Crew Experience
Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 7:48 am
That's why a Worf will always beat a Wesley
The first 2 sections contain information about how Crew Experience works, and the 3rd section addresses modding this stuff by editing values in trek.exe.
1. Amount of Exp. Points gained during battle
To get Exp. Points from a battle, you must enter the tactical combat screen. "Auto" and "Hail" (before the battle) will result in zero points.
There are three "sources" of Exp. Points during battle:
a) The sum of points of damage that your ships do to enemies with beam and/or torpedo weapons (damage from ramming doesn't count).
b) A bonus for every enemy ship that retreats. The bonus is
0.05 * [combined nominal shield+hull hit points of retreated ship]
c) Invisible overflow damage (only if your ships still have weapon capacity left when all enemies are destroyed). This extra damage is hard to predict, but has to be equal to or lower than the unused weapon capacity.
The values from a, b and c are added and equally divided (rounded up if not integer) between your surviving ships.
2. Effect of the Crew Experience Level
For every Exp. Level above "Green", a ship gains +5 Defense, +5 Beam Accuracy and most probably also +5 Torpedo Accuracy (the TA is not displayed anywhere).
Sometimes these effects don't "kick in" immediately and you have to get the ship into 1 or 2 more tactical combats so that the effect is updated.
3. Relevant values in trek.exe
All values are stored as 4-byte integers. It seems that they're all signed (though I wouldn't recommend negative values).
a) Bonuses
Bonus for Klingon ships
position: 0x4577F
default value: 350
NOTE: This value is skipped if the system has a running Combat Training Facility (such as Starfleet Academy).
Bonus for systems with a Combat Training Facility
position: 0x45872
default value: 700
b) Thresholds
There are 5 different Exp. Levels in BotF, hence 4 threshold values. Each value is stored 3 times in trek.exe. The 3 numbers don't necessarily have to be the same, but normally it doesn't make sense to use different values for the same threshold.
threshold value for 2nd star ("normal" crew)
position1: 0x48F36
position2: 0x48FBB
position3: 0x7011F
default value: 700
threshold for 3rd star ("veteran" crew)
position1: 0x48F2F
position2: 0x48FA8
position3: 0x70117
default value: 1500
threshold for 4th star ("elite" crew)
position1: 0x48F28
position2: 0x48F95
position3: 0x7010F
default value: 5000
threshold for 5th star ("legendary" crew)
position1: 0x48F21
position2: 0x48F78
position3: 0x70107
default value: 8000
[position1] is used every turn to determine the new experience levels of all ships that currently have the "crew training" order.
[position2] is used to determine the experiance level description ("legendary" etc.) of the ships when assinging formations on the F1 screen.
[position3] is used after every battle to determine the new experience levels of a ships that survived that battle.
Like I wrote above, it's possible to use different values at the 3 resp. positions, but that can result in "downgrading" after battle resp. during training, since the new experience level is determined using only [position1] resp. only [position3], without looking at the old experience level.
New ships will always start with 1 star except if they're built at a system with a Combat Training Facility (in that case it's 2 stars). The number of stars will only be updated during training and after every tactical combat.
The first 2 sections contain information about how Crew Experience works, and the 3rd section addresses modding this stuff by editing values in trek.exe.
1. Amount of Exp. Points gained during battle
To get Exp. Points from a battle, you must enter the tactical combat screen. "Auto" and "Hail" (before the battle) will result in zero points.
There are three "sources" of Exp. Points during battle:
a) The sum of points of damage that your ships do to enemies with beam and/or torpedo weapons (damage from ramming doesn't count).
b) A bonus for every enemy ship that retreats. The bonus is
0.05 * [combined nominal shield+hull hit points of retreated ship]
c) Invisible overflow damage (only if your ships still have weapon capacity left when all enemies are destroyed). This extra damage is hard to predict, but has to be equal to or lower than the unused weapon capacity.
The values from a, b and c are added and equally divided (rounded up if not integer) between your surviving ships.
2. Effect of the Crew Experience Level
For every Exp. Level above "Green", a ship gains +5 Defense, +5 Beam Accuracy and most probably also +5 Torpedo Accuracy (the TA is not displayed anywhere).
Sometimes these effects don't "kick in" immediately and you have to get the ship into 1 or 2 more tactical combats so that the effect is updated.
3. Relevant values in trek.exe
All values are stored as 4-byte integers. It seems that they're all signed (though I wouldn't recommend negative values).
a) Bonuses
Bonus for Klingon ships
position: 0x4577F
default value: 350
NOTE: This value is skipped if the system has a running Combat Training Facility (such as Starfleet Academy).
Bonus for systems with a Combat Training Facility
position: 0x45872
default value: 700
b) Thresholds
There are 5 different Exp. Levels in BotF, hence 4 threshold values. Each value is stored 3 times in trek.exe. The 3 numbers don't necessarily have to be the same, but normally it doesn't make sense to use different values for the same threshold.
threshold value for 2nd star ("normal" crew)
position1: 0x48F36
position2: 0x48FBB
position3: 0x7011F
default value: 700
threshold for 3rd star ("veteran" crew)
position1: 0x48F2F
position2: 0x48FA8
position3: 0x70117
default value: 1500
threshold for 4th star ("elite" crew)
position1: 0x48F28
position2: 0x48F95
position3: 0x7010F
default value: 5000
threshold for 5th star ("legendary" crew)
position1: 0x48F21
position2: 0x48F78
position3: 0x70107
default value: 8000
[position1] is used every turn to determine the new experience levels of all ships that currently have the "crew training" order.
[position2] is used to determine the experiance level description ("legendary" etc.) of the ships when assinging formations on the F1 screen.
[position3] is used after every battle to determine the new experience levels of a ships that survived that battle.
Like I wrote above, it's possible to use different values at the 3 resp. positions, but that can result in "downgrading" after battle resp. during training, since the new experience level is determined using only [position1] resp. only [position3], without looking at the old experience level.
New ships will always start with 1 star except if they're built at a system with a Combat Training Facility (in that case it's 2 stars). The number of stars will only be updated during training and after every tactical combat.