GCA and Half-Stat Default

[DouglasCole]

What would it take to make GCA do half-stat defaulting for you, as presented in Pyramid #3/65?

[ericbsmith]

That is going to require considerable work.

[Dammann]

for actual defaults:
It is sort of seldom that defaults appear on character sheets; the instance that comes to mind is when a character owns a weapon that they don't really know how to use. In that instance, the key would be to change how the skillused tag is written on all the weapons.

for skill levels:
You could rewrite the Skilltypes section, I think, with the defaultstat tag altered to divide the Attribute and the base tag set to work with the article. I am not positive that the defaultstat tag is math enabled, but this is what I would try first, since it would mean not having to do any alteration to all the skills there are.

BTW, clever article, there! I may give this a shot, just to see if it works. Skilltypes is not a section I have ever messed with, so this is like exploring a neighborrhood you don't usually stop in.

[ericbsmith]

I've been messing with it for the last hour... still haven't gotten to the point I have a data file yet. Mostly I've been extracting important data (skill defaults, type, etc) from all the skills in the Basic Set (there are just over 600 skills in that data file, not counting spells).

There are two issues I see
1) stat defaults aren't easily accessible for changing, meaning it's hard to just pull out and change the IQ - 6 to @int(IQ/2)+1 without messing with the rest of the of the stuff in the skill's default
2) the skill progressions vary, even with skills of the same "difficulty", based on the new default modifier. There's no easy way to address this without making new skill types for each combination of difficulty and default modifier. That is, you no longer have IQ/H skills, but IQ/H-2, IQ/H-1, IQ/H+0, IQ/H+1, etc.

Neither issue is insurmountable, just a pain to address.

[Dammann]

I'll work on the weapons tonight or tomorrow. That will be an issue; lots of data files have weapons in them. I think I see a way to do it sort of efficiently, though.

[ericbsmith]

http://gurpsland.no-ip.org/GCA4/HalfStatDefaults.zip

Preliminary file, this includes only skills in the Basic Set data file, and even then does not address spells. It needs to be checked for accuracy, as this was a mass conversion and very few skills have been looked at specifically for errors.

All skill types have been altered to include the default modifier as computed in the article. This is both convenient for referencing and necessary for technical reasons.

[DouglasCole]

Wow, I'm impressed. I had looked into this before, and given up pretty fast.

Would I load this instead of the Basic Set file, or after it?

dhc

[DouglasCole]

Would every file need to be recast using this, then? The game I'd like to play is a TL8/9 X-COM/Action type mashup. Fight bugs, kill them, take their stuff.

Files I'd load:

Basic Set - Characters
High Tech 4e
Martial Arts
Power-Ups 2 Perks 4e
Power-UPs 3 Talents

If there were Tactical Shooting and/or Technical Grappling files I'd load those too. :-)

[Dammann]

This should be loaded after the other files, as it will not include everything in the Basic file, but it will replace/revise things from that file. It should probably replace/revise things from any other files, too, but for now, just Basic, afaict.

Ultimately there might be things that need to happen to make Martial Arts work.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Would every file need to be recast using this, then? The game I'd like to play is a TL8/9 X-COM/Action type mashup. Fight bugs, kill them, take their stuff.

Every file that has skills would need to get a fix-up like this file. Fortunately, there are very few skills that aren't in the basic set, and most of them are just new specialties of existing skills (new Fast-Draw or specific Area Knowledge or some-such). This file should, as of now, cover 99% of things in the game in GCA, and those that aren't covered will be obvious as their type will use the old setup and be, for example, IQ/H instead of IQ/H[-1]

I did notice an error in the file I posted, but came across it as I was laying in bed last night going over the new Pyramid. Unfortunately I don't remember what the error was, so will have to re-read it and see if I can find it again.

EDIT: OK, I believe I've fixed the error I'd found and corrected it. Specifically, I'd either misread or misinterpreted the line saying what the default modifier was supposed to be for skills which don't have an attribute default; specifically I'd assigned a modifier of +0 for all skills with no attribute modifier instead of +1 for Easy, +0 for Average, and -1 for Hard & Very Hard.

http://gurpsland.no-ip.org/GCA4/HalfStatDefaults.zip