Feature Request Shared XP Discussion

[Pieter Boelen]

Of course there is the dialog option to "tell them to sit out the next boarding".
But then you'd end up with NO officers joining you in the boarding instead.

Random thought: What if any officer that is "Fighter" (maybe also "Boatswain") ALWAYS ends up in the boarding scene, regardless of being in the shore party or not?
Then you could tell your shore party officers to not join you and you'd automatically get your extra muscle instead.

Not sure if that's easy nor if it is a good idea.

 

[Tingyun]

I kind of like that risk though--the potential to be boarded before I am prepared, and calling my special boarding team to action.

Ultimately the line between fun management and unfun micromanagment is subtle and player dependent. MOO2 is widely regarded as the greatest 4x space game even though it had tons of management, MOO3 got rid of micromanagement and because of that was universally hated (the empire kind of ran itself).

I think, in this case a toggle is the right choice. I'd be happy with grey roger's formula as default, and a toggle thst allows other players (like me and Eskhol, who has expressed similar tastes) to opt into it only acting on the shored party (of course, contributing officers getting the same xp regardless, as usual).

edit: to pieter's idea, or a designated boarder dialogue option, that would work too. I just want to have to make tradeoffs and develop a specilized fighting team through effort, not have it automatically happen where everyone can fight. It is too fun training them up.

 

[Grey Roger]

You might not want officers joining you in boardings - maybe they don't have decent fighting skills yet, plus you've only found one suit of decent grade armour so far and you're keeping it for yourself. So you go across with no officers, some random crew act as expendable drones to keep the enemy crew from swarming you right away, then you finish the job yourself.

Random thought: What if any officer that is "Fighter" (maybe also "Boatswain") ALWAYS ends up in the boarding scene, regardless of being in the shore party or not?
Then you could tell your shore party officers to not join you and you'd automatically get your extra muscle instead.

It's probably not a good idea, the reason being you might have only just hired that fighter and he hasn't built up his "Fencing" skill yet. And auto-assigning officers like that could do nasty things to storylines such as "Hornblower" which have their own idea of which officers should be with you.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You might not want officers joining you in boardings - maybe they don't have decent fighting skills yet, plus you've only found one suit of decent grade armour so far and you're keeping it for yourself. So you go across with no officers, some random crew act as expendable drones to keep the enemy crew from swarming you right away, then you finish the job yourself.

In other words, the "sit out boardings" dialog option would suffice for you?

It's probably not a good idea, the reason being you might have only just hired that fighter and he hasn't built up his "Fencing" skill yet. And auto-assigning officers like that could do nasty things to storylines such as "Hornblower" which have their own idea of which officers should be with you.

Does it matter for Hornblower what officers you have active in boarding?

How about my idea, but with the "sit out boardings" dialog also affecting such Fighters?

 

[Levis]

@Grey Roger what if we make a check for atSea and if that is the case passengers do get XP (if they contribute it, or if shared XP is enabled) and if you are on land only your shore party gets it. That does seems kind of logical right?
I mean if you are in a fight every man on the ship will probably need to help and will get XP.
During the boarding only the characters doing the boarding would get XP ofcourse. But this way you can train passengers to become a captain.

 

[Grey Roger]

In other words, the "sit out boardings" dialog option would suffice for you?

Yes. Tell them to sit out boardings until they're skilled enough, equipped enough, or preferably both. Then tell them to join you.

Does it matter for Hornblower what officers you have active in boarding?

Depends on how the auto-assignment and de-assignment works - Hornblower can still be a bit fragile if you do things with the quest officers that it wasn't expecting. Especially if you assign quest officers when they're not supposed to be assigned, as someone found out when he got to the bit about capturing the Spanish fort. He'd assigned Sharpe already. The story tried to assign Sharpe, the function to assign him quit because he was already assigned, then the story assigned another officer into the slot currently occupied by Sharpe, displacing Sharpe, which meant Sharpe wasn't there for the fort attack. I fixed that one but wouldn't be surprised if auto-assigning a fighter at the wrong type causes similar problems, bearing in mind Sharpe and all his men are fighter type...

How about my idea, but with the "sit out boardings" dialog also affecting such Fighters?

So you have to assign him, tell him to sit out boardings, then de-assign him. And that's assuming the "sit out boardings" dialog is available. For quest officers who happen to be fighters, it won't be.

And then there's Virginie d'Espivant. She's supposed to be unassignable. But she's a passenger, so you can assign her a post. You assign her as boatswain. She jumps into the next boarding action. If you manage to keep her alive, you've now got her as an officer.

 

[Grey Roger]

@Grey Roger what if we make a check for atSea and if that is the case passengers do get XP (if they contribute it, or if shared XP is enabled) and if you are on land only your shore party gets it. That does seems kind of logical right?

Not really. Officers who aren't in your shore party can still contribute skills, which is why you don't need your quartermaster to be present to get his skill and perk bonuses when you're in the store. If skills and perks can go one way, why can't XP go the other way? Also, some activities are going on in the background on your ship, e.g. you spend a day or two getting weapons polished, meanwhile your carpenter is using your stock of planks and sailcloth to repair your ship.

Besides, once again this is slowing down the progress of officers, so once again you're into the trap by which the player goes up faster than the officers, making the officers redundant.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So you have to assign him, tell him to sit out boardings, then de-assign him. And that's assuming the "sit out boardings" dialog is available. For quest officers who happen to be fighters, it won't be.

And then there's Virginie d'Espivant. She's supposed to be unassignable. But she's a passenger, so you can assign her a post. You assign her as boatswain. She jumps into the next boarding action. If you manage to keep her alive, you've now got her as an officer.

I think there is some miscommunication going on there, because I'm confused now.
I was not suggesting the officers in your "four slots" being automatically overridden.
Just that instead of them showing up in boardings, you'd get your fighters instead.

But if that isn't an awesome idea, then by all means, let's skip it!

And that's assuming the "sit out boardings" dialog is available. For quest officers who happen to be fighters, it won't be.

True.

 

[Tingyun]

Levis, If all officers gained noncontributing xp at sea, I definiatelly would not use shared XP. That is exactly what I (and Eskhol, see his comments in other thread) hate about shared xp--everyone becomes good at everything. I don't want my surgeon knowing how to navigate so well, it breaks roleplaying for me.

Here's what I would prefer (again, as a nondefault toggle I am happy too):

1) no matter what, fencing xp is 50% shared in shore party.

2) no matter what, whether in shore party or not, contributing skills means share the xp. Half contributing skills gain half the rate.

3) all shared xp does is let shore party gain xp in all skills.

Basically, I want it to work like without shared xp now, except shared xp grants 3. I think I can mod that in myself if you guys decide to go another direction, but a toggle would be nice for people like Eskhol and others who share a love for specilist officers.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

To me, specialized officers make sense as well. Just sayin'....

 

[Levis]

To me it does too. I still hope to find a way where we can please everyone without having a toggle.
Having the toggle would be a solution if we can't find a better way.
So @Grey Roger would you be willing to try it with Shared XP just giving XP in all skills to your shore party?
If it really screws up things we can add a toggle for it, but I think we do need some more feedback on it to see how the progression goes.
I would be very interested in screenshot troughout a piece of the game to see how the progression is going for the different officers and passengers so we can tweak the values where needed.

 

[Tingyun]

Levis, if you do post that version, aside from myself I know @Eskhol would likely be interested in trying it out and providing feedback. Tagging him here since he has expressed similar preferences regarding shared xp.

 

[Grey Roger]

To me it does too. I still hope to find a way where we can please everyone without having a toggle.
Having the toggle would be a solution if we can't find a better way.
So @Grey Roger would you be willing to try it with Shared XP just giving XP in all skills to your shore party?

Not really, no. To me, that goes against the whole point of "Shared XP" and makes the perk all but useless. Perhaps give a 50% share to those not in the shore party, but don't leave them out entirely. Otherwise the only way to have all your officers gain levels, and therefore perks, at an even rate is to keep swapping them in and out of your shore party.

I still say that if you don't want to share XP with the officers not in your shore party, don't take the perk. It's the simplest solution that doesn't involve a toggle.

 

[Levis]

Not really, no. To me, that goes against the whole point of "Shared XP" and makes the perk all but useless. Perhaps give a 50% share to those not in the shore party, but don't leave them out entirely. Otherwise the only way to have all your officers gain levels, and therefore perks, at an even rate is to keep swapping them in and out of your shore party.

I still say that if you don't want to share XP with the officers not in your shore party, don't take the perk. It's the simplest solution that doesn't involve a toggle.

Passengers will still get XP, but only in the skills they contribute. What we want to prevent is passengers gaining xp in skills they don't contribute.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I still say that if you don't want to share XP with the officers not in your shore party, don't take the perk. It's the simplest solution that doesn't involve a toggle.

The main problem with that one is that officers you hire may have that perk already.
And then you're stuck with it, whether you like it or not.

Not really, no. To me, that goes against the whole point of "Shared XP" and makes the perk all but useless. Perhaps give a 50% share to those not in the shore party, but don't leave them out entirely. Otherwise the only way to have all your officers gain levels, and therefore perks, at an even rate is to keep swapping them in and out of your shore party.

@Levis: I'm afraid we won't be able to get away with not having a toggle, as much as I wished we could.
Fact is that "wanting all your officers to become good at everything" and "wanting the exact opposite" are rather mutually exclusive.

We can either have a toggle on the existence of the perk OR on the behaviour of the perk. Neither should be particularly difficult to set up.
If the behaviour is changed, the main difference would be that it would affect ALL officers vs. only those officers in the shore party.
The second option would enforce a bit more micro-management on the part of the player and would reduce the total amount of sharing that occurs.
Whether that adds or detracts from the fun, appears to be strongly player-dependent.

 

[Levis]

well let's take the discussion in another way for a moment.
What about this:
If you have shared XP enabled the interface will show a button where you can set if this character should only receive XP for the skills it contributes or for all skills.
If you pick to contribute to all skills they will get 100% if they are in the shore party and 50% if they are on the ship (we could talk a bit about the percentages).
If you pick to only the skills they contribute they will get a bonus for these skills and for example get 150% percent and if they are on the ship they will receive the full 100%

If shared XP isn't enabled people on your ship will only get 50% XP for skills they contribute and shore party members will get 100% of the skills they contribute (again we can tweak the percentages when needed).

This would be doable and actually not that much work. It does introduce a little bit of micromanagement, but normally you only have to set it for a certain officer once. If people think it breaks immersion we could also include it in the dialog files (too).
This would please everyone I think and would prevent a toggle.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It seems I was just beginning to think along the same lines. My idea was:
- With Shared XP enabled, there would be a new dialog option where you can tell an officer to train in a certain skill
- Whenever XP is gained, this officer will share in that skill, even (especially!) if it is NOT one that he contributes

That would mean XP is shared with officers that don't already contribute it, but only for ONE skill and it has to be enabled on purpose.
This prevents "Shared XP" leading directly to "across the board Supermen" while still allowing you to train up officers so they'll be able to fill a different role later.
It also brings in @Levis' idea of training officers in certain skills, but without adding extra bonus per day, but simply by sharing the XP already being gained in that skill.

@Grey Roger: What would you think about that?

 

[Levis]

also would like to hear what @Eskhol , @ANSEL , @Tingyun and @Jack Rackham think about these latest ideas (the two posts above this one mostly)

 

[Grey Roger]

One snag with reducing the amount of XP officers receive is that they then gain levels, and thus ability points, more slowly. This is particularly significant for officers who don't gain XP as fast due to their role (e.g. gunners) and who have a long list of perks, possibly cascading (e.g. gunners). So, if you want your officers to level up and get the perks associated with their posts, the reduced version of "Shared XP" will mean that you'll need to rotate them in and out of shore party, and between posts, in order to get them to level up and get their perks.

Also:

If shared XP isn't enabled people on your ship will only get 50% XP for skills they contribute and shore party members will get 100% of the skills they contribute (again we can tweak the percentages when needed).

Does this not go right against the idea of having officers get more than you for the skills they contribute, so that they will go up more quickly than you? It also means if you want your quartermaster to gain full benefit from your trading in town, you'll have to include him in your shore party. Likewise, when you're at sea in a naval battle, your "shore" party will need to include the gunner, surgeon and probably boatswain, which means they'll all need to be combat trained for when you board.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Grey Roger: Would you be able to provide some feedback on @Levis' suggestion of an "interface toggle per officer" and my idea above of specifying a non-contributing skill for that officer to gain as well?
I think either or both of those suggestions could point towards a way forward, but we'll still need to do a bit more brainstorming to establish how exactly we would want something like that to work.

One snag with reducing the amount of XP officers receive is that they then gain levels, and thus ability points, more slowly. This is particularly significant for officers who don't gain XP as fast due to their role (e.g. gunners) and who have a long list of perks, possibly cascading (e.g. gunners). So, if you want your officers to level up and get the perks associated with their posts, the reduced version of "Shared XP" will mean that you'll need to rotate them in and out of shore party, and between posts, in order to get them to level up and get their perks.

I also don't think the amount of XP officers get should be reduced.
They should get the same in their contributing skills that the player does in Leadership and Sailing.
If they get less in non-contributing skills, that may be OK. But their contributing ones must get the full amount for sure.

Does this not go right against the idea of having officers get more than you for the skills they contribute, so that they will go up more quickly than you? It also means if you want your quartermaster to gain full benefit from your trading in town, you'll have to include him in your shore party. Likewise, when you're at sea in a naval battle, your "shore" party will need to include the gunner, surgeon and probably boatswain, which means they'll all need to be combat trained for when you board.

Agreed.
@Levis: I do think we should aim to have as little difference as possible between shore party officers and those ones left on the ship.
This to avoid micro-managing them.