Reputation - Faction and Personal

[Legacy_henesua]

                I am confused about how Reputation and Factions work, but for a number of things I am doing in my module, I need to have a firm understanding. So here are a few questions:

(1) If you change the faction of an NPC, what happens to all the personal reputation information that the NPC has? Does it simply forget how it treated other individuals and take on the defaults of the new faction?
(2) How do you adjust the personal reputation of an individual towards another individual?  (AdjustReputation - adjusts an individual's reputation with an entire faction)
(3) If a PC switches parties, what happens to their personal reputation? For example, I have a system which enables a PC to join an NPC faction. Via script I AdjustReputation for the PC onClientEnter. Do I need to AdjustReputation again?
(4) If you adjust an PCs reputation with a faction, then later spawn some creatures in that faction, do the recent spawns pick up on the PCs changed reputation or does AdjustReputation only work for creatures presently spawned?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Alrighty then. I guess I'll need to figure this out the hard way: in game tests.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lightfoot8]

               I do not know if anybody knows the answers to the questions you are asking.  With the flaws in the adjust rep functions I do not even know if it is worth trying to figure out.  

You may want to take a look at  Script issue with adjust reputation to get an Idea of what you are facing.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Thanks lightfoot, I was trying to find that thread earlier today but didn't.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lightfoot8]

               

henesua wrote...

Thanks lightfoot, I was trying to find that thread earlier today but didn't.

The only reason I found it is that I still have it bookmarked.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Is reputation stored on the NPC who is affected by it? Meaning that if NPC A has a -10 Reputation with NPC B, is this information stored on NPC B?

I assume that the answer is yes.

So with this in mind I suspect that if you store this instance of NPC B in the database, that the reputation adjustment towards NPC A is also stored. BUT I bet NPC A is actually an object reference, and so when NPC B is recalled from the DB, if the server has been reset this could be problematic.

Anything wrong with my thinking so far?

So assuming all the above is true, I propose that the solution is to clear reputation on an NPC restored from the DB, if the server has been reset since the NPC was committed to the DB. However how do you do this? ClearPersonalReputation is focused on a specific target. Can you zero out all personal reputation by switching factions?

And if no one knows he answer to these questions, can you suggest a good way to test this? I have my own ideas, but am interested on other ideas as well.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ffbj]

               I use Vendalus personal reputation and reaction, with some modifications.    Then I combine that with a notoriety system that simply keeps tracks of the exploits, of the PC: bounties, quests completed, etc...But that is seperate from factional issues though it can influnence faction with certain Npc's. But you know that system,PRR much better than I do, so the esoteric parts of the stuff you are doing, such making the PC an Npc faction, I have no clue about that.
I would guess that the reputation between individual npc's remains the same, even if the factions have changed, though change could effect and influence your overall reputation/personal history with that individual.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ffbj, 07 novembre 2012 - 02:55 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               I use PRR too, but it isn't quite the same thing here. Its more of a parallel system as far as I understand it, and doesn't affect whether the creature is hostile or friendly. Can it affect actual personal reputation? If so I've completely missed that and am using it incorrectly.

Anyway, my issue here is that I am committing special NPCs to the database. That way they are not spawned from the palette, but retrieved from the DB. This has all kinds of benefits. BUT I am concerned that a PC retrieved from the DB will still hold the same grudges.

I have not tested it yet, but will need to so that I can avoid the pitfalls. Having a cleared reputation upon spawn is a nice reset given how messed up the faction system is in NWN. And if I can't do that with NPCs stored in a DB, then I have hit a major stumbling block.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 07 novembre 2012 - 02:51 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_ffbj]

               Ok I think I get it.  You should be able to do that, by adding something to the npc's onspawn that clears all reputation, right but since no target exists in the onspawn. Hmm well you could write an executable or onperception that clears personal reputation with any perceived object but only once.  Sort of clunky.  Is it all reputations or just with PC's?  I know what you are getting at now.  You want the npc's to have a clean slate regarding reputation when they are spawned from the database.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Exactly. First I need to test it out. Then if there is a problem and I understand it I'll assess as to whether I can solve it.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               [FYI: Found the Bioware documentation on Faction related things online.]

I just investigated a HAK on the vault that I had previously overlooked.
Neutral Faction Hak

The beauty of this HAK is that it defines a new faction in both repute.2da and Repute.fac. I had not previously considered editing these files (and I don't know if editing repute.2da does anything as editing it alone does not change the module). Why I like this is that it enables you to define new parent factions. New factions in Vanilla NWN derive from one of the standard 4: Hostile, Commoner, Defender, Merchant. But apparently this can be expanded. I think adding a few more parent factions will make things easier for builders.

• One downside is that I'll likely have to remake all of my factions. If I'm going to do this the time is now, before I build up a database full of faction information only to have to dump it. Remaking my factions will be a ton of work, but I need to get on this and do factions right.
• Another downside is that factions created by 2da appear to default to global settings. I'll have to carefully consider how I make use of this as I have heard of faction problems arising from behavior that appears to be global, even when a faction is not set to global. I suspect that a faction bug has the potential to creep up the chain to the parent faction. Is this true?

Another interesting 2da I've been tinkering with is repadjust.2da .   There are four types of occurences defined by that file which adjust reputation: Attack, Theft, Kill, and Help. The part that I am not so clear on are relations the various columns describe. For witnesses of the event, there are three different kinds of subcategories (A, B, and C)  for the categories Friend, Neutral, and Enemy. The link I provided at the top of the page explains what a b or c means, but some of the explanation appears redundant to me, so i think I am missing something.

In anycase, I've been tinkering with this. The thought is that perhaps it would be cool if attacking and stealing didn't lead to as a dramatic of a reputation change as killing does. I also think that giving small rep adjustments for helping others might be interesting. Its worth trying anyway.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ffbj]

               I suspect that a faction bug has the potential to creep up the chain to the parent faction. Is this true?

I think this is the case.  I believe your are talking about faction creep...i.e. whatever your current faction relationship with a particular parent faction when altered it will tend to creep back up/down to it's intial setting.  Good find on all that info btw. I think the smaller adjustments for less virulent criminal activity are warranted. I mean saying I saw a guy creeping around is not the same as saying I saw a guy shove his sword upto the hilt in xyz's belly.  I think Axe did a crime witness system, that was maybe solicited by another player.  That might be of some interest.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Faction Creep. Thanks for the term. I hope creating new parent factions solves the bug.
That Crime witness System.. did you mean this (http://nwvault.ign.c....detail&id=3583)?
Its not by Axe so i suspect you have something else in mind. Please share the link if you manage to dig it up. I am interested.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ffbj]

               Crime Witnessing by Mathew F:
http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=3583
Yeah that was it. I think Axe was involved in the discussion that led up to that script.

On an amusing sidenote, using Vendalus's PRR I had situations where a group fled some monsters, there where three of us. We headed for an area controlled by the Red Feather.  A few starting raining arrows in our direction which surprised me, but one of our group did a quick turn and headed away from the archers.  He had previously turned in proof of kill amulets to an opposing tribal group, so he had bad faction with the Red Feather.
So it could, and did happen, that different party members had different reations from the various groups in the world.  So the effort you are making is well worth it, imo.  It makes for a much more dynamic and believable world faction system.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ffbj, 12 novembre 2012 - 11:30 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_DM_Vecna]

               Glad to see there is still interest here. I am going to be digging back into this for my pw again. I will post some great notes I got from Axe Murderer regarding reputation when joining a party.