Penalties for starting with a Tier 5 Ship

[Armada]

I suggest leaving it at 5, but put a hint somewhere that tier 5 is beyond the ability of a novice captain so you're going to have trouble commanding it at first.

That would probably be ideal, but I guess the question is where to put that hint. Maybe a starting quest that encourages the player to rank up their Sailing and Leadership skills?
For example: "This new ship of mine will take some getting used to before we can get the best out of her. I should spend some time to hone my sailing and show strong leadership to make sure we're ready to take on any threat that comes our way."

Correct. If you want the repair done in a few days, pay the shipyard. If you don't mind waiting rather longer, do it yourself.

Perhaps that advice should be added to the tutorial's repair quest? Seems like the kind of useful information that belongs in a tutorial, after all.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

After checking the code, I found out that when I originally set the maximum Tier of ship in Select Storyline, it was 6 and not 5!
Apparently @Jason Maffettone changed it to 5, which is now the case in the all storylines (e.g. mostly just the Free Play only), but NOT the Standard Storyline:

   shipclass_max = 5; // JRMM
   if (slno == FindDefaultStoryline()) shipclass_max = 6;
   if (ENABLE_CHEATMODE) shipclass_max = 1; // PB

So that at least explains something.

That would probably be ideal, but I guess the question is where to put that hint. Maybe a starting quest that encourages the player to rank up their Sailing and Leadership skills?
For example: "This new ship of mine will take some getting used to before we can get the best out of her. I should spend some time to hone my sailing and show strong leadership to make sure we're ready to take on any threat that comes our way."

Alternatively, adding it here would be REAL easy:

"Choose from several pre-defined characters or freely customize your own. Various background professions are available, some featuring different starting scenarios. An open-ended and dynamic game world awaits in six unique time periods! You can even choose the United States by setting the starting date after 1770."

Otherwise we'd have to detect if either of the two is being reduced and only then show that Questbook entry.
Which is possible for sure, of course.

Perhaps that advice should be added to the tutorial's repair quest? Seems like the kind of useful information that belongs in a tutorial, after all.

I don't mind that being added. It's not actually an exploit, it is an intentional part of the game.
Just not originally intentionally part of the tutorial.

Armada, how important do you reckon it is to sort out that StartStoryline.c code so that you DO get the money needed for the repairs?
Right now there is code in place that should do exactly that (ideally even up to Tier 1 ships), but it appears it doesn't quite function as intended then.

 

[Armada]

Armada, how important do you reckon it is to sort out that StartStoryline.c code so that you DO get the money needed for the repairs?
Right now there is code in place that should do exactly that (ideally even up to Tier 1 ships), but it appears it doesn't quite function as intended then.

I guess it's probably not hugely important in the short term, since it only affects a small number of available starting ships (or more if you're cheating).

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Use this check to see if the Questbook entry is necessary:

if (CalcShipSkill(PChar, SKILL_LEADERSHIP) < CalcPartySkill(PChar, SKILL_LEADERSHIP) || CalcShipSkill(PChar, SKILL_SAILING) < CalcPartySkill(PChar, SKILL_SAILING))

I think that should return 'true' ONLY if either one or both is being reduced specifically by having a too large ship or fleet.

The relevant tutorial code is in PROGRAM\Storyline\FreePlay\quests\both_reaction.c .
As per my above post, it doesn't need to go in the Standard one because there you cannot select Tier 5 ships anyway.

 

[Grey Roger]

If possible, it would be better to have the warning in one of the selection screens. The player needs to know that a tier 5 ship will be difficult to command before he chooses it, not after. Once he has the ship, it's too late, he's probably already found out the hard way.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That's why I suggested just adding it to the Free Play storyline description. Would that work?
That is extremely easily done.

 

[Grey Roger]

Yes, that would be the best place to put it.

Incidentally, I tried starting a free-play (also to check the reported problem with Artois Voysey). Again, I was able to buy planks along with selling the cargo and buying some food and rum. By the time the store had finished, sufficient time had passed for the ship's hull to go from 60% to 61%. The repair quest had completed. This was under the 20th July version of Beta 4.1.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Incidentally, I tried starting a free-play (also to check the reported problem with Artois Voysey). Again, I was able to buy planks along with selling the cargo and buying some food and rum. By the time the store had finished, sufficient time had passed for the ship's hull to go from 60% to 61%. The repair quest had completed. This was under the 20th July version of Beta 4.1.

In that case, it is time for a Bug Tracker entry!

 

[Grey Roger]

Problem: you may not have enough money to repair the ship.
Solution: you may not need that much money if you can achieve a partial repair, whether by buying planks and doing it yourself or by paying the shipyard to repair what you can afford.
Apparently the solution is itself a problem.

And then, if it's fixed, you're back to giving the player enough money to repair the ship fully. The player then buys some planks, repairs the ship himself, and the quest disappears anyway when he leaves the island. Free money!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Note that "making the questbook entry disappear" is irrelevant. What really does matter is getting your ship repaired up to 100% before leaving.
If you choose to deliberately not do that to save money, that is player choice, and I don't object to that.
You could also sell your big ship for good money, then buy a smaller one and use the extra money for whatever you want.

 

[Armada]

That's why I suggested just adding it to the Free Play storyline description. Would that work?
That is extremely easily done.

I only suggested the quest entry on the assumption that it would be too difficult (or add too much clutter) to add a note in the Select Storyline interface.
If that's not the case, then of course that would be a more sensible place to put it.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I only suggested the quest entry on the assumption that it would be too difficult (or add too much clutter) to add a note in the Select Storyline interface.

If it's just added to the Free Play storyline description, then only the default text string in PROGRAM\Storyline\FreePlay.c would need to be edited.
This is on the assumption that the note is always present; not only if you select a larger ship.

 

[pedrwyth]

Just arrived at this thread and the calculation in post #15 for cargo selling price I will move on to when I have finished revamping store selling and shipyard cargo prices. It currently uses a different function call and calculation as assumed above so you don't get what it thinks you will.

 

[pedrwyth]

Early work on this showed that the current import cargo allocation method made no check against ship capacity at that point (added one) and also since some places are fairly limited in trade imports when a high value cargo such as gold occurs there is no check against resulting excessive high value either - so moved the repair cost calculation before the cargo and check against that. There may also be problems with the 100 item limit (really a relic from the original) not giving enough value to repair big ships (as raised in this thread) and balancing the two goods quantities on small ships better.

Oh and have to add the "soon to be" current store to get the right prices I think

So currently in mid re-think mode.or

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Thanks for thinking about this, @pedrwyth!

 

[pedrwyth]

I present a revised startstoryline.c for freeplay which sorts out starting cargo such that when you have sold it and fixed the ship etc you have around 3000 to play with, with pretty much whatever ship you choose (I think) - yes even a Dinghy and good luck with that!

In various starts in Hook's fixes @LarryHookins had some angst

Hook's fixes | Page 8 | PiratesAhoy!

He got food, then planks

Hook's fixes | Page 8 | PiratesAhoy!

then gold

Hook's fixes | Page 8 | PiratesAhoy!
and finally 100 gold and 100 silver

so I have ensured you get no usable goods (food,rum,planks,sailcloth) since you begrudge selling them (and it overrides the autosupply) nor gold /silver since these could be too lucrative. To do this I have added a few extra import goods in islands_init in some cases but nothing that was already in serious use.

I have ensured weight capacity is taken into account so the ship is not overfull and also limited the cargo placed to roughly the repair cost in cases where it was excessive (so that's pretty much nil for the dinghy then).

I have not bothered with class 4 ships or better since to have these you must be using cheat mode - so you can deal with your own financial problems.

I have not looked at 'Tales of a Sea Hawk' since I figure if you are messing with that storyline start these days you get what you deserve anyway (now free play has open most if not all sidequests and start choices) but the code would be transferable of course.