Fixed Bug with isfriend attribute not set for officers.

[Pieter Boelen]

Boarder strength should not depend on the size of the ship, but the relative sizes of the two enemy crews and their morale.

 

[Levis]

Boarder strength should not depend on the size of the ship, but the relative sizes of the two enemy crews and their morale.

I believe the boarder strength at the moment is depended on the captain and the amount of boarders is depended on the amount of crew and morale etc.

 

[Tingyun]

I do think boarder level depends on the captain level, which for ai depends on the ship tier. I think boarder hp is then modified by morale and crew size differences, but I could be wrong on that.

So moving to boarder level depending on ship tier, rather than going through the intermediate dependency on captains, would disrupt the balance between player and AI relative boarder levels in the two (somewhat worrisome) ways I discussed. Even if modified later, the base level for the player would then be linked to his size of ship rather than his level.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I thought we had discussed boarding strengths before and agreed on a method to use.
The thread must still be somewhere on the WIP section of the Bug Tracker, because we never quite implemented it like that.

 

[Tingyun]

@Pieter Boelen sounds like it would have been before I joined the community here, so over a month ago, as I would remember it otherwise.

I only know what is in there currently. It sounds perfectly reasonable thst boarder level should be a function of crew size and morale, and indepedent of both ship tier and captain rank.

I think the code you mention, or at least some of it, is in LAi_boarding. If you search "getdifficulty" you will find a function for boarder hp and other things influenced by difficukty level, morale differences, etc.

That may modify the level that comes from the CreateCaptain file or in your July 28th edition the CreateOfficer file (where boarders have a level assigned), or it may be overwritten. I am not sure, you would be able to tell better than I. But there is code in LA_boarding thst you can check if it does what you would like it to do, and then if it is operational.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

sounds like it would have been before I joined the community here, so over a month ago, as I would remember it otherwise.

Very much so. It was quite a few months ago.
See here: Fixed - Level of boarding enemies | Page 2 | PiratesAhoy!

 

[Tingyun]

Final issue from my notes:

It appears that this bug is even odder than the tavern dialogue hires simply using the wrong table for setting their level.

A tavern dialogue officer, and a tavern table officer, even at the same level and with the bonus set to 0, will have significantly different starting skill amounts.

Ie, at the same level, and I tested this multiple times, I had seen tavern dialogue officers have about a 7 in their top skill, while tavern table hires only have a 5. Measured across same officer type of course, and seen pretty consistently.

So something is different about how their skills are generated for a given level too, not just their levels.

To reproduce: find a tavern table hire, record their skills, now generate tavern dialogue of same officer type around same level, note difference in skills, repeat for a few officer types.

Ok, that's the last one of my notes of issues to report from before, have a wonderful week everyone.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

They're definitely generated through completely separate code.

In fact, it used to be the case that sitting officers only got their type and skills assigned upon talking to them.
Not sure if that is the case anymore though. I hope not....

 

[Tingyun]

Thst explains it. Should certainly be unified at some point then, or at least made so their skills are generated in a similar fashion--right now, even in realistic mode with "no bonus", tavern dialogue hires of the same level have significantly higher skills. Being a starting 7 instead of 5 in their primary skill is a huge difference for the officer, and there shouldn't be any reason to distinguish between these officer sources in such a dramatic fashion, especially in a way disconected from the bonuses defined and restricted to arcade mode.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Do they still get sort-of the same number of total skill and ability points for a character of the same level?
They definitely should, because both go through @Levis' Levelling system.
I could understand if they get a different "spread" of their assignments though.

 

[Tingyun]

They get the same number of perk points.

Not sure about total skills amount, because one never notices that. A doctor with a defense of 7 is better than a doctor with a defense of 5, and you won't even bother to notice if the defense 5 one has a better sailing skill.

I'd favor the tavern table hire formula with more moderate primary skills, as the tavern dialogue hire formula seems to have many officers getting near the skill cap in their primary skill pretty early, which is boring because then there is limited further advancement.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

We'd first need @Levis to confirm why they're different at all.
I don't think that is intentional.

 

[Levis]

From what I can see this problem is solved. For boarding we now use the GetBoardingCrewRank which is based off the captain. And the isFriend isn't used anymore in officer creation.