WIP Increase Difficulty for Governor Ship Hunting at Higher Ranks

[Pieter Boelen]

Can't remember if it was @Tingyun or @Eskhol who suggested it, but I thought the idea had merit.
So here's a simple thing to try in PROGRAM\QUESTS\quests_common.c:

void GenerateQuestShip(string character_id, int iNation) // KK
{
   bool isEnemy = false;
   if(character_id == "Quest pirate" ) isEnemy = true;
   if(character_id == "Convoy pirate") isEnemy = true;
   InitQuestCaptain(character_id, iNation, isEnemy);     // LDH 05Sep06 // KK

   ref PChar = GetMainCharacter(); // KK
   int iShipType, iTradeMoney, irank, pRank;

   //PB: Generate Rank and Skills
   pRank = sti(PChar.rank);
   if(GetShipCap()) { if((8-GetCharacterShipClass(PChar)) * 2 < pRank) { pRank = (8-GetCharacterShipClass(PChar)) * 2; } } // NK
   irank = makeint((pRank/2.0 + Rand(pRank/2)) * (2.0/3.0 + ((makefloat(GetDifficulty())-1.0)/5.0)) + 0.5);
   if(irank < 1) irank = 1;
   if(isEnemy) irank += GetRank(PChar, iNation); // PB: Increase Difficulty for Higher Nation Rank
   ref rFantom = characterFromID(character_id); // KK

Note that 'Increase Difficulty for Higher Nation Rank' line I added.

This means that for Governor Ship Hunting and Convoy Quests, your rank for the nation giving the quest is checked.
If you have no rank, then this is zero and nothing should change.
If you do have a rank, this is added to the enemy, so this means the enemy can be up to 12 levels higher than before.
This subsequently results in better skills for that captain, so they can and do get bigger ships.

I didn't test this, but I think in theory it should work as this seems a relatively simple change.

 

[Eskhol]

This looks promising! I'll test it and report back.
Thank you, Pieter

 

[Grey Roger]

Sounds interesting. It makes sense, too - you've made a name for yourself so big things are now expected of you, plus you've proven yourself to be both loyal and capable and can be trusted to take on bigger enemies.

Having said that, I asked a British governor for a job and was sent after a big man of war. Whether it was the fact that I had a high rank or the fact that I had Sovereign of the Seas, I'm not sure, but it was a big battle and well suited to my ship and abilities. And that was with an earlier version of the game.

Just so long as you don't earn that rank by taking lots of small enemy ships while sailing something like a tier 4 frigate and then find yourself being sent against that man of war...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Having said that, I asked a British governor for a job and was sent after a big man of war. Whether it was the fact that I had a high rank or the fact that I had Sovereign of the Seas, I'm not sure, but it was a big battle and well suited to my ship and abilities. And that was with an earlier version of the game.

By default, START_DIFF_SHIPCAP is 0, which means that the reason for the large enemy must have been that you were of a high player level yourself.
If you use START_DIFF_SHIPCAP at 1 though, having a high Tier ship would be the reason for triggering high tier enemies here too.
In any case, it is for sure possible to get large enemies even without including this proposed change.

What this change would do is to trigger those enemies earlier due to being promoted, making these sort of quests progressively harder.
This doesn't affect doing these quests prior to getting a LoM, only afterwards.

While the normal behaviour for this code was to always trigger relatively evenly balanced fights, this change will start tipping the scales against you.
So it is possible that you'll be eventually be presented with challenges you can hardly cope with.
Of course you are able to decline Governor Ship Hunting quests if you don't think you can handle them.

Escort Quests would also be affected by this, but there you aren't required to capture/sink the hostile ship, so you can also avoid them.
In fact, larger ships may be slower and less manoeuvrable, so it could lead to those type of quests not becoming that much harder.

I really don't know what kind of effect this is really going to have.
Playtesting should tell if this is actually OK from a balancing point of view.

 

[Eskhol]

It looks ok. After some testing, the missions seem to have stronger ships.
One of them was a Fleuron Class 3rd rate and another one was a Centurion Class 4th rate. The last two were a war galleon or something like that and a heavy brig but this one was a pirate so they wouldn't get strong ships anyway. My ships are a Fleuron Class and my officer has a Centurion Class, so battles like this are way better than vs a sloop or whatever.
I feel like in late game things get a bit too easy so this is a nice addition to make it more challenging.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Levis and/or @Tingyun: Is this change included in the recent ZIPs?

 

[Grey Roger]

By default, START_DIFF_SHIPCAP is 0, which means that the reason for the large enemy must have been that you were of a high player level yourself.
If you use START_DIFF_SHIPCAP at 1 though, having a high Tier ship would be the reason for triggering high tier enemies here too.
In any case, it is for sure possible to get large enemies even without including this proposed change.

What this change would do is to trigger those enemies earlier due to being promoted, making these sort of quests progressively harder.
This doesn't affect doing these quests prior to getting a LoM, only afterwards.

While the normal behaviour for this code was to always trigger relatively evenly balanced fights, this change will start tipping the scales against you.
So it is possible that you'll be eventually be presented with challenges you can hardly cope with.
Of course you are able to decline Governor Ship Hunting quests if you don't think you can handle them.

If you have a high tier ship then you should be able to take on a high tier ship. Under the old system, I was given the task of taking on a 2nd rate man of war. This was because I'd completed "Tales of a Sea Hawk" and had Sovereign of the Seas as well as a high level, and it was an epic battle. If that's going to be the usual result of having a big battlewagon at your disposal, bring it on!

Though I can imagine anyone starting a free-play game as Cutler Beckett is going to be in for a nasty surprise if he goes looking for governor ship quests...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If you have a high tier ship then you should be able to take on a high tier ship. Under the old system, I was given the task of taking on a 2nd rate man of war. This was because I'd completed "Tales of a Sea Hawk" and had Sovereign of the Seas as well as a high level, and it was an epic battle. If that's going to be the usual result of having a big battlewagon at your disposal, bring it on!

Note that until the 28 July 2016 game version and on default settings, it is the PLAYER LEVEL that controls the size of the enemy, not the PLAYER SHIP TIER.

At the moment this formulation is up for debate though, because @Levis will need a new one that returns an appropriate enemy ship tier value instead of an enemy character level.

 

[Levis]

Or based on something else. I prefer to have it based on something. So I'm open for sugestions. We could even change the formule so we can already say which tier it should be in the arguments and have the calculation be different for traders and pirates alike...

 

[Grey Roger]

Note that until the 28 July 2016 game version and on default settings, it is the PLAYER LEVEL that controls the size of the enemy, not the PLAYER SHIP TIER.

I know. That's why I mentioned that I had both the big ship and the high level. So the appearance of the big enemy wasn't surprising even under the old system.

Or based on something else. I prefer to have it based on something. So I'm open for sugestions.

Possibly allow high tier ships to be available. You've acquired a battleship so, if there's an enemy battleship threatening the town, it's reasonable for the governor to ask you to deal with it. But the fact that you've found a battleship doesn't mean the enemy has suddenly acquired a huge number of them and is sending them to every port you visit. The occasional big battleship should be an interesting challenge for those capable of taking it, but they're going to become boring if they're all you ever see in governor quests and escort missions. So, have the enemy tier be random and capped by your tier. (That also means even if you have a big ship, you may still be asked to take on a pirate, which is good if you don't want to take on a ship belonging to a nation which is hostile to the governor but not hostile to you, and you would rather wait for a pirate target instead.)

 

[Levis]

I know. That's why I mentioned that I had both the big ship and the high level. So the appearance of the big enemy wasn't surprising even under the old system.


Possibly allow high tier ships to be available. You've acquired a battleship so, if there's an enemy battleship threatening the town, it's reasonable for the governor to ask you to deal with it. But the fact that you've found a battleship doesn't mean the enemy has suddenly acquired a huge number of them and is sending them to every port you visit. The occasional big battleship should be an interesting challenge for those capable of taking it, but they're going to become boring if they're all you ever see in governor quests and escort missions. So, have the enemy tier be random and capped by your tier. (That also means even if you have a big ship, you may still be asked to take on a pirate, which is good if you don't want to take on a ship belonging to a nation which is hostile to the governor but not hostile to you, and you would rather wait for a pirate target instead.)

I was thinking in the same line. Altough I'm thinking of remove the player dependence all together. I mean how bad would it be if a low level player was asked to take down a tier 3 pirate?
It might be a hard challenge and if he finds out its not possible you can just let the quest expire right? You can fail the quests ...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It might be a hard challenge and if he finds out its not possible you can just let the quest expire right? You can fail the quests ...

I applied a similar sort of logic to the destinations for Cargo/Escort Quests. If there is a higher risk, the player always has the chance to say no and try again later.
This used not to work right, but it is indeed possible now. So that could definitely be an option and would work nicely into making the game less player-dependent.

 

[Grey Roger]

Fair enough, provided high tier ships are rare. The enemy shouldn't suddenly have first rate ships of the line in every port you visit, partly because it's nonsense (the enemy wouldn't have that many such ships) and partly because even if you're able to take them on, it's going to get boring if they keep showing up. The player's reaction on seeing one of those should be either "Oh, wow!" or "Oh, $#!+" depending on his own skill and ship - it should not be "Ho hum, yet another battleship".

 

[Pieter Boelen]

By far the simplest is to just say "minimum Tier is 7 and maximum Tier is 1", then let the game handle the rest.
I think the ship encounter chances might already take care of making Tier 1 ships appropriately rare.

If that turns out to not work out as balanced as I'd hope, some extra complexity can be added.
But if it does work, then why bother doing anything more than that?

 

[Levis]

By far the simplest is to just say "minimum Tier is 7 and maximum Tier is 1", then let the game handle the rest.
I think the ship encounter chances might already take care of making Tier 1 ships appropriately rare.

If that turns out to not work out as balanced as I'd hope, some extra complexity can be added.
But if it does work, then why bother doing anything more than that?

that was my idea too.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

that was my idea too.

Worth a try. Nice and simple!