Poll More unique officers

[Levis]

So after changing the leveling system slowly more and more options became avaible. You've probably noticed already officers are more specialized etc. Now I want to take this a little bit further.
Here are some ideas I still have for officers. Please let me know which of these Idea's you like and which you don't like and please tell me if you have any other ideas for them:

1) Based on the economy of the town you'll find the officer his salary claim will be higher or lower. This is because probably the officer has to support a family or something. And if he is on a wealthy island he can have higher demands because he is probably living pretty good. If he lives on a very poor island he just wants to get away from there and he will accept a lower offer in salary.

2) Make the haggling for salary a bit more interesting. Depending on your leadership skills and reputation etc yu can haggle with the officer about the salary, but instead of just have a cut to it once you will be able to haggle more on this. I'm actually thinking about you making the first offer. So the officer shows it's skills to you and you will then make him an offer first (maybe only in some cases, in other cases the officer will give an offer first, migth depend on your commerce skill). So you would for example get the options to offer him (100, 300, 600 and 900 salary) if you offer him way to few he will be offended and wont even talk again. if you offer him to much he will accept instantly. if you offer him a pretty good salary you can haggle a bit more about. For example you offer 300 while he was thinking about 500 he will then say he thinks he is worth 500. then you can offer him say 300 (again) or 350 or 400 or 450 or 500.
If you offer him 500 he will agree instantly if you offer less it will depend on skill etc if he will agree or not.

3) Some officers will have some "special" attributes. These attributes can give them bonusses or penalties in certain skills. For example you could have an officer with something like:
Wooden leg: gives -1 in melee but +1 in leadership (because he is battle tested so he is more respected)
Clumsy: just gives a -1 in sneak (you probably don't want to get this officer unless his sneak doesn't matter)
Keen Eye: +1 in accuracy (would be nice to have a cannoneer with this right?)
Haggler: +1 in commerce -1 in leadership (he wants to get the best from everything but this doesn't give him much respect, might be a good quartermaster tough )
These are just example, the specifics we can discuss better once people think it's a good idea

4) Officer alignment should work already, so let's show this in the interface (just like I did with the skill items) this could be shown like a number which shows how much the officer likes or dislikes you. I think with the help of the wiki I should be able to include some changes in officer alignment in most of the sidequests already. This would make it a bit more prominent. The morale calculation isn't that hard so we would probably be able to add something based on the loyaltiy of you officers to this pretty easy.

5) I want to make sure all types of officers are place on your ship once you visit the ship so you can talk with them on there too. Maybe we could add an option there where you tell them to go practice a certain skill. This might require you to have a certain item or something like this. I still need to think about this a bit more. but I think it would be nice if you could leave officers on the ship and have them train in something.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Based on the economy of the town you'll find the officer his salary claim will be higher or lower. This is because probably the officer has to support a family or something. And if he is on a wealthy island he can have higher demands because he is probably living pretty good. If he lives on a very poor island he just wants to get away from there and he will accept a lower offer in salary.

Possible. But what's the advantage of that? I suppose to make economy have a bit more impact on the game?
Who says the officer is from that town though?

Make the haggling for salary a bit more interesting. Depending on your leadership skills and reputation etc yu can haggle with the officer about the salary, but instead of just have a cut to it once you will be able to haggle more on this. I'm actually thinking about you making the first offer. So the officer shows it's skills to you and you will then make him an offer first (maybe only in some cases, in other cases the officer will give an offer first, migth depend on your commerce skill). So you would for example get the options to offer him (100, 300, 600 and 900 salary) if you offer him way to few he will be offended and wont even talk again. if you offer him to much he will accept instantly. if you offer him a pretty good salary you can haggle a bit more about. For example you offer 300 while he was thinking about 500 he will then say he thinks he is worth 500. then you can offer him say 300 (again) or 350 or 400 or 450 or 500.
If you offer him 500 he will agree instantly if you offer less it will depend on skill etc if he will agree or not.

Sounds like a lot of extra complexity. Is that really worth the effort?

Some officers will have some "special" attributes. These attributes can give them bonusses or penalties in certain skills. For example you could have an officer with something like:
Wooden leg: gives -1 in melee but +1 in leadership (because he is battle tested so he is more respected)
Clumsy: just gives a -1 in sneak (you probably don't want to get this officer unless his sneak doesn't matter)
Keen Eye: +1 in accuracy (would be nice to have a cannoneer with this right?)
Haggler: +1 in commerce -1 in leadership (he wants to get the best from everything but this doesn't give him much respect, might be a good quartermaster tough )
These are just example, the specifics we can discuss better once people think it's a good idea

"Wooden leg" sounds like something that could be linked to character model. Any others that could be linked like that?
(Becomes a bit weird when you change the model later on though. )

Officer alignment should work already, so let's show this in the interface

Let's not. For one thing, it doesn't actually do much of anything.
Even if it did, I'd prefer to deliberately not show it, so that finding out about it from observing your officer's reputation becomes a gameplay element.
Otherwise it just becomes a point on which to deliberately not hire and then it adds exactly no gameplay at all, only inconvenience.

I want to make sure all types of officers are place on your ship once you visit the ship so you can talk with them on there too.

Aren't they already? They're meant to be.

Maybe we could add an option there where you tell them to go practice a certain skill. This might require you to have a certain item or something like this. I still need to think about this a bit more. but I think it would be nice if you could leave officers on the ship and have them train in something.

Gaining skills happens already. And with a 1-10 range, it happens relatively quickly too.
Is there a need for such extra complexity if that only serves to speed it up more?

 

[Grey Roger]

1: Not a good idea. It just means if you want officers, you go to a poor island, you don't hire officers at rich islands.
2: Dragging out the dialog for hiring an officer is not exactly interesting. You already have the option to haggle once based on your Leadership, then you want to finish with it and get on with the rest of the game.
3: Could be interesting. Most of those bonuses / penalties should only apply if the officer is in your shore party, though. The Melee penalty for Wooden Leg should only apply to the officer himself, and probably so should the Leadership bonus - use this guy as a companion ship captain, don't take him with you in boardings. Likewise, Clumsy wouldn't do anything if he's aboard your ship - he can't affect your chances in a card game if he's not there, for example.
4: Perhaps not something as precise as a number, but there should be some indication. After all, in reality ships, companies etc. don't hire people randomly, they have an interview which gives the hirer some idea of whether this is someone they want in their team. Maybe have that added to the hiring dialog rather than an extended salary negotiation.
5: Aren't all officers already in place on one deck or another? If they're not a type suitable for the upper deck, gun deck or cargo hold, or your cabin, then they'll appear in crew quarters - are there currently any officer types who don't appear in at least one of these locations?

 

[Levis]

Possible. But what's the advantage of that? I suppose to make economy have a bit more impact on the game?
Who says the officer is from that town though?

mostly to get the economy system more use. He ofcourse doesn't have to be from there but else it would become more and more complex.

Sounds like a lot of extra complexity. Is that really worth the effort?

its only dialog work so it's not that hard...

"Wooden leg" sounds like something that could be linked to character model. Any others that could be linked like that?
(Becomes a bit weird when you change the model later on though. )

could be linked to the model but prefer it not too because that would be harder . wooden leg was just an idea, could be something else also like "battletested".

Let's not. For one thing, it doesn't actually do much of anything.
Even if it did, I'd prefer to deliberately not show it, so that finding out about it from observing your officer's reputation becomes a gameplay element.
Otherwise it just becomes a point on which to deliberately not hire and then it adds exactly no gameplay at all.

ok

Aren't they already? They're meant to be.

nope they aren't

Gaining skills happens already. And with a 1-10 range, it happens relatively quickly anyway.
Is there a need for such extra complexity if that only serves to speed it up more?

I don't know how the shared XP now works, but officers on your ship normally don't gain that much XP ... also you can't say in which skills they get it.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

3: Could be interesting. Most of those bonuses / penalties should only apply if the officer is in your shore party, though. The Melee penalty for Wooden Leg should only apply to the officer himself, and probably so should the Leadership bonus - use this guy as a companion ship captain, don't take him with you in boardings. Likewise, Clumsy wouldn't do anything if he's aboard your ship - he can't affect your chances in a card game if he's not there, for example.

I imagine that skill contribution would work exactly the same way it does now.
So it affects only that officer and IF that officer contributes that skill (e.g. it is higher than yours and appropriate for his job), only then does it affect the general "ship skills".

4: Perhaps not something as precise as a number, but there should be some indication. After all, in reality ships, companies etc. don't hire people randomly, they have an interview which gives the hirer some idea of whether this is someone they want in their team. Maybe have that added to the hiring dialog rather than an extended salary negotiation.

That already exists: Reputation.

its only dialog work so it's not that hard...

There is a lot of work that "is not that hard". But the sheer amount of that still means we have to seriously question if it is worth the effort.

could be linked to the model but prefer it not too because that would be harder . wooden leg was just an idea, could be something else also like "battletested".

Just got a bit excited about the prosect of a character with a wooden leg actually having that affect him.

nope they aren't

In what way are they not? Because I've seen the code that does it and I've seen that working too.

I don't know how the shared XP now works, but officers on your ship normally don't gain that much XP ... also you can't say in which skills they get it.

You should probably look how that works now. I posted the relevant code the other day.
It was thoroughly rewritten by me, based mainly on @Grey Roger's feedback.

Simple version: Officers always gain skills in the areas of their expertise and that gain is double that which the player should get.
Fencing XP is always shared. With Shared XP active, then all skills get shared.

 

[Tingyun]

1) i agree with grey rogers, this would just lead to preferential shopping based on island economy, which is kind of silly.

It is also not how the market for services work--employees generally aren't paid based on how much they want or need to make, they are paid based on what they produce. Only exception is if we have government regulation, or if the job requires the employee to live in a higher cost area (ie, a high cost city).

So it wouldn't be realistic in this case, or good for gameplay. All officers servs on ships, and their salary rates will be based on what they can get for their abilities, not what they want to get.

If we want to make island economy have more effects, it should affect the prices and quality of gear in stores. Also, big effects in price of commodity goods and how many available.

In sid mier's pirates, small poor towns had little to sell, and low prices. Healthy economy mid sized towns growing in size had high prices for manufactured goods and raw materials and food, reflecting their need for growth. Rich already developed towns had high prices in luxury goods and fancy things.

2) I don't like the idea of haggling with my officers. Not unless you paying them a permanently depressed wage because they were a little worse at haggling when you hired them causes a drop in loyalty and the potential for them to leave you and find a new job. Since it doesn't, I think we have to leave them at a fair wage based on their skills.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Agreed on both accounts.

 

[Levis]

Okay so that would leave mostly idea 3. How are you guys feeling about that? Should I make a test version of it where the chances of you finding officers with these kind of bonusses is higher so you can actually see how they look?
any idea's for buffs or debuffs?

 

[Tingyun]

Levis, Sounds good, I can try to think up some example traits to add to yours over the next couple of days.

One sugestion--I think much better to aim for bonuses that do something other than straight ability score increases. We already have items for that, and skill progression caps out too early. It also isn't different enough from just finding an officer with a higher score in that attribute.

I'd say instead things like bonuses and penalties to max hp, bonuses and penalties to salary (reflecting special special skills in demand or traits that lead to the person being disliked), bonuses or penalties to crew morale, bonuses or penalties to speed of movement/striking, bonuses or penalties to damage done, etc.

So like: Bloodthirsty: +30 max hp, faster movement in combat or regeneration in combat, small penalty to crew morale from being on the team.

So the person might make sense for a small ship, but probably should be fired later.

I think every trait should be some kind of tradefoff if possible, that leads to interesting strategic choices depending on needs. I'd rather only have a small number, than a ton that are generic skill increases.

Just my personal preference though.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I think every trait should be some kind of tradefoff if possible, that leads to interesting strategic choices depending on needs.

I have to second that notion!

 

[Levis]

Levis, Sounds good, I can try to think up some example traits to add to yours over the next couple of days.

One sugestion--I think much better to aim for bonuses that do something other than straight ability score increases. We already have items for that, and skill progression caps out too early. It also isn't different enough from just finding an officer with a higher score in that attribute.

I'd say instead things like bonuses and penalties to max hp, bonuses and penalties to salary (reflecting special special skills in demand or traits that lead to the person being disliked), bonuses or penalties to crew morale, bonuses or penalties to speed of movement/striking, bonuses or penalties to damage done, etc.

So like: Bloodthirsty: +30 max hp, faster movement in combat or regeneration in combat, small penalty to crew morale from being on the team.

So the person might make sense for a small ship, but probably should be fired later.

I think every trait should be some kind of tradefoff if possible, that leads to interesting strategic choices depending on needs. I'd rather only have a small number, than a ton that are generic skill increases.

Just my personal preference though.

it's all doable but it requires more work (which I dont mind) but I do need a good way to communicate it to the player also ... so I need to think about that some more then...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Are combined +1 and -1 Skill modifier traits perhaps an acceptable place to start?
Just to prevent this from becoming too complicated too quickly?

 

[Levis]

Are combined +1 and -1 Skill modifier traits perhaps an acceptable place to start?
Just to prevent this from becoming too complicated too quickly?

skillmodifiers, hpmodifiers and salarymodifiers shouldn't be a problem. they are in place already and can be done very easily. the rest is a bit harder.
I was thinking on trying it with those first.

 

[Levis]

There's also another thing that makes characters unique and that is making them dumber at certain tasks or even unable to do them. Let's say you find the best navigator in the Caribbean but he is also the cursed guy so he would have 0 luck and would not be able to gain any luck ever. That would make it very difficult to min/max things and characters would be more interesting I think (you wouldn't recruit the first officer you find in a tavern) . Maybe not making them unable to learn but very slow.
It would be normal if in a ship everyone knows how to fight (level 5) besides one or two guys but there's also those 3 or 4 guys who are master swordsman but maybe they are completely awful at everything else or even the guy who wouldn't hurt a fly and has 0 in swordfighting. So I think blocking skills or making them learn very slow would make it interesting because otherwise you will end up having near 10/10 guys again, not from shared XP but from finding people with very high level that already have a couple of 10 in some skills. If you find those guys and make their main and secondary skills different you can still have almost 10/10 guys. And I can tell you it's very easy to find people with 4 or 5 skills already at level 10.

@Eskhol take a look at this thread. We are discussing on how to make officers a bit more unique. It might be an idea also to have some generic officers have 0 in a skill that would make them more unique too. It's a feature which fully works for quests characters so it's not hard to make.

Edit: @Pieter Boelen damnit auto correct ...

 

[Grey Roger]

If I understand correctly, the idea is to have officers that have a bonus and a penalty, both to be applied to your overall stats, not just to the officer in question. So you'll find an officer with +1 in one skill and -1 in another.

Logical conclusion: hire a whole mass of officers so their bonuses and penalties cancel out, then they contribute their skills as normal. Possibly not what is intended here.

Having the occasional officer who has 0 in one or more skills and a significant bonus to something else does have possibilities, though. He's a specialist and should ideally have some sort of bonus not available any other way, even if it's only that he can bring your party skill up to 11 out of a normal maximum of 10. Or define a few perks which can't be bought in the usual manner and give them to officers like this. Such officers should be rare, partly because they reduce the flexibility of your team if they're all restricted this way and partly because the bonuses are also supposed to be something special and rare.

 

[Levis]

If I understand correctly, the idea is to have officers that have a bonus and a penalty, both to be applied to your overall stats, not just to the officer in question. So you'll find an officer with +1 in one skill and -1 in another.

I was thinking on having the bonus just for them. As if they where carying a skillboost item. It might not serve much use but it does look nice and gives them some personality.

Logical conclusion: hire a whole mass of officers so their bonuses and penalties cancel out, then they contribute their skills as normal. Possibly not what is intended here.

So that wont work .

Having the occasional officer who has 0 in one or more skills and a significant bonus to something else does have possibilities, though. He's a specialist and should ideally have some sort of bonus not available any other way, even if it's only that he can bring your party skill up to 11 out of a normal maximum of 10. Or define a few perks which can't be bought in the usual manner and give them to officers like this. Such officers should be rare, partly because they reduce the flexibility of your team if they're all restricted this way and partly because the bonuses are also supposed to be something special and rare.

They will indeed be rare. I will make sure the skills they contribute wont be 0.
Taking a skill above 10 sounds nice but I can't do that at the moment. There are places in the code where it will probably crash if we have it go beyond 10, so i first need to really take a look at those places before anything like that could happen.
But if a character has a bonus for a skill it will require less XP to get to level 10 (if you have a +1 bonus you only need the XP you need to go from 8 to 9 in order to get from 9 to 10 if you understand what I say).
Finding a master of arms who has say 2 skills at 0 and a HP boost of say 100 would be very nice right I think he will be in your shoreparty always .

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If I understand correctly, the idea is to have officers that have a bonus and a penalty, both to be applied to your overall stats, not just to the officer in question. So you'll find an officer with +1 in one skill and -1 in another.

I think the underlying intention is to ensure that one Level 10 Quartermaster is not identical to any other Level 10 Quartermaster, for example.
So then "choosing which officer(s) and which benefits/disadvantages you want" becomes part of the gameplay.
Otherwise it is a matter of "hired any Quartermaster = mission accomplished, never need to think about that again".
Which could be considered a bit dull.

I was thinking on having the bonus just for them. As if they where carying a skillboost item. It might not serve much use but it does look nice and gives them some personality.

If there is no disadvantage, then the choice becomes very simple again: Fire the officer without the bonus, keep the one with the bonus.
There's no weighing of choices then.

Taking a skill above 10 sounds nice but I can't do that at the moment. There are places in the code where it will probably crash if we have it go beyond 10, so i first need to really take a look at those places before anything like that could happen.

Indeed I have no clue what that would do and if it is even feasible from the coding side.
Good idea in concept though.

 

[Levis]

If there is no disadvantage, then the choice becomes very simple again: Fire the officer without the bonus, keep the one with the bonus.
There's no weighing of choices then.

Most bonusses should have a downside also. It will be up to the player to determine if the bonus is worth the downside.
For example a navigator which has a bonus for sailing but a penalty in HP could be good in later game if you have a good shoreparty but in earlygame you might skip on him because you need officers for your shoreparty too.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I did not vote for "Salary bonusses and penalties" and "Some skills to be set to 0 so they can't progress", but that is mainly because I cannot at the moment oversee the consequences of such changes.
But I'm not actually opposed to them either.

An appropriate salary modifier might actually turn out to be a good idea,
because a HP penalty will hardly matter at all for any officer that isn't meant to be in the shore party anyway.

Not unless we add some sort of "random chance of random officers getting killed from random cannonballs" that is affected by their HP.
Or, at least, for any cannonball hit to be able to apply a HP hit to random officers which, eventually, could lead to their death.
(Should officers then be able to use potions during sea battles???)

But that is a different discussion for a different day! And NOT for Build 14, I should think.
The controversy on that one would probably be..... massive.

EDIT: If anyone does feel like commenting on that, please do so here:
Feature Request - Sea Battles Can Lead to Officer Deaths | PiratesAhoy!
On the Build 15 Brainstorming(!) thread.

 

[Grey Roger]

I think the underlying intention is to ensure that one Level 10 Quartermaster is not identical to any other Level 10 Quartermaster, for example.
So then "choosing which officer(s) and which benefits/disadvantages you want" becomes part of the gameplay.
Otherwise it is a matter of "hired any Quartermaster = mission accomplished, never need to think about that again".
Which could be considered a bit dull.

As opposed to trying to find a quartermaster with the right +1 to offset the -1 incurred by your other officers, then trying to find someone to offset the -1 from that quartermaster, etc. That could be considered a bit dull. Better to just "hire any quartermaster, mission accomplished, never need to think about that again", then find some cargo for the quartermaster to sell. Whether you have the quartermaster buy it or have your cannoneer persuade someone to give it to you, that's your choice, but either way is a lot more fun than endlessly trying to balance the bonuses and penalties from officers.

Indeed I have no clue what that would do and if it is even feasible from the coding side.
Good idea in concept though.

The idea of a unique officer bringing a skill to 11 was just a suggestion for a way to give him a unique bonus. If that can't be made to work, what about the other suggestion of a few special perks not available by normal means and only assigned to such officers?

I'd prefer regular officers to stay as they are now, and additionally have the occasional special officer with a special advantage. He'd also demand a higher salary or a bigger share of divided loot because he's an expert and he knows it!