Thanks for the info.
Defense builds at the same time melee does. If you did a lot of melee, you should have gotten some good defense in there as well. Getting hit by cannons and repairing your ship both build defense as well.
Cannons and accuracy build quickly when you have a ship with lots of guns.
Storms! I haven't spent much time in them, but it would certainly build your sailing skill quicker than normal means.
Quests should give both leadership and a bit of luck. Talking to people should give both as well. Trying and failing to open chests will give defense and luck.
I have to agree on both leadership and grappling. Leadership can probably be fixed by using the same mutiplier for low skill experience as high skill experience when you get experience that should give leadership, without affecting the balance of points. Grappling just needs a higher multiplier to the skill level for the same amount of experience.
A problem I had when trying to balance the skills was that at some point you'd get a big jump in the number of skill points you had. Before and after this jump the number of points versus the expected number of points was fairly level. At higher ranks, somewhere above 20 I think, the number of skill points you get starts to taper off.
The system is better than the original, where I was level 9 before I had 18 extra skill points, and the number kept going up in a straight line. But it's not perfect, and I suspect it can't be made perfect. I think we're better off having too many skills for the character level than having one or more skills at a very low level forever.
Once I get the next patch installed I'll make the changes and playtest them with new characters. This won't be a quick process. When I have numbers I'm happy with, I'll let people know what changes to make to the code. In the mean time, try the following:
In the file MAXIMUS_Functions.c
<!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->if (_exp < 1000)
{
switch (expName)
{
// case "Leadership": expMult = 3; break; // LDH 30Apr09
case "Fencing": expMult = 3; break;
case "Sailing": expMult = 1; break; // included for completeness
case "Accuracy": expMult = 1; break; // included for completeness
case "Cannons": expMult = 1; break; // included for completeness
case "Repair":
expMult = 50; // repair is a lot of small skill gains, minimum of 20 sent by repair functions
if (sti(_refCharacter.rank) < 3) // keeps player from getting repair skill 5 or 6 in the tutorial - 25Feb09
{
expMult = 20;
}
break;
case "Defence": expMult = 6; break;
case "Sneak": expMult = 3; break;
}
}
// Things we don't handle in the exp<1000 test above
if (expName == "Leadership") expMult = 3; // LDH moved outside the test - 30Apr09
if (expName == "Grappling") expMult = 4; // grappling is always high experience but doesn't happen often. - 30Apr09<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->
Comment out the first leadership line as shown, and add the new leadership line at the bottom. Also, change the Grappling experience multiplier from 3 to 4. Pieter, this is not an official change; I need to playtest the hell out of it first.
Talk to a lot of characters when you first get off the boat after the tutorial. See if your leadership and luck don't improve a lot. The leadership change shouldn't affect that, only the leadership you get from quests.
Hook
