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Planet Mercenary

D

Duggan

Well-known member
Working on the Planet Mercenary system. It's a relatively simple one, so it seemed like a decent one for me to strike out on. Unfortunately, I do seem to do a lot of striking out... it's a slow learning process.

Because all of the cool kids seem to be doing it, the parameters of the system:
  • Skills (They have a rank from 0 to 9 at character start, and a selection of specialties. Command Packages, Backgrounds, and Sophont Types can add skill ranks that count against the cap)
    • 10 Combat skills
    • 11 Mental skills
    • 9 Physical skills
    • 8 Social skills
  • 7 Command Packages (chosen at character creation, adds to particular skill bonuses. There are some either/or items like "+2 Computers or Mechanic")
  • 10 Background Packages (as Command Packages, skill ranks stack)
  • Sophont Types (basically Races, includes skill ranks, skill specializations,
    skill check penalties, abilities, and natural attacks)
    • 5 Common Sophont types
    • 9 Uncommon Sophont types
    • 2 Advanced Sophont types (AI/Robots may be a stretch goal because they're handled differently. Carbosilicate Amorphs are not as bad, but change skill costs)
  • 3 Derived statistics (well, 2 really. RiPPs is based on what the GC and the cards give you)
  • Company Creation and Equipment (not certain how smoothly this will go... basically, all players are assumed to be drawing from the same resources, so a portfolio should have 1 Company, and purchases should be drawn from it)
    • AI Rating
    • Company Resources (this is a numeric value)
    • Reputation
    • Supplies (also the numeric value)
    • Ship (has its own statistics)
    • Equipment (bought via Supplies and which players then pick from)
    • Fireteams (up to 3 (or higher via cards?) grunts who have 1 of 5 roles that add to the Fireteam's total damage and skill bonus). Fireteams may also have one or more Qualities attached to them permanently or temporarily that offers bonuses.
    • Grunts (the named ones, which have a name and the number of times they survived Ablative Meat. They can be used to create characters or replace Fireteam members)
  • Equipment (There's Armor, Weapons, General Material, and Vehicles. All but General Material can be customized, although I plan to start with the preconfigured ones)

Github repository for the system
 
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That is the nature of what we do. It's a steep learning curve. My background in coding C++ and Applied Computational Mathematics has helped considerably though. :D
 
Heh. I've got over a decade in C#, Java, and a number of other languages, and several years maintaining Mutants & Masterminds files. I'm just hitting a lot of walls on this one. I think I've been spoiled by fully-featured IDEs and comprehensive documentation.
 
Duggan said:
Heh. I've got over a decade in C#, Java, and a number of other languages, and several years maintaining Mutants & Masterminds files. I'm just hitting a lot of walls on this one. I think I've been spoiled by fully-featured IDEs and comprehensive documentation.
Click to expand...

I had to learn most of this with a combination of brute force, documentation, and experience in coding algorithms. This is far easier than building matrix algorithms to solve ordinary differential equations via numeric methods. I found there is plenty of XML documentation out there for basic XML stuff. Once you get to the structure of XML it isn't so bad.
 
I currently have all of the basic data in other than the AI build rules. Skills, Specializations, Command Packages, Backgrounds, Sophonts. Most of the equipment is in, although I'm still deciding how to present it. Advancements do not currently work correctly, nor do bootstrapped Specializations from the various background features, due to me not being certain how to add a new child to a gizmo via a script. Fireteams are also not currently working correctly, although I think I'm close.

Next step will probably be doing the character sheets. Then, I'll have enough that my players will be able to create their characters via Hero Lab at least.
 
Status of the implementation:
  • Skills, Specialties, Backgrounds, Command Packages, and all Sophont Types but AIs are in and functional.
    • I attempted to implement some items from Reddit, but got hung up on conditional Specialties.
  • Some equipment is in, although I need to customize the screens. No custom equipment yet.
  • Advances work, although I need to modify the Journal to allow for adding an Advancement slot with an entry.
  • Fireteams... I know this should be an easy one, but I just haven't been able to sit down and hash it out.
  • Companies should be reasonably doable as a "character type". If I can get it to be able to assign which mercenaries are associated with it (something which seems vaguely plausible based on how I understand the code), I'll shift to tracking how much each mercenary "costs" based on equipment, and adding them to a Company will reduce its totals.
  • Character sheets... I should really do those one of these days. Otherwise, this is just kind of wanking about.
 
Oh, and Advances are good, and Fireteams made a breakthrough once Mathias set me straight on why updates did not seem to be sticking.
 
I'm currently stalled in the character sheet. I get the basic idea of it, but the incremental "adjust this item by 10, reload, print preview, rinse and repeat" process of getting things to line up is sucking my will to move forward.
 
Duggan said:
I'm currently stalled in the character sheet. I get the basic idea of it, but the incremental "adjust this item by 10, reload, print preview, rinse and repeat" process of getting things to line up is sucking my will to move forward.
Click to expand...

Sadly, this is the easiest part of the coding... It's repetitive yes but this is the easy part. If you did the game system, the sheet output is usually the easiest part. For the White Wolf systems I am doing, I was able to minimize the number of "oPick" templates I needed by having one for traits and dots. I only had to make different pick outputs for a handful of things. I found the sheet to be the simplest part of the code output. I don't save it for last though. I code it in parts as I go. I started with attributes and abilities, then as I added new components to the structure file I would do the sheet and statblock output at the same time that way everything was built as I went along.
 
TL;DR: I was rereading the documentation via PDF format during a long car ride, and I'm realizing a half a dozen things that would have worked better if I started from scratch, but I'm not so far from getting a working product. I just need to figure out Gizmos for customizable vehicles and weapons, and then reach some sort of decision for how to handle (or not) Grunts vs PCs vs Companies.
 
I've got the weapon qualities working to some degree. There's a part of me that wants to retrofit damage to this model...

The break from coding was worse than I thought. Can't remember how half of this works.
 
Got a bit back into this this weekend. I have weapon enhancements set up as Gizmos and I'm getting the trait history to work to show the breakdown. It's interesting work. I'm currently also fiddling around to see if I can get this to work in Eclipse to automagically gather all of the files into one place.
 
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