Fixed Nation Points for Promotion

[Jelle]

Navy officer gameplay issue: Being promoted does NOT increase your nation points.
Which means that you always start the game with zero points, even if you start the game as admiral.
It will then take a long, long time before you're ever promoted.

 

[Grey Roger]

There's a distinction here. Being promoted does not increase your nation points because it's the other way round - getting enough nation points leads to you being promoted. Starting off as a high rank is a sort of cheat and you need to catch up before you can earn a real promotion. In effect, you've used either money or political influence to jump the queue straight to the higher rank, but you're still new to the navy and you're not getting another promotion until you've proven yourself worthy of your current rank.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

There's a distinction here. Being promoted does not increase your nation points because it's the other way round - getting enough nation points leads to you being promoted. Starting off as a high rank is a sort of cheat and you need to catch up before you can earn a real promotion. In effect, you've used either money or political influence to jump the queue straight to the higher rank, but you're still new to the navy and you're not getting another promotion until you've proven yourself worthy of your current rank.

That was actually me who posted the issue, because I was playing with my brother.

Anyway, if you start the game as, for example, Michiel de Ruyter, you get 0 relation points.
It would take one helluva long time to get to the point where you get promoted, which probably isn't all that much fun to play through.
You can't get a new ship of your own, so you're stuck in the same situation for quite a long time.

I figure that if you start at a higher rank, you just skipped the early part but your character didn't.
So I would want the nation points to match to speed you on your way.

Indeed normally it is the other way around. But I'm thinking of editing the SetRank function so that if you are promoted and don't have enough points, your points are increased the match.
Likewise, if you're demoted, the points would be decreased again too. That would make sense, wouldn't it?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So does anyone have any thoughts on this one? Note that this shouldn't influence regular play, but does mean that:
- Being promoted through code does give you the points to match (also would work at the start of the game)
- Being demoted decreases your points accordingly

Is that what we would want?

 

[Levis]

I'd say being promoted should set your points to the right number indeed. Being demoted should take away points but I'd argue there should be even more removed because it should be harder to get back to your old rank.

When set at the start you should have the points indeed. When the character shouldn't have the points for whatever reason this could be changed manually after that.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

When using the SetRank function, your nation points are now being set to match on a promotion and demotion.
I also rewrote that function a bit further to ensure that you don't get a LoM as Hornblower because of it.
The Promote function now calls this SetRank function instead of bypassing it.

My initial tests indicate that this now does give you the points for your navy rank on a New Game.
Additionally, when calling SetRank with a lower rank than you had (demotion), this function indeed properly decreases your nation points again.

I'd like to know if regular navy Free Play or privateering still works like it always did.
This may also have some impact on the nation points during the Hornblower storyline as that one also regularly uses SetRank.

This change now included in here: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/build-14-beta-3-5-internal-wip-for-testing.24817

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'd say being promoted should set your points to the right number indeed. Being demoted should take away points but I'd argue there should be even more removed because it should be harder to get back to your old rank.

As the change is in SetRank, you can call it with a new rank TWO levels below your current rank.
That would have a similar effect to what you suggest.

Tricky parts for a navy demotion might be to call GivePromotionReward afterwards to ensure you get the lower rank's ship again.
That is easy with the player ship, but might get complicated with taking away promotion officers/ships.
At the moment it doesn't do any of that, which means that if you're demoted, you keep what you already had.
Which ALSO means that when you are promoted, you get the rewards a SECOND time.

Not a problem for now because you CAN'T be demoted and promoted again in the current version of the game.
But something to keep in mind for future development...