost vs. benefit should be evaluated. Does the inclusion of a mod create as much or more gameplay than it creates extra work?

You can think of an overall game design as a model aircraft in a wind tunnel. Some elements create drag, others lift. Too much lift and you have a game without much challenge or flavor. Too much drag and you can end up with complexities that just slow things down too much. Sometimes you can have too much lift on one hand (inflated economy) and too much drag on the other (micromanaging crew inventories) and that creates a spin. By midgame in Build 13 I was spending more time making sure all my guys had gear they needed than I was sailing or fighting. And when sailing or fighting I couldn't lose a battle unless I tried.

I'm not saying folks should stop experimenting, even in wild ways, with this engine. Ya'll have done some truly amazing things. But it'd be nice to have maybe parallel tracks. The R&D Build where folks toss in the kitchen sink just to see if they can make it work and the Applied Technology Build where another group tries to polish it up into a playable experience for a mainstream gamer.

But as there just aren't that many folks working on this I guess it might be impractical. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dunno.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shrug" border="0" alt="dunno.gif" />
 
I think it is pretty much true that game balancing is questionable at best in Build 13. Hopefully Build 14 will be better, but I don't think it will be unless we actually start paying attention to it. Features alone do not make a game great, do they? If the features don't work together well, it's still going to be not-so-impressive, even if each feature alone is. The unfortunate thing is that we have <i>waaay</i> too few coders and all mods are made pretty much as standalone mods and then put together in the same modpack. This does not make the mods work together very well, as becomes more evident with each added mod. I think that at one point we will need to simply stop working on new content and focus solely on getting the mods working together better and achieving proper gamebalancing.

Also important is that our modpack should be just as accessible to beginning gamers as to advanced ones. Therefore all the defaults should give a proper game experience, there should be a clear tutorial at the beginning, proper documentation and all the complicated features should appear only as the game progresses or else have a toggle. And there should be no actual micro-management. Surely there should be management by the player, but not in a micro way where the player has to repeat the same dozens of steps over and over again.

It appears that making a good game is really difficult. Making a good game with limited resources and limited people working on it is even harder. Now doing this with just people voluntary working on the game is definitly anything but easy! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />
 
If it was easy, anybody could do it.

Who wants to get organized and crank out some changes in a hurry? We have a pretty good list here, both in this thread and the "random string of ideas" thread. If somebody can help code, I'll do what I can to work up some numbers to go with that.

The list so far:
*blades with unique and somewhat logical stats (as opposed to direct improvement scale)
*Changes to ship combat - immediate changes to opening range and sail-to commands
- Changes in how fire is handled, to make it a real threat.
*eventual changes to ship combat: More target-specific damage scale, changes in how water leakage is defined.
*addition of a wounded/killed system for crew. Changes to defense and medical skills.

I may have missed a couple, but that should put the challenge back into combat (or at least give us the slack to tweak it) without creating unnecessary tedium in the actual game. (None of these changes should involve anything the player has to do directly, except for more sailing time in combat.)

Again, however ... I can help test and come up with stats, but I can't make heads or tails of this code. Somebody else has to actually write it.
 
That seems to be the main problem. I can't do it both due to lack of knowledge and lack of time. Maximus and Pirate_KK are also pretty much occupied. Then who's left? Perhaps somebody who doesn't yet know much about the code could start on it? Me and Pirate_KK will surely help whoever is willing to look at this. And it would be great to have someone else looking at the code as well. We really do need more coders.

I think the easiest would be to start on the blade stats. Those can be pretty easily modified in PROGRAM\ITEMS\initItems.c when somebody comes up with proper assignment for them. Shouldn't be that difficult; just a lot of work.
 
Heck, I might be able to attack those, even knowing near zilch about the code.

But next week ... I have a mountain of final exams to grade. After that, I have a bunch of time off over Chinese New Year.

The sailing and fire code, on the other hand, is beyond me.
 
Yes, that would be much harder. Better start with the simple stuff, eg the blade stats. If you would be willing to work on it, that'd be great. You'd just need to inventorize all blades and come up with some reasonable stats and prices for them all.
 
Just for information, I´m still working on a "realistic" PotC economy (ship/item costs are pretty much done, next is
balancing trading goods *cries*), its just that I didn´t want to post something until it´s more complete.

The fact that I rediscovered my love for modelling with Blender is slowing things down a bit, though <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheeky" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />


Oh, and good luck for your exams, Ron! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/par-ty.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheers" border="0" alt="par-ty.gif" />
 
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