I am new to Moodle (2.2.3) and so far very impressed with its features and sophistication. Other than hacking core code (which would get overwritten with updates) is there a way to set a default penalty for each incorrect try? If not, could I please add this as a feature request for a future release as it's very easy to forget this setting when adding multiple questions.
The code would be in the question type (probably the edit_form code) and so you could probably edit that.
However you might consider creating a template quiz, i.e. one to base all new quizzes from. Include in it one each of your most commonly used question types in it. You could then also save your favorite question behavior. Every time you want to create a quiz, make a copy of that by using the duplicate icon in the editing tools on the course interface.
Woops.... I have just noticed that the duplicate icon feature was introduced with Moodle 2.4 and you are running 2.2.x. Ignore all but first sentence
I am afraid that, at the moment, the only way to do this is to hack the code. Specifically this line:
You are right that change will get overwritten every time you upgrade.
What we should probably do at some time, is to introduce admin settings for most of the question options, so that you can change the default. (Like we do on admin -> Plugins -> Activity modules -> Quiz for all the quiz settings.)
I have suggested an improvement with this topic. You can vote for it here: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-50698
Eric, from your feature request, it is not clear to me that you understand how this feature works.
In the issue, you use the word 'Attempt', but penalties have nothing to do with multiple quiz attempts. They only relate to "How questions behave", "Adaptve", or "Interactive with multiple tries".