Fixed 230% Skill-Experience

[KillPhil]

So, I let 2 of my crewmen accompany me on shore, and I asked them about their abilities.. and one of those 2 had a 10 in melee and I was going 'oh nice, a good master at arms' .. so I promoted him to an officer.. and then, the next time I check his abilities I see this:

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I have seen in the past where a character had FAR too much XP, but this resulted in only one skill increase per level.
So they'd stay at seemingly nuts values for some time.

 

[Levis]

Savegame please

 

[KillPhil]

Well the strange thing here is, that he actually HAD a solid 10 in melee, but after changing his model, he only had a 5 left, as you can see^^

 

[KillPhil]

Here you go Levis

 

[Pieter Boelen]

After changing his model? So NOT after hiring him? Uh, wha?

 

[Levis]

Well the strange thing here is, that he actually HAD a solid 10 in melee, but after changing his model, he only had a 5 left, as you can see^^

You Mean changing his role?

 

[KillPhil]

Well.. it was like this: Asked him - saw his golden 10 - promoted him to officer - changed maybe his role to master at arms (I dont know what he was in the first) - bought a new uniform for him - went back to the ship - looked at the interface .. melee 5.. with 233% exp

But after his first boarding, the melee went up to 8 within 1 hit and 37% exp.. but still not the 10 the game told me before

 

[pedrwyth]

Here's another example from build 14 3.4 standard storyline. Gaillande Mitterand (passenger) has 10 for everything except melee where she is 5 + 1076%

 

[Hylie Pistof]

That happens to passengers. They become 10s and are quite helpful like that. It also happens to officers at a certain point or under certain circumstances. Suddenly your regular officers become super officers. I actually do not like this as when that happens their level becomes so high that they no longer earn any perks.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Marked as "Confirmed" then.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

What I described was intentional methinks, so it is not a bug but possibly something that is no longer wanted. Or maybe it is still wanted.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Random 100+% skill increases aren't intentional, I don't think.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

It is not random. Edgar Attwood always gets this boost when he finishes being a drunkard, and it seems to happen to regular officers in a fight at a certain point. I have seen that often where we are in a fight and suddenly with every one of my strokes they all get huge boosts. It is rare but it happens. In my 3.5 game regular 2 officers got that boost.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Must indeed be a specific reason then.
The random officers and Edgar Attwood might be experiencing different issues too that lead to similar results.
So this sounds hard to track down.

What we would probably need is a save just prior to a point where this consistently happens.
That would give us a test case.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Attwood is the only one where I know it happens at a certain time. The others always catch me by surprise. I have no saves where that happens, but will in the future sometime.

 

[pedrwyth]

Actually Silehard in that same saved game above has all skills as something plus greater than 100%. Since I know when he came on board I can step through my saved games until I find one just before the change (if he wasn't like that from the start). I don't know if it will then be a consistent occurrence until I have found where it takes place. More anon

 

[pedrwyth]

Well Silehard was a bust, the first save I had was after Cozumel when he already had the 100+ percentages.

Not a total bust because I noticed that Cozumel shore is tagged as $island_name shore - so that needs picking up. Also Silehard being a prisoner is not beneficiary of skills increases so stayed the same throughout.

Gaillande on the other hand gets updated by the skills routine which dutifully knocks off 100 (rounded) from the % and upgrades the skill by 1, getting rid of any excess when 10 is reached. Tracking back it looks like she was created that way, Here is her first occurrence with multiple +100% readings which gradually correct to 10 over time - not sure what the trigger is. So I guess we are looking for some blip in officer skill creation routines rather than some random in-game event for my example anyway. Hope that helps. It may be simpler to just put in a loop in the creation to reduce any value greater than 100 by 100 and add one to the skill until the value is less than 100 (if there isn't such code already not being used) than searching out the (apparently) infrequent cause.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Indeed such a loop is a good idea, I reckon.
Definitely not yet in place.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I think the relevant function would be int AddCharacterExpNSChar(ref _refCharacter, string expName, int _exp) in PROGRAM\MAXIMUS_functions.c .

Would replacing this:

if (curExp >= nextExp)

With this:

while (curExp >= nextExp) // PB: Keep doing this while necessary

Be enough?

Probably also replace this:

   int nextSkill = 50000;
   if (curSkill >= nextSkill)
   {

With this:

   int nextSkill;
   while (curSkill >= nextSkill) // PB: Keep doing this while necessary
   {
     nextSkill = 50000; // PB: Move down to reset

Hopefully that will at least introduce the desired loop so that too high values result in actual skill and level increases instead of the numbers "sticking around".
This won't fix the reason why these sudden huge XP gains occur but at least should make them behave a bit more sensibly.