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Included in Build Naval/Privateer Promotion Steps

KillPhil

KillPhil

Corsair
Storm Modder
So, as we intend to re-do and specialize each kind of play-style, we need some new awards and promotion-steps for each different role.

This thread is for the naval and privateer style, and I'd appreciate all ideas for the promotion gifts (land, weapons, ships, officers), the steps for that (e.g. what kind of ship for ... rank) and how we should name the ranks (since the names are senseless for Privateers and e.g. a Midshipman worked on a ship, and wasn't allowed to captain a ship himself)

I'd especially ask @Grey Roger here, since he has a great historical knowledge and maybe knows best what e.g. a British Commodore gets on his promotion.

I'll start for now with my own ideas:

Navy
*insert 1. rank name here* - Maybe a decent and fast low tier warship, something like a Brig or Sloop, and maybe a useful equipment, a spyglass or compass?

rank 2 - you get a quite good sword of your serving nation, and maybe get a navigator or first mate

rank 3 - a little improvement for the ship - maybe a Heavy Brig/Sloop-of-War etc..

(... I don't know how much we want to extend ranks)

Lieutenant - A small frigate, a good sword/gun, some better equipment, maybe even a book?; 1 or 2 officers

(...)

Admiral - 1st or 2nd Rate Flagship, 2 smaller battleships, one frigate, proper captains for them, and a bunch of officers. Excellent sword and gun also.

Side-Note for navy-style: I think it would be more accurate, to restrict some ship-options for the player till a certain rank. Low-level ranks should not be allowed to buy new cannons and improvements for the ship (1. because it would be historical more correct, 2. because it would prevent the player from spending unnecessary money on a ship he won't have for long). Also maybe make it impossible for a low-level navy-player to command a captured ship.

Privateer
rank 1 - a quite ok sword, and access to the 'navy-yard' of the shipyard (maybe Tier 7 - small Brigs and Sloops)

...

rank x - good weapons, a bit land, and either a promotion ship or just further Tier-unlocks in the shipyard (NOTE: If we give privateers promotion ships, too, we should have an option for the player to decide if he wants the promotion ship or not)

Lord - excellent weapons, a quite powerful battleship, a (really) good first mate, lots of land (or maybe even a colony?)


Those are my ideas so far - but I am curious about every single idea and am always happy about improvements ;)
 
Thanks for working on this!

For now I would intend to start simple with one set of navy progression rewards per nation.
Perhaps the privateer style can keep some too, but I'm not sure about that yet.
I like the idea of the two styles being as dissimilar as possible.

To allow a choice whether you want the promotion ship, that is why it is currently set up so she joins your fleet as extra instead of replacing anything.
If you don't want her as privateer, you can always sell.

Anything that requires proper Governor or Admiral dialog would require a substantial amount of extra work.
In fact we would probably want to make a shared Governor dialog file and move all general promotion functionality in there.
But that would require a fair bit of figuring out and correctly editing a great amount of files.
 
I have just set the GivePromotionReward function to ONLY apply to professional navy characters.
You will also only gain land after you reach Post Captain rank.
So that makes it proper important to give an award for EVERY rank, otherwise you get nothing.
 
Hee-hee! My "great historical knowledge" comes from looking up Wikipedia on relevant subjects. :rofl

For example, Horatio Nelson commanded a succession of 6th rate frigates before being given the 3rd rate ship of the line HMS Agamemnon while at the rank of Captain. From what I gather, a Captain could command any single ship. Higher ranks were likely to be in charge of multiple ships. At the other end of the spectrum, anybody lower than a Lieutenant Commander probably wouldn't command anything bigger than a rowing boat.
The single biggest problem with the commissioned officer as it stands now is that it's broken. The crew never demand to be taken off salary, which you don't pay anyway, which means I currently have 60 million gold. While useful for testing, e.g. the bug about selling, buying and upgrading a ship repeatedly to get the effects of upgrades several times, this is probably not something we want to encourage in general play...

The main difference between a commissioned officer and a privateer is that the officer is under navy discipline. Either from navy HQ when implemented, or from a governor, the officer should receive escort, ship-hunting and perhaps cargo transport missions, which are compulsory - you can not refuse an order! Likewise, you should not be able to sell your ship or swap ship during a capture - you have been assigned your ship and you will stay with it until the navy chooses to give you something else. But taking prizes and selling them for prize money should be allowed; officers did receive a share of prize money, a very useful supplement to their salaries! Perhaps require prize ships to be sold at naval HQ, then you can't dump them at the nearest port, so once you have your three prizes you can't take any more until you've reported to base. Which you must do within a certain time so as to receive your next order, otherwise you're guilty of dereliction of duty.

If you capture a colony, perhaps make the only option to install a new governor of your served nation. I certainly wouldn't have 60 million in gold if the places I've raided (some of them several times) had to be handed over to a British governor instead of being ransomed...
 
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Grey Roger said:
For example, Horatio Nelson commanded a succession of 6th rate frigates before being given the 3rd rate ship of the line HMS Agamemnon while at the rank of Captain. From what I gather, a Captain could command any single ship. Higher ranks were likely to be in charge of multiple ships. At the other end of the spectrum, anybody lower than a Lieutenant Commander probably wouldn't command anything bigger than a rowing boat.
Click to expand...
Yep, that's what I figure. We'd need a list of ships for each rank and adapted for time period as required.

Grey Roger said:
The single biggest problem with the commissioned officer as it stands now is that it's broken. The crew never demand to be taken off salary, which you don't pay anyway, which means I currently have 60 million gold. While useful for testing, e.g. the bug about selling, buying and upgrading a ship repeatedly to get the effects of upgrades several times, this is probably not something we want to encourage in general play...
Click to expand...
So that exploit has been confirmed? Can you make a Bug Tracker entry for it, since I'm pretty sure it isn't there yet.

I can imagine that the Commissioned player type as it currently stands basically gets far too much money.
Because while we did remove the payments necessary and food/rum rations, there is nothing in return so you just don't pay anything.
Do you think paying salary and food and rum consumption should be returned? Because the crew DOES need all that.

Only the admiralty should supply you with enough to keep going.

Grey Roger said:
The main difference between a commissioned officer and a privateer is that the officer is under navy discipline. Either from navy HQ when implemented, or from a governor, the officer should receive escort, ship-hunting and perhaps cargo transport missions, which are compulsory - you can not refuse an order! Likewise, you should not be able to sell your ship or swap ship during a capture - you have been assigned your ship and you will stay with it until the navy chooses to give you something else. But taking prizes and selling them for prize money should be allowed; officers did receive a share of prize money, a very useful supplement to their salaries! Perhaps require prize ships to be sold at naval HQ, then you can't dump them at the nearest port, so once you have your three prizes you can't take any more until you've reported to base. Which you must do within a certain time so as to receive your next order, otherwise you're guilty of dereliction of duty.
Click to expand...
A lot of that sounds like it would require editing the governor dialog files; at the moment there are a LOT of those, which requires any change there to be correctly repeated many times.
So.... Not to easily done.

I wonder if we can do a "simple" approach: If you do a Governor Ship Hunting quest each month,
then you are given your monthly salary for the crew and your ship is resupplied upon completion.
That could be accomplished without editing 67 individual files.

That being said, it might be worth editing all of them once and moving all the generic content into a shared file instead.
Because this is just too complicated to work with for now. :modding

Grey Roger said:
If you capture a colony, perhaps make the only option to install a new governor of your served nation. I certainly wouldn't have 60 million in gold if the places I've raided (some of them several times) had to be handed over to a British governor instead of being ransomed...
Click to expand...
That should be relatively easy.
How about looting a colony? Should that be allowed?
 
I do pay for food and rum. (Was that removed in one of the later zip file updates?)

Looting colonies should not be allowed for a commissioned officer - that was my point. If you've managed to take the place, it's your duty to raise your flag for King and Country, not to line your own pockets and leave the enemy there. Of course, it does mean the minor anomaly of a pirate base round the corner from a naval base might not be there for very long...
 
Grey Roger said:
I do pay for food and rum. (Was that removed in one of the later zip file updates?)
Click to expand...
No, it wasn't. I think I'm being mistaken. It is like that in the Hornblower storyline, but that is a different toggle.

Grey Roger said:
Looting colonies should not be allowed for a commissioned officer - that was my point. If you've managed to take the place, it's your duty to raise your flag for King and Country, not to line your own pockets and leave the enemy there. Of course, it does mean the minor anomaly of a pirate base round the corner from a naval base might not be there for very long...
Click to expand...
Yup, fair enough. :yes
 
Grey Roger said:
Looting colonies should not be allowed for a commissioned officer - that was my point. If you've managed to take the place, it's your duty to raise your flag for King and Country, not to line your own pockets and leave the enemy there.
Click to expand...
Just made the code changes for this. Will need testing with the next upload. :doff
 
Thinking a bit more...

Navy: May take prize ships, can't swap to them so can't abandon the ship you were assigned. Sell the ship, either at shipyard or preferably at naval HQ, get a share of the value as prize money. (This already happens at shipyards if the price you get for a captured ship is less than the price for selling one you bought.) Free ship at each promotion, perhaps not entirely accurate if each one is better but this provides a naval officer player with a way to progress through different ships.

Privateer: Can do what you like with prize ships. No free ships! Your job is to make money for your chosen nation(s), not cost money by being given expensive free stuff. Maybe a free, unique sword after a high enough promotion. Unlocking higher ships for purchase in the shipyard is reasonable, the governor is more willing to trust you with a good warship but he's not going to buy it for you. (Maybe only for a privateer with a single LoM. If you have multiple LoM's, the governor is happy for you to use his flag, attack his enemies and take a share of the profit, but he doesn't know where your true loyalty lies and does not fully trust you.)
 
For now, we'll stick to governors for the simple reason that we don't have any Naval HQs to use yet.

Disabling the "Swap Ship" button for navy officers indeed makes sense. I'll make that one of my next projects.
 
Can we also disable the ability to install new cannons and upgrades for low level navy players? As Grey Roger already explained, you get your ship assigned and it is not your ship but more likely 'rented' from the Fleet^^ So it would make sense, and also it would be quite frustrating for a player when he just bought new guns for his ship only to get a new one right the next day^^
 
Perhaps enable upgrades again when you reach a high enough rank. Partly because it will now take longer to get promotions, partly because by then you probably already have the biggest ship available, and partly because at that rank you're the boss and are allowed to customise your fleet. :napoleon
 
Disabling stuff in the shipyard is not such a problem :) just so you know.
 
Indeed I may be able to look at that tomorrow. Though I think mainly disabling purchase of ships should do it.
If you want to upgrade, why not? You'll lose it soon enough, but that's the player's loss. :shrug
 
Besides, most upgrades are very expensive. You probably won't be able to afford them until you're high enough rank that you should be allowed them anyway.

Replacing cannon should not be disabled. It's going to be annoying if cannons are knocked out in battle and can't be replaced...
 
@Grey Roger: Buying and selling your own ship as a professional navy character at the shipyard is now disabled.
I'll keep all cannon and upgrade functionality intact; that is up to the player.

Edit: Also disabled any ship transfers when you're a Commission Navy Officer.
So you can assign officers as captain of prize ships, but cannot take any ships for your own.
 
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