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Fixed [WIP] Officers do not spend Ability points

Jason

Jason

Buccaneer
Storm Modder
Another question re: officers. In previous versions I could allocate their ability points now I cannot. Is this intentional?
 
@Jason
Do you mean new officers join with most of their points already spent? If so, that would be intentional. AI wasn't spending their perk points, meaning when you faced enemies, or enemy captains, they often had not used their perks, making them underpowered. So Levis and I worked out a plan to reduce the number of perk catagories--haven't had a chance to see his final version because working all the time, but in my prototype everyone basically spent their points. Same system applies to officers, since all characters are leveled the same.

If you mean they gain levels after hiring and then you aren't allowed to spend their points, then thst would be a bug, probably related to the seperate recent change in how perks are assigned.

Also, if you find they join with inappropriate perk choices, then that would also be good info to have, as the new catagory system might then need tweaking.
 
It can be useful if an officer has some perk points free. For one thing, he may not be quite high enough level to be able to buy some of the perks of his job. I have a surgeon who was like that, he had a few points spare and wasn't quite high enough level to qualify for Advanced Ship Defence. Once he'd levelled up, I was able to use those points to buy it. (At the time I hired him, I had only the 23rd September update, which messed up the surgeon - he couldn't contribute Advanced Ship Defence anyway. One of @Levis' updates fixed that, meanwhile the surgeon had gone up a level or two.) Also, it does no harm to have a few points spare, so you have the choice to either spend the lot on his job perks, or give him some melee perks to allow him to survive as a member of your shore party.
 
@Grey Roger As I said in my post, the problem wasn't that player officers hired had a couple of points, it was that all the AI created officers were severely handicapped, including enemies and enemy captains, by leaving vast points reserves even as they went up in level.

@Levis specifically aimed to have a mechanic whereby low level officers might keep a point or maybe two in reserve for the player to spend, fading as they go up in level. If you are interested in the details, this specific issue was discussed extensively in the relevant thread.

However, the old system where a lvl 20 guy might have 13 points left over was crazy, both for hired officers and for AI enemies. There was also a serious performance hit as the system looped again and again trying to find a perk and failing each time.
 
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First of all I am playing with Levis' 10/3 fixes.

Here is what has happened. I have hired three tavern officers. They all have all of their shared abilities assigned and 20 free points. Unlike before I cant allocate any of their unused points.
 
That is definitely a bug with the most recent perk system then. All of this is new to the october releases, Levis completely rewrote the perk assignment code.

That is seperate from the perk catagory rework discussed earlier, just for reference. Different changes implemented at diffferent times, just both happen to involve perks.
 
@Jason I had the same problem, a new fresh install solved this for me.
Have you tried to delete the option file, may be it could help, if not I
I recommend a new install.
@Pieter Boelen Thats exact the same problem, I have been fighting with the last
two days. Not a bug with @Levis work.
 
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Really strange. I hired a carpenter about 20 minutes ago. He was level 5 and had a free point, so I gave him Damage Control, because he didn't have it yet. Worked like a charm; he keeps it and contributes it like it should be. This was the same case for every other officer I hired since I updated to Levis's 3/1o zip.
The carpenter was the only one who had a free point btw, all the others had spent their stuff already.
 
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After further testing I think I know what @Jason means.

I cheated myself to level 60 and entered a tavern to hire an officer. Got me a quartermaster who was level 54. Then I tried to give her some of the non-contributing stuff. Wasn't possible, the "OK" button was grey. However, after assigning her to another post on my ship (bosun) I was able to give her some new abilities like Landing Party and so on, because now they were contributing for obvious reasons. Should work with every other post too.

And then I killed everyone in town, because why not.

Conclusion: apparently officers aren't able (or supposed) to learn non-contributing perks anymore. I have no clue if this is intentional, but now we know at least what's going on here.
 
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Third post in line and I already feel like a dirty spammer; will never do it again (promise). :nerbz

I actually don't see a problem with officers not able to learn non-contributing stuff. If you either allocate their free points instantly for random stuff he/she doesn't even have any use for (as far as I'm aware, correct me here please) or later when you plan to switch his/her post on the ship doesn't really matter. What matters here is that in the last case you have at least spare points to get some abilities your officer really needs for the new job.
For the other non-contributing stuff, that's what your other officers are for. The only issue here would be that people are confused about why they can't click "OK".
All of this is IMHO of course, nothing else. If you think that's an error in reasoning, then just forget what I wrote. :doff

I wonder though how this works with companions of your fleet; being restricted here wouldn't be pretty I believe. Should try this later. I can't now; had to throw in a lot of night shifts for the last two weeks to finish something a friend of mine desperately needs.
Too tired. "Goodnight".
 
@Cassadar: If you get the chance, could you check your main game folder after these tests to see what is in the possible error.log file?
I wonder if the behaviour you describe is intentional by @Levis or by accident.

Personally I'm inclined to say you should be able to choose whatever abilities you want.
If you choose one that doesn't contribute, then it will just be ineffective. But that is player choice. :shrug
 
Pieter Boelen said:
Personally I'm inclined to say you should be able to choose whatever abilities you want.
If you choose one that doesn't contribute, then it will just be ineffective. But that is player choice. :shrug
Click to expand...
True. I personally believe he just forgot to activate a switch somewhere or whatever this would be called, otherwise all of those non-contributing perks would be locked if you're not supposed to spend your points there. Now that I think of it, my opinion about this for gameplay reasons doesn't matter anyway, since I'm more of a person who does the work rather than someone who discusses stuff. I babble too much in my current state.

I checked the folder and my last test didn't produce an error.log. Will test the other stuff later; need some sleep first.
 
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Thanks Cassadar,

What you describe at level 60 is what I experience at level 31. It is the non contributing perks you can't allocate.
 
I am confident this block to noncontributing perks is unintended. @Levis has several times voiced him liking officers sometimes having noncontributing perks to add flavor, so I don't think he would block them.

But Levis is away for most of this week, so it might not be fixed soon. Luckily, for the reasons Cassadar cites, it isn't game breaking in the meantime.

@Cassadar you should definitely give your input on gameplay, as often as you are willing. Too few people comment on gameplay issues, and then it is just an echo chamber of the same people saying the same things, with no way of actually knowing what is working or not working for most players. Especially useful is to share opinions on what is working well, or needs adjustment, especially with new features.

For example, I still have no idea if people actually like the new system of AI equipping armor or not, and whether the game difficulty still feels balanced (i.e., whether the chance of AI randomly equipping somewhat worse weapons was enough to avoid a difficulty increase). I think @Darby McGraw generally likes it, and people were downloading the original experiments so there are some who like the ideas, but other than that, no feedback one way or the other on the armor, so no way of knowing whether to make adjustments to get it right, or even remove AI armor altogether if people don't like it.
 
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