The Pistol and Its Rep

[ohhmyylantaa]

Lately I've been interested in just how rep works. Why do we get awarded what we do, how do the skill points change that formula, etc. Well, I started a little experiment to try and figure that out.

Nelly MacBonney is my newest pirate, made specifically for the experiment's purposes. I decided to use the pistol as my first experiment. Why? Well, it has no combo moves so I'll better be able to see just how the particular skills affect her rep. And, I really want to play Nelly as a real pirate and I don't often use the pistol in every day play (except hex eater, of course).

I've only just started, but I noticed something interesting that contradicts what most think, so here's my first bits of data. (Note: all enemies are yellow-tagged, except for numbers that appear in red) The graphs are abbreviated since the same # of shots always gave me the same rep.

at Notoriety 3, pistol lvl 3

Now, what we can see from this graph is that each shot amounts to 3 rep. Interestingly, the red-tagged enemies seem to give no "bonus" to speak of. You still only receive 3 rep per shot, only you shoot more and therefore get more rep. But shooting more means they can attack you more, which in the end means you'll most likely end up in jail when you could have attacked two level 4s, survived, and gotten the same amount of rep.

The 3 rep/shot formula still held fast when I advanced to level 4 pistol as long as I shot at yellow-tagged enemies. On a side note, though I doubt anyone really cares, green-tagged enemies give you half the amount of rep you usually would receive.

at Notoriety 5, pistol lvl 4

Again, results repeated themselves. Strangely enough, you see this time that I received SIX rep/shot using a maxed out take aim, and at the added bonus of having to shoot only twice, thereby reducing the damage done to me. Most people believe that using take aim reduces your rep, but we can see that with 1 skill point in take aim, it doubles it. Interesting..

Now, it will give you less per enemy most likely as you can see from the graphs. But is it worth it to use if you a) get less damage to yourself and b)are able to defeat enemies more quickly? Please, give your thoughts on this. I believe that, having only a single-barrel gun, using take aim was worth it for my particular pirate, since it takes two or so seconds to reload after each shot and the alligators always used that time to snap at me.

Now, that's all that I've studied so far, so we can't know if putting another point in take aim or lead shot will skew that rep per shot number, but I do plan on finding that out.

In the meantime, feel free to discuss and ponder and criticize me or give me advice on how I should proceed.

[Bilgepump]

How dare you test things empirically and confuse us with your facts!

But seriously, great job! And very interesting.

Question: How many shots did it take to take down an enemy at pistol 4 when you didn't use take aim? You say you still got 3 rep per shot, but if that level 4 took 5 or more shots, you come out ahead by not using take aim.

Makes me want to start another low level and check out the cutlass...

[The Beautiful Letdown]

I have found out that if you use aim just one time and don't go up any further on the bar that you get more rep than w/out the aim. It's also funny how sometimes you get more rep for yellow tags than red tags.

[ohhmyylantaa]

Originally Posted by Bilgepump

Question: How many shots did it take to take down an enemy at pistol 4 when you didn't use take aim? You say you still got 3 rep per shot, but if that level 4 took 5 or more shots, you come out ahead by not using take aim.

Makes me want to start another low level and check out the cutlass...

I think I took around the same number of shots as level 3, about 5 or 6, so really, you do get more rep by not using take aim. That's why I posed the question, is it worth it to do it faster and take on less damage even if it gives you less rep? Would you get more rep in the same amount of time that way?

Lol, you should do that! It seemed hard to me so I decided to start with the pistol, lol.

[Chris]

yea for some odd reason using combos and charging your weapons and adding skill points increases damage but decreases rep .-. disney sometimes makes no sense

[ohhmyylantaa]

It's almost like they're punishing us for leveling up and using those skill points they give us. Makes no sense at all...