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Solved Rebalancing the Fighting System

Well, now with this game ended, some observations.

Started as Adenturer level and stick to it. I used the dungeon of Santiago (Jamaica) to bring up melee to 8 or so. Also bought a battle cuirass early (with the apprpropriate merchant realism setting).
Melee was better than in earlier games, but still too hard for my taste.

I think the problem is like this:
The system is good at letting you face opponents of roughly your skill. But, with evenly matched opponents in a four on four combat, some will die on both sides. And while NPC won't care about, players do. Loosing expensive officers is not an option, so at any loss (me or officers) I'll have to reload, regardless if I won or lost the combat. And frequently reloading saved games results in less fun - at leastf or me.
 
Understandable. Technically the system isn't broken anymore now, but I'll believe it could still use further fine-tuning.
So then the main question would be how to tweak it so that it becomes better?
 
Loosing expensive officers sucks. I just made melee level 5 and have 2 officers at 10 and one at 7. We all have battle cuirass and excellent Solingen rapiers. I throw grenades and run around because I am constantly being shot. That means I can not fight because I am mostly dead. I lose that melee level 7 officer a lot. He is good for a lot of other things and I want to level him up, so restart often too.
 
As I see it, at fencing skill of 10 with good weapons, you SHOULD be able to survive.
On the other hand, if the game world IS evenly matched, then if you are at the top of your game, you'd still have only a 50/50 chance against your enemies. :facepalm
 
Well it is not exactly evenly matched. I think the enemies don't wear any armor.

But despite that, any single one of them is a challenge. In the last game where I trained melee to 10 very early, it was much better than before though.

Usually, fights are too easy in computer games. But usually, you can do a lot of things actively as a player to influence the outcome of a fight. In any combat system where you are acting round based or at least real time + pause key, you can give orders to any specific officer/unit/whatever. And usually the result of this is A LOT better than leaving them on their own.

Here on the other side, we have not such options. Any officer will decide on his own who he attacks, how he attacks, if he uses a potion or such. And this makes them die often.
By the way, I found the pistol shots don't kill me regardless how few HP I have left. But some enemies gunning at me keep me constantly low so that the next sword strike WILL kill me.
 
I am at level 8, melee 3 and with the Sharpe sabre I am a 1-3 stroke kill. Block or no block. About all I am good for is slaughtering town guards and even they managed to kill me twice.
Just got battle armor and got into a fight and lost an officer. A gunner! :rumgone Is it this bad for others?
 
Which difficulty level are you on? Now that we can change it in mid-game, try setting it to the lowest difficulty and see if that makes any difference.
If so, perhaps the effect of the difficulty level is just too pronounced. Or maybe we should just remove fencing difficulty altogether.
 
playing on easiest level, its no problem to cut through the enemies. Also, my blocking is very effective. Maybe, if higher difficulty-levels are too hard, you should add a few starting HP's to the character?
 
What character level are you on at the moment?

If the lowest difficulty works fine, but higher difficulties are too much, I don't quite see the point in giving higher difficulty characters a bigger bonus.
Might as well just turn the effect of the difficulty level down a notch. :shrug
 
I am playing on swashbuckler. The last game was not this hard and I actually liked it.
POTC has essentially become a race to see how fast one can level up melee skills. I fell behind by hitting a lot of ports with few opportunities for land fighting and now lose most fights. Armor helps but town guards are all I can beat.
 
Try changing difficulty to Apprentice just to see if the fencing becomes manageable then.
 
Just posting this here as well, so we can continue the discussion:
Hylie Pistof said:
So I switched to apprentice level and as expected it was like a hot knife through butter. They fell easily.
Pistols still do serious damage, even the smallest ones and the grapeshot pistol is by far the hardest hitting one of all. The blundebuss, musket, and musketoon are a waste of time in comparison.
All of my officers all got much higher HP too.
This is why i play on swashbuckler. One needs to find out if it is possible or not.
Click to expand...
So then the problem DOES come from the increase in difficulty. Therefore we have to tone down the effect. But not too much.

And you're saying that the blunderbuss, musket and musketoon are generally useless? That's not good; those weapon stats will need to be changed then.
Any suggestions?
 
I just tried adventurer level and still felt overpowered. The opponents did not do too much damage and fell much quicker. I also seemed to beat them to the stroke easier. Adventurer could be made tougher, and swashbuckler could be left alone so that those who need more challenges will have it. There is a big gap between Adventurer and Swashbuckler.

The blunderbuss does not do enough damage, the grape shot pistol does more damage than the musketoon, and the musket almost always misfires and is therefore completely useless. It sounds awesome when it does fire tho.
The grapeshot pistol can take half of the HP of not only myself but all of my officers with one shot at a goodly distance.
 
I thought the formulas for the difficulty levels were generally linear. Strange that there would be such a gap.

With the musket misfiring, you mean "not hitting the target" or "actually blowing up in your face"? According to the code, only the grenade does the latter.
But I seem to remember the blunderbuss was supposed to do that at times too.

On the grapeshot pistol, we added the "multidmg" effect. Perhaps, with that gun already being quite strong before, that made it a bit overpowered.
What is now supposed to be the difference between a grapeshot pistol and the blunderbuss? Which should be the better weapon?
Originally, of course, the blunderbuss was one of the Special Weapon Assembly Kit and therefore is one of the "sneaky weapons". Should it be?

As for the guns, these are their values:
Code: 
  //---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  // GUNS: ItemIndex                               picIndex         Price                 Charges
  //         | gunID        modelID                   |  rare          | minDamage   Accuracy|Reload time                                     DisableWeaponsMod
  //         |   |             |            picTexture|   |  MinLevel  |     | maxDamage  |  |   | Nation           Sound              Ammo type    |       Available in period         Last period of availability
  //-------------|-------------|------------------|---|---|------|-----|-----|-----|------|--|---|--|------------------|-------------------|--------|---------------|----------------------------|-----------------
  n = InitGun(n,"pistol1", "pistol1",             6,  1, 0.50,   1,   150, 35.0, 45.0,   40, 1,  8, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_small.wav",  "pb",     0,    PERIOD_EARLY_EXPLORERS,      PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // Short Pistol//BB BASE FOR PISTOLS
  n = InitGun(n,"PiratesPistol","PiratesPistol", 22, 10, 0.20,   4,   254, 40.0, 55.0,   50, 1, 10, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_medium.wav", "pb",     0,    PERIOD_THE_SPANISH_MAIN,     PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // Pirates Pistol (SuperDurnius)
  n = InitGun(n,"pistol2", "pistol2",             6,  2, 0.50,   2,   208, 30.0, 40.0,   60, 1, 12, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_medium.wav", "pb",     0,    PERIOD_EARLY_EXPLORERS,      PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // Long Pistol//BB small calibre(less dmg)+good accuracy
  n = InitGun(n,"pistol7", "pistol7",             9,  1, 0.20,   6,   357, 35.0, 45.0,   40, 3, 25, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_small.wav",  "pb",     0,    PERIOD_EARLY_EXPLORERS,      PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // Brace of Small Pistols (Alan Smithee)
  n = InitGun(n,"pistol3", "pistol3",             6,  3, 0.37,   7,   402, 50.0, 70.0,   30, 1, 20, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_grape.wav",  "pg",     0,    PERIOD_GOLDEN_AGE_OF_PIRACY, PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // Grapeshot Pistol
  n = InitGun(n,"pistol5", "pistol5",             6,  5, 0.10,   8,   653, 40.0, 60.0,   55, 1, 14, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_big.wav",    "pb",     0,    PERIOD_GOLDEN_AGE_OF_PIRACY, PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // Scrapper Pistol
  n = InitGun(n,"pistol6", "pistol6",             6,  6, 0.05,  12,  1260, 40.0, 60.0,   55, 2, 20, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_medium.wav", "pb",     0,    PERIOD_GOLDEN_AGE_OF_PIRACY, PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // Double-Shot Pistol
  n = InitGun(n,"pistol8", "pistol8",             9,  3, 0.15,  14,  1026, 40.0, 55.0,   50, 3, 30, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_medium.wav", "pb",     0,    PERIOD_EARLY_EXPLORERS,      PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // Brace of Mid-size Pistols (Alan Smithee)
  n = InitGun(n,"pistol4", "pistol4",             6,  4, 0.05,  20,  3620, 45.0, 60.0,   45, 4, 35, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_small.wav",  "pb",     0,    PERIOD_REVOLUTIONS,          PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // Quad-Shot Pistol
  n = InitGun(n,"pistol9", "pistol9",             9,  2, 0.10,  17,  2286, 50.0, 65.0,   50, 2, 25, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_big.wav",    "pb",     0,    PERIOD_GOLDEN_AGE_OF_PIRACY, PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // Brace of Large Pistols (Alan Smithee)
  n = InitGun(n,"pistolmtoon", "musketoon_back",  8,  9, 0.08,   6,   968, 50.0, 80.0,   60, 1, 24, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_mtoon.wav",  "pg2",    1,    PERIOD_GOLDEN_AGE_OF_PIRACY, PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // JRH: model was Musketoon
  n = InitGun(n,"pistolmket",  "musket_back",     8, 10, 0.05,  10,  3245, 70.0,100.0,   80, 1, 30, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_musket.wav", "mb",     1,    PERIOD_GOLDEN_AGE_OF_PIRACY, PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // JRH: model was Musket
  n = InitGun(n,"pistol10", "pistol10",        "JD",  5, 0.02,  20,  6572, 60.0, 90.0,   60, 3, 15, "", "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_big.wav",    "pg",     1,    PERIOD_EARLY_EXPLORERS,      PERIOD_NAPOLEONIC);  // Pump Shotgun SLiB  LDH fix sound error
  //---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And:
Code: 
  // Blunderbuss
  makeref(itm,Items[n]);
  itm.id                      = "pistolbbuss";
  itm.multidmg                = 1;      // new attribute, does multiple damage
  itm.sound                   = "OBJECTS\DUEL\pistol_bbus.wav";//JRH
  itm.shottype                = "pg2";    //JRH
  itm.skiptrade               = false;    // you can sell the item
  itm.skipsell                = false;    // PB: make them buyable
  itm.skiprand                = false;
  itm.skipequip               = false;    // LDH
  itm.groupID                 = GUN_ITEM_TYPE;
  itm.name                    = "itmname_pistolbbuss";
  itm.describe                = "itmdescr_pistolbbuss";
  itm.folder                  = "ammo";
  itm.model                   = "blunder1_10";
  itm.picIndex                = 7;
  itm.picTexture              = "ITEMS_ccc";
  itm.price                   = 460;  // BB (1600)
  itm.chargeQ                 = 1;
  itm.chargespeed             = 30;   // BB (40)
  itm.dmg_min                 = 40.0; // BB (50)
  itm.dmg_max                 = 70.0; // BB (80)
  itm.accuracy                = 40;   // BB (60)
  itm.rare                    = 0.15; // BB (0.08)
  itm.minlevel                = 8;      //Sulan: added minlevel to improve rarity.
  itm.nation                  = "";
  itm.period                  = PERIOD_GOLDEN_AGE_OF_PIRACY;
  itm.sneaky                  = true; // PB: Sneaky Trader
  n++;
Anyone got any ideas on how to balance them a bit further?
 
okay my report was crap, I boarded a ship with way less crew than mine.
So I still have lowest difficulty - and encountered 4 jungle-raiders.I am Level 3, but changed the starting HP to 60. It was unmakeable, I had to increase all the blocking-stats (increased them by adding +3 to the tens, so e.g. 14 -> 44). After that it was still hard but I could do it. The Thing is that they all had guns and shot my hp so low, that I only needed one strike. I had the idea to increase the HP-regeneration speed, especially with the perk "Thoughness". I can test it, but I dont know anymore how to find the perk.

And a little beauty flaw: The moon is very close to the horizon edge. It should be more up in the sky. Noticed this at Curacao, doesnt know if its a general flaw or just there
 
One thing that I noticed when playing myself is that in Arcade Game Mode, your gun now DOES reload while fighting.
This allows you to fire more shots, but the enemies as well. And for simplicity's sake, THEY don't require bullets and powder. :wp
 
I have always felt that there was very little difference between Journeyman and Adventurer and a big jump to Swashbuckler.

When the long guns misfire you hear a "click" and no ammunition is used. It does not fire.

The grape pistol does over 100 damage to everyone in front of it. It is by far the most powerful firearm in the game. I don't know where you got those charts, but they are not even close to being accurate.

Pillat: At level 3 you are far below average in your skills and should be easily killed. You are trying to do too much too soon.
 
Hylie Pistof said:
When the long guns misfire you hear a "click" and no ammunition is used. It does not fire.
Click to expand...
If I understand correctly, the musketoon requires TWO grapeshot bullets instead of ONE. If you only have one in your inventory, you would get the click effect.

Hylie Pistof said:
I don't know where you got those charts, but they are not even close to being accurate.
Click to expand...
That comes straight from the game code. It cannot be incorrect, because that is all the game has to calculate with.
Possible difficulty modifiers are applied later during the damage calculations though.
 
Try it yourself, but go up a few levels. The long guns work at first but stop working after a while. Period.

According to that chart the grapeshot pistol does 50/70 min/max damage. In game it is 57/120. That makes it the most potent fire arm in POTC.
grapeshot pistol.jpg
 
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