Peer learning gives too much xp, or none at all

[Vykn]

What happened?

This problem is twofold;

• The effects of peer learning are applied twice (presumably the same issue as #12639); i.e. a single character with this talent will give 125% more xp, not 50% more (xp is being multiplied by 1.5^2, not x1.5 as expected). Having 5 assistants with the talent increases the xp reward by a comical 5 thousand percent. Having a full crew of 16 assistants with peer learning leads to a very silly 43 million percent extra xp.

• The effects only apply if every crew member is the same level. If even a single character has a different level, no extra xp is handed out. This kinda defeats the entire point of the talent.

Reproduction steps

To observe the former issue:

1. Get an assistant with peer learning as the only crew member, and complete a mission. Observe that the xp gain is +125%, not +50%.

To observe the latter issue:

1. Get several crew members who are all the same level, at least some of them with peer learning
2. complete a mission and observe the bonus xp
3. Get several crew with differing levels, at least some of them with peer learning
4. observe that no bonus xp is awarded.

Of use in testing this is that the xp formula on completing a mission is money * 0.09 * (1 + level difficulty)

Version

v1.0.21.0

[Jasontti]

Tested but could not repro.

I started new game and on first outpost tested several configurations of assistants with peer learning and simple cargo mission. No assistants: 44xp 1 assistant: 66xp 1 assistant 1 higher lvl (exactly 450xp given): everybody gets 66xp <- this could be an issue 4 assistants: 223xp 8 assistants: 1lvl+680xp

XP gain is multiplicative with 50% rate. This on itself could be an issue also and maybe should be clamped to base reward xp.

Save game used for testing with 8 assistants and peer learnings Peer learning test.zip

[Jasontti]

Discussed this on discord and 125% is presumed to be related to camaraderie, as stated, and fixed.

Currently you could still cheese the system with 12 assistants, single cargo mission in 2:nd biome:

[JeroonBosch]

Camaraderie is getting a rework also as part of xp talents revisit But to me the main issue is this bug:

The effects only apply if every crew member is the same level. If even a single character has a different level, no extra xp is handed out. This kinda defeats the entire point of the talent.

Design proposal:

• Fix the bug so that the +50% only applies once, rather than XP*1.5^2 (if there is such a bug)
• Remove stacking altogether
• Require there to be a higher level crew member than the beneficiary. If everyone is at equal level (f.e. all characters have 4 talent points), nobody gets the bonus. If there's 3 people with 4 talents points and 1 person with 5, all 3 'lower-level' characters get the bonus.

[JeroonBosch]

@Jasontti did you test both parts of the issue? The crazy XP as well as XP not being handed out when anyone is at a different level?

[Jasontti]

The crazy XP

Could not get to super crazy levels, but as tested got 8 levels from a mission.

XP not being handed out when anyone is at a different level?

This i could not confirm, with limited testing it seemed to work as intended, there was one instance when one person was technically 1 level above, but their xp was exactly on the talent treshold so could be simple rounding error.

[Regalis11]

While working on https://github.com/Regalis11/Barotrauma-development/issues/4467, I noticed the way this talent seemed to work was that it gave a 50% boost to everyone's XP if the character who has the talent was one of the lowest-level crew members. Should be fixed in https://github.com/Regalis11/Barotrauma-development/pull/4497/commits/99cc8468da40b4401d2f8be3cd08e5bf8eefa02d

[Jasontti]

Tested in: https://github.com/Regalis11/Barotrauma-development/commit/8932581ee69bcaca8c8c18d8750728de3228e195

When assistant is one of the lowest members they don't get extra xp. Tested with 3 crew Assistant, with talent, and one other with 0xp one crew with 100xp

No other issues found

[Jasontti]

Tested in: https://github.com/Regalis11/Barotrauma-development/pull/4497/commits/c2897093eca7d60e69b0a970bc2b404f8193033f

No issues found closing ticket