Home » SIRTECH CLASSICS » Jagged Alliance: Unfinished Business » Maps, Mods and Editors » Mercenary payment calculation
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| Re: Mercenary payment calculation[message #186876]
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Thu, 29 May 2008 20:35  
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| the scorpion |
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Messages:1833
Registered:September 2004
Location: CH |
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hey spaceViking, would you agree that's something worth externalised? i wouldn't even mind if it was just being dropped to the options.ini
then on a second thought, it would be much cooler to have salary rise different for different characters so we can truly implement Mike-like greedy bastard mercs or other effects.
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Sergeant Major
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| Re: Mercenary payment calculation[message #186892]
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Thu, 29 May 2008 22:38
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 Shanga |
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Messages:3475
Registered:January 2000
Location: Danubia |
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Apparently in psychology there are 5 personality traits, the famous OCEAN:
Openness - appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience.
Conscientiousness - a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behaviour.
Extraversion - energy, positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation and the company of others.
Agreeableness - a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.
Neuroticism - a tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability; sometimes called emotional instability.
We score each merc upon the primary and secondary trait he/she has using the initial letters: OC, EA, etc. The "evil" side would be N-OC, etc...
Based on variations of these, I'd like to see mood swings. Both positive and negative. For example, lets say you do something good, save Maria for example. EA-mercs would react positively to that, by dropping their pay demand, working for free whatever. The N-EA mercs would snicker and their morale would drop (ps: we need more villains in the rooster), maybe to such degree than it would increase their pay demands. So this is one reward/penalty - pay increase.
Another mood swing should affect team morale, as a whole. Deeper than we have now (X hates Y, X or Y leaves). Good and evil mercs in the same team, for example. Game checks which side is a majority. They comment on each other, the minority drops morale until moved to another squad. A really devilish outcome would be "turncoat" trait (already in the game, see Iggy) that would result in fights between mercs and betrayals (mercs turns aggresive) if player takes no action.
Finally a third tweak should affect incombat performance. Make adrenaline work, pump the energy. Or drop the energy. There's a weak relation present even now, but doesn't affect the actions to dramatically. I'd like to see a more detailed "insane" bonus, for example. Mercs that when facing too much pressure/impossible odds give out a loud laugh, stand up and burst the hell out of everyone. Of course, he'll be standing up when turn ends, but he will take a few with him. Or mercs that are cool, calm and collected and give the team a boost in morale in such situations (true use of leadership). Or cowards, that surrender themselves. Or quit.
Everything above should be nicely wrapped and left for the player to choose. You want a coward that has 99 mechanical/medical? You'd better think twice before sending him into battle. Oh that 99 marksmanship sniper that works for such a low wage sounds good? Yes, but don't expect him not to pop a civilian from time to time... for fun. Finally, that top-of-the-line-saint-of-a-merc is your game? Sure, if you can afford his paycheck...
I've only scratched the surface... well maybe I was delirious at some points, but you get the idea.
[Updated on: Thu, 29 May 2008 23:39] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Mercenary payment calculation[message #187011]
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Fri, 30 May 2008 21:02
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| Mysterious Dr.X |
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Messages:33
Registered:March 2004
Location: Croatia |
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SpaceViking#define SALARY_CHANGE_PER_LEVEL 1.25 Wow, didn't expect it was that simple!
You guys have made some really cool suggestions, I want to add my own one  . I thought of a formula to calculate the "value" of a merc. For example every point of marksmanship increases the salary by $250. A point of wisdom should be more expensive etc. At the end the attributes would be summarised plus an additional fee for the merc's traits - like night operations - and at last plus an amount which will be different for every single merc. This extra amount should stand for the "especialness" of the merc. Gus for example shouldn't want to work immediately with anyone new to the business, as a result the extra amount he demands is higher etc.
Through this we could balance the salaries of the AIM-mercs, but at the same time try not to vary too much from the old values(individual extra amount).
What I aim at is a negotiation feature. If you try to hire Gus at the very beginning of the game he, by now, doesn't know what kind of squad-leader you are and because of that will demand his full extra amount. Now let's say you've just captured your third city without any loss and now try to hire Gus. He'll see that you're a trustworthy guy and perhaps - if you negotiate smart - give you some discount.
Another possibilty would be that you got a buddy of the merc you're trying to hire on your team. It's just logical that he would prefer to work with his pal, who he likes and trusts, for something less money instead of working for something more money but with only fools on his squad.
I find it inappropriate that a merc demands always 25% more, just because he gained some points of mechanics. The bonus should depend on the points which increased and how satisfied the individual merc is with his squad (buddy on team or not, many deaths lately ...).
Here again should the negotiation feature jump in. Let's say if everything looks fine you get a 75% chance to decrease the bonus the merc demands about the half. Of course somewhere has to be a bottom line. Noone works for free, especially not when his job isn't very safe.
On the other hand there should be a possibility that the merc demands a bit more than planned. Hey there has to be a snag in it .
New traits like "greed" would perfectly fit with this. We should start to play with this a bit, perhaps we'll come up with something implement-worthy.
Share your thoughts  .
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Private 1st Class
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| Re: Mercenary payment calculation[message #188811]
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Sun, 15 June 2008 20:06
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| Seraph |
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Messages:19
Registered:June 2006
Location: Germany |
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Interesting discussion with lots of possibilities.
Since I made my own payment calculation for the starting payment in WFMM, I would like to control the payment later in game, too. Although I'm late with a commentary to this discussion, I would like to present my ideas:
For the initial payment I used a formula containing wisdom, skill, skilltraits and level.
Wisdom: List of points in skill with a assigned part of payment; can increase (f.e. Wis 60 = 50$; Wis 100 = 500$)
Overall skill: list with assigned part of payment; can increase (f.e. Overall skill 500 = 1000$: Overall skill 700 = 2000$)
Level: list with assigned part of payment; can increase (f.e. Level 1 = 100$: Level 7 = 700$)
Skilltraits: list with skilltraits and fixed part of payment; can't increase (f.e. NightOps = 500&; Throwing = 50$)
Please notice, these are just examples not real values, that I used.
As we all know, the overallskill, level and wisdomskill will raise ingame. So the game needs to know how the modder calculated his payment cost. In V.1.13 a new xml-file with relevant aspects (selectable) and listfiles (see above) would be necessary. If you don't want to use a part of this, just set this value to false and it (with it's associated lists) will be ignored by the game.
Therefore my suggestion is:
One XML for all possible values, that influence payment.
Wisdom = true (game uses wisdom.xml)
Overall skill = true (game uses overallskill.xml)
Level = true (game uses level.xml)
Skilltraits = true (game uses skilltraits.xml)
Included in this XML -> health insurance and life insurance:
Either a fixed number or percantage
Specific XMLs for the lists:
wisdom.xml
overallskill.xml
level.xml
skilltraits.xml
Thank you for reading my crazy ideas. Hope you are still sane after this. 
Now to Shangas idea to take the behaviour into account. I like the idea of being greedy. Does anyone know Vinny in JA1? I think he was the one, who stole away, if you gave him too much money. Apart from such behaviour it would be logical, that such mercs ask for a higher payment. So this will need an additional XML (f.e. behaviour.xml) with behaviour and effects - related to V.1.13. This should be built in, really. And it would be absolutly great, if this list could be expanded by modders.
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Private
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| Re: Mercenary payment calculation[message #188939]
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Tue, 17 June 2008 16:31
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| Mysterious Dr.X |
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Messages:33
Registered:March 2004
Location: Croatia |
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Hi guys,
I did some research recently, in order to understand how Sir-Tech calculated the mercs' salaries. I finished with few answers and a whole bunch of questions .
Let's start with the answers first (motivational thing).
- An AIM-mercenary is made up of 614 skill-points on average (645 being the most common).
- The salary for a 7-days contract is used as the base amount for further calculation (could be wrong but seems logical).
- The salary for a single day is calculated this way: Daily = Weekly / 6.
- The salary for a 14-days contract is calculated this way: Bi-Weekly = Weekly * 5 / 3.
'Where'd you get these numbers from, mate?' you might ask yourself. Let me explain: I simply made a list in Excel with all of the AIM-mercs's salaries. After calculating some averages, minimas, maximas etc. these values turned out. After that I checked my results - just to be sure.
Here a table with the percentaged accuracy of my values:
Averaged Max Min Perfect
difference outlier outlier matches
Daily 9,6% 126,32% 88,50% 5 / 40
Bi-Weekly 7,2% 126,00% 90,00% 7 / 40
As you can see for the majority these values work very well, and we're also able to see where Sir-Tech made exceptions (e.g. Ivan whose daily salary was decreased by 11,5%). We just can't tell why!
That's where the second part of my research comes in. The questions .
The most important question to me is: 'How do we calculate the weekly salaries in a fair way without changing too much?'. This might sound strange, but that's exactly what I want to achieve with you.
A formula which rates the mercs by their skills in a fair way, but keeps the game in balance at the same time. I don't want to cheapen all the good mercs - because statistically they're out of line - I just want to create a formula to which we can found these amounts on.
I already tried it by myself without major success. One approach was to give $10 weekly per skill-point below 30, $17 per skill-point between 30-85 and $40 per skill-point >85. This brought me good results for a minority, but I discovered that there wasn't sufficient difference between the 'low-budget mercs' and the veterans. So I brought the experience-level in. For a value >4 the salary was doubled etc. This brought me further but not quite near to where I want to get.
Now I hope to get some suggestions how to rate the mercs by their skills in a fair way and at the same time keep the game balanced.
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Private 1st Class
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| Re: Mercenary payment calculation[message #188943]
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Tue, 17 June 2008 17:10
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| the scorpion |
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Messages:1833
Registered:September 2004
Location: CH |
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i don't think there exists such a thing as a formula for the base 7 days salary. Every character has a different idea of what he's worth himself and every character should have such an idea in fact, as they aren't mechwarriors where the price is just a function of the matter and work invested (plus margin) but where the wages are results of negotiations with AIM.
a formula that would be correct in the eyes of a majority of players wouldn't be possible either, as everybody judges the values of different skills, attributes, need for sleep, interaction base points, character traits, rpc boni quest relevance etc etc etc differently according to his own preferences
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Sergeant Major
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| Re: Mercenary payment calculation[message #189152]
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Thu, 19 June 2008 19:43
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| KEN C |
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Messages:244
Registered:May 2007
Location: Aberdeen Washington USA |
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You might want to take another, longer look at these characters before you make changes. for example Barry looks great at first glance but if you look carefully during game play you can discover at least two glaring faults which justify his low price throughout the course of the game. 1. daily production output at mechanic or training is always very poor throughout the game because he sleeps 12 hours and that does'nt improve with time. 2. his locksmithing success is very poor until after mid game when much better mercs are available. 3. something intangible that I have noticed about Barry is that his accuracy is very unreliable, just when you need that one hit, he will almost always miss or hit for 1 or 2 damage.
side note: in my opinion this is one of the magic features that make JA2 so increadable, it seems that there are more subtle personality traits coded into the game than people realize.
Barry doesn't swim.
The best thing about JA21.13 is that you and I can modify the gameplay to suit our own taste very easily.
Thank you coders. Enjoy!
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Sergeant 1st Class
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