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Need Help Officer's roles and their perks

F

Fluen

Freebooter
I would like to make my companion ships work as good as possible, so I would like to create a strong group of officers aboard each ship and let them have as many perks as possible.

However, I find it difficult to figure out, what officer roles are connected to witch perks (abilities).

It seems reasonable that the navigator uses the perks from increased maneouverability and until sea wolf and that the gunner uses the series from reduced reloading time and until professional cannoneer.

But what about the rest of the perks?

Does the comrade-in-arms have any perks at all?

And what does a first mate actually do?
 
That is all defined in PROGRAM\officers.c . I don't think officers on companion ships work quite right though.
But then companion ships aren't very useful in a fight anyway due to their less-than-stellar AI. :facepalm
 
Thank you, Pieter. I will check that file.

Yes, I did notice, that a captured ship damaged so bad it had less than 10 percent hull intact was first repaired, when I assigned the carpenter to the captain's position. Therefore I conclude that the perks most important at that time require the relevant officer to have the captain's role.

I'd say companion ships are still quite useful for damaging enemy ships and forts and for attracting enemy fire. Divide and conquor, you know.
It did wonders, when we were two fast war galleons against eight common galleons. :onya

Which reminds me of another question. Is the player able to foster war between two nations? I love fighting enemies with overwhelming power as in skirmishes between two nations, and right now almost everyone is at peace.
(Oh, the day I joined a battle with elleven ships on either side and my ships as the third hostile party.) :monkeydance
 
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Have you ever seen your companion ships fire on the forts? I've been testing that recently, but never saw one shot fired towards the fort.
This even after I tried to order the ship to. But when I had a fort myself during the Standard storyline, the assaulting squadron DID fire on it. o_O

Fluen said:
Yes, I did notice, that a captured ship damaged so bad it had less than 10 percent hull intact was first repaired, when I assigned the carpenter to the captain's position. Therefore I conclude that the perks most important at that time require the relevant officer to have the captain's role.
Click to expand...
I do believe that is true. Officers for companion ships is a feature that was never set up quite right. :shrug

Fluen said:
Which reminds me of another question. Is the player able to foster war between two nations? I love fighting enemies with overwhelming power as in skirmishes between two nations, and right now almost everyone is at peace.
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Not by playing the game, no. Would be an interesting feature to add, I admit, but who has the time?
It is quite easily done through code though. Open PROGRAM\console.c and find:
Code: 
void ExecuteConsole()
{
   ref pchar = GetMainCharacter();
   if (!bSeaActive) ref lcn = &Locations[FindLocation(pchar.location)];
   ref ch;
   int i;
   int limit;
Below this, add a line like:
Code: 
SetNationRelationBoth(HOLLAND, PIRATE, RELATION_ENEMY);
Replace those nation types with the ones you want to get into a war.
Load your savegame, press F12 and they'll all hate each other's guts! :popcorn:
 
An officers title doesn't mean much. You can make someone a gunner who has accuracy and cannon skills of 1, for instance.

You need to look at skills and abilities. For instance you have two officers. One has great repair skills and the other one has average repair skills. One would think that the one with the great skills would repair a captured ship faster, but that may not be true. You need to look at their abilities also. The one with great skills may not have the quick repair ability while the other officer does have the quick repair ability.

In this case the officer with the average repair skills can repair a ship much faster and is the better choice.
 
Hylie: I learned that the hard way, when I assigned a conquored ship to a "super" carpenter. Alas, he didn't have the instant repair ability or the repair sinking ship ability (I have forgotten what they are called in game) and was rather surprised, when the ship sank, even though I had loaded plenty of timber aboard it.

Pieter: currently I use build 14, beta 2.1 and I just checked. My companion ship DID help me with the attack on the Port Royal fort. It took care of the cannons from within the harbour, while I fired away from outside the harbour.

It sounds like this clever AI is lost in the new release (beta 3)?
 
Fluen said:
It sounds like this clever AI is lost in the new release (beta 3)?
Click to expand...
Not sure. I haven't seen it myself, but I only did quick tests.
I've been hoping for some feedback on it from people who did some proper playing with it.
Not sure why that functionality should be broken now; I don't remember any related code being changed. o_O
 
Pieter Boelen said:
Have you ever seen your companion ships fire on the forts? I've been testing that recently, but never saw one shot fired towards the fort.
This even after I tried to order the ship to. But when I had a fort myself during the Standard storyline, the assaulting squadron DID fire on it. o_O
Click to expand...



My Companion ships fire on Forts when ordered to attack them :yes

Main difficulties are:-
- they have problems with the range, getting to close to the Fort to hit anything
- if you order the attack from the wrong position they will try and sail straight to the Fort ( through any bit of island in the way )
- sometimes after a couple of salvos they give up and try to sail away and have to be ordered back

I am not sure if the damage the companion ship recieves affects its willingness to attack the fort - I have noticed that since ( with cheats in Beta 3 ) being able to allocate God mode to my companion they seem happier to attack the Forts :D. :rofl

Also I am not sure if the class of ships affect things - since I have only used HMS Victory for both my own and my companion's ship. If the companion's ship was a smaller ship their enthusiasm might be less.:shrug :rofl


:drunk
 
So they DO still do it. Thanks for confirming, Talisman! I must not have tested right.
 
In Build 13, I've definitely seen companion ships fire at the fort. They don't always do much because the fort I most often attack is Falaise de Fleur, coming in from behind the big rock, and the companions (as well as the fort) try to fire through the rock. But when one of the companion ships gets into position, it can knock out guns (and earn experience for its officer) - in fact, on occasion I've even seen a companion ship deliver the final shot which destroyed the fort.

As for officers' roles: one thing the gunner does (again, in Build 13 anyway) is that if you're short of personal ammunition when you go aboard from a port or beach - or if you go down to the deck to talk to a prisoner - the gunner will give you ammo, presumably from the ship's stock.
 
Grey Roger said:
As for officers' roles: one thing the gunner does (again, in Build 13 anyway) is that if you're short of personal ammunition when you go aboard from a port or beach - or if you go down to the deck to talk to a prisoner - the gunner will give you ammo, presumably from the ship's stock.
Click to expand...
Yup. In Build 14, he will automatically supply you when you get on board, so that saves you the trouble of going down.
In Build 14, a doctor also helps to heal crewmembers who got wounded in battle.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
That is all defined in PROGRAM\officers.c . I don't think officers on companion ships work quite right though.
But then companion ships aren't very useful in a fight anyway due to their less-than-stellar AI.
Click to expand...

Alrighty, I took a look in the code. I should do that more often anyways. :wp
Man, I was soooo wrong about perks. :facepalm

But now I know, how it works... thanks, Pieter.


Aaaaand I modded it to suit my needs. I'll test it tomorrow. ;)
 
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Meanwhile, I can confirm that companion ships do fire at forts in Build 14. In fact, on one occasion it was my companion which fired the final shot that finished off a fort! The Mefisto still has its 12lb long guns to give it better range during ship battles, and that plus its lack of a decent gunner means it doesn't do as much to forts as my own frigate with 24lb carronades. But as well as that spectacular success at St. Pierre, it also helped a bit during the assault on Bridgetown. (And nearly got sunk. Instead of letting you sail from the lighthouse to the fort as Build 13 did, Build 14 teleports you straight to the fort, in this case with Mefisto at one end and me at the other. I finished off the cannons at my end, Mefisto took out a few at its end, then I struggled against an opposing wind to get into range of the remaining guns just in time to finish them off before they finished off Mefisto.)
 
That's great to know! For some reason, I never got to see that in my tests, but I suspect then that was because my tests were not conducted in the normal gameplay way.

So the quest Bridgetown assault now works, right? That's been a long time indeed! We've had to skip past that for years. :shock
 
It took me a while to figure out how everything works now, but yes, it seems to work. Having been inside the lighthouse, I needed to do some things in Bridgetown before the attack, which meant going up the canyon, doing the things, coming back down the canyon and finding Danielle didn't seem interested in the attack any more. It turns out you don't just need to go back onto your ship, you need to go back to sea and then land again and talk to Danielle. When you agree to attack at once, your ship is teleported as mentioned previously. After clobbering the fort and doing the town rampage, I eventually figured out that it might be worth talking to the last surviving soldier who was standing around in the new town area.
 
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