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Minor bugs in Beta 3.3

I've only really found the borgiablade to be useful right at the start. If I do "Tales of a Sea Hawk" with stormy start, there's a reasonable chance of having a borgiablade right away, which is useful when I'm trying to hike to whichever town is nearby and run into a bunch of brigands. At that level you only need to hit them once, then keep blocking until they die of poisoning. A few levels later it's next to useless but by then I've picked up something better, either from a dead enemy or lying around in a dungeon.

In my current game I've found quite a lot of them, but then I'm now level 25 and the game has been going on for a good while. I've found almost as many thieving knives as borgiablades. I'd probably have had about that many borgiablades at this point in any previous game.
 
On the other hand, I've been finding a lot of the new Hibernian swords. Almost all enemies are carrying them, mostly "Worn" or "Average", making them too poor quality to give to crew, so I sell them. Since they're worth several thousand gold each, this is proving to be a good source of income.
 
Is that the sword added by @Jason Maffettone? I seem to remember hearing before that one is too common and valuable.
Would anyone mind doing some experimenting with its rarity value to make it not show up too much?
 
Where do I find the rarity value? If I alter it, will it take effect at once or do I need to start a new game?
 
It is in PROGRAM\ITEMS\initItems.c . You should be able to use your savegame, as long as you press F11 to force the change to take effect.
 
Ya, I changed its rarity from 0.9 to 0.4 before and noticed no difference. I just set it to 0.2.

This latest WIP seems different.

Treasure quests have always had about a 50% success ratio, but so far I am 5 for 13.

Smuggling seems easier. There are almost no Coast Guards.

There are no big ships. I have seen some 3rd rates as part of large 8 ship battle fleets, but that is about it. I stumbled across a heavy pinnace of war at Havana and it is now berthed there, but that is it. I am at the place in the storyline where I have to take the Bridgetown fort and my largest ship is a Krieser class frigate. The fact that I am reduced to sailing a frigate should tell you how desperate I am. It looks like I will have to visit Vanderdecken and buy some big ships.
 
It.... really.... shouldn't be very different from the previous release. Apart from a couple of fixes here and there, I didn't make all that many changes.
The main ones were related to the "special effects" for weapons, but that would not influence their appearance in the game.
In fact, it should make no difference to gameplay at all.

Treasure quests should actually have a HIGHER chance of success now, because I fixed a logic error that could result in there being no treasure even if there was supposed to be.

I don't think ships_init.c was touched in the last update at all, so ship appearance should be exactly a it always was.
Unless you play a different storyline in a different time period now, which would be able to explain the difference.
 
Still playing the "Assassin" storyline, I haven't tried any smuggling or treasure quests since installing the current version of Beta 3.3.

But I've certainly been finding big ships. Brandenburg frigates have appeared in Dutch groups. "Spanish" war galleons, pinnaces of war and heavy pinnaces of war routinely show up in Portuguese groups. So far I've only seen one 3rd rate battleship, under Portuguese colours. It's now berthed in Port Royale until I've finished the "Worm in the Apple" part and am ready to return to Havana. :rpirate That type of ship wasn't all that common when I played the same storyline under Beta 3.2 either - I think I found two of them during the whole storyline.

The other reason I haven't been doing any smuggling is that I have a quartermaster with the "Trustworthy" perk, so contraband just gets sold at the regular store. Which brings up another bug. Officers seem to get random perks appropriate to their trade without having the prerequisite lesser perks. That quartermaster, for example, doesn't have "Advanced Commerce", which I'd need to get before I can get "Trustworthy" for myself.

Another thought about the Hibernian sword. It only started showing up after I'd reached a fairly high level - I don't recall exactly which level I had when it first appeared. A few levels later, it's become standard equipment on most enemies. So my level seems to be a factor in which swords enemies are given. Perhaps that factor is having too much influence on the Hibernian? Conversely, the lesser blades which were common when I was lower level are now much rarer.
 
No sooner do I whine about no big ships than I sail to Willemstad and hit the Motherlode! :guns: I have a new fleet now of a Brandenberg frigate (FWzP), and heavy pinnace of war, and the NL_Pinnace. Now off to Havana to get the third ship and I'm set for that fort. But there really have not been any big ships around until just now. I am still playing the Sea hawk storyline.

I have had 2 treasure quests where there was a ship to fight, there were pirates to fight as soon as we landed, and the usual gang in the caves, but no treasure. That is different as I recall.
 
Another thought about the Hibernian sword. It only started showing up after I'd reached a fairly high level - I don't recall exactly which level I had when it first appeared. A few levels later, it's become standard equipment on most enemies. So my level seems to be a factor in which swords enemies are given. Perhaps that factor is having too much influence on the Hibernian? Conversely, the lesser blades which were common when I was lower level are now much rarer.
That is perfectly true and the result of the "minlevel" code. Low-level items start disappearing from the game as you gain level yourself.
Reason being that there isn't much point in "crap" showing up when you are "too good" for it.
And enemies indeed scale together with the player, otherwise either the early game would be too hard or the late game would be too easy.

Realistically speaking, none of this makes any sense at all.
But that is the result of having an arbitrary leveling system with massive changes in HP values between low-level and high-level characters.
I do hope that we can think of something more sensible for Hearts of Oak here. :facepalm
 
I'm beginning to think that a variety of factors are at play here, having had a look through "initItems.c". The Hibernian's rarity is 0.1, which isn't all that high compared to some. Its minlevel is 19, which sounds about right; it may very well have started appearing when I was level 19. It's one of the few really good swords which are available in the "Spanish Main" period, which is what I guess is the period of the "Assassin" storyline, which starts in 1665. Take out those which don't appear before "Golden Age of Piracy", take out those which are limited to Spain or France (as I'm working for Spain, I don't attack them), take out anything knocked out by "minlevel" as being beneath me, and there's really not much else left. And of those which do remain, many have rarity 0.01 or 0.02.

Does an assigned nation mean a sword can be found on enemies of that nation, or must it be awarded or bought from that nation? The basic Shamshir is rarity 0.15, minlevel 9, no nationality, available in "Spanish Main", and I've taken some. The Portuguese Officer's Sword is rarity 0.12, minlevel 10, nationality Portugal, available in "Early Explorers", and the only one I have was lying around in a dungeon - I've never seen one in the hands of a Portuguese enemy. Likewise, the Damascus Shamshir is rarity 0.02, minlevel 20, nationality "Pirate" and I've never seen one; the Knights Templer Sword is rarity 0.01, minlevel 19, no assigned nationality, and I have taken a few of those. If swords with assigned nationalities can't be used by enemies then that takes even more out of the mix.

All of which means the reason I keep finding Hibernians is that there is nothing else available to find!
 
Swords with assigned nationality should show up on enemies of that nation only. But they should show up.
 
Update: I've played around with "initItems.c" over the weekend. First I set the rarity value of the Hibernian to 0.01. After that, I didn't see any more of them at all. Then I set it to 0.03, and now they're appearing at a more sensible frequency. Other swords are now allowed to appear as well. Lesser blades sometimes appear on dead enemies, specifically the Kilij, the Hunting Sword and the Snake Head. More frequent are Back-blade Sword and Hibernian. Most frequent are Swept Hilt Rapiers - I've captured so many of those that they're also now standard equipment for my own crew, with several dozen "Good" and "Fine" specimens in my ship's locker. Knights Templer Swords are also becoming more common as I rise in level.

And I still have not seen any swords with nationalities assigned, apart from those which I found in dungeons or was given by governors after promotion. Actually, that's not quite true; I got some French admiralty swords when, during the "Alliance" part of the "Assassin" storyline, I had to kill several guards on my way to burgle the Martinique governor's residence. But I didn't get any more when I accepted a mission from an English governor to take out a French war galleon - its crew were armed with the usual mix of Swept Hilt Rapiers and Hibernians.

Still no sign of the Blade Care Kit, either - not in random chests, not for sale by stores or street vendors, not for sale by random civilians either offering general goods or special objects of interest. There's something in "initItems.c" which is labelled "bladekit", commented as "Good Luck Charm", and has rarity 0.02. So is the real Good Luck Charm, and I've found a couple of those.
 
Is it commented like that after the // ? If so, that should not make a difference.

The Blade Kit DID appear before, right? And I know I didn't touch its rarity.

I hate computers.
 
I saw the blade care kit in an earlier version of Beta 3.3, yes.

The items in that area of "initItems.c" are: cursedcoin, lockpick, compass1, compass2, compass3, clock1, clock2, sextant, scales, doctortoolkit, microscope, carpentertools, silkgrapple, gunnerdrum, gunnerglass, masterkeys, luckcharm, bladekit. (Those are the item ID's, not the commented names.) I've seen all of those, either on sale or in treasure chests. But I don't recall seeing the gunnerdrum or gunnerglass during the game in which I saw the bladekit. I didn't see the luckcharm either, but that's not surprising given how rarely it's appeared in this game.

So, have extra items been added in the current version of Beta 3.3? The bladekit is the last item in this list so if some of the others are new and perhaps a counter somewhere has been incorrectly set, that's the one which would fall off the end, so to speak. There's also something odd about the luckcharm; in the game, its description says it can't be bought, only found. Perhaps whatever code has arranged for that to happen is messing with the bladekit?
 
I don't think that particular section has been touched, but indeed we HAVE been adding a bunch more items.
Perhaps you're right and we have a problem with the limit again.

@Jack Rackham: Do you have any ideas? I think you have been increasing the item limits before, right?
 
Cheers,

did anything bad happen to Fred Bob? I can't get him as a crewmember, because Orable Caron doesn't talk about him. :rumgone
 
Which storyline are you playing? Fred Bob would only be there in the Standard one or Brave Black Flag.
 
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