Need Help Points, Perks and Leveling UP

[Jason]

As I am following the conversation about officer perks I thought I would describe my experience with 9/23 WIP + Levis' 10/3 fixes.
I usually play at level 31 especially when testing. When I do that I always start with 340 HP. In this version I started at 440. After playing for about six weeks of game time I am now at 484 which would suggest that I have leveled up 4 times resulting 8 skill points and 4 ability points. I have no additional points and no messages about leveling up.

None of my tavern officers have leveled up. I play Free Play so I start with a set of officers they are leveling up and gaining points fine, (as before).

One other thing I have noticed is that even though I am at level 31 the weapons I encounter when in melee are the lower level weapons you get when you start from scratch. This is not necessarily a complaint, but in previous versions if you cheated up to 31 you were facing weapons and therefore looting them that were available to players at that level.

Let me know if someone wants a save game.

 

[Tingyun]

One other thing I have noticed is that even though I am at level 31 the weapons I encounter when in melee are the lower level weapons you get when you start from scratch. This is not necessarily a complaint, but in previous versions if you cheated up to 31 you were facing weapons and therefore looting them that were available to players at that level.

The rest seems to be bugs I know nothing about, and probably Levis will need to look into. This quoted part I can offer some insight though.

Two things probably account for the change. First, the primary reason is probably that all captains and crew are now on a consistent unified formula that are independent of level. Second, a smaller contributing reason is that the min cap on weapons has been removed to account for AI armor being added.


Detailed explanation: POTC in LAi_equip uses the level of the character being equipped to determine his equipment, NOT player level, this hasn't changed. However, now all captains and crews are on a consistent formula independent of player level, so regardless of you being level 31 or level 1, what matters is what level the enemy is at.

In the current version, bandits are still leveled with the player (we temporarily reverted my deleveling of them while a bug in officer creation is worked on), meaning you should still see a difference in their equipment based on player level.

But now all captains are based only on ship tier, not player level, and their crews are based on their level. Some types of captains had this already, for some it is possibly new. Either way, a tier 4 navy ship will have great equipment, a tier 8 merchant ship will have terrible, regardless of player level.

Probably the smaller factor you are noticing is the min cap on weapons was removed, creating a chance for higher level enemies to sometimes roll lower level swords, to balance out their greater damage resistance from sometimes rolling armor now and avoid a difficulty increase. However, since they still have the other parameters in their weapon selection left alone, most significantly the highest allowed weapons, most of the time they will still have the better swords of their level (and the worst swords were increased a bit in performance to soften the blow if they get really unlucky and roll them).

(To get rid of the truly innapropriate possibilities like knives and tools, you might also install this fix, and press f11 to reinitilize Fixed - Blocking worst weapons from everyone | Page 2 | PiratesAhoy!) (also might as well install this one, to restore ability to take captains prisoner Behaviour of Surrendered Captains | Page 4 | PiratesAhoy!)


So, to summarize, mainly it is probably the type of encounters you have been having, as weapons are based on AI level, not player level, and most enemies are now independent of player level, so if you raid some big high tier ships, especially navy (where both the captains and guards get boosts to levels), you should see some very nice weapons among their collection, with some random variation of low end weapons. Unless something broke since the late September updates, which was last I played.

 

[Jason]

Tingyun,

Thank you for that detailed and livid explanation. I did not mention the missing opportunity take captains prioner, but it seem to me important to preserve that. And where do I insert those two fixes. Thank.

 

[Tingyun]

@Jason glad to help! The init-items file goes into program/items I think (make sure it is overwriting something). The cabin fight fix for prisoners goes into program/dialogs.

BTW, definitely please leave as much feedback as you have on any of the new features. In particular, whether you like AI having armor, hate it, think it needs changing, whether difficulty has been more or less maintained even with the armor given to AI by sometimes having worse weapons on AI, or whether one end or the other needs adjustment.

Basically, please do report your opinion on what works well, what works badly, and any suggestions you have. All of this needs fresh opinions to see how to go forward and make adjustments.

 

[Jason]

Well I haven't played enough with the amour to know how I feel about it yet. I think the frequency of it is a key and finding a balance is going to be important.

 

[Tingyun]

@Jason Indeed, that is the trick. Currently the system is that enemies start with about a 1/3 chance of getting some kind of armor at the lowest level, and that increases as they go up. At lowest levels, leather jerkins are the staple, at highest levels, cheap metal armor is the staple. Gold Armor is always very very rare, and only even is possible at above level 30, and never goes above 2% chance even for level 51 enemies. Battle armor is also very rare, having about a 1% shot at level 21 and building slowly, never reaching 20% even for enemies over level 51 (ie, highest navy captains).

Will be interested to hear your feedback on anything as you play. I will not be around for awhile, but someone will be tweaking this system as things go forward to make it better.

 

[Jason]

What you have now feels right.

 

[Tingyun]

Thanks @Jason , I spent about a week designing and balancing it, so glad to hear the initial version looks ok.

 

[Jason]

I inserted the cabin dialogue folder did a F11 and nothing changed still can't send him to the brig.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It did end up overwriting the original file?
F11 should not even be needed for that.

 

[Jason]

And further evidence that the perks are FUBAR, I have the wisdom tooth idol which is supposed to add to defense and it doesn't. All other objects and books seem to work as intended.

 

[Jason]

It did end up overwriting the original file?
F11 should not even be needed for that.

Yes it did overwrite the file.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Then I don't know what's going on there.

 

[Jason]

Oh well. I will again.

 

[Tingyun]

@Pieter Boelen I'm very confused as well, unfortunately out of time to run this down further. Maybe some of the initial dualing code is somehow erasing that dialogue option, but I have no idea how.

Or maybe there is something else going on. Someone will have to figure it out later.

@Jason Install this file then. I tested this version two days ago, and by selecting the first dialogue option, I then got a list of options that included throwing the captain into the hold as a prisoner.

Please report back on whether it works for you as well. Hopefully it will, sorry about that.

 

[Levis]

@Jason could you provide a savegame?
Does the interface still show you to be level 31?

 

[Jason]

Yes. still 31.

 

[Jason]

@Pieter Boelen I'm very confused as well, unfortunately out of time to run this down further. Maybe some of the initial dualing code is somehow erasing that dialogue option, but I have no idea how.

Or maybe there is something else going on. Someone will have to figure it out later.

@Jason Install this file then. I tested this version two days ago, and by selecting the first dialogue option, I then got a list of options that included throwing the captain into the hold as a prisoner.

Please report back on whether it works for you as well. Hopefully it will, sorry about that.

 

[Jason]

The cabin fight fix did not work when I select the first dialogue option "throw him in the brig" is not an option that appears.

 

[Tingyun]

The cabin fight fix did not work when I select the first dialogue option "throw him in the brig" is not an option that appears.

Huh, now that is odd. I took a prisoner several days ago with that exact file (the second more extreme version I posted), I even checked afterwards to make sure he was there (his ransom was a little ofer 5000).

I think then the bug might be situational in some way, only manifesting some of the time. I only tested it once, it is possible had I tested it multiple times I would have been blocked from taking prisoners some or most of the time. Will have to be looked into what is going on.

Thanks for the info Jason!