Fatima (NPC) will offer to train you but gives no refund if no training is done

[pjf]

Describe the bug

Fatima (Refugee Centre NPC) will offer to teach you, with a fee of 5 Merch plus the cost of training.

However if no training is selected, she keeps the 5 Merch.

It's not possible to see what can be trained and the prices without handing over the 5 Merch first.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Load the attached save.
2. Note you start with 45 Merch.
3. examine 4west and talk
4. a a d to reach the training dialogue
5. a Here's your money (lose 5 Merch)
6. Exit the trade
7. BUG: Observe you're down to 40 Merch, even though no training happened.

Expected behavior

The 5 Merch fee is only charged if training happens, or is refunded if it does not.

Versions and configuration

• ed007eea570caca77bc296d796909b1b1e711248 (origin/master)

Additional context

Fatima also won't accept exact payment for training, but this is fixed in #49470.

[I-am-Erk]

Hmm, that makes sense. It isn't trivial to fix. I wonder if we can get a way to check if you needed training or not and only charge the merch after. the trade interface used for training is not very connected to dialogue.

[pjf]

If the purpose of the extra fee is to make sure the player learns about Merch, then I'd look at moving it to a one-time fee to cover costs in setting up a learning environment, or some other hand-waving excuse. Training from that point onwards can proceed as usual, and I believe would be possible with our current chat system.

If the extra fee is to make Fatima a consistently more expensive teacher, then some attribute of the NPC or conversation that modifies prices in the skill-trade window sounds desirable, and would also allow other NPCs to be implemented as cheap/expensive trainers.

[I-am-Erk]

The trade window is really hard to deal with currently, but yes, what we'd want there is the ability for her to require 5 merch and ____$ instead of just _____$. Or, even better, she'd just demand merch of equivalent value to the training you want.

fwiw, all the NPCs in the center that trade currently charge a few merch plus barter as far as I recall, and their dialogue flags it as such ("Let's say, 5 merch for a teaching session, plus a bit in trade depending on how in-depth you're looking for?) The problem is I don't think I have the tools to only charge you on a successful training.