• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


    Visit our website www.piratehorizons.com to quickly find download links for the newest versions of our New Horizons mods Beyond New Horizons and Maelstrom New Horizons!

A start for the "Master and Commander" storyline

Andyintore

Andyintore

Landlubber
Master and Commander quest?

Is there one? Where? How do i start it? :shock

Until now, the only thing i see of M&C in the game is the main character Jack Aubrey and his frigate HMS Surprise. After the game starts, there is nothing more related to M&C as far as i know....so, the only thing i do is improve my skills sinking everyone that cross my way (since Britain is in peace with Portugal only, i dont need to make much effort to find some ship to sink xD: )

I already tried to search Stephen Maturin, but i guess there is no Stephen Maturin in the whole caribbean, right?
 
Nah there isnt anything in the storyline I was suggesting that you could have a go at writing a quest for it :yes
 
Oh...

Not a bad idea, but i must read the AubreyMaturin stories first, in my country we got only two books translated (Master & Commander and The Far Side of the World). I would have to read all O'Brian's books in english and i dont know if im able to find them in the net.
 
Hello Everyone!
This is my first post on the PA! Community,and also my humble contribution to thecreation of the Build Mod.
I uploaded on FTP server the Patrick O'Brians Aubrey-Maturin series books,in e-book format.The folder is in .zip format,named ,,Master&Commander resource"
Files are in .LIT format,you can open it with MS Reader (Windows) or Convert LIT(Mac OS) (both freeware,just drag and drop the files after the instalation,in the program window)

Best regards! Askary
 
For Neptune! Looks like i have work to do! :woot

I will try to read all the Aubrey-Maturin stories this year (if i manage to understand all the naval expressions in english, it is quite hard to understand them in portuguese already :urgh ). Im working in a marina, so i dont have much time to read, but i thank you, now i have something to read when the winter comes.
 
I have the entire series, and have read them several times. I am currently about a third of the way into The Wine-Dark Sea. The movie is actually bits and pieces from a number of the books mashed together into a thoroughly entertaining representation of O'Brian's works. The Acheron never actually appears in the series, but there are so many other historically accurate ships that could be portrayed in the game! I wouldn't mind lending a hand to creating some Aubrey based storylines. I'm not sure how much time I can commit to it, however, as I much prefer playing to tinkering in my limited liesure time. I can certainly act as an adviser on O'Brian's works, though.
 
That's not quite legal, is it?

For a Master and Commander storyline to be really written,
the main thing we need is someone to do it.
It can be done and there's plenty of people willing here to help.
But the people we currently have are already occupied doing other things.
 
I moved the discussion on making a start on the M&C storyline to here from the A thankyou to all who contributed to the Mod pack. thread.
Looks like we may have found someone interested in working on this. :cheeky

At the moment there is indeed no M&C story at all. However, there IS a Stephen Maturin look-a-like in the Bridgetown apothecary.
 
"At the moment there is indeed no M&C story at all. However, there IS a Stephen Maturin look-a-like in the Bridgetown apothecary."

For a moment i was amused that i found him there, althought the name is not Stephen Maturin, but is very similar, just as his speech style. Very tricky ;)

Well, im finishing the very first book and then i will start reading everything in english.

Since im a writer, i dont think it will be hard to write my own story for Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin in the Caribbean. As far as i remember, Jack Aubrey has a bastard son, i dont remember if in the Caribbean or anything close. It is a start... :doff
 
Well, most of the Aubrey action in the books takes place in locales other than the Caribbean, so a lot of what we come up with will have to be "adaptation". I imagine the same is true for the Hornblower work as well. I do have a thought that shouldn't be too difficult to kick things off. Of course, Jack Aubrey will have to start his career with the 14 gun Brig Sophie as his starting ship. The major naval accomplishment of the first book is the capture of the 30 gun Xebec Frigate Cacafuego. The ship is sent in response to Aubrey's success in capturing Spanish prizes. So as a simple start, the first mission should be to accumulate a certain bounty level from Spain, at which point the Cacafuego appears and the epic David -vs- Goliath battle ensues. The bounty level should be fairly high, as Aubrey's prizes were said to "choke the harbor at Port Mahon", which garnered him the nick-name "Lucky Jack". I have other ideas running through my head on this now, but if we can get this much coded and functioning we would at least have a start.

As to Jack's bastard son, yes, he is a black priest named Sam. Not a naval character at all, but perhaps a person to build some shore quests around.
 
Yeah, i imagined that the first book isnt hard to be adapted into the game. We can make quests like:

- Hunting spanish and french ships in specific islands (similar to the ship hunting quests that we get from the governors).
- Start cruisers and return with a certain number of prizes and/or a bounty level from an enemy nation before the time of the cruiser runs out.
- Attack a specific spanish fort (like the attack in the Cape of la Nao).
- Taking some prisoners from two frigates (HMS San Fiorenzo and HMS Amelia, under the command of Sir Harry Neale) and transporting them.
- Leaving Stephen Maturin ashore in a desert shore.
- Searching some spies hidden in an american ship.
- Training the young Mr. Ellis, son of an annoying rich family that asked you to take the boy aboard.
- The final battle with the Xebec Frigate Cacafuego.

See, there is a plenty amount of quests already and it is still the first book.

Now, we need the HMS Sophie and lots of models, then we can start writing the quests and when any modder find himself able to encode the quests, we will finally have the M&C storyline out of the paper.

Im already getting exciting... Now i will finish reading the first book :sail
 
The "SloopBrig" in the game was originally made to be the HMS Sophie.
You could use that. :yes
 
There are some good ideas there! I'm not sure how we would go about some of them, but others shouldn't be too difficult. I especially like attacking the fort, but with forts as tough as they are in the game, there is no way a brig would stand a chance. Cutting-out expeditions should be possible though, especially with the work being done on fog and darkness reducing the fort's accuracy. Makes night raids a more viable plan! I love cutting-out expeditions! In the meantime, I will go back through the quest writing tutorials and my notes from when I dabbled with it a couple of years ago and see I can't put something together for the start I proposed. Any ship modelers out there that would care to build us a Brittish 14 gun brig and a Spanish 30 gun xebec-frigate?

One function in COAS that I don't think is in New Horizons is the ability to launch a boat to visit a friendly ship. This would come in real handy, as quests can start and end by reporting to an Admiral aboard a lineship, rather than a governor or something in port.

Edit- Thanks Pieter, cross that one off the list then!
 
Attacking the fort with a brig? Doesn't sound like a good idea.
Better attack by land and possibly do some sneaking infiltrating kind of thing.
 
Attack by land!?!?! What are we playing here, Mount & Blade? Just kidding, of course. And there are numerous occasions in the series where they did exactly that. But you can't take on a fort's soldiers at low levels and we need to get a beginning in place here first. Doesn't hurt to have a stockpile of ideas for further development either though. But cutting out expeditions, sink and destroy missions and capture the ship type quests all are manageable early in the game. Also, Aubrey is a man of the sea. I think it would be best to keep his land time to a minimum. What's the point of having a great sailing game if you spend most of your time slogging through towns and jungles?
 
Problem is that, at least at this time, the number of different quest events you can stage at sea is severely limited.
You can basically only have battles and the only thing you can vary is the number of ships and sides involved in it.
And maybe add in a fort once the player has had the chance to get a big enough ship and enough experience.
But other than that, there isn't too much that can be done at sea at the moment.
So a storyline that takes place mainly at sea could become quite boring quite quickly.

On the other hand, I'm all for adding new things that could happen at sea,
to make it less boring to spend lots of time at sea,
also for players who are not really into very long sea battles.
 
An interesting perspective there Pieter. I think that was why I found AOP so refreshing despite all of the bugs. You didn't really need to do much on land, it was all about your skill at sea. If you could outgun them or outrun them it was relatively easy. If you couldn't do either, then it became interesting. I think with some creativity coming up with compelling sea-based quests wouldn't be that hard. Especially with all of SWS' work on ship performance, a questline focused on ship handling and combat with some land based chapters interspersed to prevent monotony would be the kind of game I personally would like to play. Need some examples, right from the O'Brian series? Howsabout taking on a more powerful ship one on one- in a storm? Or the Surprise escorting the East India Company ships and taking on the French fleet? Or recovering a captured ship from under the fort's guns? How about taking on a speedster privateer in a race around an island? Those are just off the top of my head.
 
I'm not sure at this time. Just use the storyline start files or console to give yourself that ship to see her.

You do make a good point, Rum Runner. Especially with SWS's ship handling project,
sea battles could be really interesting and varied. There's definitly options here.
And indeed a storyline involving mainly all sorts of different and varied sea battles
could be much appreciated by certain players. Definitly nothing wrong with that. :no
 
I was thinking more about this last night while playing COAS. What is it that makes sea battles become monotonous to many? I think the answer is this: Most people when they start a new game go right to getting their "Uber-Ship-o'-Doom", whatever that may be. I myself am often guilty of this. Once I find my schooner, I don't bother with other ships, unless it is a faster schooner! I can handle pretty much anything in a schooner. I've even reduced a man'o'war to 1 cannon and forced it to strike to me using only 4 pounders(a story for another time). When you play out sea battles over and over in the same ship type, they are going to get boring because you are using the same tactics over and over again. This is a HUGE generalization, and I realize that a lot of people here do use different ships and experiment with different tactics. I would also make the argument that you won't hear those people complaining of sea combat becoming monotonous. To my point, what if the Master and Commander storyline took away some of the freedom of using whatever ship you want, and instead forced you to win the scenario with the ship the Royal Navy saw fit to give you? The RN does not let you pick and choose when it comes to ship assignments, after all. Aubrey commands a number of different ship types throughout the series. So in one chapter you can battle the Cacafuego in the Brig Sophie, while in another you can be battling the Dutch "Waakzaamheid" 64 gun line ship in the "Rotten Old Leopard", a decrepid 50 gun ship, in a storm. Take command of the frigate "Boadicae" as commodore of a mixed group of ships and take on four French frigates and a fort. Use the Surprise to escort a group of East Indiamen and duke it out with the French 74 gun Marengo and accompanying squadron. Liked the look of the 74? Take command of the 74 gun "Bellona" and use your small squadron to capture slavers leading up to a slugfest with French Commodore Maistral and his fleet. Like the small ships? Take a spin in the Baltimore Clipper "Ringle" for some fast paced action. In addition to keeping the monotony at bay, this would also be a great way to showcase the varying ships and ship types New Horizons has to offer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top