Some research has turned up that the change appeared in v796, and indeed by Jonathan.
5-10x boosts.
A disguise training of 50 instead of 10, subsequently multiplied by your agility, makes for instant levelups.
Another option to consider, is to have the experience go into a buffer, which then trickles into skill over time.
You could spend a day working B&E on the apartments, however far up you feel you can risk it before getting caught (conservatives get suspicious about unlocked doors quickly now). Then spend the rest of the week doing something else until your liberal has sorted out everything they did wrong and what they should try next, and the trickling skill increase ends.
Ah it seems you are right. The changelog for revision 796 is as follows:
- Revised Heat/Secrecy system; Heat now risks raid when Heat>Secrecy
- Significantly increased chance of getting caught when hacking
- Reduced chance of prison scenes, but increased chance of effects
- Ledger only shows if you have currently active Liberals
- Large increase in Security/Stealth/Disguise learning rates
- More difficult Stealth/Disguise when committing crimes
- More difficult Stealth when in groupsIt was made on July 25, 2014, actually one of 2 revisions Jonathan S. Fox made that same day, the 2nd one, 797, having this short changelog:
Made lockpicking and door breaking more suspicious.I don't think I've changed the code from either of those revisions except for the code involving stuff in prison, it had a few bugs that I fixed but I preserved the intent of his changes. I don't revert changes by other developers, generally speaking, except if they are unintentional mistakes... but if someone intends a change and lists it in the changelog I do my best to preserve the intent of their change even if the way they coded it was buggy, I just try and make their change work better without any bugs, in a way that both they and I would like. So whenever Jonathan S. Fox, who has studied game design and I haven't, makes changes to the balance of the game, well the balance of the game is something I generally avoid changing anyway, and I also tend to avoid reverting stuff other people do especially him.
Now it is possible that maybe he went a little too far and may have made it too easy to level up Steath/Security/Disguise with one of the changes in revision 796. But personally I don't have any problem with that change... I actually think it's improved gameplay from my own playtesting since then and I like that change personally. But when I am playtesting I tend to like things that make the game easier since I'm trying to get through a whole lot of the game without running into problems so I can test the things I want to test. The increase in learning rates for those skills was directly balanced by making those skills harder and more likely to fail, although personally I haven't really experienced that problem when playing the game, usually because I go on solo missions and avoid committing crimes in front of witnesses, and he made those skills more likely to fail if you're in a group or if you commit crimes in front of people, both of which aren't really my style (I've always found that going around as a group and committing crimes in front of people tend to cause a lot of problems... you are more likely to get in trouble and have a fight on your hands as well as legal trouble.) The main problem with my style is, sending someone in solo means they get outnumbered easily by enemies so they have to have really good fighting skills, especially Dodge, and generally also need SEAL Stealth Armor to have both stealth and armor protection at the same time. But even SEAL Stealth Armor fails quite a bit, not as far as stealth goes, but as far as armor goes... if a bunch of people unload on you with machine guns you're very likely to die.
And if you are worried this makes the game too easy I would say, look again at those 2 changelogs, a lot of stuff there compensated for this being easier by making other things harder. Some changes I don't particularly enjoy when playtesting are the increased chances of getting raided based on heat and the increased chances of getting caught while hacking. Part of my strategy used to involve having a hacker just hack away in a safehouse and they'd never get raided, the main risk was that if they ever got arrested they'd end up in jail forever, or even get the death penalty if death penalty laws are C+, and it'd be basically impossible to get acquitted at trial if you'd done loads of hacking. If you combine the increased chances of getting caught while hacking and getting both criminal charges and heat, and the increased likelihood of raids based on heat and the decreased secrecy of locations with business fronts (from 95% down to 70%, quite the dramatic fall), well let's just say that as a player of the game and not as a developer, this makes me not want to do hacking as much. So personally I think right now there is a little bit of imbalance with secrecy (I think business fronts provide too little secrecy protection right now), and with hacking (the chances of getting caught, the heat, the chances of getting raided, and the legal consequences, they all make hacking much less desirable than it was before). So if I WERE to make balance changes on both of those I'd add the option for an upgraded business front that had very high secrecy: a CORPORATE business front, which would cost ONE MILLION DOLLARS to set up, 5 times as much as an anti-aircraft gun when anti-aircraft guns are illegal. And I'd also make something easier regarding hacking... perhaps allow "hacking" for people with no computer skill, where they would just read tutorials on hacking online and stuff like that, to be able to increase Computer skill to 1 if it's 0 without having to check polls every day (it'd increase it at about the same speed but without the annoyance of seeing polls every day if you don't actually want to see them and just want to train Computer). And I'd decrease the legal punishment for hacking... realistically speaking, although hacking is a serious crime, even the most infamous hackers don't get jail sentences THAT long in the real world. I also might add in a chance for hackers with a low Heart/Wisdom balance to join the FBI or NSA and do hacking for it (something that happens in the real world)... the in-game consequence of this would be, you would lose that LCS operative for good and they'd rat you out to the cops as an informant, which would work the same way in-game as when someone rats you out to the cops currently, except this would have the additional penalty that they would delete all the documents you've accumulated (AM radio memos, police records, cable news memos, etc., even the CCS Backer List if you have it, you'd lose all of them if a hacker defects to the FBI). So this would be pretty balanced... we would make things a bit easier on hackers... less jail time, easier to get found innocent, a bit less heat, less chance of being caught if you are very skilled, being able to learn hacking as a script kiddie with 0 Computer skill: at least some of those to make it easier but maybe not all of it. But then to compensate we'd only make things a BIT easier, not too much, and add a chance for the hacker to join the FBI or NSA if they are apprehended by the authorities and then they would remotely delete ALL documents that the LCS is in possession of, at all of its bases.
I'm not sure if I'll actually rebalance those things, it's just an idea, I'm not committed to it, I'm interested in feedback on those ideas, whether or not they'd be good to implement. If I don't get any positive feedback on those ideas I probably won't implement them (if I don't get positive OR negative feedback I MIGHT implement them, I dunno).
As for the increased learning rates of those skills, well I think the Stealth learning rate does need to be fairly high, if your Stealth skill is low, but maybe we could slow it down a bit at higher skill levels... it'd still go up when there's a Stealth check just not as fast. Same thing with Disguise. As for Security, I think we might actually do the exact opposite with it: make it something you learn slowly when the skill level is low but you'd be able to learn it faster when the skill level is higher. This is all to fit in with other game mechanics... with low Disguise or Stealth skill the failure rate is quite high so you'd need to learn faster then, but at higher levels the failure rate is much lower so you can learn slower, and it'll be balanced. As for Security, well at a low skill level you can go around trying to pick lots of locks and fail at most of them and still get a level up, even with a slow training speed. But at a high level, Security only increases if you have difficulty picking a lock usually, and it stays pretty static and can get hard to level up when it's higher, so at high levels we'd have a faster training speed... this would reflect Security being something where it's hard to learn at first but easier the more you know, whereas Disguise and Stealth would be easy to learn the basics of but hard to really master.
So what do people think of those ideas on rebalancing stuff, including learning rates, hacking, and expensive corporate business fronts for added secrecy? And with these corporate business fronts think of left-leaning companies like Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, or... uhm... well actually that's the only left-leaning company I can think of, most companies are right-wing although some right-wing companies pretend to be left-wing (Google, Comcast-owned MSNBC, etc.), despite the fact that management at those companies has them be part of right-wing organizations like ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (and donating money to Democrats like Google does doesn't mean they are left-wing, it means they are trying to curry influence with people in power and think Democrats might be sympathetic to their company's goals and willing to help them out, which is the same exact reason companies give money to Republicans, in both cases it's to gain influence and power with government officials). So my point is corporations are, generally speaking, inherently right-wing, although there are a few notable counter-examples (like some companies that are worker-owned or are on very good terms with labor unions) but they are a small minority of corporations. I guess another left-wing corporation could be a supermarket chain that sells organic fair trade vegan food and has all unionized workers who are paid a living wage... can't think of any supermarket chains that fit that description entirely though... for instance Whole Foods is run by a libertarian and libertarians are hostile towards labor unions... and while Wegmans workers have great wages and benefits, the food at Wegmans isn't all organic fair trade vegan stuff, it's a standard supermarket that has meat and everything and I'm not sure whether it's actually unionized. And I wouldn't consider Trader Joe's to fit the bill either... their ginger snaps have butter in them, that's an animal product... not vegan... plenty of ordinary grocery stores that aren't even remotely liberal don't put butter in their ginger snaps, not for vegan concerns, but just to save money on ingredients to make more profit. For that matter, Ben & Jerry's ice cream is full of dairy so it isn't vegan. There really aren't any True Elite Liberal companies out there. Nope, I can't even think of 1 that would qualify. Maybe possibly a company involved in open source software, like a company that makes Linux distributions or something... I dunno. There probably are some Elite Liberal corporations out there, I just don't know about them. I know Progressive Auto Insurance for years was run by a very left-wing CEO... at least very left-wing when compared to all the other CEOs of companies that size... but insurance is an inherently Conservative industry all about making profit, charging people high rates, and denying claims made by your own customers, to maximize profit. Progressive Auto Insurance had a different approach to other car insurance companies that allowed it to grow very fast... its left-wing CEO decided to insure dangerous drivers who get into lots of car accidents, and just charge them rates based on sound actuarial analysis that would be reasonable but still profitable. At that time, other car insurance companies all charged exorbitant rates to very bad drivers or might even refuse to have them as customers. Eventually though, Progressive Auto Insurance's business model spread to the rest of the car insurance industry and now all the companies are willing to insure bad drivers and can calculate just the right price to charge them and make a profit, so it turns out the business model of Progressive Auto Insurance isn't especially Liberal or Progressive. Oh yeah and some people claim Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway is left-wing... no he isn't, he just helped Burger King merge with Tim Horton's in Canada to avoid paying corporate taxes and save money, as one example. And as for Apple being liberal or Bill Gates being liberal don't make me laugh. Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation and GNU project is ultra-ultra left-wing, a real Elite Liberal, but both organizations he runs are nonprofits, not corporations, so they don't count. Anyway, hard to think of how an LCS-run corporation would operate, or how it would manage to fit into the corporate world and evade legal scrutiny but still uphold Liberalism. Well not that hard... have a unionized labor force, don't pollute, don't do tax evasion, don't harm animals or use animal products, don't do unethical research, pay workers a living wage, charge high prices to your Elite Liberal customers who can afford it while giving away free stuff to the poor if nobody buys it, and donate to Liberal causes.
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Topic: Learning bug in latest version? (Read 2745 times)