• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


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Build 14 Beta 1

No, I'm using Patch 6 but with my changes to the LAi_fightparams file. Why?
 
it might make some differences, though i doubt it. i'm not sure if there were any changes to the weapons between those two patches.
 
maybe some of the other files in that last patch 7 update is combining with Baste's LAI_fightparam.c file to give the 'constant death' issue?

@ Baste, all i can say is for 100% sure when playing the Build Mod 14 + patch 7 wip 2(the last one with your updated file), combat suddenly becomes lethal. Replacing that LAI_fightparam.c file with the one from the first Patch 7 or earlier patches suddenly reduces the combat death rate - with no other changes needed to the base modded game etc. :shrug It's like night and day in how different the game plays in relation to land combat.

When playtesting i always start a new game from the begining(as this is where any new players to the game will start out, so any oddness here is most obvious and better to fix up first i find). So my games are very low tech in terms of char ability and weapons, but then most of my enemy encounters are not that far in advance of me it seems(maybe the odd tough 100Hp encounter etc).

Difficulty is set at Adventurer mostly but sometimes Swashbuckler or Journeyman(is that the one just below Adventurer, i can't check just now!) just to see if there is any difference to overall play.
All basic game start stats and weapons and sometimes i'll get lucky and find a reasonable weapon after clearing out the jungles around Speightstown, but nothing Uber.

I should have some time next week to run a test using your file and those tweaks you mentioned and i'll report back before next weekend on how it goes :sail
 
The weapons in patch 7-2 are completely different. The best swords have offense/defense of maybe 56/43% and damage around 25/45HP.There are US cavalry sabres, Polish szablas, Russian shaskas, Knights Templar sword, kilij, dirk, and more.


My last post was with the level set to .06 in your LAIcode. Before that I was using black Bart's LAIcode. Both are useable at my level but Baste's is harder.

I am at level40, swashbuckler, two excellent heavy pistols or grenades, golden cuirass, excellent Knights Templar sword, all abilities checked and 10-10 in melee and defense. I always have three officers who are 10-10 in melee and defense. They prefer the 4 barrel pistol and US cavalry sabre. My last fight was a boarding where the crew had treacherous morale and they all started out with over 400HP.
 
the hp issue is something that is very old. i remember members like Hook and such reporting that one, but since hardly anyone made it that far it wasn't really bothered with. i do think that such things only happened at level 300 though. i don't know how he played for that long with one character either, but hey.
 
The opponents being very strong comes with Baste's changes. The other setup is almost too easy. I started playing again yesterday and almost died twice. Is anyone else playing with these settings at the beginning levels?
 
Using Build 14 beta + Patch 7 wip 2(the last patch with the changes to combat): Game start situation, no cheats/buffs just the game as a new player would find it.

This is an early report as i'm hoping to get more game time for a fuller report on the weekend coming.

I changed the value in the 'professional fencer' section of LAI_fightparam.c from 0.7 to the suggested 0.6

So far i'm finding less of an issue re the 'insta death' hits by swords from the enemy NPC's, BUT my char and officers are killing lots of enemy out right with their pistol shots and the damage we do does seem to sythe enemy down quicker than before(in previous patches) - probably we're looking at a total rebalance for all weapons and armour values with this setting!! So there is some improvement in the playability of the game with that one small tweak, but it seems as if the damage levels compared to when using the LAI_fightparam.c from previous patches(like patch 6 and the first patch 7 wip), are set much too high.

I'll report back with more details as this is just my prelimary findings using these settings after a couple of days(about 5 hours worth) of play testing.
 
I downloaded Patch 7 WIP 2 and have now tried my changes with both Black Bart's settings and Hylie Pistoff's settings regarding level, difficulty, weapons, and so on. Because of the higher difficulty levels enemies were at higher levels and had more HP, but it still wasn't very hard. :shrug

As Hylie Pistoff said, the critical hits aren't the problem. They do less damage than before. If "instant death" is an issue, it must have to do with the Professional Fencer damage decrease. Damage from normal hits is unchanged, and since critical hits do more damage with how it was before, "instant death" would be more of a problem then.

That being said, I might have found a reason why you feel combat is harder with my changes and easier with how it was before. I tried changing the critical hit code back to how it was, which means that critical hits once again did more damage. This means that enemies (and you) will receive more damage quicker and thus get killed quicker. If they are dead they can't damage you anymore. With my changes everyone receives less damage overall, but this means that enemies will live longer and thus get more chances to kill you, especially if they are in a group. However, you will also live longer since they can't suddenly take away most of your hit points due to a critical hit.

So, enemies live longer and have more chances to kill you but with less damaging critical hits. The same applies to you. With how it was before they can be killed faster because of more damaging critical hits, but they can also kill you faster. Damage from normal hits is the same in both cases.

Apparently there are problems with both ways in the build. :shrug

Black Bart: My pistol changes are not included in the patch, and Professional Fencer only decreases damage from melee attacks. I hope the change to "0.6" stops the "instant death" problem, since that is the only thing I can think of that could cause it if it's not a problem in previous patches and if it isn't the weapon stats that are causing it.

Hylie Pistoff: In case you didn't know, the Defense skill only decreases loss of crew in sea battles. It doesn't lower damage taken in melee combat. The Melee skill, however, increases the damage you do and increases your chance of successfully piercing enemy blocks and blocking their attacks. In melee combat and apart from the Melee skill, the Luck skill is more useful than the Defense skill.

Both of you: Thanks for your help in this. :)
 
I'm very interested in how Black Bart gets along with this system at the start of a game. I am staying with this long running game (level 44) because it's easier to get the large ships that I am working on. Combat is challenging with everyone taking heavy damage.

Baste: Have you met anyone in town who will teach you about a skill for a fee? When you meet someone who will teach you fighting skills, you get the choice of learning offensive or defensive skills. :ixi Learning offensive moves improves your melee skills while learning defensive moves improves your defense skills. :nerbz Voice of experience here. :cheers
 
Indeed it will be interesting to see the results. :)

Yes, but I don't think I've met anyone who've talked about fighting. That's interesting. I could be wrong, but I believe it's an error. I haven't seen the Defense skill being taken into account in melee combat damage calculations anywhere, only in sea battle calculations about the crew. :shrug
 
It's a bit of a change of subject, but a while back we were discussing sailing XP. I remember reporting 262 XP per hour of directsailing in regular time. Yesterday I was noticing much higher amounts in the 400-600XP range. Has this been changed recently?
 
Hylie Pistoff said:
It's a bit of a change of subject, but a while back we were discussing sailing XP. I remember reporting 262 XP per hour of directsailing in regular time. Yesterday I was noticing much higher amounts in the 400-600XP range. Has this been changed recently?
Click to expand...

I think Pieter had included some of the reduced XP tweaks i had mentioned in my modding thread. If you go look at that you will see that XP was about 1000 per update(which i think is every 15mins rather than every hour), so my tweaks had reduced that by about 50%. There is also a difference if you are playing RPG or default Mode, in RPG mode sailing XP is only given to you it seems and not shared amongst your crew(atleast you don't get the screen update listing your other crew getting XP). In the default game mode(non rpg) all your active officers also get some XP, usualy a portion of what you get. All that stuff was covered in that thread in detail also. My current test game uses an extended version of XP reduction, so all land based XP is also reduced(lock pick, fighting etc). In the default game using the default leveling you got so much XP that you really advanced through the first 10 levels very quickly, which felt odd pacing wise and lead to massively powerful Officers with 10's in most of their job related skills. This was less of an issue in the rpg mode as your skills are completely unrelated to your XP and levelling.

As for my test report, i'm going to need more time(so don't wait for it!) as the Rugby World Cup got in the way over the weekend! I've gone back to setting that value from 0.6 back to the previous 0.7 and NOT been having the issue with regular 'insta-death', but if that is dependant on the NPC's having 'Professional Fencer' perk then maybe i've just been lucky this time?

So in short it needs more testing, although i am still noticing that guns/pistols often kill outright compared to pre last patch 7 update(and that is with the same damage ratings). So a number of things are still a little out of whack it seems? Others reports on these kinds of things will help build a more complete picture on those last changes in patch 7 :yes
 
I think your XP code changes need to be changed to take place only if Auto Skill System is off. I'll see about sorting that before Beta 2.
 
Sure, take some more time. :yes

I can't comment on the pistols, since the change I did to them isn't in the patch. :shrug
 
@ Pieter, well you have the 'lite' version on the XP reductions but if you feel it is not needed for the rpg mode then see what you can come up with. I'm currently playing back on the rpg mode with Baste's changes(and fix for professional fencer) and i'm about to clear out the dungeon in Speightstown, having cleared the one in the jungle and a bunch of jungle encounters to raise cash from loot(and test out the LAI_fightparam.c code). I'm level 3 with a leadership score of 2, Melee 2, luck 2 - all other skills are 1. Level 3 close to leaving Speightstown seems ok to me? I'd make a rough guess that without those reductions in XP i'd be more like level 4 or 5 at this stage.

@Baste, re the pistol damage that might be down to something i tweaked in InternalSettings.h or another of those 'game setup' type files? So don't worry too much about that. So far my combat 'insta kills' has dropped right off for myself and my crew. I occaisionaly die very quickly, but often that is just me missing a block. So so far the testing looks ok, even using the original value of 0.7 for professional fencer. I'm not sure what I was seeing earlier(and Hylie also) in terms of the constant deaths! More testing under way :)
 
I'm just thinking that with Auto Skill System on, sometimes it's too hard to get your skills to increase rather than too easy. :facepalm
 
oh, the skill ratios. i was working on that for a bit. i'll get back to it once i start playing the game again.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
I'm just thinking that with Auto Skill System on, sometimes it's too hard to get your skills to increase rather than too easy. :facepalm
Click to expand...

And i should just state this again, as it's a common misunderstanding it seems(both Hylie and Morgan needed quite a bit of convicing!). XP has no effect whatsoever on the skill development under the rpg system. None, nada, zero. It only effects your character level, perks and HP.

And Morgan is right - the code for Skill improvement calculations needs tweaking, i'm doing some currently but it is quite hard to really get a handle on what exactly the code is calculating, so it is a bit 'trial and error' so far.

As it was in the Build 14 so far, using the default char progression system(where you pick your skill improvements and perks after a level up) the ammount of XP given was too high for most area's of the game, so you end up with super Officers(and your own super char) by around level 6-7, which roughly is about the stage in the Nathaniel mission where you are heading to meet with the French Barque to escort and sink it. At that point you will have a level 10 navigator, level 10 gunner(or both 'gunning' skills around 7-8 approx) etc.

Now as it is in the current Build 14 if playing using the rpg system, you get very slow skill progression especially compared to the quickness of your leveling up. With the small XP tweaks currently in the game you won't level as quick but that does not effect your skills at all, those are all calculated independantly of your char leveling, and those calculations need some work to better balance them. As i under stand it you can be very high level(say 15+) but still have very low skill levels(around 5 etc) at that point of the game. This would indeed make some of the game situations difficult to over come, but this is not related to XP at all in the rpg system.

XP only effects skill levels in the default game progression mode. :yes:
 
BB, we know that. you just keep confusing wether we mean skill xp or leveling xp. pieter was referring to skill xp.
 
For me, the sailing skill is the hardest to bring up. The best way is to find a teacher. That's a level every time. I'm at level 45 now and just made 10-10 at sailing on level 44 because of a teacher.
 
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