General > Discussion

Improving skills by gaining experience.

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Zenerka:
People, I need a feedback, under what circumstances PHALANX soldiers will upgrade their skills.

First of all, the maximum skill value is 100 - skills higher than that will be available only with implants in the future versions.

In the current code, the algorithm to upgrade skills works like that:
1) upgrade SKILL_CLOSE after 4 succesful kills (or stuns) with CLOSE weapon
2) upgrade SKILL_HEAVY after 6 succesful kills (or stuns) with HEAVY weapon
3) upgrade SKILL_ASSAULT after 5 succesful kills (or stuns) with ASSAULT weapon
4) upgrade SKILL_SNIPER after 5 succesful kills (or stuns) with SNIPER weapon
5) upgrade SKILL_EXPLOSIVE after 8 succesful kills (or stuns) with EXPLOSIVE weapon
6) upgrade ABILITY_ACCURACY after 12 succesful kills (or stuns) with any weapon
7) upgrade ABILITY_POWER after 12 succesful kills (or stuns) with HEAVY weapon.

When I am writing "upgrade" I mean "improve given skill value by 1". Of course, only killing or stunning aliens counts.

That definitely can be improved. Should I change those values in any way? Should I add other improvements here?

inquisiteur2:
First of all thx for asking our opinion.

If we want to be more realistic we should also take into account the fact that skill not only increase when aliens are killed; but also when soldiers are simply using the gun; even if they are firing at any target.

Example: shooting on a wall without aiming at anything will still help the solider to master the recoil of the gun/rocket launcher. He will also grap the gun in a more appropriate way, notice what is the effective range, what is the precision of the gun; etc....

So in my point of view, the system should be a little more complex i would add:


1) -upgrade SKILL_CLOSE after 4 succesful kills (or stuns) with CLOSE weapon
-upgrade SKILL_CLOSE after 4 missions where close has been used (to try to hit aliens; but necesserly killing or stunning them)

2) -upgrade SKILL_HEAVY after 6 succesful kills (or stuns) with HEAVY weapon
-upgrade SKILL_HEAVY after 4 missions where HEAVY weapon has been used to fire on aliens (but necesserly killing or stunning them)
-upgrade SKILL_HEAVY after soldier having shot 60 times with it (anywhere)

3) upgrade SKILL_ASSAULT after 5 succesful kills (or stuns) with ASSAULT weapon
-upgrade SKILL_ASSAULT after 4 missions where ASSAULT weapon has been used to fire on aliens (but necesserly killing or stunning them)
-upgrade SKILL_ASSAULT after soldier having shot 60 times with it (anywhere)


4) upgrade SKILL_SNIPER after 5 succesful kills (or stuns) with SNIPER weapon
-upgrade SKILL_SNIPER after 4 missions where SNIPER  weapon has been used to fire on aliens (but necesserly killing or stunning them)
-upgrade SKILL_SNIPER after soldier having shot 60 times with it (anywhere)

5) upgrade SKILL_EXPLOSIVE after 8 succesful kills (or stuns) with EXPLOSIVE weapon
-upgrade SKILL_EXPLOSIVE after 4 missions where EXPLOSIVE  weapon has been used to fire on aliens (but necesserly killing or stunning them)
-upgrade SKILL_EXPLOSIVE after soldier having shot 60 times with it (anywhere)

6) upgrade ABILITY_ACCURACY after 12 succesful kills (or stuns) with any weapon
-upgrade ABILITY_ACCURACY after 4 missions where any weapon has been used to fire on aliens (but necesserly killing or stunning them)
-upgrade ABILITY_ACCURACY after soldier having shot 120 times with it (anywhere)

7) upgrade ABILITY_POWER after 12 succesful kills (or stuns) with HEAVY weapon.
-upgrade ABILITY_POWER  after 4 missions where HEAVY weapon has been used to fire on aliens (but necesserly killing or stunning them)
-upgrade ABILITY_POWER  after soldier having shot 60 times with it (anywhere)

I don't know if the mentionned above can be coded. This is my opinion maybe somone can give a better input.

The Dude:
That are very hard conditions to improve skills. With saving during combat turned off my soldiers hardly survive long enough to gain some points this way, let alone a noticeable advantage.
Let's say one of them happens to survive 15 missions with 30 kills with an assault weapon. A very formidable performance, but he would gain mere 6 points on assault skill and 2 points on accuracy. While this would make not a great difference at all, most of my men die even earlier.
Depending on how new recruits look like (average stat?) I would increase the rate somehow like this:

A possibility to increase 1 point in the respective skill for every (!) mission with at least one kill or hit. The more hits&kills the better the chance. Maybe even two points if the skill is below 70. Basic chance should somehow be weighted like you did.
On a quick and very unbalanced approach the chance to improve skill by 1 could look like
if KILL>1: Percentage = 40 + 10*KILL + 5*HIT
if KILL=0: Percentage = 10*HIT
maybe multiplied with a specific factor depending on skillpoints and the skill itself.

I guess you are planning other ways of raising skills, but the main impact should come from combat experience. Medals should have some influence, too. I've read somewhere about a simulator, maybe the improvement like normal missions divided by 3.
I like the idea of implants. If they come early to play and improve with further research, improvement through mission could be lowered.

Anyway, why is skill improvement currently so slow? Or is it only me  :P

inquisiteur2:
I agree to the fact that skill advancement would be slow give the current game difficulty (on normal difficulty). As you mentionned soldiers may will die too early before starting to be expert firearms users.

We have given concepts now it's up to the coder to tweak the setting i think...

misiek:
Hello (mi first post here :) )

Maybe every skill should have it's own experience points. And raising skill by one point needs specified amount of XP (for example raising from 20 to 21 point needs 10 xp, but raising from 80 to 81 needs 100 xp). XP points needed for raising stat can be multiplied by difficulty ratio - for example on easy 0.8, on normal 1, on hard 1.2.

How XP could be earned (just example):
1) Shooting with weapon gives 1 point.
2) Shooting alien gives 5 point. This could be multiplied by range factor - especially for sniper weapons - killing from long distance gives you more points than from short distance.

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