My idea would be to create ONE Free Play storyline with a naval starting character. If you choose this one, you will get that attribute.
Even better might be to add another extra player type named as "Commissioned Officer".
Choosing that one will make you a proper navy officer instead of a general freelance player.
This will make the following differences:
- No Food/Rum consumption: This is handled by the Admiralty - Done for Hornblower storyline, try to avoid here!
- No Salary to be Paid: This is handled by the Admiralty - Done already for Hornblower storyline, do we want this here too?
- If nation relations change, so do the player relations
- Start with your crew being soldiers
- Do NOT get awarded land upon promotion until reaching Flag Rank (which rank level is that?)
- Do NOT get any dialog choice to buy a LoM from any governor
- Do NOT get any dialog choice to purchase amnesty from a pirate relation agent
- NO companion mutinies due to differences in reputation
- Cannot hire officers from taverns
- Cannot hoist other-nation flag; only player flag allowed
- Pre-programmed officers and new ships for each promotion
- WISH: Free hiring of crew in own-nation taverns
Sounds like an excellent idea. Comments on the differences:
- I agree with Roger on this, provisioning is also a very immersive feature. I think what Roger mentioned about the auto-trade upon friendly port visit might work. Then again, this could be left for the player to do (and pretend). This also relates to the commissioned powder and shotte. For 3.4 I think we better leave this as is.
- That is a good idea. I also like the idea of getting free crewmen at your nation's ports.
- This is the most important thing for now, I think - at least with the current Nelson start in mind.
- That can already easily be set the storyline parameters. I don't think it's a must though; after all, only a small part of your crew were marines/soldiers.
- Agreed (Rank 9).
- Agreed.
- Agreed.
- Agreed.
- I'm not sure about this. I think there should be a way to complement the set of officers you get by the board. Especially if we expand upon the officer types (like I've seen mentioned - cook, musician, etc.).
- I disagree, it's an important part of naval tactics to confuse your enemy, and I think you should be quite capable of hoisting another nation's flag to fake neutrality for example.
- This would be excellent, I'm not quite sure about the officers though. Do you mean a full replacement or just an addition at some events? Usually there was a set of officers a commander/captain had to have, no matter his ship/rank.
- I think that's a good idea, yes. Maybe even integrate press-gangs during the "friendly ship encounter"?
If you are a navy officer you shouldn't need to pay for any ship related stuff, so also repairing your ship should be free (at least on islands of your nation). But you shouldn't be able to hire crew in the taverns. You need to hire crew at the naval acadamy also (which is also for free for you). I think when you are a naval officer you should get some kind of quests or targets to finish so you get payed. We should try to include town capture quests here, you can get an assigment to capture a town when you are a high level.
It would indeed be nice with a continuous stream of quests that you're required to do for the service. I also think you should get some more or less free assignments. It wasn't uncommon to get a general order to cruise a specific area and engage the enemy wherever you find him.
For my own part I'm quite fine with taking the regular escort, governor, and fetch missions etc. and pretending that they're orders from admiralty - for now.
Also, if you have to surrender your loot to the governor, what reason is there for doing that? Other than very deliberate Role Playing, I mean?
And if you don't pay anything as Naval Officer but don't get much of anything either, that could make for boring gameplay.
You'd be forced to do random missions for the governor all game long because there wouldn't be much else to do.
Only way to make that truly interesting is to have proper character-based story in there. And we already have that: The Hornblower storyline.
I disagree. I think the reward of rank is enough to make it worthwhile. Especially if you get fully supplied by the admiralty, and in the future maybe also new ships assigned at various intervals. Of course, there should be some kind of prize-money, that was a very important incentive for any naval officer - and crewman alike.
If we're going to start trying to be realistic, I'd like to first see you penalised if you fire on a ship without first hoisting a flag hostile to that ship, even if the other ship has recognised you as an enemy and started firing first. Loss of reputation for a start, loss of letter(s) of marque as well - the letter of marque requires you to behave to some extent as a naval officer, meaning you abide by the rules of war, meaning you have to hoist a valid flag before you start fighting. That would also solve the problem with forts not joining in the fight. Either you hold fire, accept the damage from the enemy ship, keep your false flag up and the fort ignores you; or you raise a hostile flag to return fire and have to contend with the fort as well; or you return fire under your false flag, the fort doesn't know which of you is the real enemy and keeps out of it, but you are penalised for fighting under a false flag.
That would indeed be a nice feature.
Navy officers and crews did get a share of the prize money. In reality the ship would be disposed of by the admiralty court and shares of prize money paid out, and that goes for privateers too. In the game, you get a pitiful fraction of the ship's value when you sell it at the shipyard (see how much you get, then see the price of the ship on sale). The difference is what the government keeps. Of course, the same applies if you're a pirate as well; perhaps this time the difference is the shipyard pocketing the profit in exchange for not turning you in as a pirate, then paying some lawyer to do shenanigans to put the ship legally up for sale.
Yes, sometimes it's enough to 'pretend' that things are happening realistically.
Simple solution: For Navy Officers, call SetRelationsAsNation(player served nation) upon every random nation relation change.
Sounds like a nice temporary solution at least. Solves the problem I raised yesterday.
Having that in Free Play mode will require a completely new system of random governor navy missions to be added into the game.
That will also have to be a more long-term wish. For now, we'll have to leave a fair bit to the deliberate role-playing of the players.
Yes, and personally I'm fine with that. Of course, the more realistic we can make the naval career the better. We'll see which features can actually be implemented and which ones will be left to the player to 'pretend'.
Or perhaps at flag rank you get a full complement of four ships, three of them being little things, and they get replaced by bigger ships as you rise further. Whether that can be implemented in short time or left as another nice thing to consider for the long term, is up to whoever has the skill to code it. 
