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Some ideas and questions.

DonaldJason

Powder Monkey
Quest Writer
Provisional
Hello everyone this is my first post on Pirates Ahoy although I have been reading articles on this forum for years, I especially love following people's build logs.

Anyway I'm not sure if this is the correct place for what I'm about to say. If its not I apologize and beg for the forgiveness of the admins.

Onto the important stuff (hopefully)

Royal Navy campaign

I had an idea for a Royal navy campaign/storyline that could be made as an addon much later in Hearts of Oak.
Basically the player would start as a midshipman or lieutenant on board a ship as an officer doing tasks such as commanding divisions of the guns during battle taking part in cutting out expeditions and boarding parties. Maybe being given charge of a prize to take into port. The player would eventually be promoted based on how well you do these tasks gaining more and more experience until reaching the rank of master and commander and getting command of their own ship. Basically from there the game would continue in a similar way to existing games there except you wouldn't have to worry about trading and finance so much but more on keeping your crew happy. Staying alive and keeping the admiralty happy as their happiness will affect whether your next command is a plum or a vile slow crank ship that couldn't out sail a barrel of salt pork. Also all your "quests" would come from the admiralty or senior captains while you are a commander or higher rank while your commands would come from your captain when you're a mid or lieutenant.

Questions about sails in Hearts of Oak

Will the sail modelling of ships in Hearts of oak go as far as using stay sails to sail on a bowline and square sails when going large? If you were to do this wrong would you receive a speed penalty? What about studding sails?

Also would different ships have different statics for sailing close hauled and sailing large? As in reality some ships would perform better on one angle or another? What about how close a ship can lie? Again not the same for every vessel. Finally what about lee way?

PS sorry for the length of this post.
 
Questions about sails in Hearts of Oak

Will the sail modelling of ships in Hearts of oak go as far as using stay sails to sail on a bowline and square sails when going large? If you were to do this wrong would you receive a speed penalty? What about studding sails?

Also would different ships have different statics for sailing close hauled and sailing large? As in reality some ships would perform better on one angle or another? What about how close a ship can lie? Again not the same for every vessel. Finally what about lee way?
Yes to everything. Different ship types will certainly make a difference.

As for use of individual sails, we will indeed eventually include that.
 
That's really awesome. I'm super excited for all of this. (been thinking that for years never had a chance to say it)

Pieter you didn't mention anything about the royal navy campaign? any thoughts? Is it a possibility or does it not fit in with the Hearts of Oak concept. I understand it may be to rigid or that playing as an officer may be too difficult to do.

It doesn't necessarily have to be royal navy I just suggested that because I have a better understanding of their ranks than say the french or dutch and so was able to express myself better.

I'd really be pleased if this idea took hold as it would be my pinnacle of happiness if I was able to play a game like that. I don't have the know how to help code or make it happen in game. I could maybe with the help of many others I'm sure provide some help and guidance in terms of research and information that could help create an accurate historical reputation. I wouldn't call it historically accurate because you'd struggle to advance through the ranks at a pace that would be acceptable for a game.(I think)

Also I have a nice long holiday coming up in about two months. During which I hope to try some 3D modelling probably with a student version of Maya. I'll probably start small maybe with some cannon similar to the one in my avatar (12lb iron long gun). I made that using Inventor 2013 its a solid model.
 
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There definitely will be navy gameplay as well. If you have any specific ideas on that, you should consider signing up for the Quest Writing team.
 
I've pretty much outlined the full extent of my ideas in the first post.
I'm not sure I'd be much good at writing storylines of sufficient length that wouldn't resemble a Patrick O'Brian or Alexander Kent novel far to closely.
 
Well, @Dario is in charge of the quest writing. So perhaps he has some thoughts on this as well. :doff

In any case, the length isn't a problem. A short mission can also be incorporated in a larger story.
And I see no problem with taking inspiration from other sources; as long as it doesn't end up a carbon-copy.
 
Would playing as an officer and not being in direct control of the ship pose a problem? What I mean its. Is it something that could be integrated into the game or would it pose a major problem? Maybe I'm the only person who wants to start as a midshipman and rise through the ranks hopefully one day hoisting my flag.
I'd be happy to submit story lines for say cutting out expeditions and the like and even just ideas for Admiralty orders.

Some of things I feel would go into the officer part of the campaign are:
Control over a division of the ships guns eg. Forecastle carronades.
Control of a ships boat for cutting out expeditions, diversionary attacks are shore battlements etc.
Leading a boarding party
command of a prize.
The ability to point a gun individually with control over the elevation and traversing of the gun plus the need to judge the ships roll. This is with the aim of being able to bring down a mast or spar or causing damage to the rudder. Achieving one of these goals would obviously increase your standing with the captain and go along way towards eventual promotion.
The higher your standing with the Captain the increasing likely hood you will be selected for things like cutting out expeditions or command of a prize.

I'm sorry my posts are so long winded. As you can tell I'm quite excited about all this and would like to rouse up some enthusiasm.
I understand not everyone shares my taste as this may be a very rigid sort of campaign perhaps even full of repetition. Which are not exactly what Hearts of Oak is striving for. (I believe) but as for immersion in the game world well those are two attributes you could very easily apply to life aboard a man of war.

I see one pretty major problem with an officer campaign and that is what do you fill your time with between battles. It would be silly to just skip straight from action to action. watch keeping with time compression would be just as pointless you'd basically just be a spectator watching the ship sail through the sea maybe with orders to wear every glass.
 
I'd be quite curious about implementing such things as well.
Hopefully we can create a base game that allows enough flexibility that we could include such a "start from Midshipman" style gameplay as well.
Allowing the player to do certain specific tasks manually would be pretty welcome; and the officer and crew interaction required for that would be really cool too.
 
Yes the manual task thing I drew a lot of inspiration from the Silent Hunter series. I think that game and Hearts of Oak actually have quite a lot in common apart from the actual type of vessel obviously. Silent Hunter doesn't have a start from officer stage. You are the captain from the beginning but there is a lot interface between crew and captain at all the stations and the player can manually operate almost any station including ships guns, hydrophones, sonar and radar. The captain crew interface is done through either clicking on the officer himself or through a UI on the edge of the screen. If you've not seen silent hunter I think it would aid the development of hearts of oak if you took a glance at it. Silent hunter 5 is supposed to have the most in depth crew captain interface of them all but I haven't played it. I've only played 4 and 3. (3 is better than 4 in my opinion) The damage control and repair is also a really good part of that game much better than in AOP CT. (I've just started vanilla POTC and I didn't really like city of abandoned ships)
 
While I myself didn't play Silent Hunter, I know many on our team definitely did. :yes
 
:ahoythere DonaldJason! We've definitely had some similar ideas around here, particularly relating to training and deciding manual vs automatic control of certain gameplay elements. The idea being that there could be a tutorial campaign where you play as an officer that has to manually go through various tasks such as commanding a division of guns in battle, heaving to, kedging etc before being able to eventually order officers to do it for them while in command of their own vessel(or still do it themselves if they so chose) This was intended to be a way to allow those who wanted to deal with fewer operations manually to still avoid doing so in the larger game, while giving those who like to see through things in a more detailed manner the ability to do so as well. This was all discussed quite some time ago, and obviously its potential implementation is fairly far off considering our stage of development right now. There are many of us who would like to see a developed naval system in place that allows a character to actually play as a naval officer outside of a structured storyline, with a system of accurately generated commands, missions, performance-based outcomes, roles in a larger war, etc. However there is no denying that such a system would have to be quite complex, and would have to work alongside systems for those who may not want to play as naval officers, so developing it will likely present some challenges. At any rate, our focus is currently on developing basic gameplay systems such as sailing and fighting, but more input on how various roles can be created through procedurally generated missions could certainly be appreciated by the quest writing team! If you'd like to join the team, I'd suggest that you make a post in the recruitment forum (when you are ready) stating your interest in procedural quest writing and 3D work:)
 
Thanks very much Captain Armstrong. I'm glad that this is something that is at least being considered at least for the perhaps very distant future.

I would like to help but am hesitant to commit myself to anything as I may not turn out to be the most reliable person in terms of this regard. I'd hate to cause delay and or frustration to anyone doing a fantastic job here (which is what you all do here) just because I'd forgotten to check the forum for a couple of months. (I actually forgot about this place for a couple of years then I finally got an internet connection at home and stumbled across it again :D and here I am). We'll see what happens during the upcoming holidays (in about 6 weeks). Hopefully I will still be around :wp
 
The way we always figure it, *some* contribution is better than none.
You can pitch in when you are able and let us know when you can't be around as well. :doff
 
I certainly intend to. Actually working on my final project for this year at the moment hand it in tomorrow morning. After that I plan on downloading Maya and fiddling around with that a little. I figured I could learn the software and the process while producing small items that could be incorporated into other models.
For instance hats, belts, etc. customizable player avatars are going to need plenty of small things like that. (Your appeals for character modellers has appealed to me:p)

This doesn't mean I don't intend to help out with what is said I'd do previously I'm still on board for that.
Speaking of that is there anyway to get involved with quest writing in general without being associated with any one specific quest say as a generic ideas sounding board. Thought of cool (in my opinion) hostage rescue mission idea that could be used in any kind of story line I guess ( provided there's hostages). ( I use too many brackets). My idea may have been done before but if someone is interested I'd be happy to share.
 
I figured I could learn the software and the process while producing small items that could be incorporated into other models.
For instance hats, belts, etc. customizable player avatars are going to need plenty of small things like that. (Your appeals for character modellers has appealed to me:p)
Eeeexcellent! :woot

Speaking of that is there anyway to get involved with quest writing in general without being associated with any one specific quest say as a generic ideas sounding board. Thought of cool (in my opinion) hostage rescue mission idea that could be used in any kind of story line I guess ( provided there's hostages). ( I use too many brackets). My idea may have been done before but if someone is interested I'd be happy to share.
Right now, there is pretty much no OTHER way. We wouldn't ever want to limit anyone's creative input. :no
 
This doesn't mean I don't intend to help out with what is said I'd do previously I'm still on board for that.
Speaking of that is there anyway to get involved with quest writing in general without being associated with any one specific quest say as a generic ideas sounding board. Thought of cool (in my opinion) hostage rescue mission idea that could be used in any kind of story line I guess ( provided there's hostages). ( I use too many brackets). My idea may have been done before but if someone is interested I'd be happy to share.

Hi Donald! Welcome to the community.

Very soon the Quest Writing forum will be available for all members to give and discuss ideas about quests.

You can also think about joining the Quest Writing Team if you want to work developing quests. You don't have to worry about lenght or being available the whole time or even being a writer (it's definitely a plus if you are familiar with literature, though). But, by and large, what we need is creative minds who can express their thoughts and work in collaboration. From what I see, you do very well in all those regards.
 
Thanks for your kind words Dario and the warm welcome. Under those circumstances I will be happy to join the team. Should I put an application in the recruitment forum.
 
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