Modifying Wages and Forms of Payment

[Horik6697]

Greetings community!

I've searched on the forums and found nothing related to this, so here am I posting.

What you guys think about modifying wages and forms of payment?

Let's suppose you could reduce wages in times of peace in exchange of a debuff on morale, or if you prefer, you could reduce wages in time of war but complement it with looting profits, also causing a negative effect on party morale. This suggestion makes the player more free to manage his money and his troops, and then he could use smart-money-use to overcome times of finnancial difficulties, adding a new level of strategy gameplay.

 

[NPC99]

Greetings community!

I've searched on the forums and found nothing related to this, so here am I posting.

What you guys think about modifying wages and forms of payment?

Let's suppose you could reduce wages in times of peace in exchange of a debuff on morale, or if you prefer, you could reduce wages in time of war but complement it with looting profits, also causing a negative effect on party morale. This suggestion makes the player more free to manage his money and his troops, and then he could use smart-money-use to overcome times of finnancial difficulties, adding a new level of strategy gameplay.

I don’t believe this would justify the effort required to code the ai to use this facility sensibly. Giving it to the player only would run against TW’s design philosophy and would give the player too much of an advantage. The game is already weighted in our favour as indicated by the opening comments in last weeks dev blog:

ultimately the player, as the hero of the story, is supposed to win

People don’t buy games that always beat them.

 

[Lord Engineer (Castor)]

The idea makes sense in theory, but I'm not sure how it would actually pan out.

The idea of changing wages reminds me of a city building game with taxes, higher pay equals higher moral and lower pay leads to lower moral. In those types of games it makes sense and I only really bothered to change tax rates if the situation was dire. I think something similar would happen to wages if this was implemented. As highlighted by NPC99 it could very easily give the player a big advantage and would probably be difficult to code the AI to use it in a sensible manner.

As for alternative forms of payment, apart from the example you provided I can't really think of all that many. Maybe you promise a lord a fief if they join your army but I think this thread is more about troops anyway.

Still I like the idea. Also I would think this falls more under logistics than strategy. Tactics wins battles, strategy wins wars, but that's all irrelevant if you have bad logistics.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Greetings community!

I've searched on the forums and found nothing related to this, so here am I posting.

What you guys think about modifying wages and forms of payment?

Let's suppose you could reduce wages in times of peace in exchange of a debuff on morale, or if you prefer, you could reduce wages in time of war but complement it with looting profits, also causing a negative effect on party morale. This suggestion makes the player more free to manage his money and his troops, and then he could use smart-money-use to overcome times of finnancial difficulties, adding a new level of strategy gameplay.

I think that's a very good idea.
We know that the possibility of building castles was eliminated but we still don't know how the settlement's management panel works (considering that it hasn't been eliminated).

Spoiler

In that panel you could modify the taxes, perhaps in the panel of army management we will find a similar solution for the troop salary

Spoiler

People don’t buy games that always beat them.

.

NOPE, that's why there is Exanima, La Mulana, Traitor's Gate, Myst 2: Riven, Dwarf Fortress, Traitor's Gate, King's Quest V, Aces of the Deep, Apollo, Commandos, etc...
Now we want it all chopped and to the mouth, we have accommodated ourselves in the "pay to win" and in the "People don't buy games that always beat them" and of course the industry offers us what we demand.

 

[John the Roleplayer]

I think a manageable form to include this would be as follows. The weekly party wage does not get deducted from your funds automatically. Instead you are presented with a dialogue and can choose whether to pay the full amount, half-wage or nothing. Maybe your leadership skill and perks could influence how drastic the impact on party morale is. To avoid having to decide this manually every week, you can tell your quartermaster (companion in the appropriate role) to pay one of these options automatically every time (though paying nothing every week, would likely not go well for very long).

However, the point about the AI remains. It could be inconvenient to include another decision for the campaign AI to take.   

 

[SenorZorros]

garrisoning already is a thing which allows you to pay half-wage in peacetime. I think it's better to expand that option to the pre-noble phase by building camps or stationing troops in other's towns and castles with all dangers and consequences. then you have almost the same feature already contained in another one.

 

[Roccoflipside]

We've already seen where troops can be stationed in an allied/friendly town or castle. Assuming that never got removed

 

[wormydowg]

I think a manageable form to include this would be as follows. The weekly party wage does not get deducted from your funds automatically. Instead you are presented with a dialogue and can choose whether to pay the full amount, half-wage or nothing. Maybe your leadership skill and perks could influence how drastic the impact on party morale is. To avoid having to decide this manually every week, you can tell your quartermaster (companion in the appropriate role) to pay one of these options automatically every time (though paying nothing every week, would likely not go well for very long).

However, the point about the AI remains. It could be inconvenient to include another decision for the campaign AI to take. 

There is already an organization modifier. low wages high organization decay. Profit!

 

[Brosiedon]

This seems like something perfect for a mod.

 

[wormydowg]

This seems like something perfect for a mod.

You know what the difference is between a mod and a feature is?

A game full of mods has higher entropy than a game full of features.

2nd law of thermodynamics, the entropy in a system can never decrease, but can remain constant provided that it's in a closed system under equilibrium.

When you open up your game to outside systems, you risk increasing the amount of disorder that is in your game.

And that ladies and gentlemen is why modding cannot be the answer to EVERYTHING!

Lol I apologize if I come off as a complete ****.

 

[Lord Engineer (Castor)]

This seems like something perfect for a mod.

You know what the difference is between a mod and a feature is?

A game full of mods has higher entropy than a game full of features.

2nd law of thermodynamics, the entropy in a system can never decrease, but can remain constant provided that it's in a closed system under equilibrium.

When you open up your game to outside systems, you risk increasing the amount of disorder that is in your game.

And that ladies and gentlemen is why modding cannot be the answer to EVERYTHING!

Lol I apologize if I come off as a complete ****.

While the description of a fundamental law in physics was appreciated I would argue it wasn't wholly necessary. Cool though.

I would argue most people who use mods, especially those who have been doing it for a while, know that most modding damages the stability of a game. Patches and bug fixes generally don't for obvious reasons.

 

[wormydowg]

This seems like something perfect for a mod.

You know what the difference is between a mod and a feature is?

A game full of mods has higher entropy than a game full of features.

2nd law of thermodynamics, the entropy in a system can never decrease, but can remain constant provided that it's in a closed system under equilibrium.

When you open up your game to outside systems, you risk increasing the amount of disorder that is in your game.

And that ladies and gentlemen is why modding cannot be the answer to EVERYTHING!

Lol I apologize if I come off as a complete ****.

While the description of a fundamental law in physics was appreciated I would argue it wasn't wholly necessary. Cool though.

I would argue most people who use mods, especially those who have been doing it for a while, know that most modding damages the stability of a game. Patches and bug fixes generally don't for obvious reasons.

Yeah & no I just thought it was an amazing application. I mean while patches and bug fixes do, increase the instability of the game (on principal, even though they would improves game play), given their size it wouldn't be by much. Usually developer patches  are better than community patches... But a patch it self is a small addition to a closed system. Where as a mod that changes the wages of your soldiers and adjusts their morale according, it's really hard to see that not becoming problematic, especially to anyone who would like to add more than one mod to their game.

The fundamental law was to emphasize an absolute.

Suprisingly though, the standalone version of Dayz managed to break that law entirely 

 

[NPC99]

Provided we don’t load incompatible mods, hopefully the main issue with running multiple mods will be their impact on game balance as opposed to underlying program stability.

Unlike Warband, the vanilla game scripts will not be directly modifiable by modders. However, it will be possible for modders to add new scripts as plugins and also have modifications for XML data files. In Warband, we had the problem that, whenever we released a new version or patch, almost all existing mods would immediately become incompatible with the new version and modders had to go through the lengthy process of reapplying their changes on the new version’s scripts. Moreover, it was impossible for players to run multiple mods in conjunction. The new system will make modders’ lives much easier and also support multiple mods...

...Modders who want to change an existing behavior (like party members deserting when morale is low) will have two options: Either they will modify the default formula, or if that’s not adequate for some reason, they will be able to disable the default behavior entirely and add a new one from scratch.

 

[Revverie]

I don't know anything about modding but statements like those lead me into thinking modders can actually make a completely different game out of this one

 

[wormydowg]

I don't know anything about modding but statements like those lead me into thinking modders can actually make a completely different game out of this one

I've ruined a lot of games with that attitude.

Not ruined... But had the most beautiful experience, only for a game update or an incompatible mod be released that would essentially make the decision between the two quite difficult.

But yes warband had one of the best starwars games ever... A+
Starwars/disney to this day hasn't made a game that can compete.
Imo tho, idk one republic was definitely a gem.

 

[Desideratus]

...Right. Attempts to apply thermodynamics and entropy to software aside, this is how I suspect it would be done. Based on user inputs - hopefully Bannerlord gives us easy ways to do this - you apply a modifier to troop wages like multiplying by a percentage, and a flat malus to party morale. How that's done is dependent on whether or not Bannerlord gives us the ability to do those things easily. If not I figure we can hack it in some horrible horrible way.

 

[wormydowg]

...Right. Attempts to apply thermodynamics and entropy to software aside, this is how I suspect it would be done. Based on user inputs - hopefully Bannerlord gives us easy ways to do this - you apply a modifier to troop wages like multiplying by a percentage, and a flat malus to party morale. How that's done is dependent on whether or not Bannerlord gives us the ability to do those things easily. If not I figure we can hack it in some horrible horrible way.

.... This is something that would completely change how the entire game is played for AI units. Now you gotta give all The AI finance degrees  .

You wouldn't want this done through a mod period. It would certainly limit other mods, and force popular mods to make compatibility patches for their mods. If they even wanted that version of the modded game compatible.