Fixed Modified Officer Generation and Skill Contribution

[Grey Roger]

Here's my first "Nelson's First Command" savegame, at Kingston port after having done everything I wanted in town. The game starts with a full set of officers, including a gunner with Cannons 5, Accuracy 5. My own skills are Cannons 3, Accuracy 3.

On the "Passengers" display, the combined skills are shown as Cannons 5, Accuracy 3. Accuracy does not seem to be inherited from the gunner. All other skills to seem to be inherited from their relevant officers.

This is under Beta 3.4 with the 19th January zip update.

 

[Captain Dixi]

I just loaded your savegame. If I look at the passenger menu, your gunner Mr. William Sylvan has accuracy skill of "3" not "5". In the Character menue he has accuracy "5" as you stated, but it did not get transfered to the passanger menu.

I also tried the tailor's shop to reset your gunner. Same result at first, but then I did it again giving Mr. Sylvan more accuracy (7) and it turned to "4" as result in passanger menu. So I cheated a bit and made him a perfect gunner, he will only contribute 5 of his 10 skills.

So I checked my own game and found exaclty the same with my gunner (TotSH). So my guess is, that gunners only distribute 50% of their accuracy skill. And that makes sense, the gunner can only aim so much. You have to allign the ship. So the rest of accuracy comes from your character.

I think this is not a bug, but intentional.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Ah, good point! Officer types can indeed either contribute 100% or 50% of their skills.
Check PROGRAM\Officers.c to see how they're set up.

 

[Levis]

They are set to 1 so thats only 50%

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Who does 100% accuracy skill now if not the gunner?

 

[Captain Dixi]

You do yourself. I think that makes sense. You steer the ship and that is about half of the aiming...

 

[Grey Roger]

You do. I don't know why setting the cannoneer's Accuracy skill to 1, i.e. 50%, is "balance". If anything it ought to be the other way round, the gunner contributes 100% and you contribute 50%.

 

[Captain Dixi]

I think there can be arguments for both. I think 50% is Ok, because you cannot really aim the cannons on such ships other than up and down. So in order to shot accurate, you need to steer your ship into a good position to fire.

But if any officer should contribute 100% it should be the gunner.

But I think I will keep it as it is for now. Should I play a game without cheating, I might change this setting to "2". Wait, that would be cheating again, wouldn't it be?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You do yourself. I think that makes sense. You steer the ship and that is about half of the aiming...

You do. I don't know why setting the cannoneer's Accuracy skill to 1, i.e. 50%, is "balance". If anything it ought to be the other way round, the gunner contributes 100% and you contribute 50%.

Indeed that would make more sense. Though right now the player always contributes 100% of everything he's got.

The original intent was that some officer types contribute half to a certain skill as "bonus".
So the Carptenter might help 50% with Commerce or something on account of him possibly needng planks or something.
Not a very useful feature, because mostly you would want to make use of good officers that contribute 100% of the skills you want.
So for a gunner, you would definitely want him to contribute 100% of the gunner-related skills.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I think there can be arguments for both. I think 50% is Ok, because you cannot really aim the cannons on such ships other than up and down. So in order to shot accurate, you need to steer your ship into a good position to fire.

The manoeuvring of the ship is a factor, of course, but not incorporated in the accuracy skill.
That is just something the player has to do well in the moment during actual play and cannot be expressed in numbers.

 

[Levis]

Some officer types where turned down so the officer types with less perks to contribute would contribute more skills to make them more usefull compared to the others.
But we could put the gunner back to 2 on both cannons and accuracy if people want that.
But before that I think we should look into the creation of officers more first.
I mean right from the start I can find officers with 10 on a certain skill already. if you just go in and out of the tavern for a while you could get a set of 4 officers which would give you 10 on almost everything already if we put them all on full contibutation.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Which officer now contributes 100% of his accuracy skill if it isn't the gunner?

But before that I think we should look into the creation of officers more first.
I mean right from the start I can find officers with 10 on a certain skill already. if you just go in and out of the tavern for a while you could get a set of 4 officers which would give you 10 on almost everything already if we put them all on full contibutation.

I quite dislike the ability to go "in-out-in-out" of the tavern all the time anyway. That has nothing to do with realism and doesn't even make any logical sense.
How about setting things up so that there is only one officer generated in the tavern per day?
You'd certainly have a harder time finding officers that way, I should think.

 

[Grey Roger]

Which officer now contributes 100% of his accuracy skill if it isn't the gunner?

None of them. In fact, apart from you (100%) and cannoneer (50%), the only officer which contributes accuracy at all is "OFFIC_TYPE_RANDCHAR" (50%).

I quite dislike the ability to go "in-out-in-out" of the tavern all the time anyway. That has nothing to do with realism and doesn't even make any logical sense.
How about setting things up so that there is only one officer generated in the tavern per day?

The tavern is not realistic and makes little logical sense anyway. In reality you can enter and leave a tavern as often as you like, possibly resulting in someone telling you to make up your mind and shut the door. Or you could stay in the tavern a while and watch to see who else enters and who leaves, which is how you'd get multiple possible officers. In the game, you can stay in the tavern as long as you like, nobody else will move. What does not happen in reality is the tavernkeeper telling the next officer "Sorry sir, only one officer per day, we've already had one and he got hired. See that captain over there? You can't come in until he's left the island."

You can get a batch of weapons repaired at the blacksmith or get the ship repaired at the shipyard, both of which involve several days passing in an instant, or from the point of view of the blacksmith or shipyard, you standing like a statue for days on end. This also has nothing to do with reality because in reality you'd leave them to it and go off to the tavern, probably several times. In the game you can also go to the tavern several times, you just have to do it after the blacksmith or shipyard has finished. Effectively your personal reality is catching up with the rest of the world's reality.

Besides, where's the fun in forcing players to depend more on their officers and then making it harder for them to find the officers they need? (For the player, that is. For the evil programmer, I suppose it's fun...)

 

[Pieter Boelen]

None of them. In fact, apart from you (100%) and cannoneer (50%), the only officer which contributes accuracy at all is "OFFIC_TYPE_RANDCHAR" (50%).

Well, THAT is getting changed right now.

The tavern is not realistic and makes little logical sense anyway. In reality you can enter and leave a tavern as often as you like, possibly resulting in someone telling you to make up your mind and shut the door. Or you could stay in the tavern a while and watch to see who else enters and who leaves, which is how you'd get multiple possible officers. In the game, you can stay in the tavern as long as you like, nobody else will move. What does not happen in reality is the tavernkeeper telling the next officer "Sorry sir, only one officer per day, we've already had one and he got hired. See that captain over there? You can't come in until he's left the island."
[...]
Besides, where's the fun in forcing players to depend more on their officers and then making it harder for them to find the officers they need? (For the player, that is. For the evil programmer, I suppose it's fun...)

With that being the case, why is the appearance of officers in taverns random at all?
Why not make one appear EVERY single time? Forcing the player to go in-out-in-out and then sometimes not succeeding is no fun either.
With my idea, you may find an officer there on a day or not. That makes it harder to find such potentially good officers.
It doesn't become hard to find *an* officer though, since you can promote your crew to officer which makes for a limitless supply if you need that.

 

[Levis]

The officer are generated in about 4 different places to make things more easy .
You got the officer generation by the script you pointed out. There is one also in the monsters encounters for taverns. Then you got enc_walkers which can be officers also, they all are a bit different in theire generation, so it's a hell. I tried to tackle the generation of encounters before but it only became worse then, so for now I'm going to leave that code alone, a lot of black magic is happening in there cause people added stuff all over the place.

I changed some of the contributing skills for officers now so each skill can be contributed at least once 100%.
I'm still taking a look at the officer generation to get some nicer looking distribution of skills for officers but I think that will just be to much of a hassle.

I do like the idea of @Pieter Boelen to just have 1 single officer per day and there might be an solution but need to look in that.

please take a look at the included files.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That officer generation I found is the most consistent one you can find; all other ones are pretty much already very random.
As far as I'm concerned, if we can limit that one to one a day, it'd already be a nice step.
Other ones are more easily handled I reckon. Some attributes here and there go a long way.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So as per yesterday, officer skill contribution should play better again. New game required for those changes to take effect, though.

 

[Grey Roger]

With that being the case, why is the appearance of officers in taverns random at all?
Why not make one appear EVERY single time? Forcing the player to go in-out-in-out and then sometimes not succeeding is no fun either.
With my idea, you may find an officer there on a day or not. That makes it harder to find such potentially good officers.

As it stands, you can enter the tavern multiple times if you want. Nobody is forced to do so, though - any player who only wants to check the tavern once per day is free to do so. And any player who wants to go to the trouble of entering, leaving and re-entering the tavern is also free to do so. Why deprive players of that choice?

Given the plan to make the player more reliant on officers to provide a full range of perks and skills, do you only get decent officers by hiring them from the tavern (or street)? Or can you get similarly good officers by promoting your crew? Can you choose what type of officer to create by promotion, or are you stuck with an endless succession of officer types you already have until you finally find the right one?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

As it stands, you can enter the tavern multiple times if you want. Nobody is forced to do so, though - any player who only wants to check the tavern once per day is free to do so. And any player who wants to go to the trouble of entering, leaving and re-entering the tavern is also free to do so. Why deprive players of that choice?

If you really do want to have that "feature", we should remove the randomization altogether and ENSURE there is ALWAYS an officer there.
Otherwise it is just annoying for the sake of being annoying.

Given the plan to make the player more reliant on officers to provide a full range of perks and skills, do you only get decent officers by hiring them from the tavern (or street)? Or can you get similarly good officers by promoting your crew? Can you choose what type of officer to create by promotion, or are you stuck with an endless succession of officer types you already have until you finally find the right one?

You can change the officer type for any officer you have, including promoted crewmembers.
But for your crew, you would generally have to grow them from the bottom; they wouldn't generally be good straight upon hiring.

 

[Levis]

Going to close this topic cause this is now implemented. We can go on in this topic:
http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/improve-officer-importance.24519/page-3#post-501159