WIP Making total skill bonuses from realistic items consistently +4

[Tingyun]

Hopefully noone will shoot me if I suggest another round of minor item changes.

With Levis's reworked item bonuses, skill bonuses are now x/difficultylevel, meaning at swashbuckler, you need +4 in base bonuses in order to get a +1 in the skill, at mariner, you need +4 to get to +2

Some skills have an abundance of bonuses from realistic items (sailing), other items currently only have +3 total. Meaning, if playing with the "realistic item bonuses" option, some skills can never get a bonus at swashbuckler, and skills differ in reaching +1 or +2 on mariner.

I propose we make the total skill bonuses available from realistic items consistently equal to 4, allowing everything to get to +1 on swashbuckler, +2 on mariner.

I have attached a file that does this, reworking some bonuses and some item prices to arrange things in what seems a sensible manner. Note sailing looks like it reaches +5, but that is because of two compass types.

I think adding consistency to this would help balance the recent skill boost rebalance, and suggest we include it.

EDIT removed file since changing yet again, new one below

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Sounds like it makes sense.

 

[Tingyun]

@Pieter Boelen

And realized something else we forgot.

if ( id == "cheaparmor" ) armor.skill.fencing = (-1*GetDifficulty()); // GreatZen TY fixed to new skill effect

We need the cheap armor to give a negative equal to the difficulty level, otherwise with the skill bonus effect it won't be a substantial enough detriment.

Does that line look right?

Repuploading.

EDIT I don't think there is good reason to increase the effect of other negative items (cursed coins, etc) or the positive bonuses of magic swords, as those aren't tied into balance in the same way armor negative effects are).

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Good point.
You can test in the game if that works correctly.

All of this means that when the difficulty changes, the item Reinit must be redone and all skills for all characters in the game should be reset.
Otherwise it won't update properly when things change.

 

[Levis]

If you have dynamic stuff in the init file it might cause problems. If you change the difficulty in-game it won't change this stuff unless you reinit.

 

[Tingyun]

It does require reinitilization after changing difficulty level, but testing in game otherwise confirms it works fine.

I'd say worth it even if it requires reinitilization, otherwise the armor penalty becomes meaningless.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

As I said, a full character reset needs to be triggered now anyway.
Might as well include an "items only" Reinit.

 

[Tingyun]

Tests confirm it works fine, so posting the item file to new content for now pending later reinit changes, just in case someone else needs to do more item work in the meantime.

 

[Levis]

Doing a reinit everytime the difficulty is changed sounds strange to me. I think if possible we need to prevent this.
I also think armor should maybe raise to +2 fencing now but it should still be difficulty depend.

 

[Tingyun]

Levis,

I would agree with you if we were talking about a positive. But cheap metal armor is a negative, not a positive, so increasing the base penalty won't work. If you move to up to a -2, then on seadog and swashbuckler the armor could be worn with 0 penalty. Meanwhile, on landlubber it would hit with a -2 penalty!

Honestly, even having it set to the initial difficulty level and never reinitialized would get the result right more often than any fixed value. How often do people change difficulties in game anyway? It shouldn't be so very frequent.

Also, I think Pieter's point is we need to reinitilize on difficulty change and have that reinitilization include a reinit of the skill bonuses of the player anyway? If someone switches difficulty, all their skill bonuses will be messed up right now anyway, because the skill modifier amount will have changed. It isn't really a problem of the armor.

 

[Levis]

Hmm....we will have this problem with all items having a - bonus right? What about inversing the divider for those?
So
Mod = mod/(6-difficulty)

 

[Tingyun]

Interesting idea! But I'm not sure we want other negatives to be magnified?

For example, there is an indian statue of a war god that gives +1 melee and -1 luck. That is nicely balanced right now, but if we magnified only the negative effect, then it would not be worth it. Also, it currently takes one other skill item to cancel out a cursed coin, I'm not sure if we want to make it require more given the limited number.

I personally think the common armor is the only place where we actually want to magnify a skill negative, because there it is about balancing the protection of armor vs a definite detriment to fencing, instead of items like the indian war god statue, where the important balancing is the tradeoffs with other items.

Eh, that sounds convoluted when I read it back, but I think it makes sense?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Doing a reinit everytime the difficulty is changed sounds strange to me. I think if possible we need to prevent this.

I was not suggesting a full reinit; only for the items:

    if(LoadSegment("items\initItems.c"))
     {
       InitItems();
       //trace("after init items in if");
       UnloadSegment("items\initItems.c");
     }

reinit of the skill bonuses of the player anyway

Of ALL characters, actually!

Honestly, even having it set to the initial difficulty level and never reinitialized would get the result right more often than any fixed value. How often do people change difficulties in game anyway? It shouldn't be so very frequent.

True.

Hmm....we will have this problem with all items having a - bonus right? What about inversing the divider for those?

It would indeed be nice if the Albatross, Cursed Coins and Cooking With Albatross would remain their actual -1 Luck modifier, regardless of difficulty.
Otherwise you don't/barely notice those items doing anything at all to your skills.

BONUS THOUGHT: @Levis' recent change shows per skill what items affect it.
However, for some items, such as the Albatross and Cursed Coins, their skill contributions are deliberately hidden.
How about that then....?

 

[Levis]

I believe they still aren't show in the interface then.
But I don't remember now If I checked for the hidden attribute or not.
Will take a look at that if I'm going to look into the negative ones.

 

[Grey Roger]

It occurs to me that if skill items now only contribute 1/4 point, meaning you need to collect four separate items just to get +1, then they're pretty much worthless. There's little point in trying to find and buy all four just so you can get a mere +1.

Perhaps make it so that you need two items to get +1 on Seadog and Swashbuckler, and put them back to full value on Mariner and Landlubber?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

There's little point in trying to find and buy all four just so you can get a mere +1.

Why is that pointless? +1 is more than +0. Especially a difference between 9 and 10 can be quite substantial, no?

Perhaps make it so that you need two items to get +1 on Seadog and Swashbuckler, and put them back to full value on Mariner and Landlubber?

That sounds like it is easily done. All that does is to reduce the effect of difficulty.

 

[Tingyun]

I think Levis's bonus divided by difficulty formula currently achieves great balance.

At the extreme end, as a swashbuckler player with realistic item bonuses on, I can say that I do go after the +1 from all four items. Sure, it isn't as quick or dramatic an effect, but gold isn't so scarce in this game that you won't be buying the items. Board a couple of ships or make several trade runs and you have enough money to buy up all the skill items. And as Pieter said,it is very hard to go from 9 to 10 otherwise.

As for casual players on mariner, they still get +2 from collecting the realistic items, and then up to +3 for collecting the unrealistic ones.

A seadog player should generaly get to +2 from combining realistic and unrealistic bonuses.

Basically only swashbuckler plus the ironman setting for realistic bonuses only is going to face a +1 cap, and that player is asking for it.

And it should be remembered what the skill boosts are: when we cannot go above 10, they cut off player advancement. It isn't hard to reach rank 7 or 8 in a skill, and with easy skill boosts, the player experiences no further rpg growth.

Currently we bassically end up with a
Landlubber/mariner/seadog/swashbuckler
+4/+3/+2/+1
Max skillboost possiiblity as we go from landlubber to swashbuckler, which seems calibrated right.

 

[Levis]

I'd say for now we first test a while with this. then we can see again if it needs to be rebalanced .

about negative skill multipliers. At the moment they become easier if you raise the difficulty. This is weird so I sugest we either don't modify them at all so they are always -1 etc. Or we inverse the multiplier so if becomes more depending on the difficulty.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'd say for now we first test a while with this. then we can see again if it needs to be rebalanced .

I agree.

about negative skill multipliers. At the moment they become easier if you raise the difficulty. This is weird so I sugest we either don't modify them at all so they are always -1 etc. Or we inverse the multiplier so if becomes more depending on the difficulty.

My vote would be for negative skill modifiers to be independent from difficulty, so only positive ones are affected.

 

[Tingyun]

I would vote not modifying negative penalties at all so they always give a full -1.0 skill level independent of difficulty, that sounds right.

(The one exception being that inca wargod statue that gives +1 melee -1 luck. Maybe we should just remove the luck penalty then, and make it a straight bonus like the other statues)