Brainstorming Personal Modifications for Feedback and Testing

[Grey Roger]

Increasing the number of companion ships will make pirating and privateering obscenely profitable. I can already make a lot of money by raiding a convoy, picking the three most profitable looking ships, capturing them, and heading for port. It's going to get silly if I can bag the whole convoy...

Increasing the number of officers is likely to cause trouble at bottlenecks. I ran into a similar problem while developing the "Hornblower" extension. Originally I wanted all the riflemen to follow you back to the ship, but the narrow passage leading to the beach is already difficult to pass if you have just the three normal officers, and impossible if the extra riflemen are there as well. So I arranged for them to make their own way back to the ship (i.e. they disappear before you get to the shore). More than three officers means some places are going to be impassable, especially if you don't enable sidestep in "InternalSettings.h".

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Indeed I think the default values of "4" for both are perfectly acceptable.
I don't object to the option existing though. I know there are people who want it.

 

[Mere_Mortal]

Increasing the number of companion ships will make pirating and privateering obscenely profitable.

You’re not wrong there, it does make things a lot easier. Maybe at some point I’ll look at ways to mitigate this. One option could be to impact upon morale if the player has more than 4 ships (either that alone or maybe also if the player has a certain amount of credits), so that it becomes very costly to maintain crew. So if the player has 8 sloops then it wouldn’t be overly expensive, but if they’ve got the equivalent amount of crew for 8 sloops on just one ship, and that is 8-fold again, then it ought to cost huge amounts. So either the player pays to keep them happy, buys lots of food and rum (which could run out at the stores), or they mutiny. This could be something which is never triggered so long as the player has up to 4 ships, and kicks in after that.

Increasing the number of officers is likely to cause trouble at bottlenecks.

Currently this is my biggest concern, as if it isn’t a problem already. Even then a lot of code would need attention if ever this was to be done. With the companions it’s mostly a case of applying a single variable and updating a few interfaces, but officers are a different story. I don’t think it would be anywhere near as simple to make this stable, it could require a complete rewrite of several files and also stories/quests.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You’re not wrong there, it does make things a lot easier. Maybe at some point I’ll look at ways to mitigate this. One option could be to impact upon morale if the player has more than 4 ships (either that alone or maybe also if the player has a certain amount of credits), so that it becomes very costly to maintain crew. So if the player has 8 sloops then it wouldn’t be overly expensive, but if they’ve got the equivalent amount of crew for 8 sloops on just one ship, and that is 8-fold again, then it ought to cost huge amounts. So either the player pays to keep them happy, buys lots of food and rum (which could run out at the stores), or they mutiny. This could be something which is never triggered so long as the player has up to 4 ships, and kicks in after that.

A morale drop depending on the size of the fleet and the player leadership skill does not sound so bad.
Though morale should mainly be controlled by the ships' own captains. Loyalty of those captains to the player might be affected though.

Certainly more ships means higher costs. Maybe somehow ship upkeep should be prohibitively expensive?
At the moment it seems that once you reach a certain point, it becomes a bit too eay to make money.

Currently this is my biggest concern, as if it isn’t a problem already. Even then a lot of code would need attention if ever this was to be done. With the companions it’s mostly a case of applying a single variable and updating a few interfaces, but officers are a different story. I don’t think it would be anywhere near as simple to make this stable, it could require a complete rewrite of several files and also stories/quests.

Since we already have the Shore Crewmembers feature, I reckon more than 4 officers in the shore party would be very low priority.

 

[Mere_Mortal]

It is too easy to make money, even with one ship.

Though morale should mainly be controlled by the ships' own captains. Loyalty of those captains to the player might be affected though.

So what about companions having a morale (or loyalty) attribute? If it drops too far then he either goes hostile or simply sails off.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So what about companions having a morale (or loyalty) attribute? If it drops too far then he either goes hostile or simply sails off.

That already happens for Morale.
As for loyalty.... Planned Feature - Officer Loyalty | PiratesAhoy!

 

[Mere_Mortal]

That already happens for Morale.

Yes, but...

Though morale should mainly be controlled by the ships' own captains.

What I mean is that the morale of a companion’s ship has nothing to do with the other ships, right?

So the player and 2 companions could be very happy... but one of them is a Horror of the High Seas so to speak.

As for loyalty.... Planned Feature - Officer Loyalty | PiratesAhoy!

If that becomes workable then it would certainly interest me in this respect!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

What I mean is that the morale of a companion’s ship has nothing to do with the other ships, right?

At the moment, indeed not.

If that becomes workable then it would be certainly interest me in this respect!

The functionality is pretty much already there.
At the moment "Companion Mutiny" and "Officer Loyalty" are separate features,
but my idea would be to combine them and just have on be the "on sea" version and the other the "on shore" one.

Loyalty doesn't do much, because hardly anything triggers a change in loyalty.
That is where this one comes in: Planned Feature - Balancing and Repurposing Reputation Gain | PiratesAhoy!

I had intended to work on this half a year back, but never could because Beta 4 still needed to be released.
Now I'm rather burned out from working on that and am not doing all that much.
So no guarantees on when I'd finally get round to making that happen.

Don't let me stop you from looking into it yourself though!
I've got some relatively simple ideas on how to make this work.
Just not at the moment the enthusiasm to actually do it.

 

[Mere_Mortal]

I hear you. Since I got back into this game, at least after about a week of playing, I’ve pretty much done nothing but code. I’ve been alright lately, but when I was working on the transfer interface it really was burning me out because I kept going around and around in circles. End of the day, number one is priority.

But yeah, when I first brought up the companion increase my main concern was balance, so this idea could be the answer.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I've got to admit that Reputation>Loyalty>Fame is basically the main thing I personally would want to see done in the game.
Basically because we did all sorts of preliminary work to make it possible, but it hasn't been taken the whole nine yards just yet.
It would definitely add a new layer to the game if done right.

 

[Mere_Mortal]

Well I don’t know the first thing about how that all works, but if I do look into it and drum up some ideas then I’ll certainly let you know!