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Chain shot

Jason Maffettone

Jason Maffettone

Lord of Entropy
Quest Writer
Provisional
Storm Modder
I want to start off by saying I LOVE the real cannons mods by and large but I'm noticing that it has pretty much nullified chain shot. You can shoot a guy up all day with the stuff and not punch a pin-hole in his sails. Chain is SUPER important because when you're out-gunned mobility is your only friend. I don't really know if grape is also rendered ineffective or not, hard to tell for sure on the fly.

Chain seems to have been rendered just a low-range cheep cannon ball, is this adjustable somewhere?
 
I concur, the chain shot needs to be tweaked. I haven't really noticed anything with the grape though, I mostly use solid and chain shot.
Could doubble shotted guns be added? Twice as powerful as solid shot but only half the range, it could replace bomb shot (which compares to heated shot), as the bomb was not as popular and very dangerous to use on a ship, leading many captains to not use it.
 
Checked it out, the grape still functions normally. I think it's a question of gun elevation that's rendering the chain ineffective, perhaps this was altered somehow in the real cannons mod? I tore up a guy's sails before with regular shot because the ship lurched sideways just as I fired so it is still possibile to hit them and have them react. Was there a setting somewhere that made the guns fire higher when useing chain that isn't active anymore?
 
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/poet.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":hmm" border="0" alt="poet.gif" />

I don't understand.....why has the Cannon Fire effects and problems with the different ammunition, all of a sudden reached "ridiculous proportions"

things that worked fine, are now dumb....stupid...not realistic.....???????

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?

They always told me you could bring down a mast.....I personnally have never seen it happen....now with chain shot ruined, I never will....this is just SAD!!
 
Masts can still go down with ball shot as well, just a matter of a mast hit being registered. I think there must have been something in the origional chain shot programing that aimed for the masts that isn't working now. I've poked around in the files for something that looks like it may have an effect on this but nothing leaps out.
 
I've noticed that in general sails take very little damage, almost all hits seem to be directly on the hull, if I remember correctly didn't sails used to get ripped apart in the origional and build 12?
 
are you guys manually firing or letting the comp do the targeting? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/whistling.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":wp" border="0" alt="whistling.gif" />

The computer knows nothing about targeting, and in reality they couldnt aim very high with cannons, the only way to get a higher elevation was to knock off the rear wheels on the carriges(on those guns that had wheels) but that would also limit them to only one shot, i have no problem with firing trough the sails and blowing down masts, its just not doable near point blank range, another thing is to do what real sailors and captains of warships did, is use the ocean to your advantage, to position yourself so that the waves will move your ship in a rocking motion to gain elevation and range.
 
Some thoughts, oppinions, facts about this issue:


Chain shot now makes very few damage to sails

With balls you can bring down a mast, but only if you hit it with a ball... and normally with heavy cannons (With 24 pounders I did, with 9 pdr never)

The elevation is right. To fire to sails you'll have either to fire from far away, or use the ship's roll in your advantage. As it happened historically.

The trouble is that, when firing at sails:
- you'll only damage them if you hit a mast or a sail
- if you hit a sail with chain, seems to do the same amount of damage of ball shot
- if you hit the hull with chain, it seems not been modelled the damage caused to ropes, cables, stays, etc...


I've noticed that the function ApplySailDamage is now an "empty" function... sort of:

void ApplySail Damage(....) {
return;
}


But I've now no time to fix it.


My 0.02 €

Kblack.
 
As Merciless said, chain shot (well, bar shot really) works fine provided you fire manually. When letting the AI target it tends to target the hull so of course it misses the sails and masts, but switching to manual targetting and it is very useful. Plus you won't see the 'bars unless your in 1st person mode, though tis a pity they don't spin.
Out of interest has anyone ever seen the CPU controlled ships use any ammo other than balls? I like to watch in 1st person view the shot approaching my vessel but it's always plain old balls. I guess unless CPU has no balls left they won't attack with other types...wonder what they'd choose after balls run out, grape or chain?

Anyway the difficulty in demasting a ship in POTC is surely a lot more realistic than in Meier's Pirates! where it's a given that using chain will immediately disable a vessel (or so I find in my 40 gun flag galleon).
 
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/poet.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":hmm" border="0" alt="poet.gif" />

Well maybe this is the reason the puter doesnt use other ammo other than balls, because it might use them more effectively than users. Look at what the build has now, if you have a new boat and crew (255) and the computer fires "one" time at you.....you lose almost ALL of them......I have seen this time in and time out, and no one knows why yet, but it is in the last tested post build 12 modpack now! So you can imagine what AI would do with other ammo. Still, the french were notorious for using Chain Shot, because they wanted to add ships to their fleet, and they were not the sailors like the English, being bottled up in Harbor by the English Blockading Squadrons all the time. It would be great to reflect this in game.....different nationalities using different tactics on you, but this might be too much and set off another round of bugs. Still file this one away for a bit....you never know
 
This was an interesting discussion. From it my conclusion is that nothing is really wrong with the way chain is working.
 
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/keith.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":keith" border="0" alt="keith.gif" />

Jason: HUH ???

Define please....don't leave us hangin man! that be tew cruel
 
I think what he means to say is that from what people have said in this topic THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH THE CHAIN SHOT.
 
Chain is usable in 1st person but the use of chain USED to automaticly do sail damage and it doesn't now. Even in 1st person when you score a direct hit it punches very few holes in the sails and has little effect on their speed. Also, Long John says he can't take down a mast? I do almost every time I hit a smaller ship. Granted I'm using a type 1 Battleship with 32 pounders but...

Is it possibile people are experiencing different types of issues with the same mods? Sounds goofy but I had issues where I installed multiple times and to different effects when I did. Certain features were missing (all of the "SHIP" submenues once) and not on the next re-install dispite that I was very careful with the file transfers in each case.

Could this be a case of differing effects with the same mods because of some quirk caused in the updates?
 
I'm afraid that, because there are so many different version possible, lots of people have slightly different versions. I will try to make a proper base version, which should then be used by everyone to decrease troubles caused by base version differences.
 
I see what people mean that there isn't any advantage in using knippels (Chain) in battle as they don't add apparent extra damage to sails.
I've found a 'cannons' config file in Resources/INI where the game is maybe saying how much damage each type of shot does to each element? Has values for 'BALLS_HULL_DAMAGE', 'BALLS_CREW_DAMAGE' and 'BALLS_SAIL_DAMAGE' with values of 1-3. Now bombs are assigned 3 for hull damage compared to other shot types, and grapeshot is given a 3 for crew, but knippels only warrant a 2 for sails. Would upping this value to 3 help?
Maybe the creators of the cannons modifications and Merciless who tweaked the fire and effects know what this file does?

BTW, there's a bit in AIShip seemingly written by a 'Walker' about mast damage that seems to my untrained eye to suggest when you hit a mast there should be a message to that affect 'Captain with hit their mast!'...don't think I've ever seen it happen though. No idea what the code does mind you...
 
You can try setting that value to 3 and see what happens. I'm surprised those values are in a RESOURCE\INI file though. Usually those kind of values would be in some file in the PROGRAM folder. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />

I have seen the "Captain, we hit their mast!" code you refer to. The reason you never saw it on your screen is because of the "//" before the line "//Log_SetStringToLog("Captain, we hit their mast!");". Lines with "//" before them are not read by the program. If you remove the "//", you should see it when it happens. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/yes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":yes" border="0" alt="yes.gif" />
 
<!--quoteo(post=148313:date=May 13 2006, 10:17 AM:name=Pieter Boelen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pieter Boelen @ May 13 2006, 10:17 AM) [snapback]148313[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
You can try setting that value to 3 and see what happens. I'm surprised those values are in a RESOURCE\INI file though. Usually those kind of values would be in some file in the PROGRAM folder. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />

I have seen the "Captain, we hit their mast!" code you refer to. The reason you never saw it on your screen is because of the "//" before the line "//Log_SetStringToLog("Captain, we hit their mast!");". Lines with "//" before them are not read by the program. If you remove the "//", you should see it when it happens. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/yes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":yes" border="0" alt="yes.gif" />
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Aye thanks Pieter. Yeah that line seems to have been mistakenly turned into a comment in code. I'll see if that changes things. There's actually the same thing a little above in the case SHIP_MAST_TOUCH_SHIP

//aref rCollideCharacter = GetEventData();
fDamage = fDamage + MAST_SHIP_SCL * collhp;

I wonder if this is was meant to be collision damage between a mast and another ship whether friendly or not (as the previous case is about collisions with islands and the following case collisions with cannon balls). Actually I think in the past I have seen ships lose masts to collisions...at the very least the demasting sound effect does play in those scenarios.
But then there's loads of stuff commented out in that file, so maybe it was never meant to be switched on.

As for the cannons config stuff...well I stuck Knippels to 3 for sail damage but wasn't really in a position to see if it made any difference. I'm fairly sceptical as well that it does anything. Partly the problem is that whilst theoretically it might cause more damage to the sails with chain(knippels), would it visually any effect? Reading this thread the complaint is as much as anything that visually knippels don't make big enough holes in the sails compared to cannon balls, as well as obviously not really slowing enemy vessels down. Perhaps our resident cannonFx guru might know how to make our chainshot have more of an obvious effect?
 
A lot of code is commented out because these lines were only meant for testing or because those lines are old.

The size of the holes on the sails visually might have been changed by Merciless Mark. However, he didn't change the amount of damage the chain shot should do to the sails. I am thinking the amount of actual damage and the amount of visual damage might not actually be related. Not sure at all though... <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":?" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />
 
My suspision is not, I've been testing it out quite a bit by using a lot of chain shot at various ranges, both automaticly and manualy. The visual sail damage I think is keyed because storm damage to sails causes the same visual, also I note thet in the origional game (and the base build 12) the results on maneuvering was consciderable and now its minimal at best.

I will try making the alteration above and report back any results I note.
 
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