What is the actual effect of NPC skills?

[JDCollie]

wwdragon was kind enough to dig up these posts in answer to a question I had about what the skill values meant:

What do the NPC skill levels actually mean?

Oh you found it.
These are the two relevant posts:

The relevance of each skill depends on the type of NPC. For example for a pilot there's a ratio of 5:3:2 for navigation, combat and morale, and for an architect it's 3.5:3.5:3 engineering, management and navigation. For an engineer the only relevant skill is, as you might expect, engineering.

Commanders are 4:3.5:2.5 for leadership, navigation and morale; defence officers are 4.5:3.5:2 for leadership, combat and morale. Morale is just another "skill" value that each NPC has. Skills ranges are defined in the characters.xml file, and which characters are used where is defined in charactergroups.xml. Please note that the exact numbers used in the combined skill calculation may be subject to change without notice.

This definitely helps me understand which skills are most important when choosing a between available NPCs, and I appreciate the answer



However, I'm curious if anyone knows what the various skills actually do?

For example:

• Does a captain's navigation skill improve his/her ship's handling?
• If so, by how much? (like, one star = 2.5°/second turning or something)
• What about speed? Acceleration? Jump charging? Path calculation speed?

Basically, I'd love to know the baseline values for what each skill does (since we already know the multipliers for the various crew members)

Also, which skills are taken into consideration for a ship? Is only the captain's navigation skill factored in when calculating navigation bonuses, or is are the bonuses based on an aggregate of all members of the crew? (I'm inclined to believe the latter; why else would a mechanic start a otherwise useless skill like navigation, and why would NPCs have skill multipliers associated with their primary roles?)

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

I don't know the real numbers, but 5* captains are definitely faster than 1*.
It seems like they recharge jumpdrives much faster (among other things), so they can jump again after jumping much sooner.

[JDCollie]

I don't know the real numbers, but 5* captains are definitely faster than 1*.
It seems like they recharge jumpdrives much faster (among other things), so they can jump again after jumping much sooner.

That's the thing, nobody does seem to know the actual stats I mean, we all know that a 5 star marine officer keeps more of your guys alive than a 1 star, but we don't really know how those five starts are affecting the formulas, you know?

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

5* combat pilots/captains/defence officers will fire missiles more frequently.
Morale = removes penalty for low ship hull (crew will perform worse if ship has low hull)

[Snafu_X3]

A captain's navigation skill proportionately decreases the amount of time spent 'calculating parameters' (or whatever the phrase is), so its effect is to make the ship more responsive (ie quicker to maneuver)

I /think/ a manager's 'management' skill improves his efficiency (ie product used for ware), but it may be a speed (cycle time) bonus; I haven't checked

Also: RC 1 Improved engineer repair behaviour allowing higher-skilled engineers to repair to a higher level.

[Spami]

It is difficult to answer though it is known.

You can find the actual math which is behind those skills in the proper script files but then again I don't know how useful it is to post something like this

Code: Select all

// no actual code but biased on it, have to look it up again
repairrate = 50 * 280 * (skills / 5.0);
foreach( drone ) repairrate += repairate * 0.1;
if( repairrate < 0 ) repairrate = 1;

[JDCollie]

It is difficult to answer though it is known.

You can find the actual math which is behind those skills in the proper script files but then again I don't know how useful it is to post something like this

Code: Select all

// no actual code but biased on it, have to look it up again
repairrate = 50 * 280 * (skills / 5.0);
foreach( drone ) repairrate += repairate * 0.1;
if( repairrate < 0 ) repairrate = 1;

Ah, this is what I was looking for. Do you happen know which script files? (Or which .cat I should be looking in?)

Thanks to everyone who has replied to this thread, by the way

[Tamina]

Formatted code of engineer.ai file

Code: Select all

baserepairrate = 50
repairratefactor = 0

// Don't know what this is:
<do_all exact="unitcategory.welder.maxmk" counter="$i">
      repairratefactor += unitamounts.{$i} * $i
</do_all>

if( repairratefactor == 0 )
      repairratefactor = 0.1

// "engineer speeds up repair by up to 400% (meaning a fifth of the normal repair time)"
repairratefactor += repairratefactor * this.combinedskill / 25

repairrate = baserepairrate * repairratefactor

addedhullpercentage = 100 * repairrate / Defensible.maxhull

Are there really any other script files besides the engineer one? I can't find captain, defence officier or even the ai file for the pilot?

[UniTrader]

Code: Select all

// Don't know what this is:
<do_all exact="unitcategory.welder.maxmk" counter="$i">
      repairratefactor += unitamounts.{$i} * $i
</do_all>

bonus for welder/repair drones

[wwdragon]

Are there really any other script files besides the engineer one? I can't find captain, defence officier or even the ai file for the pilot?

I think they are in a different area... something about the puppetmaster.