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Included in Build Modify "False Flag" Behaviour While Ashore

For the Beta 4 Public Release, do you think we should....

  • Allow changing flag at any time, both at sea and ashore (current situation)

    Votes: 2 22.2%

  • Allow changing flag only at sea and on ship deck; lock it while ashore

    Votes: 7 77.8%

  • I don't mind either way, just try something

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Other, please specify

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    9
I think this could get all quite complicated real quick.
So we'd probably need to split it into several separate steps, starting with the simple ones.

For starters, I'd imagine:
- Having the town guards actually care if you're hostile
- Maybe have them automatically initiate dialog in some cases
- Plus your suggestion to have town folk be able to report you too
- Adding a preprocessor for all player to NPC address forms to indicate the flag you're flying

That together is probably already a considerable job.
But it could lead to interesting sneaking around enemy towns! :woot

Dynamic false flag detection while ashore probably needs to wait until the AI groups are finally working right again.
 
Does anyone else care about this as well? Remember there is even an "I don't care" option in the poll.

If nobody else lets their voice be heard, this behaviour WILL be changed as suggested in the next update.
And then we'll see what happens. :rolleyes:
 
I think for the future the concept of splitting your ship deception from a personal ashore deception is sound and would resolve some of the inconsistencies.

Your ship is likely to be known by the enemy if you have progressed in rank/fame. So flying a different flag rightly has a diminishing chance of subterfuge. I still believe that, logically, changing ship should bring you some level of reduced false flag detection (if you get rid of the original from your possession/squadron).


On shore some of the concept of say a French person seeing through your attempt to pass yourself off as French more easily than another national has merit but maybe you will be (as an example) Portuguese pretending to be a Spanish Ally of France - so what would they know then. Whilst it may be inconvenient I think that this too should probably have a link to changing on ship (which is now sort of set for 14 4) on the imagined situation that you are unlikely to be walking round with an appropriate change of clothes. However I suppose there is no real problem with you presenting yourself differently at a new location (such as entering the shop) without any preamble so that could give rise to 3 levels of recognition chance - each of which could be affected by your notoriety/fame.

Ranging from presenting as the nationality of the inhabitants, through just deciding to pass yourself off as a different person/nation with no preparation (change the flag on the fly) and finally dressing ready for the part (in your imagination) and thus setting the flag when leaving the ship. If different detection chances were introduced then changing the flag (as in changing your deception) anywhere on changing scene could be restored.

Just thoughts for any future development in this area.
 
Interesting thoughts for sure, @pedrwyth! Probably wouldn't be a 5-minute job to incorporate all that, so may have to wait until Build 15.
But I'm definitely hoping to eventually make it all more logical and fancy than it currently is.

There used to be a "reminder of the ship type/name" as part of the false flag recognition at sea.
But that didn't make things simpler nor transparent and could have worked as a far-too-awesome cheat.
I haven't yet thought it through enough to come to a simple solution to it all, so for the time being I skipped it.
 
So now that we've had it like this for a while, what's the verdict?
Do we want to keep it?
 
It's already caused trouble in a storyline where, unless you know what's about to happen and change your flag well in advance, you're stuck with the wrong flag all the way up to the point where you put to sea and are attacked by the fort. The storyline was easily enough fixed to account for this, but the basic point remains - this is causing trouble.

It's going to be annoying if you landed at a beach, forgot to change flag before you walked into town, and have to go all the way back to your ship so that you can pretend to speak the correct language when you do reach town. It's going to be even more annoying if you start at one colony on an island belonging to one nation, then walk across the island to another colony belonging to another nation. As long as the flag interface controls both the bit of cloth on your mast and your dealings with people on land, you need to be able to change it both on the ship and on land.

Anyway, you don't have to change flags while ashore. If you don't want to do it, don't do it! Likewise, I happen to think Personal flags are nonsense but some people like them, so I wouldn't dream of changing the basic game files to suit myself - I just don't use Personal flags.

There is, of course, another solution - a toggle. Where is this restriction implemented? It shouldn't be too hard to have it check a toggle set in "InternalSettings.h". Then everyone can take or leave the restriction on only changing flags aboard ship to suit themselves.
 
You can use the Fast Travel to go to your ship deck and change there, then return.

The code is in the nation relations interface file.

I prefer not having a toggle on something as trivial as this.
So if players don't want it like this now, I'd prefer changing it back to Beta 3 state.
 
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