Ally Cost Rounding

[Phil Masters]

I was putting a character together in GCA5 with a couple of Reputations, one +2 and one -2, both with Frequency 7 or less. GCA calculated the values of these two features as 4 and -3 points respectively. I'm sure that this is incorrect; the Basic Set says (round down), and my understanding is that this is literal; round downwards - so the costs should be 3 and -4 points.

This feels like a familiar issue, though it may previously have cropped up with GCA 4.

[Armin]

It does indeed seem quite familiar.

I tried a couple things, and they don't seem to be changing anything. I'll have to look into it further to see what might be going on.

[Armin]

Ooookay.

There was a bug in the calculation logic, so that rounding UP was restored if every modifier on a tier didn't set it to DOWN. It's supposed to set to DOWN if any modifier sets it to DOWN, and keep it that way for the tier. So, for a single modifier it worked correctly, but for cases where there were normal UP modifiers listed after a DOWN modifier, it would be wrong. (This particular bug has existed since at least 2017.)

So, that should be fixed next release.

I also noticed that the modifiers for the Disadvantage version of Reputation were not flagged as round(down), so those would not have rounded correctly anyway (assuming down does in fact mean away from zero for the negative values in this case.)

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Armin

I also noticed that the modifiers for the Disadvantage version of Reputation were not flagged as round(down), so those would not have rounded correctly anyway (assuming down does in fact mean away from zero for the negative values in this case.)

That got clarified in the seventh printing of Basic Set: Characters. It now says

Originally Posted by p. B28

Apply multipliers for people affected
and frequency of recognition, and
then drop all fractions at the end.

So that's round towards zero, for positive or negative values.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by johndallman

That got clarified in the seventh printing of Basic Set: Characters. …
So that's round towards zero, for positive or negative values.

Oh yes, I’d forgotten that. So, okay, the positive Reputations need fixing, but the negative ones are working right.

[Armin]

Originally Posted by johndallman

That got clarified in the seventh printing of Basic Set: Characters. It now says
So that's round towards zero, for positive or negative values.

Ah, good, thank you. And that's why there are different modifier sets for the Advantage and Disadvantage versions. Okay, I'll keep it the way it was, then.

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Oh yes, I’d forgotten that. So, okay, the positive Reputations need fixing, but the negative ones are working right.

That'll happen once the next release build comes out, as I've fixed the bug in the code.

Sorry about that. It'll be a little bit, as I'm in the middle of a couple things right now and can't immediately package up a release.

[Armin]

Oh, I forgot. I usually like to include a work-around when one can be used in a particular situation.

In this case, since the problem is that the rounding flag is getting reset to UP because of the other modifiers, the work-around is to explicitly include the tag needed to specify rounding DOWN on the other modifier.

So, double-click the other modifier, in this case the "People Affected" one, to open the Edit Modifiers dialog. Then click Add Tag to add a new tag, and enter round in the Tag field and down in the Value field. Click OK. Now both modifiers should be saying to round down so the value should correctly be getting rounded down.

[Phil Masters]

Yep, that serves the purpose. Thanks.