[Answered][Question] Should the soldier bonuses stack?

[Juku121]

Does the new question have a thread? Should one be made if not?

[Meridian]

I don't know.

So far I haven't seen a comment from any modder using commendations and bonuses, so hard to say if anyone's interested or not.

[Juku121]

Hmm. Well, it also affects players of mods that use those commendations, in a nonintuitive and not really clear manner. We've now had at least three players comment on this. Don't know if this make the issue relevant enough.

[Meridian]

Hmm. Well, it also affects players of mods that use those commendations, in a nonintuitive and not really clear manner. We've now had at least three players comment on this. Don't know if this make the issue relevant enough.

It is relevant, yes.
I already agreed with that.
I personally would also prefer if they stacked, see my comment from Feb 20th.

But it is not the players who decide, it's the modders.
(If 100 XCF players want it to stack, but the XCF modder doesn't want it to stack... I will listen to the modder.)
(And if modders don't say anything, I tend to stay with the currently available, used and documented functionality.)

Is it so difficult to imagine that I don't want to make breaking changes to mods without modders' approval?

[Solarius Scorch]

Yes, I think Master of X and such definitely should stack, if possible.

Not gonna lie, I am worried that this will make some soldiers overpowered; but that's on my side to take care of, if necessary.

[Dioxine]

From my side, as author of Piratez: if these commendations will stack (master of weapon etc.), I will be forced to remove them completely from my mod (or at least remove any bonuses); they will be way too powerful considering the number of possible commendations of this type (basically unlimited).

[Solarius Scorch]

Then how about only the highest commendation counting?

[Juku121]

The main issue here from the player side is not whether "Master of X" stacks or not, it's that it currently stacks inconsistently.

I would also like to point out that getting higher levels of these promotions is pretty hard. How many of your soldiers are going to end up with triple- and quadruple-digit kill counts? So removing low-level bonuses might also work.

[Mathel]

As I understand things, "Master of Sword 5" and "Master of Axe 5" (for example), are considered the same commendation and do not currently stack.
"Master of Sword 5" and  "Master of Sword 4" are different commendations, but "Master of Sword 5" removes "Master of Sword 4".
But it neither removes, nor deactivates "Master of Axe 4".

So if you decide to not have them stack, please do it thoroughly and have the highest instance of a soldier bonus deactivate any lesser instances in the same commendation line present.

[Meridian]

As I understand things, "Master of Sword 5" and "Master of Axe 5" (for example), are considered the same commendation and do not currently stack.
"Master of Sword 5" and  "Master of Sword 4" are different commendations, but "Master of Sword 5" removes "Master of Sword 4".
But it neither removes, nor deactivates "Master of Axe 4".

So if you decide to not have them stack, please do it thoroughly and have the highest instance of a soldier bonus deactivate any lesser instances in the same commendation line present.

That's because technically, none of this is true (none of this is actually happening in the background).

The game doesn't compare or consider the commendations in any way. At all.
The game only works with soldier bonuses they provide.
And not only they, but also soldier transformations.

There is currently no concept of "higher" or "highest" soldier bonus.
Soldier bonuses can only be equal or not equal, they cannot be sorted.

To have a hierarchy in soldier bonuses, I would need to design and implement a completely new soldier bonus mechanism.

Then how about only the highest commendation counting?

Same as above.
It's not commendations counting, it's soldier bonuses.
And I don't have any way of deciding, which is "the highest".

STR_BONUS_1 and STR_BONUS_2 may seem comparable to humans (visually it's obvious isn't it), but the game doesn't have any numeric parameter to compare them by.
Or even a parameter to say which ones belong to the same group and should even be compared (or not).

If a soldier transformation called "Convert to MEC" gives you "STR_BONUS_1" and a commendation called "Jedi" gives you "STR_BONUS_2", should they stack? or not? is "Jedi" commendation higher than "MEC" transformation?

[Meridian]

I'm not trying to be a dumbass here btw.

Just trying to explain why I cannot implement any of the two approaches.

I cannot implement the "intuitive stacking" (of commendations).
And I cannot implement the "intuitive non-stacking" (of commendations) either.

The stacking or non-stacking (of soldier bonuses) doesn't correspond to any of the two options above.

Both of these would require big and breaking changes.

[Solarius Scorch]

After reading this entire thread, and also a heated argument with Dioxine, I must retract my earlier message.

I still don't like how it works. I hate how it works now. But the alternative is even worse: either the bonuses from weapon mastery will grow uncontrollably (for example getting level 1 proficiency in 10 weapons is not hard, but will give you +10 Throwing), or the bonuses would have to be reduced to only be added every 2 or 3 levels, and empty levels are bad design. Since I have no good solution, I will drop the subject and pretend that there's no issue at all.

[Juku121]

Hmm, this is largely a design problem with the "Master of X" having such a multitude of bonuses in the first place. Either they all do something and can be stacked to stupidity, they don't (or at least have gaps) and look kinda odd and useless, or have some sort of limit (like only a limited number of such commendations allowed to give you bonuses) that goes against the idea of having a commendation per weapon in the first place.

I suppose that gives us the answer that the current situation is the best of the worst options as far as (several big) modders are concerned, and leave players to optimise their 10 different levels of "Master of X" and "Bane of Y" as they like.

[Vakrug]

The problem discussed in this topic is just an example of much bigger problem of this game. Right now there are countless counterintuitive mechanics in this game and only reading wiki can explain some (but not all) stuff. And commendation stacking/not stacking is just one of them. But I am still shocked how such strange behavior even got into a game. Is the idea of "1 soldier uses only 1 weapon" so deep in players minds?

[Meridian]

The problem discussed in this topic is just an example of much bigger problem of this game. Right now there are countless counterintuitive mechanics in this game and only reading wiki can explain some (but not all) stuff. And commendation stacking/not stacking is just one of them. But I am still shocked how such strange behavior even got into a game. Is the idea of "1 soldier uses only 1 weapon" so deep in players minds?

This idea got into the game by an explicit request (of several modders): https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,7405.0.html
The solution was heavily discussed (on discord) among modders and even the exact syntax was designed by modders.
The design limitations were properly described at the very beginning.

So to answer your question... it is a typical example of "mod it until it breaks"... it has happened a thousand times already and it will happen a million times more in the future.

Every second thread in the OXCE Support category begins something like this: "Can I misuse feature X to achieve Y?" or "Can I do XYZ using scripts or something even though it is not available in the game?"

Still surprised?

It is not possible to foresee all use and misuse of new (and old) features.
If I was 100% strict on possible misuse, I would never implement anything and reject everything.
And people already accuse me of rejecting everything...