Fixed Leveling: Sudden Huge Amounts of XP Gained

[Pieter Boelen]

That plus the ships' crews' morale, which means a 3rd rate Bellona ought to have no trouble boarding a sloop, especially after unloading a few broadsides of grapeshot into it.

True.

And going that far would take some of the fun out of the game.

I'm curious how it could be made to work. But we won't be finding out for a long, long time yet.
And you may very well be right: It isn't for nothing that those kind of systems exist in games.

 

[Levis]

If regular enemy crew are about your level then the captain should be higher. Just maybe not quite so high.

The other problem with tying everyone else's level to yours is one which I've encountered in paper-and-dice role-playing games as well, which is that if the game-master (GM for short) does that then there's no point levelling up - everyone else in the world levels up at the same time so you're no better off. Perhaps crew and captain level should be tied to ship tier instead? In most games you start off with a small ship and work your way up to something bigger, so should they. Which means if you encounter a little sloop, it ought to be a relatively inexperienced crew just starting out. A bigger ship such as a brig or sloop of war would be run by a more experienced crew, the reason being they've been successful and earned that ship.

At the moment the captains level is tied to the ship. There is also a component of your level in it, but only when the captain is way weaker i believe.

 

[Grey Roger]

I think the largest difference is the starting level...
@Grey Roger could you make sure the co debugging in levelling.c is set to 2 and do a run in that cellar. After that please upload the compile.log

Here it is.

 

[Grey Roger]

Yeah captains might be a bit to high. Could you do something for me while I'm still away?
Use the highest debug level, when encountering an captain use the dialog option show skills and make a screenshot. Please post 2 or 3 and also the tier ship they have. Also please let me know what you should think they should be.
I think I'm going to have captains at also your level (unless they sail higher tier ships) and add some officers to them to boost theire skill and perks. Maybe for build 15 I can make those officers show up on the boarding decks.

Here's one. I can't remember the ship tier off-hand but it was some sort of pirate tiddler, probably a tier 6, possibly a 5. I was in a 3rd rate Bellona at the time. I'm level 9, he's level 16, but I was level 5 at the start of the battle which presumably is when enemy captains are created. He certainly wasn't created at the time of boarding because after he killed me, I reloaded a savegame I'd created immediately before boarding, tried again and it was the same captain.

 

[Levis]

You should be able to be level 3 in melee now already.... My flight got cancelled yesterday. Hopefully I'm back tonight so I hope to have a more balanced update Sunday.

 

[HellSailor]

In one post I said something about increasing or decreasing the ExpMult of some skills... well, I have done some trials and I increased specially on commerce, sneak, and sailing. These are the changes I made to a more fast progression of skills (Still WIP):

• Leadership: From 5 to 5.5 (Tried with 6 and it progressed too quickly)
• Fencing: Remains the same - 5.
• Sailing: From 1 to 2.5 (Not tested yet)
• Accuracy: Remains the same - 2.
• Cannons: Remains the same - 1.
• Repair: Remains the same - 50.
• Defence: From 6 to 6.5 (Tried with 7 and it was too easy to progress)
• Sneak: From 3 to 4.
• Grappling: Remains the same - 4.
• Commerce: From 0.5 to 1 (1.25 was a bit too fast).

Edit: Sailing I think I am going to put on 2 rather than 2.5. Also, Commerce I still think it is too easy with 1, so I'm going to try with values of 0.75 or 0.85.

 

[Grey Roger]

You should be able to be level 3 in melee now already.... My flight got cancelled yesterday. Hopefully I'm back tonight so I hope to have a more balanced update Sunday.

Bear in mind that this was early in the "Hornblower" game - I'd done the Antigua cellar, then the story sends you to Guadeloupe beach and from there to Jamaica, and I met the small pirate ship on the way to Jamaica. Other than the Antigua cellar I hadn't had much chance for swordplay, but the sea battle took me up several levels.

As I'm higher level, the bandits which I met in Barbados cave later were tougher and as a result my Melee has gone up. Getting lucky and defeating that pirate, then beating another one on the way back to Charlestown, also helped. It's now 4.

 

[HellSailor]

I'm also going to try these changes onto a old version before the changes to linear exp (25th July, for example), to see how it perfoms with better resources and stable games.

 

[HellSailor]

One Question @Pieter Boelen, is it better to post my changes about Exp Mult in another appropiate thread outside the Bug Tracker, or is it good here? Because I'm not sure if this is neccesarily related to what we are trying to achieve here...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

This is not actually a bad spot. But you could make a separate thread for the balancing if you would like.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

For me the sailing and sneak skills go up too slow, with cannons also becoming unbalanced with accuracy over time. This is because pistols add to accuracy as well as cannons.

 

[HellSailor]

For me the sailing and sneak skills go up too slow, with cannons also becoming unbalanced with accuracy over time. This is because pistols add to accuracy as well as cannons.

What would you like to change? Then I can give a try and see what is suitable to be changed. Feedback is appreciated in order to get a consense between all of us. Some posts below you can see the original AND the changed values.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Does the sailing skill increase change if one plays the open sea mod compared to the stock game?

Those are the ones that I can't level up unless I make an extra special effort and spam the game.

 

[HellSailor]

I haven't done enough of testing with sailing and playing sea battles, but for I could see, 2.5 ExpMult is too much. 2 points it's the number I think it's needed. But yes, It gets increased. I think I am now on level 3 or 4 after a couple of battles with pirate ships.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Sailing should still increase when you use DirectSail just like it always did.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

It does, but soooooo sloooowly that I set sail and direct sail from say Grenada to Havana and back and get almost no gain at all. I could have 10-10 skills in most other things and have 6-9 for sailing.

 

[HellSailor]

It does, but soooooo sloooowly that I set sail and direct sail from say Grenada to Havana and back and get almost no gain at all. I could have 10-10 skills in most other things and have 6-9 for sailing.

You should try and change the number value to what do you think it is better. I think that you play on Iron Mode, isn't it?

Because I play on Arcade Mode almost exclusivelly, I don't know if in other game modes it is different. Try to increase first from value 1 to value 2 and see if that has helped you.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I play realistic mode with the open sea mod on. I do not know where the code for that is.

 

[HellSailor]

It is in Levelling.c, an archive that it is found inside the PROGRAM folder, like InternalSettings.c Instructions for looking that section of the archive is explained in some posts above by Levis, I think.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Hylie Pistof : When you have Open Sea Mod on, you do still often use the worldmap, right?
You only get sailing XP with DirectSail and of course Iron Man Mode enforces that with Open Sea Mod on.
Not sure how much of a difference that makes here, but it might at least be worth fully clarifying on it.