[REL] MCC Leveller : III

» Thu May 19, 2016 1:33 pm

A leveller mod I've been working on in the last couple of days, you may like it. I tried to unite GCD dynamical attributes and MADD Leveller straightforwardness and easiness of use.

An xls (Excel) file is included to test your builds. To activate the mod: Alt+M+L in inventory menu.

Download on http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/44294?

This is the readme.

Spoiler

To activate the mod: Alt+M+L in inventory menu. Choose 'Configure', then 'Initialize'.

If you choose 'Initialize' right away, default values will be used.

Once it's initialized, if you want to change settings and reinitialize it, you must first press 'Revert changes'.

You can choose 'Revert changes' also to perform a clean uninstallation of the mod.

First, it's just two very light scripts, one for initialization, the main script is only run once when you sleep, to update your attributes. Therefore, impact on performance equal zero.

Second, what does this mod do? It's not easy to say it in two words, but I'll give a short explanation. For a better understanding, I include an Excel sheet with tables and a character simulator, where you can see how attributes are calculated, and try out your own character builds.

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The main changes that the mod brings are:

Attributes are calculated on the base of your starting values and your skills, with a proportion of these two elements that is influenced by a 'Starting Attribute Factor' that you can configure.

So, skill advancement directly influences attribute advancement. Not at level-up, but continuously. How do skill influence attributes, and which attributes are influenced by which skills?

Skills aren't governed by a single attribute, and each skill influences the development of more than one attribute in different proportions. You can read all this in the Excel file. If I made an example, it would really sound more complicated than it is. You can think of it this way: when you fight with a sword, you don't use just your strength, but also your agility, and something else. When you haggle with a merchant, your personality is important, but why not intelligence? Etc.

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How does this translate in the game?

- You still get attribute points at level-up to distribute, but no multipliers.

- Instead, your attributes will improve along with your skills. The way this progression is calculated is a bit compicated, but if you're curious I explain the procedure at the end of this readme file.

- Some skills influence certain attributes more than others. Some skills may be very focused on a certain attribute, while other may spread their influence over more attributes in a more even way.

- The mod cannot detect which your major and minor skills are, but when the mod is first started, skills that are over 30 pts are considered 'major', and their influence on attribute advancement will be multiplied by 3. Skills with over 15 pts will be considered 'minor', and their influence on attribute advancement will be multiplied by 2.

- This has two important consequences, one positive and one negative. The negative side is that if you don't start a new game or have a relatively fresh character, this mod can make your character slightly (or heavily) overpowered. In this case, I suggest you choose the hard difficulty and also a high SAF (read later), so that the influence of your skills on your final values will be smaller. The positive side is that also racial and specialization bonuses have their say in the character advancement, since you can reach 15 points in a skill without it being selected as a minor skill at character generation.

- Another difference is that Luck is a living attribute. It is considered as a measure of the favour of the Divines, and it is influenced by skills like Mysticism or Conjuration, through which you establish a link with the overwordly forces, and by many other skills in a smaller way. The TOTAL influence of all skills is PERFECTLY evenly distributed among attributes. This means that if you raise all of your skills by 100, all of your attributes will be raised in the same way (but remember that skills that are considered major or minor have their effect potentiated).

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There are two Esps.

The normal version includes the following (necessary) GMST changes:

- Level Up: 12 skill advancements required (instead of 10), no multipliers.

- skill advancement rates for major/minor skills are slightly slower (from 0.75/1 to 1/1.25 respectively), the one for misc skills is even slower (from 1.25 to 2).

- training cost increased by 150% (from 10 to 25). This is necessary since skills can have a big impact on your attributes values.

The 'More GMSTs' version includes some other GMSTs. The changes are:

- Picking locks is harder, as it is disarming traps. Security advances faster, though.

- less gold from sold potions (iAlchemyMod from 2 to 1).

- more difficult to remain unseen (fSneakViewMult to 2 from 1.5), but sneak advancement is easier, especially while pickpocketing.

- merchant gold isn't reset after one day, but after one week.

- much slower armor skills advancement rate (1/2).

- armorer improves faster slightly faster

You may have other mods that change the same GMSTs, so it will depend on your load order which settings will be used. For example, if you use BTB Improvements (that alters far more settings than this mod), some of them will be different (notably gold from potions, training cost, and merchant gold reset time). Choose the verion that you prefer, but keep in mind that this mod absolutely needs the level up GMSTs to work properly, so keep the esp rather low in your load order (after other GMST changing mods).

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In short, how attributes are calculated.

Three things are important:

- Starting attribute value: a fraction of it is automatically transferred to the new value, that is, your new value will never be lower than that fraction of the original value. This fraction is 1/4 for 'Easy' difficulty, 1/8 for 'Normal', and zero for 'Hard'.

- Starting Attribute Factor (SAF, range 0-99): the role of starting values in defining the new values. Default is 50, this means that another 50% of your starting value is transferred to the new value. A SAF of 0 means that only the initial 1/4 is transferred, the rest is derived from skills. This means that your starting attribute values will be very low, but they will advance more swiftly with skill increases. On the other hand, a value of 99 means that your skills will start at a value that is increased by 1/4 compared to vanilla, but they will never increase with skills (maybe 1 point but I doubt it). You'll still receive attribute points at level up in any case (but no multipliers, remember).

- the rest is contributed by skills. How? As I said, each skill can contribute to the advancement of more attributes, in different proportions. There are 27 skills and 8 attributes. I assigned 80 points to each skill, and distributed these points into the attributes they influence. Each attribute will receive 270 points from the various skills.

The formula for the different attributes is the same, the skills that take part to the formula change. For example, this is the Strength formula:

iSTR = initial Strength SAF = said already

iSTR*Difficulty + iSTR*SAF/100 + ( CombatSkills + MagicSkills + StealthSkills ) / ( 270 / ( 1 - SAF/100 ) )

CombatSkills and the other two are the sum of the contributions to Strength from the various skills (each skill = 80 points distributed among different attributes), multiplied for the skill multiplier (SM from now, 1 for misc skills, 2 for minor skills, 3 for major skills).

Example, Armorer. 80 points distributed as follows: 30 STR, 5 INT, 10 WIL, 5 SPE, 30 END. So Armorer contributes for 30 points in the Strength calculation (x1 if misc, x2 if minor, etc.).

Back to the Strength formula, now it will look as follows:

CombatSkills = Armorer*30*SM + Athletics*10*SM + Axe*30*SM + Block*10*SM ... + Spear*30*SM

MagicSkills = 0

StealthSkills = Marksman*20*SM + ShortBlade*10*SM + HandToHand*25*SM

Their sum will be divided by

( 270 / ( 1 - SAF/100 ) )

For a SAF of 50, this will be =135, so:

iSTR/4 + iSTR/2 + ( Armorer*30*SM + Athletics*10*SM + ... + HandToHand*25*SM ) / 135

Low SAF means low initial attribute average, high dependence on skills, high spread over attributes.

High SAF means high initial attributes, no dependence on skills, low spread. Makes PCs more static, if you're after that. And it will make the late game definitely more difficult. I think 50 is a good compromise.

With the Excel file I provided, you'll be able to test your builds. Enjoy.

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Final Notes and Warnings:

This mod updates your stats when you sleep. It will only change your attributes and never your skills. But to check your skill values, skill fortifying effects active on your character are removed. This means that if you have a constant effect on you given by items, you'll need to re-equip the item again to restore the effect on yourself. This could also mean that if the effect is given by abilities such as modified birthsigns, then I don't know what could happen. Your fortifying effect could be lost permanently, I mean, but I'm not aware of anything that could cause such a problem.

» Fri May 20, 2016 12:21 am

This sounds really good. A modern take on GCD +MADD, neither of which has had serious work since 2004.

Couple questions:

When you say over 15 (30), you mean 15 or over, right?

I see no mention of level caps so I assume normal limits, correct? I hope so because the slow-downs, uncappings, and curses used to work around were the main causes of wonkiness with the originals, especially running with MCP.

This is making me want to start a new game right now. Thanks!

» Thu May 19, 2016 9:50 pm

Multiplier is 3 if skill >= 30, 2 if it's >= 15.

Slow-downs are impossible because the script runs only once after initializtion and once when you wake up (tested in game). That is, the script is running but it just returns if you don't sleep.

It should be compatible with MCP uncapped skills and attributes, actually if you don't enable those options you could reach the cap and not advance any further. It is possible to reach and surpass the cap with specialized builds (experiment with the Excel file to try your builds).

Anyway, I'm preparing a new version right now (should be ready in a couple of hours), you may want to wait to install the mod. I forgot the function to remember stat gains when leveling up, so those points would be wasted. I'm also adding an option to revert changes, if one wants to uninstall.

» Thu May 19, 2016 8:15 pm

OK, I'll wait. Thanks for the info.

» Thu May 19, 2016 2:48 pm

New version is ready, sorry for the wait (it took me a bit longer than I anticipated). Now my main concern is about skill/attribute fortification removal/exclusion, I will run some tests to see if everything runs correctly. This version should be already a big improvement.

1.2 was broken again, sorry, now it "should" be working as intended. Fixed also problems with fortifications.

» Thu May 19, 2016 8:21 pm

Finally got a chance to start a new game and check this out. It works just as described/expected so far. As soon as I get a few hours into it I'll update.

I'm surprised there isn't more interest in this baby; it looks like a very good MADD replacement to me.

» Thu May 19, 2016 8:09 pm

Thanks for trying it, if you find any problems please tell me, I'm on a short break so I'm not testing it personally (last tests I run were fine but who knows).

I didn't write it in the readme, but I expect it to be compatible with MCP uncapped attributes/skills, and if you go to jail and your skills decrease also your attributes should decrease after sleeping (depending on the SAF you choose, that determines the weight of skills in the attribute formula).

» Fri May 20, 2016 1:32 am

Looks very interesting. I'm fond of GCD but I could use an alternative with a bit of control thx to the kept level up screen.

Why having steps to artificially keep misc/minor/major skills?

What about using a ratio based on actual starting skill for attribute advancement?

For instance ratio = 3 * min(skill, 60) / 60

» Thu May 19, 2016 5:04 pm

What would that mean, exactly?

The steps weren't meant to artificially keep major/minor skills, I introduced them at a later time (with the multipliers) because I didn't want to force the player to train all skills just to be able to increase his attributes, it would be out-of-character and also a bad replacement for the vanilla skill farming. I used steps because they were the first things that came to my mind.

I could do it like: multiplier = ( starting skill / 10 ), but it wouldn't change that much, I would still need to set a range (like 1-3) otherwise many skills wouldn't contribute much and you'd have problems increasing your attributes, and if the multiplier is too high it would be totally overpowered for non-fresh characters. Scaling the multiplier with the starting skill within a certain range is a good idea though.

On a second thought, I think it's better to keep the steps. Since the multiplier shouldn't be less than 1, if most minor skills get a multiplier of 1.5 instead of 2 the difference with minor skills would be risible. Instead I was thinking about giving the option to recalibrate your multipliers at certain levels (level 5,10 etc), but it would need a lot of stuff and I don't know if the trouble is worth it.

I was more interested in knowing what I should do with GMSTs. Currently even in the normal version I set training cost at 2.5x and decreased skill advancement rates, I started to think that maybe these things are better left to other mods or maybe an additional esp.

» Thu May 19, 2016 3:17 pm

Not sure on the GMST stuff, but the latest MWSE allows you to retrieve the players major/minor/misc skills as well as base values (so you don't need the dangerous RemoveEffects). It also includes loop-friendly skill/attribute functions that could shrink your code size dramatically.

I'm glad work is being done on this BTW. GCD and MADD's incompatibility with code patch features has always been an annoyance.

» Fri May 20, 2016 1:15 am

I generally agree that the GMST changes (other than the level mult) should be left out. Neither GCD nor MADD change those. I haven't played long enough to get a feel for how the character progression feels but if it's too strong I think there are better ways of dealing with it than limiting training. Limiting skill advancement may also be too much because it's a double whammy; lower skills means directly lower Attributes.

I think more play testing is needed before you decide. Anyway, as it is now, a user can just revert the changes in the CS if that appeals.

Edit: BTW, I hope I don't sound critical, far from it. I'm so happy that you're working on this.

» Fri May 20, 2016 2:13 am

I knew of those MWSE alpha functions and it would be definitely a better option, I'd also rather not having to mess with RemoveEffects. But my current setup is incompatible with MWSE Alpha, I could make a special version for it, though. I don't know about the loop-friendly functions, but code is very small already.

I'll remove GMST changes entirely, except for the level up multipliers. I'm not confident enough with them to alter game progression right from the start.