Fixed Discussion about player money which causes mutiny

[Levis]

not sure of that but putting your main wealth inside ships chest seems to let you be a billionaire without having to sign articles

Can someone confirm this? As far as I know the money in the weapons locker is taken into account.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

This used to be true in the past, but isn't anymore. Weaponslocker is checked. I know, because I added that check.

This along with ContraProductive's other report makes me wonder what game version he is playing.
Perhaps he is a bit out-of-date?

On this subject though, the purpose of the whole money check is to encourage players to switch to "Divide the Plunder" in the later game.
Some players like @Hylie Pistof don't like this though because it interferes with their trading.
While it IS possible to switch of this functionality, I'd much rather find a way to handle this so that it doesn't have to be disabled.

So then my questions are:
1. Would you consider using signing articles? If not, why not? What could we do to make this more atractive?
and
2. If you don't want to sign articles, why do you need so much money? How much money do you need? And what is this based on?
Monthly crew pay is already exempt from this check. Should we scale it on ship size too or so?

 

[Levis]

Well I believe the money you have at a loanshark isn't counted right? so you could always store your money there which would be normal.
Being a trader can be quite expensive. if you have a full fleet of 4 ships which large cargo hold and want to fill them to the brim with gold its gonna take some money. So maybe the treshold should be reconsidered (haven't really looked into it yet). I was also thinking about making a "invest in shop" thing lateron for traders. dont know exactly what it would do but it would be something for people who want a (kind of) honest living.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Currently the limit is at "monthly crew pay" plus 1 million, if I recall. It is in DailyCrewUpdate.c .

Well I believe the money you have at a loanshark isn't counted right? so you could always store your money there which would be normal.

Only the player, the ship chest and the weaponslocker are checked. So if you WANT to hide your money, you can easily do so.
Loansharks, officers and any random chest are all fair game.

 

[Levis]

Currently the limit is at "monthly crew pay" plus 1 million, if I recall. It is in DailyCrewUpdate.c .

Only the player, the ship chest and the weaponslocker are checked. So if you WANT to hide your money, you can easily do so.
Loansharks, officers and any random chest are all fair game.

What do you say about making a perk "Fair Trader", this will make sure the crew wont ask for signing articles but it limits the amount of crew you can hire at taverns (only people who want to do fair work will apply then). would that be an idea?
Should only be avaible a bit later ingame (for example if your rank is above 15). And the effect should go away if your reputation drops below the normal reputation I think.

 

[Levis]

Or even better. If a shop owner trust you enough he can aks you to be in a trading consortium (might be that this can only happen if you have this perk). By paying a large amount of money up front you get even higher discounts at the shops connected to this consortium (could be nation based) you will get a document saying you are part of the consortium and this will make sure your crew wont mute with large amount of money cause now you are a real trader. Some crew might defect as soon as you make this arrangement but it should profit you in the end.

hmmm I like this, going to look into it

 

[Grey Roger]

I like the idea of a trading consortium. It means there's a large amount of money in one place. Now I just need to find a way to rob them.

Apart from that, there's a branch of the East India Trading Company in one of the ports. Perhaps that is where you should buy your document - you're joining the EITC. (What other major companies were there, if any?)

Another thought - when does the game check how much money you have? If it could be made to only check when you put to sea, then you can have plenty of money while on land. That means you can sell all your cargo, buy another load of cargo, and perhaps invest some of the profit into a new ship. So long as you don't have 1,000,000 in loose cash when you leave port, the crew wouldn't complain.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The check happens every at midnight.

I like @Levis' ideas there. Though I do not think there should an ability that has a disadvantage to it.
Reason being that you cannot get rid of it later if you reconsider.
An item such as an official trader document would be much better.

@Grey Roger: The Dutch would have the Vereenigde West-Indische Compagnie active in the Caribbean.
I think they already have an office in Willemstad, but it serves no regular gameplay purpose.
It is used in one of @Bartolomeu o Portugues' storylines.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I need at least $1,000,000. That is the minimum. I am just scraping by for much of the game and sometimes don't make the payroll as it is. With treasure quests only having treasure 1/3rd of the time they are not a good source of income. Especially when you go 0-5 and have to pay out for battle damage too. Smuggling is a good source of income once one has the money to fill the hold. That takes a while.

Divide the plunder?? What plunder? There is nothing to divide.

 

[Grey Roger]

@Pieter Boelen: I think it might have been at Willemstad where I found the East India Trading Company office. Certainly that's the only corporate office I've seen, I've never seen Vereenigde West-Indische Compagnie, and I've been to Willemstad. (It was a convenient place to sell some ships which had, er, "joined" me while I was on my way to Aruba. )

@Hylie Pistof: it was your trading problems I had in mind when I suggested checking how much money you have when you leave port rather than every day. If you sell cargo and as a result have 3,000,000 gold; then pay for your ship repairs, maybe buy a new ship, and fill your holds with new cargo, the crew should not get upset. Only if you've made so much profit that you've paid all the expenses and filled your holds and still have over 1,000,000 gold should they start to become envious.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I want to have much more money on hand than that. One never knows when major expenses crop up. I have spent over $3,000,000 buying and outfitting ships.

Meh. Do what you want.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

We're trying to think this through so that it doesn't need to annoy you but actually make the game more interesting.

@Grey Roger: In some storylines there are English EITC offices in Bridgetown and on Jamaica as well.

 

[Bartolomeu o Portugues]

It is used in one of @Bartolomeu o Portugues' storylines.

Right

 

[Levis]

Should we at least chance the max amount to 1mil times the numbers of ships in your fleet?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That sounds like a fair simple solution until something more fancy can be attempted. ​

 

[Levis]

money = money - ( 1000000 + GetEstimatedOfficerPay() + GetEstimatedCrewPay() );

this seems to be needed to change.
Does anyone know if there is a funciton already who returns the amounts on ships in the fleet?

 

[Grey Roger]

Doubtful, otherwise that would have been a much more elegant solution to the problem of checking if you have a slot free for a promotion ship. Instead, that code checks each slot in turn and goes ahead with the promotion ship if any of them is empty. A function to calculate the number of ships in your fleet might have to do the same thing.

Which, if it's done as part of the daily update, will make that even slower. I still think the check ought to be done once when you leave port. Not only does that take some of the load off the daily update, it also means you can do what you like with your money so long as you don't have too much when you put to sea. You could have 10,000,000 and provided 9,000,001 of it is used to buy repairs, upgrades and new trade goods, you won't have a problem.

 

[Levis]

The fact that it isn't used somewhere else doesn"t say much in potc cause so many people coded in it already and no all coded clean .
if you need to check if 4 slots are emptry or not that doesn"t take to much load. not compared to some of the loops.
it would be a first quick fix untill somone has time to make it better. Feel free to be that person just mind some of the code is used for morale drop also. It would be easier to just add a if statement in front of this to see if you are at sea or not.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

As far as I'm aware, there is no such function. Should be easy enough to write though, I imagine.

 

[Levis]

Place in PROGRAM\Worldmap
this should take the amount of ships in account and only check your money when at sea or the worldmap.