Menace reduction question

I’m so sorry if this has been covered in one of the wikis (or is actually blindingly obvious to everyone but me) but what if the reason for menaces being reduced in odd increments?

For example, I do an action in A State of Some Confusion, and am informed that my nightmares have fallen and the progress bar they’ve clearly dropped to 5. On my next action, it says my nightmares are falling again, but they show as falling from 6 to around 5 and a half. This happens consistently until around level 3 or 4 of a menace.

Is there a simple mathmatical explanation that I have overlooked? I do have a cold, as well as being mathmatically inept so it’s entirely probably
edited by Arbar on 1/16/2014
edited by Arbar on 1/16/2014

the gory details can be found here: http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Beginner’s_Guide but it’s basically all about change points (CP).

It takes 1 CP to bump your menace to 1 and two more CP’s for two and so on…

Perhaps the first bar that you saw was a 5 bar with 5 CP’s in it. The next bar that you saw was a 5 bar with perhaps 2-3 CP’s in it.

Anyways, I hope you get well soon.

Not blindingly obvious at all! The little progress bar sometimes does odd things, especially when it’s travelling in a downwards direction.

When it says your Nightmares have fallen from 6 to 5, what it actually means is that they’ve fallen from 6-point-something to 5-point-something. Say for the sake of argument, from 6.2 to 5.8.

The next time, they drop from say 5.8 to 5.4 - the same amount. But because that hasn’t pushed you over a whole-number boundary, it just says &quotNightmares are dropping&quot, and the progress bar animates in a different way.

So, in fact, they’re going down in perfectly consistently, it’s just the way it’s displayed that’s a bit funny.

NB. I’m deliberately simplifying - the &quotpoint somethings&quot don’t work in quite the way I’ve implied here. If you want to know the details, the section on &quotChange Points&quot at http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Beginner’s_Guide explains exactly what’s going on.

Cheers
Richard

Thank you very much both of you - both explanations have helped me make sense of it all at last!

We’re sure you figured this out, but it’s also worth noting that not all the actions available reduce Menace by the same amount.