Right so first off I don’t have any coding experience, so I doubt if I could do all this myself, but it’s just some ideas and I thought I would put them out there in case anyone else was interested/ to find out if they are at all possible. I think It would be good to have a ‘free play’ storyline where the player can choose their character, name, start ship (of a lower level), start location, start year, and country, all from the new storyline game menu. I know this has been discussed before and I thought something similar was included in build 13 or something. It is easy to modify the location, year, ship etc in the Jack Aubrey quest file, but this means only one free-play storyline can be used at a time, and I think most players don’t want to go to the trouble of doing that. Could the character/ship selection thing be added back in any form? Or is the code incompatible? If It can’t, I think I could create open-ended storylines for several countries with a little help. The main thing I would need help with is the starting quest entry, what file do I go to change it? Right now it is still the quest entry about infiltrating Eleuthera, even though I have changed the country, year, and start ship. I would want to do this for each country anyway even if the old interface could be used.
My second Idea is slightly related; I want to expand upon ship-hunting quests. I think it would be good to have a variety of missions available from governors and especially admirals at naval headquarters. They would add more flavor into the open-ended storylines, and hopefully similar ones could be used for many countries, ideally they would be generated using some know information (e.g. what countries are we at war with, what islands do they have, what lvl and rank is your character etc) They could follow a basic formula of: Take command of ship X (fitting for your rank and level) –or- take command of a squadron consisting of ships A, B,C, and D (fitting for your rank and level) and
• Defeat a similar enemy ship/squadron Y (like ship hunting, but maybe sail to other islands as well?)
• Escort a convoy of (3 ships max I guess b/c of the engine, but more would be ideal, this could be based off the merchant escort missions in taverns.)
• Patrol from this island to island such and such, and protect our merchant shipping, capture/destroy enemy shipping, and attack enemy naval forces of similar or lesser power.(traditional cruising and commerce-raiding)
• Reconnoiter (scout) an enemy harbor/island, report back on number and type of ships. ( not sure if these change once you head out to sea, but for the purpose of the mission it shouldn’t matter as long as you can report what was there when you were)
• Blockade an enemy Island (destroy/capture as much costal shipping, enemy ships as possible)
• (for the highest levels only, and maybe after several scouting and blockading missions to the island) take a squadron of certain ships of line and/or heavy frigates, and sail with all due haste to the island of -----, currently under (a given enemy’s) control, and take the port of such and such, with the intention of establishing (your country’s) control over the town and the rest of the island. These missions could also involve defeating an enemy squadron of ships of the line before reaching the fort, but only once you are an admiral with command of a line ship squadron.
I am sure there are other things that could be included as well, but I think this is a good list to start from. So what do people think of these ideas? Could any of them work?
My second Idea is slightly related; I want to expand upon ship-hunting quests. I think it would be good to have a variety of missions available from governors and especially admirals at naval headquarters. They would add more flavor into the open-ended storylines, and hopefully similar ones could be used for many countries, ideally they would be generated using some know information (e.g. what countries are we at war with, what islands do they have, what lvl and rank is your character etc) They could follow a basic formula of: Take command of ship X (fitting for your rank and level) –or- take command of a squadron consisting of ships A, B,C, and D (fitting for your rank and level) and
• Defeat a similar enemy ship/squadron Y (like ship hunting, but maybe sail to other islands as well?)
• Escort a convoy of (3 ships max I guess b/c of the engine, but more would be ideal, this could be based off the merchant escort missions in taverns.)
• Patrol from this island to island such and such, and protect our merchant shipping, capture/destroy enemy shipping, and attack enemy naval forces of similar or lesser power.(traditional cruising and commerce-raiding)
• Reconnoiter (scout) an enemy harbor/island, report back on number and type of ships. ( not sure if these change once you head out to sea, but for the purpose of the mission it shouldn’t matter as long as you can report what was there when you were)
• Blockade an enemy Island (destroy/capture as much costal shipping, enemy ships as possible)
• (for the highest levels only, and maybe after several scouting and blockading missions to the island) take a squadron of certain ships of line and/or heavy frigates, and sail with all due haste to the island of -----, currently under (a given enemy’s) control, and take the port of such and such, with the intention of establishing (your country’s) control over the town and the rest of the island. These missions could also involve defeating an enemy squadron of ships of the line before reaching the fort, but only once you are an admiral with command of a line ship squadron.
I am sure there are other things that could be included as well, but I think this is a good list to start from. So what do people think of these ideas? Could any of them work?
that should help a ton. Ill look at all that stuff when I get the time, one thing Im not sure I made clear though is that I was thinking of creating several generic free-play quests(one for each country) that could later be intergrated into the interface where you can choose specifics. My plan was to make the expanded ship hunting missions side quests that could be done in any storyline (where they can be done already) but taking a look at how the other quests work should still help me understand how to do that.
Im sorry about the long silence. Real life has been very busy and I want to get my ships in-game in time for Beta 2, so I will be focusing on that for now. I willl come back to this though after that, I think this might work out well, especially if it could tie in with some of the ideas being discussed in the Nation's Ranks-new ideas thread.