[Suggestion] Reputation Problem #1: Low Reputation

[mjbroekman]

There are now many threads (only one of which is in the Suggestions forum) that I am aware of relating to problems surrounding low reputation. There may be more and I know of at least one suggestion regarding high reputation.

As a result, and because it's sometimes hard to follow all the different threads and discussions, I felt it important to consolidate the discussions into a suggestion post with a concrete suggestion for a JSON hotfix and a couple of suggestions for a more dynamic reputation system.

Please bear with me and if you know of additional threads regarding LOW reputation, please link them in the comments.

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Disclaimer: At first I didn't think much of the claim that there was a problem with the reputation system. I didn't feel like it was too difficult to control your reputation and prevent blackballing yourself. However, on reading the experiences and discussing it in the threads, as well as trying out certain actions in my saves, I've come to agree with the majority of folks. Low reputation is incredibly easy to fall into and, if not caught early enough, incredibly tedious and hard to get out of...especially in Career Mode.
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Threads specifically related to low reputation or mission availability:
@Knotz - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...recover-reputation-once-its-at-hated.1132969/
@Leraje_ - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/thoughts-on-reputation-and-alliances.1133284/
@Sorbo - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...r-oversights-in-reputation-mechanics.1133270/
@eelnicki - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/reweigh-mission-reputation-loss.1133045/
@Icewraith - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...m-vs-travel-contracts-and-reputation.1134507/
@Hagen-Volker - bug report - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...e-to-get-contracts-from-that-faction.1132960/
@Fletchtar - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...reputation-and-contract-availability.1137607/
@Kereminde - comment - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ggested-solution.1133319/page-3#post-24967290

@Sharazad (and others, apologies as I don't remeber which threads they were in) point out that access to stores (Black Market or Faction) that the player should have access to if their reputation with the system faction is too low. Examples given:

• If you are Loathed by Davion, you can't access any of the Steiner Faction Stores if you are Allied with Steiner.
• If you are Loathed by Liao, you can't access the Kurita Faction Store in their space if you are Allied with Kurita.

Thread:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/arg-a-pirates-life-for-me.1134856/

I don't know how to address that in JSON for a hotfix and it sounds like a bug to me.

Additionally, @Edmon touches on the problem of low reputation in https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ss-of-flashpoint-a-suggested-solution.1133319 but talks mostly about high reputation goals.

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In these threads, a number of suggestions have been made already (and apologies if I don't list your idea for low reputation here). If I missed your suggestion, please repost it below or link to it. I will try to keep the top post updated.

From @FArheinFisch Use mrb rating for available contract difficulty.

From @Jade_Rook What if lower rep didn't restrict you from [3 skull] missions, but instead drastically reduced the pay? What if you could take 3 skull missions from factions which loath you (-80 to -100 rep), but the mission only pays 25% of what it would normally?

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HotFix - JSON Changes
Thanks for @Amechwarrior and @draqsko for pointing out the SimGameConstants settings where reputation is set up.

The JSON changes are designed with two purposes in mind. First, reducing the size of the hole that limits your ability to get contracts. Second, reducing the difficulty of filling that hole.

Currently, reputation is a pretty evenly divided range of "feelings" that a faction can have you, starting at 0, and moving +/- 20 in each direction twice, before making a big jump.

Reduce the size of the hole
Current (SimGameConstants.json lines 242 - 247)

         "LoathedReputation" : -80,
         "HatedReputation" : -40,
         "DislikedReputation" : -20,
         "LikedReputation" : 20,
         "FriendlyReputation" : 40,
         "HonoredReputation" : 80,

HotFix #1
Start the gaps wide and make them progressively smaller, to provide the difficulty of reaching the new stages and the ease of coming off the absolute worst state. This gives you a 40 point swing state at "Indifferent", 40 point states at Liked/Disliked, 30 point states at Friendly/Hated, and very narrow bands at Honored/Loathed.

         "LoathedReputation" : -90,
         "HatedReputation" : -60,
         "DislikedReputation" : -20,
         "LikedReputation" : 20,
         "FriendlyReputation" : 60,
         "HonoredReputation" : 90,

Make the hole easier to fill
CAMPAIGN MODE
Current (SimGameConstants.json lines 251 - 253 for Campaign Mode)

        "LoathedMaxContractDifficulty" : -3,
        "HatedMaxContractDifficulty" : -2,
        "DislikedMaxContractDifficulty" : -1,

This is what ends up limiting the difficulty of the contracts that are available to you and, in the end, is the cause of the blackhole from which it is hard to recover from in Campaign Mode. Other than Pirate locations, there are few 3-Skull planets that can host missions for Loathed mercenaries. While this may seem appropriate, it locks out a reasonable amount of content for players that enjoy the sandbox experience and want to continue playing a single merc company for a significant amount of time.

HotFix #2 - Campaign Mode
Set the MaxContractDifficulty to one less than what an Indifferent merc company would take. Indifferent is a MaxContractDifficulty of 1 (from what I can tell, this is 1/2 skull above Global Difficulty in Campaign Mode). So, for anyone with a lower than Indifferent reputation, limit them to 0 above the Global Difficulty.

        "LoathedMaxContractDifficulty" : 0,
        "HatedMaxContractDifficulty" : 0,
        "DislikedMaxContractDifficulty" : 0,

CAREER MODE
Current (SimGameConstants.json lines 969 - 972 for Career Mode)
There is a steep (1.5 skull) drop from Indifferent to Disliked and then a steady fall to the bottom.

        "LoathedMaxContractDifficulty" : 1,
        "HatedMaxContractDifficulty" : 2,
        "DislikedMaxContractDifficulty" : 3,
        "IndifferentMaxContractDifficulty" : 6,

HotFix #2 - Career Mode
Smooth the decline from the top to the bottom into 1/2 skull steps.

        "LoathedMaxContractDifficulty" : 4,
        "HatedMaxContractDifficulty" : 5,
        "DislikedMaxContractDifficulty" : 6,
        "IndifferentMaxContractDifficulty" : 7,

Honored is at 10, Liked, is at 9, Friendly is at 8. There is no real reason for Indifferent to be 6, so we boost that to 7, and then continue the decline from there, meaning Loathed is 1.5 skulls higher than it currently is.

But! you may say, where's the penalty for low reputation? In Career Mode, it's clear. There is a declining mission availability, but missions would be much more available. In Campaign Mode, it's not as clear.

I've tried playing with the reputation pay values but they didn't seem to actually change anything. The default is:

         "LoathedRepPaymentAdjustment" : -0.9,
         "HatedRepPaymentAdjustment" : -0.5,
         "DislikedRepPaymentAdjustment" : -0.1,

But I was getting multi-million C-Bill and 5/20 salvage contracts with Loathed factions and increasing that negative number didn't seem to be changing anything...so I'm not sure how to implement @Jade_Rook 's suggestion about giving a massive pay-cut for contracts as a hotfix.

But I did notice there are Shop Price adjustments...and that's another place that penalties can be placed.

Current (SimGameConstants.json lines 265 - 267)

        "HatedRepShopAdjustment" : 0.5,
        "DislikedRepShopAdjustment" : 0.2,
        "IndifferentRepShopAdjustment" : 0.1,

HotFix #3 - Penalize Low Reputation in Shops

        "HatedRepShopAdjustment" : 0.9,
        "DislikedRepShopAdjustment" : 0.5,
        "IndifferentRepShopAdjustment" : 0.2,

Stuck in a Hated Faction (you can't sell in Loathed shops) area and see that sweet SLDF Highlander part you want? Good luck at 90% mark-up.

UPDATE
Reduce the speed of digging the hole
Current (SimGameConstants.json lines 297 - 299)
Courtesy of @Jade_Rook in the comments...

        "TargetRepSuccessMod" : -0.8,
        "TargetRepGoodFaithMod" : -0.4,
        "TargetRepBadFaithMod" : 0,

This sets the ratio of reputation lost to reputation gained from the contract. Currently, if you succeed at a mission, you lose reputation at a rate of 80% of the reputation gained with the employer, 40% if it's a good faith loss, and 0% if it's a bad faith loss.

Since most people seem to be rather successful at their missions, this means you end up digging the negative rep hole very quickly if you even have a slight tendency to favor one faction over another.

To lessen the speed of that, we can reduce those numbers a bit. Thanks to @Jade_Rook for doing some testing on this below

...

I've removed the hotfix suggestion after doing some more testing on it. On a 4.5 star battle mission, the settings in the suggestion would've started the reputation difference at +14 sponsor, -9 target and on a max reputation run, that would've escalated to +23 sponsor, -14 target. On hindsight, that makes it far too easy to alternate your way to high reputations across the board.

While potentially a useful tool, I don't feel confident in it as a HOTFIX. There may well be a way to incorporate sponsor/target reputation in modifying the loss / gain percentage (LTS#3), but a straight, across-the-board improvement in that ratio (especially in light of the other options) seems inappropriate.

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Long Term Solution Suggestions FOR LOW REPUTATION

LTS Suggestion #1 (from @FArheinFisch )
This is probably the most elegant and appropriate solution to the issue of mission availability.

Use your MRB rating as the factor which decides the difficulty of contracts of that are available to the player. As your MRB rating goes up, you get contacted for harder and harder missions. Period, end of story.

LTS Suggestion #2 (adapted from @Jade_Rook )
Make your reputation really impact pay and salvage.

All missions have a base difficulty. Set the pay based on that. Then modify it based on reputation starting from "Indifferent".

Assuming a 3-skull mission with a max of 3/14 salvage, a rep modifier max of +13, and Indifferent reputation as the base:

"Disliked" should pay out 10% less c-bills and reputation and one step less salvage. Max salvage becomes 2/11. Max Reputation change becomes +11.
"Hated" should pay out 50% less c-bills and reputation and two steps less salvage. Max salvage becomes 2/8. Max Reputation change becomes +6.
"Loathed" should pay out 90% less c-bills and reputation and three steps less salvage. Max salvage becomes 1/6(?). Max Reputation change becomes +2.​

In combination with the adjusted Reputation bands (above), this still allows for reasonable exit strategies from maximum negative reputation.

LTS Suggestion #3 (from myself)
Make reputation more responsive to your current sponsor / target reputations.

Example:
The sponsor and target of a contract are both indifferent to you and running the mission at default settings would net you a +3/-3 rep change.

That same mission where the sponsor already likes you, might net you a +4 while the indifferent target is still -3.
On the other hand, if the sponsor is indifferent and the target likes you, the rep change is +3/-4. Why? because the target liked you, but then you went against them. "Some friend you are".
In reverse, if the sponsor DISLIKES you, then the rep bonus becomes +4. Why? "Because, maybe you're not that bad after all."

And then for each step away from "Indifferent" that bonus changes by 1. So, "Disliked/Liked" is + (sponsor)/-(target) 1, "Hated/Friendly" is +/- 2, "Loathed/Honored" is +/- 3.

LTS Suggestion #4 (from @NwFrplayer ) - Make loathed have a real consequence
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/low-reputation-consequence.1137263/

@NwFrplayer rightly points out that if you don't care about being loathed by a faction, there is virtually no consequence for it. They posit an interesting way to "make" the player care and that is by having a sort of "bounty hunter" in-mission possibility, where the worse your relationship is with a faction, the more likely a random opfor will show up in-mission and attempt to kill you. Not sure how feasible it is, but it's definitely interesting.

On the flip side, this could have interesting consequences on the positive side, where there is a random chance of a dialogue offering allied units for an employer that you have good relations with.

Both of those may fit better as HBS develops the reputation / relationship system more with various non-faction groups (example, pissing off Mason's Marauders may have them drop in on a mission to attack you. Helping out the Kell Hounds may have them offer a couple of mechs in support of mission later on, etc).

LTS Suggestion #5 - ( from @Kereminde ) - don't populate mission list with 'unacceptable' missions
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ggested-solution.1133319/page-3#post-24967290

The reputation system gates what the MAXIMUM difficulty can be for a given contract to be accepted and the Global and System Difficulty Levels seem to gate the MINIMUM difficulty available on a given system. However, contract lists sometimes fill up with contracts that can't be accepted due to reputation reasons. Making the procgen contract system populate with contracts you can take would eliminate the issue of mission availability entirely.

[Note: from me]The easiest way to avoid filling with contracts that can't be accepted (based on my coding experience in other languages and using the logic that seems to be currently used) would be to do something like this:
1. Generate the contract list at the current difficulty - So if you're at a diff10 (5-skull) system, generate the contract list for that difficulty (10 +/- 1 = 4.5 - 5.5).
2. Eliminate any contracts that the player can't accept.
3. Regenerate contracts at ( difficulty - 2x variance ) FOR THE ELIMINATED FACTIONS - Why 2x variance? Because you have already attempted to fill "difficulty - 1x variance" in step 1 and need to attempt "newdiff + 1x variance" now. So now we have contracts of 8 +/- 1 (7 -> 9 = 3.5 - 4.5)
4. Repeat until approproiate amounts of contracts are created.

After step 1, you have the contracts for all acceptable factions, so every time you eliminate an unacceptable faction contract, you need to regenerate a lower difficulty contract for that same faction. You can either do that by simply looping over the difficulties regening contracts, or jumping right down to the "max contract difficulty" for that faction.

Alternately, the logic used to generate the procgen missions needs to have faction and difficulty "decisions" switched so you generate a list of missions and factions BEFORE determining the difficulty of those missions. This would allow you to cap the difficulty at whatever level reputation allows. This would also eliminate any "<5-skull" missions that can't be accepted when you are already honored.

LTS Suggestion #4 (from @BobaFatt - Regress towards indifferent

Is this too simplistic to just let all reputation slowly regress towards Indifferent over time, so if you spend a period of time not actively antagonizing a loathed faction they will eventually “just” hate or dislike you. Similarly with positive reputation, if you ally with somebody and then just don’t take missions for them they will think a little less of you over time.

[Note: from me]
I think this would add a certain amount realism and would be awesome if the timeline were extended a great deal or if we were thinking in grand strategy terms. For a 1200 day career though, I'm not sure how much difference that would make. I'm not sure regression in days would be appropriate (too fast), weeks would mean you would move closer just about every jump, months would probably be 'not enough to matter' and years would definitely be "not enough to matter".

Maybe in terms 'jumps' or even contracts though. It's a great idea but I'm just not sure how you would measure it and balancing it would be quite the exercise.

 

[mjbroekman]

As an additional testing point since the PaymentAdjustment in the "Story" section of the JSON didn't seem to impact things, I did two things:

1. I updated the negative numbers to whole numbers: Disliked was -1. Hated was -2. Loathed was -3.
2. I copied the PaymentAdjustment values into the Finances section as well.

Then I dropped into my post-campaign game and took missions. There didn't appear to be any change in the payouts on those missions compared to, say, missions for Indifferent Factions.

I'm going to test by increasing the negative number to -10 and see if those adjustments are to the "difficulty" used in the calculation as opposed to a straight multiplier on the payout.

If that is the case, then the positive payouts aren't really working right either.

 

[mjbroekman]

So, I tested out setting the PaymentAmount for "Liked" and lower to -10 in the JSON. The net result was that it showed a "+0% Job Payouts" in the contract.

A second test of setting it to -0.9 (on the theory that numbers over -1 were being ignored) also resulted in a "+0% Job Payouts".

Thus, one of two things is happening... either the negative reputation modifer NEVER worked in contract negotiations, or the change in the reputation system broke something.

On the other hand, POSITIVE PaymentAmount settings do show up correctly in the contract negotiations which leads to an interesting possibility...

Lowering the ContractPricePerDifficulty and basing EVERYTHING on a +0% at Loathed and going +% from there... time to test more.
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UPDATE
I'm not convinced that the PaymentAmount settings work at all now...nor am I convinced that the ContractPricePerDifficulty works.

I set the following in SimGameConstants.json:

   "Finances": {
       ...
       "ContractPricePerDifficulty" : 18000,
       ...
   "Story": {
       ...
       "LoathedRepPaymentAdjustment": 0,
       "HatedRepPaymentAdjustment": 0.5,
       "DislikedRepPaymentAdjustment": 0.1,
       "IndifferentRepPaymentAdjustment": 1,
       "LikedRepPaymentAdjustment": 5,
       "FriendlyRepPaymentAdjustment": 7.5,
       "HonoredRepPaymentAdjustment": 10,

I was in Taurian space and they are Indifferent to me, but I am honored by the Federated Suns. By all rights, I should see "+100% Job Payout" for Taurian contracts because of the "1" setting.

I didn't. I saw "+0% Job Payout".

On the other hand, I did see the correct "+1000% Job Payout" for Davion contracts when I moused over the reputation icon.

HOWEVER (and it's a huge however), the contracts didn't reflect the payout modification...AND THEY DIDN'T REFLECT THE ContractPricePerDifficulty setting. By all rights, contracts SHOULD have been paying out 10% of what they "normally" would have...but they weren't. Contracts were paying out the exact same.

And then I realized the setting might controlled by the difficulty settings...in a separate file.

And they were. Instead of SimGameConstants/SimGameConstants.json, the base contract payout is set in data/constants/DifficultySettings.json.

So I changed the values there to be 10% of their default settings and started up my save game.

And here I found the SUPER interesting part...
The PaymentAdjustment is based not on the contract sponsor but rather on the system owner. So it doesn't matter that the Federated Suns is offering work, if the contract is in Taurian space. If the contract is in Taurian space, it uses the Taurian reputation modifier.

Examples (with 18,000 cbills per skull):

• 3-skull Recovery mission in Taurian space (Ishtar) offered by Davion: 42,900cbills
• 4-skull Destroy Base mission in Taurian space (Ishtar) offered the Taurians: 106,700cbills
• 5-skull Destroy Base mission in Davion space (Midale) offered by Davion: 1.2 MILLION cbills

Intuitively, you would think that the payouts should be based on the reputation with the offering party, NOT the reputation with system owner.

UPDATE 2:
Switching back to the original files made all the contract payout values show up in the tooltip properly. I haven't been able to find a sufficient array of contracts to verify if the payout amounts are impacted the same.

 

[mjbroekman]

Setting high ShopAdjustment values worked properly and showed the right value. The shop adjustment is applied to the purchase prices in shops. The ShopAdjustment doesn't impact price that the PLAYER sells at (presumably because that's already ~90% below the purchase price).

 

[GallantDuke]

Thanks for compiling the information together!

I've been trying to balance the rep gain myself with the suggestion of the community. This is what I managed so far:

- Adjust max contract difficulty for lower rep: I changed the lower 3 reps to '6' on their max contract difficulty since the decrease payout should be enough of a punishment (assuming it works which you seemed to have determined does not).
- Lower all (career) planet difficulty: The Planet difficulty ranges from 1-9 but I adjusted it so that it ranges from -1-7. This works with...
- Increase Contract Difficulty Variance: So in SimGameConstants.json, there is a "ContractDifficultyVariance" under "Story" that controls the range of missions that will spawn.
E.g. Setting the contract variance to 3 will make missions spawn between 4-10 difficulty in a planet with a 7 planet difficulty.
- Increase number of contracts spawn: I changed the "MaxContractsPerSystem" under "Story" from 5 to 7 since I believe someone suggested more choice in selecting what missions to take will have an effect on rep since not taking missions is now an option. Still experimenting with this.

For the suggestion about MRB rating gating contracts, in SimGameConstants.json, under "CareerMode", there is a "GlobalContractDifficultyIncreasePerMRBRating" that might be useful. My suggestion would be setting it at 1, and then adjusting Planet difficulty from -2-5 such that when you reach 5 MRB rating the difficulty becomes 3-10.

Will continue to investigate what I can.

 

[mjbroekman]

Thanks for the great info @GallantDuke ... I'm going to play with that a little before making any updates to the original post just so I can see for myself how it interacts and so I am able to speak to it.

 

[GallantDuke]

Something interesting I found:

Adjusting "IndifferentRepPaymentAdjustment" does not seem to do anything. When I changed the number, it does not reflect the change when I hover over the indifferent icon in the reputation tab. The other PaymentAdjustment does reflect when I hover over their icons but I am unsure if it is applied to the actual contract.

Edit:
I'm coming to the same conclusion as you about payment adjustments not working at all. I compared a similar mission when I was indifferent and honored and the payout is the same. Not sure if it is a bug that nobody realised when payout was added to the settings.

Edit edit:
Not sure if you have tried it already, but when you tested the change in payout, did you visit another planet to refresh the contracts? I have no luck so far on my end.

 

[mjbroekman]

Something interesting I found:

Adjusting "IndifferentRepPaymentAdjustment" does not seem to do anything. When I changed the number, it does not reflect the change when I hover over the indifferent icon in the reputation tab. The other PaymentAdjustment does reflect when I hover over their icons but I am unsure if it is applied to the actual contract.

Edit:
I'm coming to the same conclusion as you about payment adjustments not working at all. I compared a similar mission when I was indifferent and honored and the payout is the same. Not sure if it is a bug that nobody realised when payout was added to the settings.

Edit edit:
Not sure if you have tried it already, but when you tested the change in payout, did you visit another planet to refresh the contracts? I have no luck so far on my end.

Yes. Not sure if you noticed, but I think the PaymentAdjustment is by system owner reputation, not contract sponsor. So outside of "faction space", you probably won't see any payment differences.

 

[mjbroekman]

For the suggestion about MRB rating gating contracts, in SimGameConstants.json, under "CareerMode", there is a "GlobalContractDifficultyIncreasePerMRBRating" that might be useful. My suggestion would be setting it at 1, and then adjusting Planet difficulty from -2-5 such that when you reach 5 MRB rating the difficulty becomes 3-10.

This is set to 0 (in mine, anyway). I believe that it to ensure that system difficulty never changes. When set to 1, I believe that every MRB rating would increase the system difficulty by 1/2 skull. That means the 1/2 skull systems would be 3 skull systems when you have a 5-star rating from the MRB (similar to Campaign mode).

This is not what we want. Instead, the desire is that when you are a low MRB-rated merc company, you won't see contracts for more than, say, "ContractDifficultyVariance" above your rating. So, with ContractDifficultyVariance at 1 and an MRB rating of 0, you wouldn't see anything higher than a 1 skull contract. When you work your way up to, say, an MRB rating of 1 (of 5), you would see contracts that range from 1/2 skull to 2 skulls. This way, by the time you reach an MRB rating of 4 (of 5), you would be able to see all contracts of every difficulty, regardless of faction reputation.

 

[Jade_Rook]

A great summary @mjbroekman !

This issue caught me by surprise. It comes up late game and I have been playing a loyalist career. If the Davions aren't willing to hire me, it doesn't matter to me. I don't want to work with them anyways.

I can confirm that at least the negative payment modifiers are not working. I had a set of half skull missions. Some were from Davion (who loathes me) and others from Kurita (who likes me). Both paid about 200k. The Davion missions should have been paying me 20k to 30k if the modifiers were working the way I thought they did.

There is another set of lines we could consider in SimGameConstants:

        "TargetRepSuccessMod" : -0.8,
        "TargetRepGoodFaithMod" : -0.4,
        "TargetRepBadFaithMod" : 0,

These determine how quickly a player digs themself into a reputation hole. These lines determine the reputation loss as a multiple of the base reputation gain for the mission. So on a successful mission you lose reputation with the target equal to 80% of the reputation you gain with the employer. I tested this by setting TargetRepSuccessMod and TargetRepGoodFaithMod to -0.1 and checking the expected rep loss on a mission. On a 1.5 skull mission, it was showing a max gain of 5 rep for the employer and a loss of 1 rep for the target, so these modifiers are active.

I would consider setting them to -0.6, -0.3, and 0. That would give players more time before hitting the severe Hated and Loathed penalties.

I like that there are significant penalties for being disliked by a faction and that the reputation is nearly a zero net gain, but I understand that other players don't play the same way I do.

 

[BobaFatt]

What about if reputation slowly regressed to center over time? Maybe 1 point towards center for both positive and negative reputation every in game month. So the far past has less weight than the recent past?

 

[GallantDuke]

Yes. Not sure if you noticed, but I think the PaymentAdjustment is by system owner reputation, not contract sponsor. So outside of "faction space", you probably won't see any payment differences.

I ran out of time to test this further so I can only speculate. I am assuming you mean the 'Contract Payment' (correct me if I am wrong). I always assume that this affected all contracts globally.

Although speaking of the settings, there is the salvage adjustment setting as well to toy with to implement what @Jade_Rook suggested.

This is set to 0 (in mine, anyway). I believe that it to ensure that system difficulty never changes. When set to 1, I believe that every MRB rating would increase the system difficulty by 1/2 skull. That means the 1/2 skull systems would be 3 skull systems when you have a 5-star rating from the MRB (similar to Campaign mode).

This is not what we want. Instead, the desire is that when you are a low MRB-rated merc company, you won't see contracts for more than, say, "ContractDifficultyVariance" above your rating. So, with ContractDifficultyVariance at 1 and an MRB rating of 0, you wouldn't see anything higher than a 1 skull contract. When you work your way up to, say, an MRB rating of 1 (of 5), you would see contracts that range from 1/2 skull to 2 skulls. This way, by the time you reach an MRB rating of 4 (of 5), you would be able to see all contracts of every difficulty, regardless of faction reputation.

You are right about how it works. Not sure about how to implement it though. With the tools we have so far, it's probably a combination of adjusting planet difficulty, contract variance, and MRB rating difficulty adjustment.

 

[mjbroekman]

Yeah. I'm not sure how the salvage values are adjusted. I saw entries in the DifficultySettings.json for setting the minimum salvage, but didn't see anything in the SimGame that might have impacted actual rates.

"LoathedRepPaymentAdjustment", etc. It takes effected based on which faction controls the system, not which faction is offering the job.

 

[mjbroekman]

For fun and crazy, I noticed that "Loathed" doesn't have a ShopAdjustment setting and I wondered if that was how the "Loathed won't sell to you" was implemented. More info after I load up a game and test it out.

 

[Amechwarrior]

I'd watch out on the "Reduce the speed of digging the hole" fix.

The point of those was to make sure you couldn't net gain both sides at once. If I took alternating jobs on a world I'd be able to raise my rep with both sides at 40% each and it might lead to not skipping over jobs against your favored faction you are trying to build up as the penalty is less.

Overall, great suggestions and I do think a hotfix is needed soon while they work out a matured system for the next big patch.

 

[scJazz]

I honestly do not think that any fix is required/desired/necessary.

Pay attention, manage your contracts, deal with the consequences.

 

[Amechwarrior]

I honestly do not think that any fix is required/desired/necessary.

Pay attention, manage your contracts, deal with the consequences.

How does this help people with massive negative rep in story mode gained prior to 1.3's rep adjustments?

 

[scJazz]

@mjbroekman First of all I'd like to thank you for putting all of this together. Hat tip also to everyone else.

I would like to take a moment to play Devil's Advocate. (This will no doubt hurt me more than it hurts you ) Yes, digging yourself out of a Reputation Hole is extremely hard. It seems to me however that this is not a bug but a feature. Bear with me for a moment...

In the pre-Flashpoint release Streams Mitch and Kiva both mentioned repeatedly that the Narrative Campaign had no consequences for decisions but Flashpoint does. They went so far as to say this as a feature in the 1.3/Flashpoint release, choices matter. They even demo'd it in one of the Streams with the decision to help "blah blah Mercs". Decisions have consequences!

Again, prior to 1.3/Flashpoint... decisions had absolutely no consequences except narrowly in Events and a 10% penalty to the purchase price from Stores. This allowed a carefree style of "sandbox" play. Planet hop, do the 2 missions that were typically available and then move on to the next hop. Unless you were enforcing a "house rule" there was never a need to actually worry about Reputation at all. So, now we arrive at this point. Lots of players who never considered their Reputation, ever, being "locked out" of choices when using pre-1.3/Flashpoint saves. This play

The 1.3/Flashpoint Reputation system introduced something new. An actual Reputation system, where decisions matter. Seriously, aside from the "house rules" players never gave even a thought about their Faction Rep while playing bounce around to all the wonderful planets with +++ items? Is it any wonder that playing the game using an old save where nothing else matters except run the 2 missions is probably screwed up.

And so now we have a bunch of players talking about the "sandbox" and the "reputation hole". Just to be clear here... there was never a "sandbox" prior to 1.3. Now we actually have one. So...

How does this help people with massive negative rep in story mode gained prior to 1.3's rep adjustments?

I do not think that there should be a fix at all.
Period. Full stop.

 

[scJazz]

What I would love to see which I haven't so far is... players playing in Campaign Mode, knowing what will happen, and the results.

 

[mjbroekman]

@scJazz I started in exactly the same place. I never had a problem with negative rep in the campaign. Didn't see any issues with low rep because of my playstyle and didn't have a problem with the consequences of low rep because... there wasn't one during the Campaign. The only "real" consequence occurred post-story if you decided to go negative with the Houses. But even then, because the difficulty was raised, the rep gain allowed by those contracts meant that you were one or two missions away from getting out of "the hole" in campaign mode. Finding those missions may be problematic, but if you do the "overshoot travel, stop at jump point, check contracts" trick, you don't waste all that much time looking. All you needed to do once you decided to "get out" was watch your contracts and avoid taking contracts against the house you were working on. But it was relatively "easy" because contracts at end-game difficulties allowed for +13 (or more) rep per mission.

In Career mode, becoming Loathed means you're limited to 1/2 skull missions...and that means a max of +3 rep per contract. If you're at -100, that's seven max rep contracts to get out of Loathed. And, after playing around with a post-story Campaign save and post-Career save, I came to the realization that just because I am more than happy to start another Career or Campaign to play with a different faction doesn't mean that other people should be locked out of "fixing" their reputation by limited mission availability.

Add on to the 7+ missions to exit Loathed in Career mode, you have the problem of not being able to access Allied faction stores in Loathed faction space (a separate but related problem), and suddenly there's content that should be accessible being blocked by an incredibly arduous gate that shouldn't even be there.

And, in conversation with folks, I kind of see their point about availability. Contracts through the MRB really should be available regardless of difficulty as long as your MRB rating is high enough. That being said, if a faction loathes you and you still want to work for them, I don't see why they wouldn't take you on but just pay you poorly.

That mindset is really what prompted me to compile this and put effort into it. I still don't think my Career plans (one per faction, one for pirates) or playstyle are going to change, but I understand the folks that want to play the same unit well beyond the end of the campaign / career score. I enjoy having different saves that allow me to try different things. Some people don't.

I, honestly, feel like MRB rating doesn't have a useful impact in the game right now and switching contract difficulty to use that instead of faction reputation will be a good thing over all.