Fix in Progress random_captains_sit_tavern pays to much for contraband

Apperently random_captains will buy contraband from you.
I'm actually thinking about removing them all together because it unbalances smuggling. but I would like to know if people use this for theire relation points, I think it also exploids the relation system.
What do you think @Grey Roger and @Pieter Boelen ?

I kind of like the idea of them still being there, but being a very rare tavern encounter, so you only see them one in a hundred times visiting a tavern (and so wouldn't plan a strategy around them). Meanwhile, they shouldn't give any gold, but instead just relation points.

It is nice to have the variety of odd encounters like this, as it makes the game world feel richer, so it would be a shame to lose them entirely.

If it gives no money and only relation points (not exceeding zero at most), then could it not be kept?

Pieter Boelen said:

If it gives no money and only relation points (not exceeding zero at most), then could it not be kept?

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sure, it's a nice way to get rid of some contraband you got. I'd say remove the money all together indeed and boost the relation points a little bit.

maybe also add a smuggler liking -1 because the smugglers would have liked to profit from this. and -1 isn't that bad but it would make an impact if you do this a lot .

That does sound quite reasonable to me.

Included in the zip file is an excel sheet which on the left side shows the value for the current relation and at the top shows the amount of goods you smuggled.
In between are the amount of points you will get added to your relation score.
Also changed this in the dialog file.
Please test if it works cause I haven't been able to test it.
Also please let me know what you think of the new calculation.
The idea is, the higher your score is the less it will matter.

@imado552 or @Tingyun could you test it?
Put the .c file in \PROGRAM\DIALOGS

Levis sure but do you know any way or any place where can i meet him or should i just search until i find him ?-?

imado552 said:

Levis sure but do you know any way or any place where can i meet him or should i just search until i find him ?-?

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He should be in taverns.
Make sure you have some contraband with you and he should be there I think about 30% of the time. So enterering and exiting it a few times should work.

Hi Levis, I've got this and the officers shared xp leveling you tagged me on in my testing list, will do so today or tomorrow (if Imado doesn't have them tested before then). Sorry for being unresponsive, just haven't had a chance to test yet, but I keep a list whenever you tag me in a post so I can make sure to get to them within a couple of days.

Levis said:

He should be in taverns.
Make sure you have some contraband with you and he should be there I think about 30% of the time. So enterering and exiting it a few times should work.

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okay then that's why i couldn't find him !!!

@Levis

To confirm, I installed the dialogue file, but did not do anything with the excel spreadsheet, it is just for reference right?

Found him testing in a French tavern with loads of every good.

He said he would offer me 61 gold. He took 20 ale, 20 silk, and 21 tobacco.

He then made my relations worse by 2 points, I dropped from -45 to -47 with France.

So, problems:

1) there is a negative where a positive should be somewhere.

2) Why even offer gold at that point, with it so low?

3) Also, some grammatical errors: A) "exchange of" should be "exchange for"; B) there shouldn't be spaces between the last word in the sentence and the punctuation mark; C) Not every sentence should end with an exclamation point.

Looking at the file it seems some of the other dialogues with different tavern encounters have the same oddness, with spaces between the last word and the exclamation point or question marks. Not sure what is going on, maybe that is correct in some languages other than English?

Finally, one bit of feedback--rather than just making the power of this encounter less by weakening the gold and relations, I'd favor making it rarer. At 30% it becomes a pretty reliable way to get relations if you want to make the money/relations tradeoff. I'd prefer it to be somewhat more rewarding but rare enough that players can't rely on getting it anytime they want (absent a desire to be exploitive and just enter/exit multiple times).

Levis, I think this finishes the backlog of stuff you wanted me to test. Let me know if I missed something, otherwise, I'll post a few new issues that came up, and then I probably won't have much time to do further testing until next week. Really busy this week and a trip planned for this weekend.

@imado552

Since I will have limited availability for the next couple of days, if Levis needs further testing of revisions (I posted the first round of test results for him here a few minutes ago), I wanted to give you my testing save file so you can quickly help him out.

This save has a full compliment of smuggled good (ale, tobaco, and silk, all contraband in the current port), and is right in the tavern. All you need to do to test further revisions is enter and exit the tavern a couple of times, so it should only take a couple of minutes to test with this setup.

Forgot to mention: @Levis , I am happy to rewrite the dialogue part if helpful, fixing the errors I mentioned and improving the language. Just paste anything you want looked at here and I will proofread and revise within a day or so (even when away from my computer, I can always use my phone to quickly do revisions).

In general, anytime you need dialogue revisions done, I am happy to help.

Ah I forgot to remove the money part from the dialog. You don't get the money anymore.
@Tingyun maybe you could take this file and update it?
In this file the dialog strings are located in the file itself so you can just edit them in there. Can you look for this line too:
and remove the - infront of points. Think that one slipped by...

Levis,

I can find some time either tonight or tomorrow to do it, and will test the revised file once done. I will finish and post it here before leaving for the weekend.

@Levis

Attached find the revised file. I deleted the negative sign, used the money part of the dialogue for a new purpose, and edited pretty much every bit of dialogue in there (probably 50 lines). Aside from fixing the grammatical mistakes, I rewrote over half of it, trying to stick close to the meaning of the original version (while completely changing the words). Here is one example from the challenge a captain dialogue sequence:


Old version, without any changes from me:
"Yes, i'm the captain of a good ship ! You can see her in the port and I serve the crown of this colony.";
"Your governor will see your body hanged on my mast from the shore ! I'll wait you on sea captain ! Farewell !";
"I'm a corsar of the king and i accept your challenge mister ! You'll regret what you said.";
"Ha ! I'll sink you with pleasure !";


My rewritten version:
"I am an honest captain and loyal to my country. Consider your actions carefully, rogue.";
"Your country is fit only for the service of dogs such as yourself. Your ship will be mine, and your governor will witness your failure.";
"I serve my king through the strength of my cannons and crew. You will die for your insolence.";
"The dog bares its teeth. Soon, it will lie on its back.";

I have installed the file and tested several of the dialogues, and the ones I encountered all look good. I also used winmerge to double check I hadn't messed anything up, and it looks ok.

Also, tested, with removing the negative sign, the relations points from turning over contraband now works. I went from -45 to -42 from giving them about 20 each of three smuggled goods (or about 60 goods total).

Thanks a lot for improving this dialog, @Tingyun!
Indeed there are a few files in the game with quite terrible spelling and it's great to see one of those taken care of.

Also, I do believe a promotion is in order, so welcome to the Storm Modders group!
You should now be able to post your improvements here so that we won't forget about them for the next update:
http://piratesahoy.net/threads/new-content-post-build-14-beta-4-0-public-release.27077/

Tingyun said:

@Levis

Attached find the revised file. I deleted the negative sign, used the money part of the dialogue for a new purpose, and edited pretty much every bit of dialogue in there (probably 50 lines). Aside from fixing the grammatical mistakes, I rewrote over half of it, trying to stick close to the meaning of the original version (while completely changing the words). Here is one example from the challenge a captain dialogue sequence:


Old version, without any changes from me:
"Yes, i'm the captain of a good ship ! You can see her in the port and I serve the crown of this colony.";
"Your governor will see your body hanged on my mast from the shore ! I'll wait you on sea captain ! Farewell !";
"I'm a corsar of the king and i accept your challenge mister ! You'll regret what you said.";
"Ha ! I'll sink you with pleasure !";


My rewritten version:
"I am an honest captain and loyal to my country. Consider your actions carefully, rogue.";
"Your country is fit only for the service of dogs such as yourself. Your ship will be mine, and your governor will witness your failure.";
"I serve my king through the strength of my cannons and crew. You will die for your insolence.";
"The dog bares its teeth. Soon, it will lie on its back.";

I have installed the file and tested several of the dialogues, and the ones I encountered all look good. I also used winmerge to double check I hadn't messed anything up, and it looks ok.

Also, tested, with removing the negative sign, the relations points from turning over contraband now works. I went from -45 to -42 from giving them about 20 each of three smuggled goods (or about 60 goods total).

Click to expand...

Tingyun that was really amazing that dialogue was great !!! i salute you Master Mariner !!
and about testing my week was crazy woo!! i couldn't do anything nor testing nor resuming my Role-play but i think i will be able to get a free time these days so i can do something to help you all!!!
and again that was great (by the way can you do it for Japanese ? i know its out of the subject so i hope you can pm with your answer you know creating dialogues for Japanese instead )again another time great job Tingyun you too Levis !!!

Pieter,

Thanks so much! I'm honored.

Imado,

I don't know Japanese, so I'm sorry I couldn't help you correct anything in that language.

Perhaps you thought I did from my screenname? I am a native English speaker, but my screenname is Chinese (Tingyun=廷筠). I do know Chinese, but not Japanese.

Are you doing a Japanese translation or something? Confused about why you would need dialogues in an Asian language.