BSM Rank and Class System

[Kyle]

R@S,

Let me see if I'm understanding one of your goals correctly:
are you trying to enable us to pick any avatar that we wish, and then assign a class to that avatar? If so, I'd much prefer this to the current system, of being "stuck" with a specific CHARACTER with an already well-defined background. For some reason, having this background already there reduces the sense of immersion for me. As a player, I would much rather prefer to select my avatar's appearance, then his/her class type, and allow me to imagine and role play out "who" my character is. Is this what you're aiming for? If so, I'd advise supplying a clearly defined description of what each class does, and its exact starting stats, and have all of these definitions easy to find, and preferably, compare to one another.

I'd like to pitch a class-type that I can't recall ever seeing being spelled out in the Blue Sun Mod...

Close Quarters Battle Specialist
Imagine a SWAT officer and you'll have an excellent idea of what I mean, which is someone who is highly trained at fighting in-close to their targets, both with small arms and hand-to-hand.

I'm not going to quote exact figures here, since I can't see what your starting stats are for the other classes, there's no point in me stating starting figures that could be substantially different than yours, so I'm just stating generalities.

Endurance: high due to constant drilling with the "weapon at the ready." Out of all of the attributes/skill levels I'm proposing, this one is the "least necessary" to me.

Eyesight*: high due to constantly training the entering of rooms of various lighting conditions, and having to quickly determine whether a foe is friendly or not
*Since I'm not sure how 7.62 handles this, perhaps an attribute/skill to better describe what I'm trying to get at here is Intelligence. While I'm sure SWAT officers have to have excellent eyesight, that doesn't necessarily mean that they can see things more CLEARLY at a DISTANCE, but rather that they're highly trained to quickly ASSESS whether a potential target is friend or foe.

Hearing: high, again due to constantly drilling to be as perceptive as possible within environments that are so small as to allow no room for error.

Snapshot: high, for reasons that should now be obvious.

Shooting: high, again as above.

Hand-to-Hand: high, as above.

Reaction Time: I don't want to split hairs here, but my lack of knowledge regarding 7.62's mechanics does leave me guessing. If the Eyesight attribute doesn't due, and/or the Intelligence attribute is too vague, then perhaps what I'm really looking for is the ability to react QUICKLY to what's being seen/heard. I'm just bringing it up here so that you can better be in my shoes to understand my thinking. Well, however you decide it should go, if you come to the same conclusion as myself regarding this matter, then the Reaction Time should also be highly refined.

Throwing: They're pretty good with those grenades, aren't they? Out of all of the stats/skills proposals here, this is the second weakest one to me.



Now, if you'd like me to create a background story for an avatar/character, then I'd be more than happy to do so.

Not to toot my horn too strongly, but I feel that I'm a pretty solid writer, and I already have a character's background details cooked up that would be fairly...um...interesting. I'll put it down for you if you'd like to head in that direction.

Let me know!

[R@S]

Originally Posted by Kyle

R@S,

Let me see if I'm understanding one of your goals correctly:
are you trying to enable us to pick any avatar that we wish, and then assign a class to that avatar? If so, I'd much prefer this to the current system, of being "stuck" with a specific CHARACTER with an already well-defined background. For some reason, having this background already there reduces the sense of immersion for me. As a player, I would much rather prefer to select my avatar's appearance, then his/her class type, and allow me to imagine and role play out "who" my character is. Is this what you're aiming for? If so, I'd advise supplying a clearly defined description of what each class does, and its exact starting stats, and have all of these definitions easy to find, and preferably, compare to one another.

Yup, that's what I wanna do. The player only has to choose how the avatar will look from the 8 available models, then this new class system will deal with the skills. I think there'll be some minor differences in their starting physical attributes, but those won't make any difference in the long run. I was thinking that the male models will have a little higher strength from the start while the female will have better agility. But as I said, the differences will not be that big and it wont affect the gameplay.

Consider your new class added, is it OK if we call it a Skirmisher? These are the main 5 attributes for that class if I were to pick five.
Reaction(This skill covers your idea for EYE and HEARING, at least when in confined spaces.)
Stamina(endurance)
Snapshot
Strength
Shooting

I would say that Reaction and Snapshot would be the main skills for this class, and EYE and HRN should be there as well. Maybe we could make so that every other lvl up we could have 2 sets of skills, like when even the choice would be the above skills, but when odds we would replace strength and shooting with Eyesight and Hearing. On second thought, we should do something similar on all classes, having only the most important attributes available every time.

[Kyle]

Consider your new class added...

Yay! I'm quite happy about this!


"Skirmisher" is a much more succinct, and great way of summarizing my too-long Class Name. I'm definitely in favor of it!

Reaction
Stamina (endurance)
Snapshot
Strength
Shooting

The above list looks "right on" to me in regards to what I was trying to get at. I'm honestly surprised that 7.62 didn't supply such an "obvious" class-type before.

No one's perfect, but now that I'm here...



About alternating attributes/skills that are available when leveling up with Even and Odd numberings...

My initial reaction, and I'll be very up front about this, is deeply related from my prior experiences of going from playing Dungeons & Dragons to GURPS: I strongly feel this "alternate-leveling" should be avoided.

In D&D, such Even's/Odd's "availability" leveling up's were commonplace, and if that's all that one ever knows, then it's highly likely that there will be no questioning of such a design scheme, but after playing GURPS...

I strongly feel that one doesn't even have to play GURPS to quickly and deeply appreciate the utter soundness of its logic, and easy-to-grasp "relay-ability" of WHY the game's mechanics are setup the way they are, because they model one's real life experiences extremely closely. They also maximize a player's ability to chose exactly what they want his/her character to be, without causing Game Masters a ton of frustration designing a mission/dungeon for a gaming environment that is so seemingly "player friendly."

I strongly feel that a good deal of D&D's design problems are from how it was designed too much around the "supposed" needs of the Dungeon Master in order to get a "good" role playing experience, but that's a whole thread in and of itself...

One would also be mistaken to assume that a game design system such as GURPS would make it more challenging to enjoy and become immersed in fantasy-based environments, but one would be very wrong in making such an assumption, but that's a whole different thread as well...

Anyway, back on target: alternating "when" an attribute/skill can be raised seems too arbitrary to me. Now, the way BE5 and 7.62 automatically elevates certain skills is also arbitrary to me, but that's due to there frequently being no clear connection between an event that just occurred and the elevating of an attribute/skill that may not be related to said event. It may not be as arbitrary as it appears, but until we can see the guts of its mechanics, we can only judge what we actually experience.

It also reduces player options, and having put GURPS through the grinder many a time, I can say that with all confidence that putting that power in the player's hands can work, and does not "have to" lead to headaches and "failure."

If I was a player, I'd prefer to always have full access to my character's attributes/skills, and have growth be managed by...
(1) ...the cost of raising attributes/skills, with some being clearly and reasonably more challenging to raise than others, and...
(2) ...the number of points that I get to spend.

So, in this game-based-economy, my options are kept wide open in regards to what I could invest in, but my resources are limited so I have to chose what is most valuable to me at a given time. As circumstances change, so will my decision making, and like any real life flesh and blood human being would do, I'll alter my choices as necessary.


Before I go, a link to all things GURPS. Take a quick look at the write ups for the products, and be prepared to drool. Illuminati is a BLAST to play as well. AWESOME game. Bye for now!
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/

[R@S]

OK then, I'll start coding the bugger this weekend. I will have to see if I can find a way to implement some of the suggested things, but I'll try. I'll release it through Flügenweb or a$$ möde

[R@S]

I had some spare time at work today and managed to write about 500 lines of code for this new project. I've made some minor changes to simplify matters and I hope it won't piss you off too much

I made it so that ALL skills in the selected class only costs 1 point, think of it as you already had your basic training and you only need some minor adjustments to improve the skill. But for the skills outside your class I made the following cost and divided them into 2 groups, Parameters and Skills:

Parameters:
Health = 4
Energy = 4
Eyesight = 4
Hearing = 4
Strength = 2
Stamina = 2
Dexterity = 2
Agility = 2
Reaction = 2
Intelligence = 4

Skills:
Shooting = 2
Sniping = 4
Gunfighting = 2
HeavyWeapon = 4
Throwing = 2
HandToHand = 4
Camo = 2
Sapper = 4
Medic = 4
Stealth = 4

Maybe we should change it so that the attributes costing 4 costs 3 instead?

Since I haven't touched a role-playing board game in more that 25 years, you need to explain things to me as you would a total n00b Otherwise you'll never get your ideas through, yes, I'm that daft

EDIT: I forgot to say, when implementing this into the mod, it will cause some problems with the outsourcedINI mod and i might be forced to remove it. But it needs some testing to make sure and it might only affect a small part of it, time will tell.

[Kyle]

and I hope it won't piss you off too much

R@S, don't worry about upsetting me. I've survived one on one critiques with some pretty brutal professors in the past.

It's late. I'm tired. So this will be kept short, but sweet...

Parameters:
Health = 4 Yup!
Energy = 4 I'd make this cost 3 points. In my experience, increasing one's energy is pretty easy; go out and do some light exercise. Of course, I think what "Energy" here means is something a bit more profound, like physical energy WITH emotional vigor (sort of like morale), so I'd raise the cost a little more for that.
Eyesight = 4 Yup!
Hearing = 4 Yup!
Strength = 2 Yup!
Stamina = 2 Yup!
Dexterity = 2 Yup!
Agility = 2 Yup!
Reaction = 2 Yup!
Intelligence = 4 Yup!

Skills:
Shooting = 2 Yup!
Sniping = 4 Perhaps drop this to 3 points. Out of all of the skills that I rank by difficulty, none can be more challenging in scope, mental pressure and physical acuity than Medic. As challenging as being a sniper is, I think being a Medic is harder still.
Gunfighting = 2 Yup!
HeavyWeapon = 4 Perhaps set to 3, and for the same reasons given for "Sniping" above.
Throwing = 2 Yup!
HandToHand = 4 Yup!
Camo = 2 Yup!
Sapper = 4 I'd lower this cost to 3. While there's no question that being a sapper is very difficult, I think it's somewhat safe to say that it's not as challenging as putting back together a broken body. Ironic that.
Medic = 4 Yup!
Stealth = 4 Yup!

A good list. Let's see how it works!

By the way, what is the "outsourcedINI" mod that you referred to?

Good night!
Snore!
Kyle
June 30, 2010

[R@S]

I stayed up too long last night and coded some more, the leveling up system is now complete. Now comes the next stage, deciding when the leveling up should happen. I though locking it to the CGL would be the easiest way to go, but have changed my mind. I think it would be best to tie it to the killcounter which is independant from things that might cause problems. Here's my preliminary thoughts:
lvl 1 Kills 20 (+20)
lvl 2 Kills 50 (+30)
lvl 3 Kills 90 (+40)
lvl 4 Kills 150 (+50)
lvl 5 Kills 210 (+60)
lvl 6 Kills 280 (+70)
lvl 7 Kills 360 (+80)
lvl 8 Kills 450 (+90)
lvl 9 Kills 550 (+100) //Maybe all the next level ups should be at a 100 kills?
lvl 10 Kills 660 (+110)
lvl 11 Kills 780 (+120)
lvl 12 Kills 910 (+130)
lvl 13 Kills 1050 (+140)
lvl 14 Kills 1150 (+150)
lvl 15 Kills 1310 (+160)
lvl 16 Kills 1480 (+170)
and so forth.
This can go on until all attributes has reached their limit, the player can keep leveling up as long as he keeps killing.

Now I need to check where the attribute cap for the skills are, I know that the hearing cap is at 200, but where the rest of them are I have no idea.

As it is now, the player will get 5 points to spend at every leveling up, and he can save point for the next event. I had a though that I could also add a point if the player completes a specific mission, or place a few easter eggs that will give a point. I also thought of giving the player a chance to get another point by having a small bonus mission on the level up screen, but I'm to busy for that and it would take too lang to make all those new missions.

outsourcedINI is a mod guineapig made, check your 7.62\ini\ folder for a outsourcedconfig.ini file for more info. It makes a few hard coded setting open to adjustments

EDIT: I did some quick testing and it seems that the cap is much higher than I first thought. Check this out:

But since the stats are too high, it does some weird things to the game. The amount of time it takes to raise and shoot is acually a negative number, like -2.14 seconds. Look what happens when I select single shot "shoot until dead":

Since shooting is now a negative number, it fires 100 shots in less than a second. Talk about a hail of bullets