Planned Feature Balancing and Repurposing Reputation Gain

[Pieter Boelen]

- adjusted the starting HP, HP per level and enemy-levels in internalsettings.h Most characters have now more logical HPs (no 300-500HP anymore).

That most certainly sounds interesting! I always found the huge HP differences between characters to be quite unrealistic.

- removed this one-day-skip when a hour passes, replaced it with an add of 1-3 hours (game sometimes skips more). Feels better for me, since it was quite odd to imagine that you need 3 days from port entrance to your anchorplace^^

The reason for that is due to a mismatch in scale between the 3D sailing mode and WorldMap.
The day-skipping is to get the two more in line. It is far from an ideal solution though and technically doesn't make one bit of sense.
This is rectified with the Open Sea Mod, though that one does make DirectSail take quite a long time. So we can't really have that for regular Arcade players.

 

[KillPhil]

#define CHAR_HITPOINTS_PER_LEVEL        10        // INT - The amount of hitpoints which is added to a character's maximum hitpoints on each level up
#define CHAR_START_HITPOINTS            5        // INT - The amount of hitpoints any character starts with at level 1
...
#define ENEMYLEVEL_MULT_BASE            0.0002    // FLOAT - The base multiplier to level for enemies.
#define ENEMYLEVEL_DIFF_INFL            0.0002        // FLOAT - The influence of difficulty on enemy levels.
#define ENEMYLEVEL_RAND_INFL            0.0003    // FLOAT - The influence of a random function on enemy levels--will be x(1.0 +/- rand(this))
#define ENEMYLEVEL_LUCK_INFL            0.0001    // FLOAT - The influence of your luck on enemy levels. The influence will be _up to_ this x luck.

That's the part about the HP in my internalsettings.h so far.. You die quite fast in the beginning but with higher levels it gets more easy as now, which feels a bit more RPG-like for me (So you actually feel a level-progress)
Because you die now on level 1-5 with 1 hit if you're unlucky, I also adjusted the blocking-stats, so blocks won't get pierced so much and so often. But I guess you also just can increase the start hitpoints a bit again, if you don't want those blocking stats^^

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'm quite surprised by those values, really. Would have expected to reduce the CHAR_HITPOINTS_PER_LEVEL value.

Making the early game harder might be a bit of an issue for some players.
Perhaps we can do some more experimenting with balancing for Beta 3.4 .
Then you can post your adjusted files here for people to play around with, for example.

 

[KillPhil]

Well I tried to reduce the hitpoints per level but for a strange reason, at some point I had only like 50Hp on level 20 and bandits in the jungle still like 80-90.. so the rpg-effect gets lost there..

It is not really harder, because enemies only need 1 to 2 hits too that is unless you border a ship with double of the crew-size of course^^ So in the early game you have to be fast, while in the later progress, you don't need to worry much about your HP anymore, which is what I wanted to have

 

[Levis]

I think these work better for the skillbook:

  //------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  // SKILLBOOKS: added by Levis
  //-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  if(ALLOW_LOCKED_PERKS)
  {
  n = InitItem(n,"skillbook1", "",     13, 4,   0.10,  0,   1875, 0,   0, 0, 0,   0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0);// Unlock Advance Defence
  n = InitItem(n,"skillbook2", "",     13,14,   0.02,  0,   3165, 0,   0, 0, 0,   0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0);// Unlock Gun Professional
  n = InitItem(n,"skillbook3", "",     13,10,   0.05,  0,   2550, 0,   0, 0, 0,   0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0);// Unlock Advance Battlestate
  n = InitItem(n,"skillbook4", "",     13, 8,   0.01,  0,   3715, 0,   0, 0, 0,   0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0);// Unlock Cannon Professional
  }

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Will be included in the next release.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Modified balancing for skill books has been included here: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/simplified-build-14-beta-3-3-wip-code.23064/page-31#post-496903
Comments appreciated, of course.

 

[Levis]

Improving your rep is way too easy with all those "this meeting realy enlightened me" encounters, since you get +1 and the same for 1 trading quest

Still need to look into this

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Another balancing issue mentioned by @Hylie Pistof:

The only reason to do those escort missions is to unlock a perk. There is no money in them.

Amount of money should be tweaked, then. There is no point in having a feature if there is no point in using it.

 

[Levis]

Put these in your dialogs folder to make sure the reputation doesn't increase to fast.

I will also see if I can look at the escort mission today or tomorrow

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Reputation balancing now included here: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/simplified-build-14-beta-3-3-wip-code.23064

 

[Pieter Boelen]

On appearance of the Hibernian blade:

1. Hibernian blades have a high values, cost a lot and seem to be a good blade for the weapons chest. They also look exactly like the another blade and if someone has the time they might be dressed up a little.

1. I think it is the most common blade in the game I am playing. It would help to a)make it less common, more dressy, like say one of the nice blades from an earlier era, and then it would be fine.

Does anyone have any objections to the simple solution of just removing that sword again?
Alternatively, who would care about thinking through some fair balancing numbers?
Other thoughts?

On the rate of reputation gain:

6. It seems to take an awfully long time to improve reputation.

6. I start at apprentice, go to journeyman after about a month and then go adventurer after another month or two. I am currently a journeyman and am stuck. It seems to me movement no matter how much goo one does is the slowest it has ever been and I have been playing all the mods since the original game came out. I know how hard it is to get those thinks just right but perhaps this could use some more tweaking?

 

[Levis]

About the Hibernian blades, probally giving them a nation would help on the rarity a lot. I'd sugest to give it the nation ENGLAND and see what that does.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Good suggestion; will do that for the next release.

 

[Grey Roger]

That just means they're only common if you play hostile to England.

One reason the Hibernian has been fairly common in my most recent game is that this was the "Assassin" storyline, set in the "Spanish Main" time period, so numerous other blades which could have competed with it don't exist. Perhaps limit the Hibernian to "Golden Age of Piracy" and later? (After I dropped its rarity value to 0.03, the Swept-Hilt Rapier became by far the most common blade.)

 

[Pieter Boelen]

One reason the Hibernian has been fairly common in my most recent game is that this was the "Assassin" storyline, set in the "Spanish Main" time period, so numerous other blades which could have competed with it don't exist. Perhaps limit the Hibernian to "Golden Age of Piracy" and later? (After I dropped its rarity value to 0.03, the Swept-Hilt Rapier became by far the most common blade.)

Good point. I will include that change in the next modpack I post.

 

[Levis]

So does the reputation goes better now I've added it to the fetch and convoy quest?

 

[Levis]

Put this on fixed and moved cause the still standing issues in here have theire own seperate topic now.

 

[Grey Roger]

I don't like the "balanced" reputation at all. It might be fair enough if you can only get each type of increase from talking to citizens once per visit to a town, i.e. if you've talked to someone, he's dropped his purse and you've warned him about it to get the +1 reputation, you won't get it again while you're still there. But you should be able to get it again at the next town, or if you've been away and returned. Instead, it seems that you only get it once for the whole game! So, for example, I'd like it if you're in Port Royale, warn someone who's dropped his purse, and get the increase, then not get it again if someone else in Port Royale drops his purse; but you will get it if you then go to Bridgetown and warn someone he's dropped his purse; and again, once, if you then return to Port Royale.

Otherwise the only way to gain reputation seems to be doing boring things instead of getting on with the storyline or basic piracy.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I thought the rep increase was now random. So sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. @Levis made it difficulty-dependent too.