Trying to Puzzle out Advances

In Planet Mercenary, the system I'm working on, there are essentially two advances. Either you gain a point in three distinct skills (two of which you're supposed to have used in the course of the scenario, but of course that's not really part of the program logic), or you buy a skill specialty. I'm working on the latter right now, and hitting some issues.

Background info

• Specializations exist as picks in a gizmo on the related skill. That was the easiest way to set up dialogs to pick specialties off of character creation so that only Specialties related to a skill where displayed.
• Most Specialties are unique, but there are two that are not and have a domain.
• You cannot have more Specialties than you have ranks in a skill.

Exclusion expression
The skeleton code has code for excluding unique items we've already added before:

For my character with two specialties already, that means an exclusion expression like "& !Specialty.spLongBeam & !Specialty.spMechJury" which is neat and tidy and works.

That works just fine, but I want to only display skills where it's possible to add a specialty, so I have code to try to exclude specialties which can't be added because there aren't sufficient skill ranks. I wound up with the following:

That, for the same character, produces an exclusion string of "& !Specialty.spAirEvad & !Specialty.spAirNav & !Specialty.spAirPurs & !Specialty.spAirStnt & !Specialty.spAthClmb & !Specialty.spAthFlght & !Specialty.spAthJump & !Specialty.spAthPurs & !Specialty.spAthRun & !Specialty.spAthStr & !Specialty.spAthSwim & !Specialty.spCarbBeam & !Specialty.spCarbNL & !Specialty.spCarbProj & !Specialty.spDecBluff & !Specialty.spDecDisg & !Specialty.spDecDist & !Specialty.spEconLcl & !Specialty.spEconPlan & !Specialty.spEconSec & !Specialty.spEmpGamb & !Specialty.spEmpGInfo & !Specialty.spEmpInfl & !Specialty.spEmpRSoph & !Specialty.spEngArch & !Specialty.spEngHab & !Specialty.spEngPlVeh & !Specialty.spEngVess & !Specialty.spExpBld & !Specialty.spExpDet & !Specialty.spExpDearm & !Specialty.spExpPlac & !Specialty.spGrndEvad & !Specialty.spGrndNav & !Specialty.spGrndPurs & !Specialty.spGrndStnt & !Specialty.spHvyBeam & !Specialty.spHvyNL & !Specialty.spHvyProj & !Specialty.spHistMil & !Specialty.spHistPoli & !Specialty.spHistRel & !Specialty.spHistSoph & !Specialty.spInspLead & !Specialty.spInspOra & !Specialty.spInspSed & !Specialty.spIntCoer & !Specialty.spIntInter & !Specialty.spIntTort & !Specialty.spLarcBE & !Specialty.spLarcPLoc & !Specialty.spLarcPPoc & !Specialty.spLarcSlgt & !Specialty.spLongBeam & !Specialty.spMechJury & !Specialty.spMedBatt & !Specialty.spMedFAid & !Specialty.spMedSurg & !Specialty.spMeleeCom & !Specialty.spMeleeEx & !Specialty.spMeleeUn & !Specialty.spMeleeWr & !Specialty.spNegBlck & !Specialty.spNegHagg & !Specialty.spNegPers & !Specialty.spPercHear & !Specialty.spPercMag & !Specialty.spPercSght & !Specialty.spPercSmll & !Specialty.spPercTste & !Specialty.spPercThrm & !Specialty.spPercTch & !Specialty.spPerfAct & !Specialty.spPerfCom & !Specialty.spPerfDnce & !Specialty.spPerfSong & !Specialty.spPistBeam & !Specialty.spPistNL & !Specialty.spPistProj & !Specialty.spScatBeam & !Specialty.spScatNL & !Specialty.spScatProj & !Specialty.spSpcEvad & !Specialty.spSpcNav & !Specialty.spSpcPurs & !Specialty.spSpcStnt & !Specialty.spStaWBall & !Specialty.spStaWBeam & !Specialty.spStaWMiss & !Specialty.spStlthHid & !Specialty.spStlthTai & !Specialty.spThrwAero & !Specialty.spThrwGren & !Specialty.spThrwImpr & !Specialty.spWatrEvad & !Specialty.spWatrNav & !Specialty.spWatrPurs & !Specialty.spWatStnt & !Specialty.spWillFort & !Specialty.spWillTena & !Specialty.spXenoWrld", which is long, but looks to hit all of the points. Except, well, it's not working. Every Specialty shows up, including the ones that were excluded before. Am I running into a limit on how large the field can be? It still prints without being cut off in the debug window. Maybe a limit for using it for tag exclusion? If I manually input a value of about half of those, it does work, which is suggestive.

I suppose I could rewrite the code as being "here's the list of things you can pick," but then I have the opposite issue of someone with 1 in each skill having every non-picked specialty on the list.

Or is there perhaps a way to set up subsequent changer tables so that they pick a skill, and then pick a relevant Specialty, like how the character creation does it?

Where does the Advance go?
Right now, the specialty isn't showing up, presumably because it didn't get added to the relevant skill. Where does it get assigned to? The Gizmo? The Advance thing? I'm having little luck figuring it out via the documentation and the debug window, although I'm still plugging away.

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I previously had a small issue with how to display Specialty values differently (since they're not specifically being brought up from the skills), but a look at the Savage World code provided a solution there.

Thank you.

I'm fairly certain for the latter, I need something with pushtags, or maybe pulltags, but I haven't quite figured out where yet.

I'm an idiot. That field explicitly sets a size limit of a 1000 characters, but that's 2,355 right there. Expanding the size creates a different error, where I'm getting picks that have nothing to do with Specialties, but I also haven't touched this code in a while, so this is likely a side effect from somewhere else.

And... not quite the idiot I thought I was. I expanded the field. It's still not working over a certain amount of characters. 990 characters goes through. I will keep experimenting to see what that upper limit is.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to give you much help recently, with so much to do for Starfinder, but the limit is 5000 characters, and this problem is why the <needtag> and <denytag> options were added to tables, because even at 5000 characters, you're eventually going to run into something that breaks that limit.

1058 doesn't work. Somewhere between 990 and 1012 is where it seems to ignore the entire tag expression. That's also the line between 43 and 44 conditions inside the expression if that makes a difference. I guess I have hit some sort of internal limit. I'll probably try a different approach tonight.

@Matthias: I figured something had drawn you away. No worries.

Incidentally, I found a partial solution. Because every Specialty is tagged with the skill it applies to, I was able to instead bar individual skills when there were no possibilities (which is the case when the number of ranks in the skill are not greater than the number of specialties the character has in that skill). Since most characters have many skills they have no ranks in, this will work for now, but I feel like this is bound to break again at some point.


Next step is to figure out if there's a nice way to define three independent skills for the "Advance 3 different skills by 1 point" Advance without having to define a custom portal for each.

I couldn't find a way to avoid the separate portals. *shrug* Small things. Now, to prevent the form from validating if the same skills are picked for two or more of the choices.

Would it not be simpler to just display the specialties, regardless of skill ranks, and use the validation rules to warn about insufficient skill ranks?

That's a possibility. I partly limited the list because otherwise it's just way too much.

I also got it to avoid allowing skill duplication.

Duggan said:

That's a possibility. I partly limited the list because otherwise it's just way too much.

I also got it to avoid allowing skill duplication.

Click to expand...

Not trying to be facetious here, because there are some things I still don't grasp very well, but can't you avoid skill duplication by designating each skill as "add once" or "is unique" or something like that?

EightBitz said:

Not trying to be facetious here, because there are some things I still don't grasp very well, but can't you avoid skill duplication by designating each skill as "add once" or "is unique" or something like that?

Click to expand...

Ah, well, in this system, everyone has every skill at the start, just at 0 ranks. There's no such thing as a "Trained skill". The system for Advances is that, at the end of a successful job, every player chooses to either gain a new Skill Specialty, or to advance three different skills (two of which are supposed to be skills that they used) by one point each. Anyhow, because every skill chosen is a Pick on the Advance, I just modified the code so that it excluded any skill that already existed. So, when in the dialog, if you set two of the skill choices to Athletics and Xenobiology, the selection logic for the third one is "Skill.? & !skAthlete & !skXeno". ^_^ It works pretty well.

Duggan said:

Ah, well, in this system, everyone has every skill at the start, just at 0 ranks. There's no such thing as a "Trained skill". The system for Advances is that, at the end of a successful job, every player chooses to either gain a new Skill Specialty, or to advance three different skills (two of which are supposed to be skills that they used) by one point each. Anyhow, because every skill chosen is a Pick on the Advance, I just modified the code so that it excluded any skill that already existed. So, when in the dialog, if you set two of the skill choices to Athletics and Xenobiology, the selection logic for the third one is "Skill.? & !skAthlete & !skXeno". ^_^ It works pretty well.

Click to expand...

But you shouldn't have to do it that way ... I don't think. Unless we're talking past each other, which is quite possible. Regardez vous:


You see that line that says isunique="yes"? That means that the skill can only be picked one time. It can't be chosen multiple times. That should be all you need to prevent skill duplication.

Huh. I wasn't thinking of it that way. That said, it doesn't work for me because the skills were all marked as unique and, until I made the change to the selection logic, it was possible to select the same skill for multiple Choice boxes, adding multiple copies of the pick to the advance, and causing errors when you tried to remove one of them.

Duggan said:

Huh. I wasn't thinking of it that way. That said, it doesn't work for me because the skills were all marked as unique and, until I made the change to the selection logic, it was possible to select the same skill for multiple Choice boxes, adding multiple copies of the pick to the advance, and causing errors when you tried to remove one of them.

Click to expand...

Well, foo. I thought I had a working example of this, but I can't find it. So maybe I was just imagining things.

Ah, were you the other person working on something like this? I found a reference on the boards, with Mathias advising just making it a Validation thing, but I couldn't remember who it was, or which system.

Duggan said:

Ah, were you the other person working on something like this? I found a reference on the boards, with Mathias advising just making it a Validation thing, but I couldn't remember who it was, or which system.

Click to expand...

I have asked a question in the past where I've received that type of answer. I wasn't too keen on it at the time, but I realized it was the right answer. In general, it's less work, and it allows for instances where a GM might grant an exception to a rule, regardless of validation errors.