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Overcrewing ships

K

Kazeite

Privateer
Storm Modder
As I understand, pirate ships often sailed overcrewed, that is, with more crew than necessary, in order to posess numerical advantage over merchant ships crew. Even ships in regular navies often could have more crew than necessary (for example, <i>HMS Pandora</i>, ship sent to recover <i>HMS Bounty</i> carried twice the normal complement, as it was expected that the extras would man the <i>Bounty</i> when it was recovered from the mutineers).

And the problem is, POTC doesn't allow that, of course. If I want to sail undercrewed, that's fine, but overcrewed? No way, Jose! Um, Jean. or smth <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" />

So, is it possible to make game to allow you to hire more sailors than "maximum"? I was thinking about introducing extra commodity - sailors (and, by extension, it could've been duplicated into 'passengers', to allow you to carry civilian passengers from one destination to another). Those guys would've been used as reserve, replenishing any losses when necessary, and could've been used to man prize ship. Of course, player would've been prohibited selling them in stores or disposing of them in the sea.

Incidentally, I think there's a bug with generating survivors of the sinking ship - Many times I took entire crew from boarded ships, only to pick a few more survivors when returning to the tactical view. I think that code that generates those floating survivors should check whether there <b>are </b>any people left on the sinking ship <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />
 
I have moved this threat to the Build Alpha & Brainstorming forum, because I think it belongs there.

I had another idea to accomplish this: Set two or three minimum crew values for the ships in ships_init.c:
1) Absolute minimum crew for sailing the ship. This woul be the current mincrew number. Under this amount, you CAN NOT SAIL the ship. For example: Crewing a Manowar with 2 men
2) Minimum crew for sailing the ship effectively. This would be the current maxcrew numbers. Under this amount, sailing your ship will not be 100% efficient.
3) Maximum crew the ship can hold. With this value you can overcrew your ship. However, everything above maxcrew should decrease your cargospace. We could also introduce "crew weight" so that the more crew you have aboard, the slower the ship sails, because of the weight of all those hundreds of crewmen.

BTW: I thought there WAS a check on the survivors floating in the sea, but it doesn't seem to be working anymore. Not sure why. I do recall in Build 12.1 I never saw survivors in the sea when the ship had 0 crew when sinking.
 
This sounds good to me and is certainly simpler <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />
 
I like it too - the rations would need to depleat in relation to the oversized crew(as well as the taking up cargo space). IF we ever decide to really expanding the usefulness of Doctors/Apothacories you could also have an illness feature in the game - overcrowding would of course make it more likely for sickness to break out.

A ship packed full to bursting of sick,stinking, angry pirates - i cant think of a more frightening scene to see coming your way if you were the pilot of an unlucky merchant ship!!
 
<!--quoteo(post=167999:date=Oct 18 2006, 10:57 PM:name=Pieter Boelen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pieter Boelen @ Oct 18 2006, 10:57 PM) [snapback]167999[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->

BTW: I thought there WAS a check on the survivors floating in the sea, but it doesn't seem to be working anymore. Not sure why. I do recall in Build 12.1 I never saw survivors in the sea when the ship had 0 crew when sinking.
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Definitely not working. Even when you put a captured crew to the sword, there are always survivors floating who can be picked up. And who will increase your crew past the maximum, I've noticed. Now I always make every effort to pick them all up to increase my crew size (and reputation)...
 
Now that is CERTAINLY not good! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />
 
<!--quoteo(post=168812:date=Oct 26 2006, 04:47 AM:name=Pieter Boelen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pieter Boelen @ Oct 26 2006, 04:47 AM) [snapback]168812[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
Now that is CERTAINLY not good! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />
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Not good? Why say ye this; pirate ships be always overcrewed matey! Actually a pretty good workaround until the overcrewed ships option comes along... <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheeky" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />
 
overcrowding would help spread disease too......... <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />
 
LOL. You actually WANT disease, don't you? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheeky" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />

I meant "not good" because it isn't meant to work that way, so it is a bug of sorts.
 
<!--quoteo(post=168878:date=Oct 26 2006, 04:07 PM:name=Pieter Boelen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pieter Boelen @ Oct 26 2006, 04:07 PM) [snapback]168878[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
LOL. You actually WANT disease, don't you? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheeky" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />

.....
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Well not my char personally, or my officers(not fatal anyway - we could play around with the option of stat-reduction untill cured(something for the new officer Doctor class to fix?)- maybe even the player char could be included?). But it would be nice to have a real scurvy ridden pirate crew to get you into the mood <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />
 
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