Hey guys, I decided to reinstall POTC a few days ago after years and years of absence, and of course had to get the build mod up and going as soon as I did. I installed both the base mod and patch 6 for reference. I've been playing the Nathaniel Hawk campaign and have been having tons of fun lately, especially with direct sailing despite my initial reluctance (it just sounded too crazy to actually be fun). I've noticed a few odd bugs with direct sailing though, and I'm curious as to whether it's something to do with my install or if they're known bugs that I haven't been able to find on the forums.
The first is that I can't seem to make landfall during combat. This wouldn't be quite so terrible if I hadn't stripped all of my cannons off of my heavy lugger in order to sell cargo, but that's the path I've chosen to begin with. Pirates and the like seem to chase for a very very long time in this game, and I was hoping I'd be able to make it to a friendly colony and dock and hopefully have the fortress destroy them for me, but no luck. If I'm direct sailing in combat, no matter how far I go I can't seem to reach my destination. I have a sextant, chronometer, compass, and all of that fun stuff so I can see my position on the world map. I've tried sailing to a few different islands but all that results is empty ocean for miles and miles; I can sail straight through what appears to be an island on the archipelago map and it's all just open ocean. The one time I was actually able to shake my pursuer and get him to go away the game immediately loaded a "Land Ho!" and out of nowhere appears the island I'm looking for, which is another reason why I'm assuming combat is the cause of this interesting problem.
Another less crippling problem is that a "Land Ho!" seems to freak out my "GPS" signal on the archipelago map. As an example my first sailing trip was from Puerto Rico due west to the dutch colony west of Curacao (name escapes me at the moment) in order to dump off some gold. I sail west west west, everything looks fine on my map, then a "Land Ho!" pops up for an island in between the two, and all of a sudden I check my map and I'm at the westernmost edge of the map. Given that this is my first time direct sailing I figure "Oh wow, I must have set time compression to 30x for way too long, I've gone past my destination!", but that turned out not to be the case. I kept sailing west for a little longer and another "Land Ho!" pops up and boom, I'm back east of my destination, in between it and Puerto Rico where I figured my ship should be. I kept sailing west and eventually reached my destination with no problems aside from my GPS going crazy. This has happened several times since and I just ignore it, figuring that my navigator had too much rum and decided that we're in the West Indies for whatever reason, because the ship doesn't actually seem to be half way across the map in the wrong position, just the map reports that I'm there for whatever reason. I'm assuming this could just be a limitation of the engine given that the game wasn't really designed for direct sailing? Or am I just getting weird bugs?
Lastly, and this has pretty much nothing to do with direct sailing, what exactly dictates what class of ship I'm able to buy and sail? Is it level? A function of sailing/leadership? I'm level 10 with level 2 leadership and 4+3 sailing and I still can't sail any ships above a class 7 without penalties, and no shipyards will sell them to me. I've looked around a bit and haven't been able to figure it out just yet, my apologies if this is answered 100 times in different places.
The first is that I can't seem to make landfall during combat. This wouldn't be quite so terrible if I hadn't stripped all of my cannons off of my heavy lugger in order to sell cargo, but that's the path I've chosen to begin with. Pirates and the like seem to chase for a very very long time in this game, and I was hoping I'd be able to make it to a friendly colony and dock and hopefully have the fortress destroy them for me, but no luck. If I'm direct sailing in combat, no matter how far I go I can't seem to reach my destination. I have a sextant, chronometer, compass, and all of that fun stuff so I can see my position on the world map. I've tried sailing to a few different islands but all that results is empty ocean for miles and miles; I can sail straight through what appears to be an island on the archipelago map and it's all just open ocean. The one time I was actually able to shake my pursuer and get him to go away the game immediately loaded a "Land Ho!" and out of nowhere appears the island I'm looking for, which is another reason why I'm assuming combat is the cause of this interesting problem.
Another less crippling problem is that a "Land Ho!" seems to freak out my "GPS" signal on the archipelago map. As an example my first sailing trip was from Puerto Rico due west to the dutch colony west of Curacao (name escapes me at the moment) in order to dump off some gold. I sail west west west, everything looks fine on my map, then a "Land Ho!" pops up for an island in between the two, and all of a sudden I check my map and I'm at the westernmost edge of the map. Given that this is my first time direct sailing I figure "Oh wow, I must have set time compression to 30x for way too long, I've gone past my destination!", but that turned out not to be the case. I kept sailing west for a little longer and another "Land Ho!" pops up and boom, I'm back east of my destination, in between it and Puerto Rico where I figured my ship should be. I kept sailing west and eventually reached my destination with no problems aside from my GPS going crazy. This has happened several times since and I just ignore it, figuring that my navigator had too much rum and decided that we're in the West Indies for whatever reason, because the ship doesn't actually seem to be half way across the map in the wrong position, just the map reports that I'm there for whatever reason. I'm assuming this could just be a limitation of the engine given that the game wasn't really designed for direct sailing? Or am I just getting weird bugs?
Lastly, and this has pretty much nothing to do with direct sailing, what exactly dictates what class of ship I'm able to buy and sail? Is it level? A function of sailing/leadership? I'm level 10 with level 2 leadership and 4+3 sailing and I still can't sail any ships above a class 7 without penalties, and no shipyards will sell them to me. I've looked around a bit and haven't been able to figure it out just yet, my apologies if this is answered 100 times in different places.
. Thanks for the help, though, that clears up most of it at least (I had no idea cargo affected speed, makes sense, or the gunpowder=mine thing). As for the weird map stuff though, you said I'm jumping off to the far west of the map because I'm in combat. Does it work like, ok I'm at Curacao and I'm heading west, while I'm in combat I'm unable to go to a new area, so my map will show me going to the very edge of the ocean until I get out of combat, then it will *jump* me back to the west part of Curacao en route to my destination once I'm out of combat? Or will it jump me to the nearest island to where I appear to be on the archipelago map? I'm just trying to figure out why it would result in the map showing me having gone much much farther than I actually have, and then loading again and having my ship jump EAST on the map whenever I was heading WEST the entire time, seemingly in order to adjust for some error in my ship being much much too far west?
