Mercenaries

[bad_captain]

Being able to give mercs equipment would help with that, but I think even if mercs have equipment, allowing equipment trades would be a low priority.

I'm more concerned about having to have a record for every level for mercs, for each proficiency, for each tier, for each class. That would be 4 classes, 3 proficiencies including master, 5 tiers, and however many levels each server allows.

Maybe there can just be a tier modifier for each proficiency, with records for certain level ranges. I.E for levels 1-50, you have one record with stats that would max at level 50. In the code, it would scale the stats based on level. Then, another record for lvls 51-65, and so on. That way you could scale based on level, while giving the opportunity to change some parameters at certain levels.

I currently have skills being set to the max for their level based on their class, but I guess that could be put in the database as well.

[trevius]

I think skills being max for their level is fine. It wouldn't hurt to have the option to be able to set it in the DB, but that shouldn't be something to really worry about at this point.

I think the best way to handle stats would probably just be to do it the long way by having each merc class/proficiency/level in the DB. Even for a server with max level of 80, that is only like 960 entries, which isn't huge in terms of db entries. Most of that could be written, adjusted, and scaled by simple queries fairly quickly using similar formulas to what might be used if we had scaling hard set in the source.

I am sure it could be done by setting a base and then having fields for scaling each field by X amount for levels Y+ or whatever, but having the individual entries allows for the most flexibility by far and shouldn't be too hard to manage.

As far as the upkeep cost packets go, the first one was definitely just an OP_MoneyUpdate, which I broke down here:

12/8/2011 9:02:45 PM
[OPCode: 0x528f] OP_Unknown [Server->Client] [Size: 16]
2d 00 00 00 - 45 Platinum
00 00 00 00 - 0 Gold
06 00 00 00 - 6 Silver
05 00 00 00 - 5 Copper

OP_MoneyUpdate

struct MoneyUpdate_Struct{
	sint32 platinum;
	sint32 gold;
	sint32 silver;
	sint32 copper;
};

My guess is that the 45 Plat and change is how much you had on your char after the charge happened. You probably started with 46 Plat 9 gold 6 silver and 5 copper, or something like that before the charge.

So, the charging for mercs should be very simple and is no different than how we already do money updates for just about everything else.

I am not 100% sure about the second packet. Your collect is from a time-frame that I don't have a good opcode reference for, so without the full collect and other merc packet examples, I am not able to verify for sure which packet that is. Since it is 4 bytes and is definitely around the merc related opcodes, I assume it is what we currently refer to as OP_MercenaryHire.

// [OPCode: 0x5e78 (OP_MercenaryHire?)] On Live as of April 2 2012
// Sent by Server in response to requesting to view Mercenary info or Hire a Mercenary
struct MercenaryMerchantResponse_Struct {
/*0000*/ int32 ResponseType; // Seen 0 for hire response, 6 for info response, and 9 for denied hire request
/*0004*/
};

My guess is that ResponseType 10 is just a server response saying you get to keep your merc If that is the case, then there is probably another ResponseType for dismissing mercs as well, but we will need to figure out what that is either via collects or by testing with sending different ResponseTypes from 0 to 10 (or so). It could also be that there is a separate packet/opcode for dealing with dismisses or whatever that upkeep packet is, but I would need a more complete collect example to be able to tell for sure.