Fixed Cannot remove all crew from captured ship

[salonikasurf]

Jan 7 update.
When transferring crew from a captured vessel, when all companion slots are filled, the transfer screen will only allow you to move crew above the ship's minimum crew number. Hence, the rest must go down with the ship.

 

[pedrwyth]

OK I'll look at that - could have arisen through my re-enabling crew transfer to companion ships during ransack - or perhaps the use of the same interface these days for transfer and ransack on abordage rather than two separate interfaces as previously means the block needed for transfer between your ships too maintain a minimum crew on either ship has been applied in the other conditions too.

 

[Jason]

I can confirm this problem.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If I recall, minimum crew should only be enforced if you intend to keep the ship.
So there should be checks:
- In the interface, but only if there is a Captain assigned
- After exiting the interface in case someone tried to assign a Captain after first removing all the crew

I can't remember if that used to be the case, though.

 

[Grey Roger]

I can confirm the same thing. Even if I don't put a companion officer onto the ship to take it as a prize, I can't evacuate the whole crew. It goes down to minimum crew and refuses to let me take any more.

If the captain surrenders and I remember to do so, I can tell him I'm taking his entire crew (or as many as will fit onto my ship). In that case I can then loot the ship for cargo and leave it with 0 crew, provided I'm leaving it to sink and not putting a prize officer aboard. (Of course, if I do put an officer aboard, the loot screen won't let me exit unless I've put a minimum size crew aboard, which is fine.)

 

[pedrwyth]

Here's a revised transfer_crew.c for you guys to try -

I think it works because I spent about an hour trying to trigger this today to see what was happening after forgetting I had already had put an attempted fix in last week! Dumb or what - just call it testing! That's what I get for not putting an accompanying comment in the file at the time.

EDIT At least I learned you can swap in a companion ship to do the whole ship swap with (not just for cannons or crew) so that saves me a lot of making sure I am on the lesser ship of the flotilla ready to swap in future playthroughs. ENDEDIT

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@pedrwyth

 

[LarryHookins]

I'm not sure why we're enforcing minimum crew at all.

I can hear the answer already: "But there won't be enough crew to sail the ship back to port!!1!!!11!!". Yeah, but there will be enough crew to tow a ship back (happened after Trafalgar), even if the animation doesn't show it being towed, or jury rig a spritsail on a spar for a dismasted ship. It's not like the ship will be forever dead in the water if you're one crewman short. But it will be inefficient.

I thought we already had special case code to handle less than minimum crew. I remember adding a lot of stuff back when it was still possible to end up with two ships and just the captain, everyone else dead, after a boarding.

Hook

 

[pedrwyth]

I'm not sure why we're enforcing minimum crew at all.

Well neither am I, but don't shoot the messenger, I just got rid of it where requested/reported as bugged.

I would guess it grew out of the fact that the ships had a quoted minimum and someone thought it should be made to stick.

In the original vanilla I think you can transfer crew between your ships down to the captain alone. In NH it has bugged me on the rare occasion when the two ships have not had sufficient crew between them and I have been locked from keeping them both regardless (that was before I re-opened being able to get them from your other ships if you have them) - I would happily bend that one into shape (there was code allowing that situation where there is not enough in both in the transfer but it would still be blocked by the minimum requirement on leaving the interface) -should be simple enough for a headcount of the two to let the minimum check slide.

 

[LarryHookins]

I'm not shooting the messenger, @pedrwyth, but I wouldn't mind taking a shot or two in the direction of the person who thought enforcing minimum crews was a good idea. If I remember right, each ship had a minimum crew to work the sails, and below that number there would be penalties to sailing. If that code is still in place, just turn the crew number orange when it gets below minimum crew for the ship, and red when it gets below minimum sailing crew. There would also be minimum crew for guns, with similar penalties.

I only saw the problem once and it caused me to use rude language. But if I'd been off capturing ships instead of trading I would have removed that restriction in a New York minute.

I spent a lot of hours getting that code to work right at the time. It was all part of the rewrite of the boarding code to have each ship keep a reserve out of the fighting so there would always be someone left when it was all over. If I remember right, I kept half the minimum crew in each ship as a reserve. Not sure what it is now.

Hook

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@LarryHookins: All of that is still in place.

What is enforced is an absolute minimum.
There is also a minimum crew to be effective, which is a higher number.
It is that second one that you worked on.

So if you have more than the effective minimum, then the ship has reduced efficiency.
But the absolute minimum is also still in place.
I think that was there since the stock game.