Question re. JobDifficultyScaling

[pbox]

Does the Awesome JobDifficultyScaling take these tunables from 0x6e9adcdaeb2ce302 into account:

  <MaxPerfFlow></MaxPerfFlow>
  <MinPerfFlow></MinPerfFlow>
  <MaxPerfFlowMaxLevel></MaxPerfFlowMaxLevel>
  <MinPerfFlowMaxLevel></MinPerfFlowMaxLevel>

?

I'd like to know roughly how it works because I'm tweaking careers at the moment - I don't want to accidentially introduce unexpected behaviour for AM users/non-users. Thanks!

[J. M. Pescado]

JobDifficultyScaling is applied after all the other variables. You can see "jobinfo" for the breakdown of what variables are affecting your sim's job progression. If you are without any difficulty increase settings (scale to age off or Normal length, difficulty 1.0), then you will see your values you inputted used raw as in an unmodified game. If you change any of these values, the effect will be globally applied to all job performance alterations.

[pbox]

I think I need some help in deciphering this.

Firstly, I'm using my own agecons (I believe they're similar to "rule of six" but not exactly the same) - in-game option is set to "normal aging":

    <kDefaultSimDaysPerAgingYear value="4" />

    <kAgingStageLengthBaby value=".5" /> = 2
    <kAgingStageLengthToddler value="1" /> = 4
    <kAgingStageLengthChild value="1.5" /> = 6
    <kAgingStageLengthTeen value="1.5" /> = 6
    <kAgingStageLengthYoungAdult value="3" /> = 12
    <kAgingStageLengthAdult value="6" /> = 24
    <kAgingStageLengthElderMinimum value="3" /> = 12

Is this taken into account? I am using the ScaleToAge option, with difficulty 1.0 now.

Then, in my careers, I'm using the EA defaults for

  <MaxPerfFlow>14</MaxPerfFlow>
  <MinPerfFlow>-8</MinPerfFlow>
  <MaxPerfFlowMaxLevel>8</MaxPerfFlowMaxLevel>
  <MinPerfFlowMaxLevel>-10</MinPerfFlowMaxLevel>

for all careers except school. I think what they mean is "performance flow" as in, performance can only change by a maximum of N on one day. I'm not sure about that though … and I don't know what the difference between <MaxPerfFlow> and <MaxPerfFlowMaxLevel> would be. Halp?


Then jobinfo gives me this:



Everything up to "AVG" is obvious (I think - AVG is the average of all metrics combined, right?), but downwards from that I'm not sure anymore.  

Metrics PPH - what does PPH mean? Performance per Hour (thanks). Where are those values from (is the latter the MaxPerfFlow?)?

PPH From Traits - that seems quite clear, I haven't seen an example for it but I guess workaholics or geniuses might get extra performance here.

Standard PPH - I'm guessing that this might be where JobDifficulty would come into play if it would (I've set it to 1 so nothing happens). Is that right?

Total PPH 3.1 / 14 = 0.22 according to my calculator, but the Total PPH is 3.111 = 3.1 + 0.011 so I'm a little confused here .. ? The x 4 resp. x 6 factor after that is that the scale to age thing perhaps? is the number of hours in a day, which results in PPD = Performance per Day. Thanks.

Total PPD - this is the final result (of the TotalPPH function) - which means the second sim would only *ever* get a promotion if they WorkHard, otherwise it'll stay the same.

What's the value shown in brackets after the coworker names - the relationship?


It all does seem to work reasonably well in my game, I'd just like to understand exactly how. Would be great if you could answer some of the questions above.

Also, I noticed that the sims don't always get their nominal §/hour - it's usually some odd value, I'm guessing/hoping depending on their current performance. Would there be a way to make jobinfo show what their current hourly rate is? Or is that what the S/hr line already does (and the two sims in question actually do get 15§ and 10§ respectively at the moment)? Also, do you know how the final hourly rate is calculated? Is that perhaps what the inexplicable Max/MinPerfFlowMaxLevel parameters are for?

[Anonym]

There are parts of this I think I can answer, even though I'm not all that awesome.

PPH is most likely Performance Per Hour.
PPD is most likely Performance Per Day (that the sim works, so if he works 5 hours a day it would be PPH * 5).

"Metrics PPH" seems to be the hourly performance the sim gets from the job metrics, which is Nadine's case are mood, relationship with her boss, and charisma.

PPH from traits deals with such things as (as I recall) the Ambitious trait giving you something like +3 PPH (might be more or less), the Evil trait helping people in the Criminal career with bonus PPH, and possibly others.  The MultiTasker perk most likely works the same way.

Hope this helps.

[pbox]

PPH is most likely Performance Per Hour.
PPD is most likely Performance Per Day (that the sim works, so if he works 5 hours a day it would be PPH * 5).

Duh, yes! That makes absolute sense. I wasn't seeing the obvious I guess .. Thank you.

[J. M. Pescado]

Is this taken into account? I am using the ScaleToAge option, with difficulty 1.0 now.

The age-to-difficulty autoscale does not care what your Agecons settings are, it only cares about the relative proportions of Normal vs. Epic, etc, with "normal" treated as the default. If Scale To Age is on, then your job difficulty is 1.0 at Normal, more at higher aging difficulties. Because we are anti-easiness, reducing the aging setting below normal will not make it drop below 1. Additional difficulty is multiplicatively stacked with this.

Total PPH 3.1 / 14 = 0.22 according to my calculator, but the Total PPH is 3.111 = 3.1 + 0.011 so I'm a little confused here .. ?

3.1 is 3.111, only the display is truncated at fewer digits.

The x 4 resp. x 6 factor after that is that the scale to age thing perhaps? is the number of hours in a day, which results in PPD = Performance per Day. Thanks.

That is hours worked. The /1 you're seeing after Standard PPH is the difficulty adjusted for both your difficulty scale and your aging scale.

Total PPD - this is the final result (of the TotalPPH function) - which means the second sim would only *ever* get a promotion if they WorkHard, otherwise it'll stay the same.

That's right, because his metrics are a uniformly awful average of 0, meaning he earns no performance for regular work.

What's the value shown in brackets after the coworker names - the relationship?

Yes.

Also, I noticed that the sims don't always get their nominal §/hour - it's usually some odd value, I'm guessing/hoping depending on their current performance.

It's possible that if you arrive a few minutes late, you will get docked a few minutes worth of paycheck. Otherwise, your odd value is just floating point rounding error and is nothing to be concerned about.

Would there be a way to make jobinfo show what their current hourly rate is? Or is that what the S/hr line already does (and the two sims in question actually do get 15§ and 10§ respectively at the moment)? Also, do you know how the final hourly rate is calculated? Is that perhaps what the inexplicable Max/MinPerfFlowMaxLevel parameters are for?

That's what $/hr is. You get that much per hour, less if you are late, and the final value printed out by the game may be visibly off by 1 due to floating point error.