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Included in Build Improve officer importance

Also potentially makes the game easier as it progresses, though. Have to be careful there....
 
If we make it to easy we just amp up the difficulty a bit again to balance it :p.
 
A proper fiddler is something this game has needed since it was in development as Sea Dogs 2! Cool stuff mate! :onya
 
Would be fun if these guys would end up on your ship's deckwhere you can visit them and talk to them for all sorts of special features.
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The fiddler could play us a tune there.
 
I think each officer type should have 1 special perk for him which can only be activated as soon as all other perks assigned to that officer type (except the combat perks) are taken. This perk will give you an extra boost for this specific officer.
SO say a cannoneer will help you load the guns even faster
A boatswain boosts the morale
A navigator increases your worldmap speed (and something else for non-worldmap players)
etc
These perks can only be chosen by officers so you can't get them.
How does that sound?
 
What I would like to see is to have each officer serve a specific purpose to take over part of the captain's responsibilies.
For example, the gunner already supplies you with ammo if you have him. And the doctor reduces the amount of crew that dies after battle.
I'd like something similar for the other officer types. For example let the Quartermaster auto-supply in port so that the player doesn't need to worry about that.

And the Boatswain can be on your ship's deck to tell you about whatever happened with the crew lately, giving you more control there.
For example, I was thinking of having the "drunken brawls" that may occur on double rum rations be reported by the bosun when you visit the ship's deck.
Then you can decide how to deal with this offense, which can influence crew morale and your reputation.
But not doing anything would make the chance for drunken brawls increase all the time as apparently nobody is doing anything about it.
That should not actually be excessively difficult....
 
I think both ideas are good an should be taken into account^^ But for the perks.. maybe let the officer require a certain level and quite many skillpoints for that? Because e.g. another reload boost will be really strong.. we should balance that out with taking a long time to aquire this ;)
 
I agree we should have something like this. But then I'd also like to add a perk for each type to make them be better at theire job and give you a bonus. This is so officers still contribute something special even when you as a character have all perks they can have also. This way a high level officer is even more valuable.
 
Yep. And you even have to find or level your officer for being on the required level.. definitly something worth implementing ;)
 
Levis said:
This is so officers still contribute something special even when you as a character have all perks they can have also.
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That is definitely a valid point.

Ideally as player you should never be able to max out your skills so that you MUST use your officers to help you out.
But that presents two problems:
1. Non-player ships don't have officers, so THEIR captains SHOULD be able to have much higher skills since they represent the entire crew
2. To prevent the player from maxing out, the range must be changed. Say from 1-10 to 1-100 instead.
But that requires a LOT of code changes and could also massively mess up whatever balancing we have in the game.

On the other hand, giving each officer type a specific use that cannot be expressed in percentage bonuses would serve the same purpose.
Also if these bonuses ARE skill/ability-based, then it would be very easy for NPC ships to not ever have these, giving the player a potentially unfair advantage.
 
Hmm.. we can discuss now one important question, which is always there for every rpg:

Is the player just a random character like evryone else in the archipelago or is he something special?
If he is considered as a normal guy like everyone else, then we have to give enemy captains indeed all perks who are aviable through all ranges of officers. If we say that the player's character is someone outstanding, we could leave it as it is

If we say the player is normal, the range of skills goes for everyone to like 20, but the player can't reach ALL skills to 20 on his own (we could maybe also work with the background professions here, so you can indeed train your 2 main skills to 20 on your own)
But if we say the player is special, we could increase the skill points for all to 20, and for the player to 30, with the same system as above (only that the player can now train on his own up to 20 to, 2 main skills up to 30).. that would especially be noticable in melee fights, when the players char has a lot more fighting skill than the enemy..

So, my personal opinion is, that we indeed make the player kinda special, and that he can outpower npc's .. Because this is somewhat what for me a good rpg is about.. training your char hard enough to be the best^^
 
As I figure it, it should be the player ACTIONS that make him/her special, not the ability to get more skills and blow everyone else out of the water.
Even if you cannot become better than everyone else, you CAN get as good as the best of the random characters.
Which means that you are still better than almost everybody else because we would eventually want random characters to not be related to player level anyway.

If you end up better than anyone else in the game, then the game ends up consisting of the player just killing everyone with ease.
That is what the cheatmode is for. And curses. And fantasy stuff. But that should not be part of the regular game.
For one thing it is unrealistic, but most importantly it would get boring real quick. You would want there to remain a challenge even in the late game.
 
Well, agreed, if we are able to make npc's unrelated to the players level, we could do it like you said ;) But I think a skill range extend is still necessary.. how do you like my idea about the skill system? That the player only can reach his 2 main skills to the maximun and have to aquire the others through officers (and items)?
 
I doubt we can afford the time to do it, but if we can convert to a 1-100 skill range, then the problem is sorted.
You CAN reach 100 in all skills, but it will take exponentially longer to get each next level so practically you will never get there.
So either you focus on certain areas and let your officers do the rest OR you try to do everything yourself and become average at it all. :cheeky

The two main skills would feature in automatically. Since those increase faster than the others, you'll end up specializing in those sort-of by default.
 
But on a 1-100 range, there would be a problem: If we really manage to randomize the npc's levels.. and you end up in a fight with a guy who has fencing 100.. and you only like 4 or 5.. you are instantly dead.. with 0 chance to survive .. not that good imo
 
Well... There is that, yes. But wouldn't it be the same with placing a Fencing = 1 vs. a Fencing = 10 character right now?
Of course that doesn't happen due to the level-dependency.

Perhaps all personal skills should have a smaller range so that you CAN max them out?
So for example you can become as good as all other best fencers in the game without that much trouble?
 
Would not.. cause if you 1v1 a guy who has like 90 points more in melee fighting, you will be dead by the first hit he does, because you can't block him and he will deal like 200Hp damage I guess :D If you have 10 guys, all with a fair level of skill, you just have to watch out that they can't surround you, and then kill them 1 by 1..

So we can't extend the range too hard.. I'd say a good start would be 20 or 30.. Then we 1. don't have such a great chance for a David vs Goliath Situation and also the difference is not that crazy. 2. Items that contribute skillpoints could play a greater role then and 3. Officers could have the wished effect

There's one more problem about that randomizing the levels.. what if you are level 4 or 5 and you have to fight against a group of bandits who are level 3, 6, 14, and then 25? The first 2 are okay, the level 14 will be hard but maybe doable with a good focus.. but you can't stay a chance against a level 25 enemie.. so we should probably think more of a way of 'randomizing while taking players level into account' .. e.g. the player is level 5 and the npcs have a max level of 10.. that way we could prevent certain-death situations. But I think this is quite difficult to code :/
 
I don't think we're going to start on anything like this for a long time anyway. ;)
 
Here is another couple: This would fit in well if you were commissioned or perhaps a Naval Officer in general.

Would make you feel more of that certainly: examples

- Troop Officer (Like in command of boarding troops) - ie. (Marine Officer) - Leadership, melee, ranged, fighting skills and boarding skills linked to soldiers.

- Guard - Basically a rename of what is currently your basic fighter/bodyguard who accompanies you on land boarding etc. - Melee, ranged, Fighting skills
 
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