Too much range to the RNG of leaders

[Tiojion]

There appears to be too much range to what can take place with the leader RNG even in situations that are supposed to have a narrower range.

Example: Recruiting a Senior leader versus recruiting a junior leader.

The Senior leader often comes up with almost no skills, cap 1, despite being 60 years old. Meanwhile a junior officer might be as bad but can just as easily be a cap 4 with more skills than the senior guy despite only having been an adult for a year or two. What exactly is the point in differentiating juniors from seniors if they all can be at any point in the competency and skill range? Doesn't this total overlap of their ranges defeat the whole point of having different strategems? Why did the senior card cost so much more PP?

At another level, why would such a poorly competent senior person still be in service? It makes sense that a junior leader might encompass a wide range of capacity levels. While they probably shouldn't have many skills yet they aren't really known in terms of their capacity.

Isn't the whole point of having senior leader strategems to bring in a KNOWN and proven leader? Yes a moderately less skilled or moderately lower capacity senior leader might promote beyond their true competency but they would be a known commodity. The truly poor would have already reached their ceiling. Only those that had a decent amount of skills to offer or showed greater capacity than they had currently reached would remain among senior candidates. I'm all for the aspect of the game having to do with deciding what leaders fit your regime and for there to be difficult decisions. The over use of RNG doesn't benefit the game though.

The extreme range of the RNG in this area appears to be one of the weakest aspects of an overall really strong game. I tend to dislike card heavy games because of their non-sensical rng but love the idea this game brings in terms of being able to invest/steer the likelihood of what cards come up. It's unfortunate that some situations such as the over range of the leader's rng defeat the purpose of such a cool idea.

Update: I just ran through recruiting a bunch of various leaders a bunch of times. While the sample size was small there appeared to be several noticeable trends...

--Mercenary and Commander leaders appear to always have some Command skills though those may not be their best skills. At least they have them. There appears to be no correlation between what stats these leaders have and their skills. They often are weakest at the War stat. Why exactly are they in Command?

--The Mercenary didn't appear to be stronger at Command skills than the Commander despite costing five times the PP. Perhaps the range of their skills or stats is too wide?...making it not worthwhile to enlist them compared to the cheaper options.

--Junior leaders appear to have the full spectrum of outcomes, from zero skilled to massively skilled (despite being 19 years old, did they gain their skills while in the womb?). Their capacity runs the full range as would be expected.

--Senior leaders appear to be the same as junior leaders... just older. Their skills can run from almost none to a full set. How did they manage to have no skills and still be around
Their capacity also can be at any level, which makes sense if the low capacities were offset by some good skill/skills. Even their rank seniority can be at any level. Why exactly are they still in the service at their age if they are the least senior ranked leader around? Nepotism can only push things so far....

--In all cases there appears to be no correlation of skills acquired with related stats. Commanders are as likely to be terrible in their War stat as they are at being good. Diplomats may have no Charisma or great Charisma, etc. People tend to gravitate toward what they are good at and avoid that which they stink at. Exceptions happen in life but even then it only happens with a skill or two (essentially a side hobby), not everything one trains at while ignoring one's actual given strong areas of ability.

This system is totally random and doesn't take into account any degree of ability rising, disability stalling out. It also doesn't appear to matter much what sort of leader one is looking for. Just hire as many as you can until RNG favors you. That goes against the game design in regards to having a system for hiring that means anything. The level of randomness here goes well beyond anything realistic. Total realism isn't the goal in games but some degree is needed for suspension of disbelief. =(

I've emphasized this weak spot a lot here. Perhaps it stands out to me so much because the game is so good in so many others ways it was disappointing to see the discrepancy. Unfortunately, like many other things, a game is only as good as it's greatest weakness. This is a really cool game with a hidden Achilles' heel.

[maerchen]

In my experience, it helps to have a really good relation with your interior director, as he does those rolls. He still can fail, but I get cap IV guys more often when he is in a good mood.

There is the - rare - 3 FP Sage national strat card. Those guys are insanely high skilled, and their attributes range up to the 90s. The downside is, they come at 55+ age.

[Tiojion]

So I recruited talent. Right in step with the randomness listed above the leader that joined had zero in all colored skills and stats in the low twenties. He was Cap 3 but he leaves me still wondering what the point of having more expensive leader strategems is when none of them appear to be any less random than junior recruits. Relationship with the Interior Director was 80, the same as with all the previous recruits.

The white skills he did have a slight bit of were all combat focused. This overlaps entirely with all the various military recruit cards that are supposed? to be focused on that direction and adds to the perception that all these card's outcomes are totally random.

[maerchen]

80 is not a really good relation, to be honest. At 100 you get a +50 relation bonus to your rolls.

And I agree, the talents aren't that good. I prefer juniors, as they come young at least ( and without seniority, so I can retire them the same turn if bad).

[Tiojion]

80 is "good." Doesn't 75+ get a +10 or +25 to relevant factors? 100 is as great as it gets for best chance at things but is it really the only level that gets good leaders?

In keeping with the upside down or totally random nature the leaders appear to get I called up a junior recruit. I mean, hey, why waste PP's if it's all random. Same 80 attitude for the Interior Director. The junior leader came in Cap 4, some colored skill rolls in the 50's, stats in the 40's...basically what you would think some...or at least one...of the senior or talented leaders would enter at. The junior is age 19 with more skills than the last five senior and talent guys I've hired had combined.

Is anyone sure that the skill and stat ranges for juniors, seniors, and talent leaders hasn't accidentally been reversed in the code? Small sample but thus far I've had every leader come in backward of their strategem descriptions. This comes across as more of a Rim World story feature than anything you would find in a strategy game.

Edit: Recruiting a leader doesn't show as having a roll take place. Are you sure leader relation matters at all here?

[DazaKiwi]

Doesn't a very good BP budget for Human Resources also impact chance of better recruitment stratagem cards as well?

[Tiojion]

@DazaKiwi it does but the problem seems to be that these "better" recruitment strategems aren't better. They appear to be either completely random or even possibly coded backwards, resulting in them costing a lot more PP but being the worst leaders most often while junior recruits may have the best chance of being much better. At least in the small samples so far only the junior recruits are coming up with decades worth of skills (at age 19) while the senior and talent recruits are coming in with no skills (even when age 60).

[Demitrious]

So, Director relations or maybe skills effect the outcomes of the resulting leaders?

Even though the description says there is no test or skill roll when executing the stratagem...

[Demitrious]

Follow up question... Does the profile of regime or director executing the stratagem effect the resulting recruit's profile?

[OznerpaG]

Government type is a big decider:
Meritocracy creates better leaders (+1 CAP)
Democracy Creates worse leaders (-1 CAP)

I'v always found I get better leaders from the cheap 10 PP leader cards, the 40 PP cards never give proportionally better results

[cranky corvid]

According to the tables in the in-game debug mode, most recruitment stratagems only affect the leader's age and background. Background determines what skills they put their starting experience in, and age determines the amount of experience.

However, capability level also has a very strong effect on the amount of experience gained, both during leader generation and during play, as well as their starting stats. Cap I's tend to start with minimal skill levels no matter their level of experience, while a cap V junior is sometimes already an expert. The manual confirms that stats also effect how well experience translates to skill level growth in related skills, at least during play, though I can't say with 100% certainty that the same applies during leader creation.

A few stratagems are set to produce leaders of a fixed capability level. Recruit Merc produces cap II's, and is almost never worth the huge PP cost. Recruit Talent produces cap III's, so it's nice for consistently producing usable leaders. I want to emphasize that besides gaining experience much faster, higher-cap leaders are also much more likely to roll high stats.

Scrap stratagems produce a leader of a cap level equal to the roman numeral in the card's name (cap I if there is no numeral), and fate stratagems such as the Sage are fixed to a high capability level.

[Majamas]

There are many more such weak points. The entire Shadow Empire is a generator of random disasters and difficulties thrown against the player's plans.

[OznerpaG]

Another thing to keep in mind is that Leaders generated at game start often have pre-leveled skills, so judging them by their CAP might be a mistake if they already have high levels in the right skills for certain jobs

For example a CAP I that already has lvl 20 Technician is going to be a solid choice for model design at game start - perhaps they won't get much better as the game goes on, but they are definitely fine to hold the fort until you find a better replacement