Fix in Progress Companion ship drops morale

[Grey Roger]

Playing a merchant FreePlay campaign, I had three schooners whose morale kept dropping to "Poor". One captain had a positive reputation, as did I; the other was "Neutral". I had a merchant licence so my gold was not a factor. At first I thought it was because both captains had too low "Leadership" and "Sailing", so I bought them books and items to boost their skills - no effect.

Some work with 'trace' lines in "DailyCrewUpdate.c" showed that, where a companion captain's "effective leadership" should affect morale, it was 0 for both captains. Yet if I used the same command to show one captains "effective leadership" from the console, it showed skill 4.

Then it got weird. Trace commands showed the captains' leadership as 0, then I pressed F12 to trigger console, it showed the captain's leadership as 4 - and next day the traces showed this captain's leadership as 4 and the other as 0.

There is a function 'ResetEffectiveSkill'. I put this above the leadership check for morale and, next day, both captains showed their correct leadership and their crew morales began to rise.

The next question is, what to do for companions whose reputation conflicts with yours? With this fix, they will use their leadership in your favour! Negating the leadership bonus is a bit harsh, especially if the reputation difference is slight. Perhaps only apply the leadership bonus if the companion's reputation does not oppose yours?

Anyway, here is "DailyCrewUpdate.c" with the leadership fix.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

There is a function 'ResetEffectiveSkill'.

If I recall, that functionality was mainly added for game performance reasons so the game doesn't have to check officers, passengers, items every single time.
I did a fair bit of work on it myself and that "Reset" should be added whenever something changes.

I remember wondering if it was added in enough places.
Apparently not.

Makes me wonder where it is in fact missing.
The ideal fix should be somewhere else...
Could it be that skills aren't reset at all when you assign a captain to a ship?
But should the Ship/Passengers interface not show you the ACTUAL skill number the game calculates with?
Otherwise, what is the point.

The next question is, what to do for companions whose reputation conflicts with yours? With this fix, they will use their leadership in your favour! Negating the leadership bonus is a bit harsh, especially if the reputation difference is slight. Perhaps only apply the leadership bonus if the companion's reputation does not oppose yours?

So... a high-leadership opposite-reputation captain would be BETTER than a low-leadership one; for the player?
Even though they could be using that leadership AGAINST you; because you don't see eye-to-eye?
That's what you mean; right?

This would reputation-difference effect is a bit underdeveloped anyway.
I had the intention of applying something similar to (non-quest) shore officers too.
So their loyalty could drop based on your actions and eventually leave.
But I never bothered to finish that up...

 

[Grey Roger]

So... a high-leadership opposite-reputation captain would be BETTER than a low-leadership one; for the player?
Even though they could be using that leadership AGAINST you; because you don't see eye-to-eye?
That's what you mean; right?

Exactly.

The easiest fix would be to only apply the leadership bonus if the companion's reputation does not conflict with yours, leaving him unchanged from the way he is now.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The easiest fix would be to only apply the leadership bonus if the companion's reputation does not conflict with yours, leaving him unchanged from the way he is now.

Been trying to wrap my head around the logic of this one.
I wonder about the "sense of professionalism" you might have on a high Leadership; to keep doing the job even though you don't agree.
And whether that makes any sense...

Probably I'm overthinking, since I've got some real-life experience with that and real life is obviously not so simple.

Sounds okay to change it.
Stop the Leadership bonus from applying if the difference between reputations is too large.

 

[smrtwhkd]

Not sure if a captain's reputation would have anything to do with it. I put Claire Louresse, the girl pirate you collect from San Juan on a ship when she only has swindler reputation. That ship revolted. Later I put her on when she has Vixen, the ship was ok.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Not sure if a captain's reputation would have anything to do with it.

Most certainly does have something to do with it.
If a captain is on the opposite end of morality compared to you, it'll make things more difficult...

 

[Grey Roger]

Quest ships do not mutiny. You have the choice of whether to recruit an officer from the tavern with opposed reputation to yours, and you then have the choice of whether to put that officer in a ship. You do not have the choice of quest companions, and if they have their own ships then you can not remove them. So Claire Larousse will not mutiny even if she's "Scarlet" and you're "Hero".

But if, while you're in that tavern, you find a random officer with "Swindler" reputation and then put him in command of one of your own companion ships, expect trouble...

Meanwhile, I've gone ahead and made the Leadership bonus only apply if the companion captain does not oppose your reputation. If he's only slightly different (you're "Bloke" and he's "Rascal", for example) then other morale factors should keep him in line. But he won't be actively supporting you with his own Leadership.