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Included in Build Playing as a Pirate

It's not a matter of whether anyone sees you raise a Personal flag; it's supposed to be for the benefit of players who don't want to be tied to a nation and to give them an easy way out. What's important is that you and your crew have seen it, so you'll no longer take any notice if your (former) ServedNation declares war on someone, you won't be fighting in that war.

But if linking it to raising a flag will cause problems, it might be enough if the "loyal" attribute is set to false if you pick PERSONAL as your nation in the storyline options selection screen. That way you don't need to pick PIRATE (hated by all other nations) and can still have the option not to be tied to any nation.
Starting the game as Personal Nation does set ServedNation to PERSONAL_NATION.
Of course once you get a LoM, that gets overridden with the nation you chose, but goes back to personal with a second one.

For a Pirate to regain "loyal" status should certainly be more difficult than for someone who lost it either by declaring himself Personal or by buying multiple LoM's. Ideally you'd only be accepted if you haven't attacked any of this nation's ships, but that probably can't be checked in this game. Maybe require that you're famous enough, have reputation Hero, or both of the above. You have to be something special if the governor is to take you seriously - basically, you're trying to be like Henry Morgan.
At the moment the way to do it is to ensure you DON'T serve the pirates anymore, then get a new LoM (or perhaps get promoted; not sure if that works).
If you were hostile before, you need to pay a good sum of money for forgiveness and again for the LoM, so it shouldn't be so easy.
Of course it also doesn't matter right now. :lev
 
I think we can archive this issue for the time being.
Certainly things can be improved for Pirate and Privateer specific playstyles, but they are at least properly different now.
Any further fancy ideas can wait until Build 15 as far as I'm concerned.

If there still ARE things that need doing on this, I'd like to know. :doff
 
moving this to the archive
 
Code:
    case PLAYER_TYPE_CORSAIR:
       if (iNation != PIRATE)
       {
         ReceiveLetterOfMarque(iNation);                         // Non-pirate corsairs get a Letter of Marque
         SetActualRMRelation(PIRATE, REL_AFTERATTACK);                 // But are still neutral to the pirates
       }
     break;
^ Does it make sense to always start Corsairs friendly to the pirates?
 
^ Does it make sense to always start Corsairs friendly to the pirates?
Yes, for at least two reasons. One is that a lot of pirates were corsairs - most of the real Brethren of the Coast, for a start.

Another is that most pirate camps are on the same island as some nation's town, so any corsair who isn't welcome in the pirate base will just go round the corner, especially if his LoM is with the nation who owns the town, or at least with someone at peace with that nation. Moreover, most of those pirate bases don't have forts and raiding one is a great way for a corsair to get lots of points with his sponsor nation, not to mention lots of loot to sell when he visits the town. About the only pirate base which can afford to be choosy is Turks Island, and that's only until a corsair helps himself to someone's battleship. (Tortuga does have a fort but it still has competition from Port au Prince.)

So if the Pirates aren't friendly to the corsairs, it's the Pirates who are going to suffer most, either from lost business or from being regularly raided.
 
After my huge skill system rewrite of the past week, I now have to double-check what type of skill check is being done where.
Specifically, are the specific spots supposed to take into account your officers as well or just the character being checked?

While doing this, I figured that all the Fame and Divide the Plunder code that uses Leadership should probably use your PERSONAL values.
That could be considered both a good and a bad thing:

- Player leadership probably increases slower, so Fame decreases slower too. Not good if you want to be famous, but does keep your false flag detection chance low for longer.

- When dealing with a piratey crew (Divide the Plunder or a Mutiny) it will be YOUR leadership that matters. After all, they want a STRONG captain!
But if you manage to get your hands on a large ship/fleet in the early game and get a penalty from that, you can switch to Divide the Plunder and your crew stuff there will NOT be affected.
This is because your personal skill is calculated BEFORE applying the "fleet mali".
Not intentional, but I quite like this side-effect. Gives an ambitious early-game corsair a bit of an extra incentive to play more as a pirate with Divide the Plunder. :cheeky
 
So, less incentive to hire a first mate, then. There's no point in hiring an officer whose job is to keep discipline if he's now going to sit back and watch you try to do it yourself.

Possibly tie it into the new officer loyalty feature? If the first officer is loyal then he supports you so his Leadership is included, otherwise you're on your own.

But I agree that Fame should be based on your personal Leadership rather than combined Leadership. People are supposed to be telling tales about Captain Jack Sparrow, not Boatswain Joshamee Gibbs.
 
So, less incentive to hire a first mate, then. There's no point in hiring an officer whose job is to keep discipline if he's now going to sit back and watch you try to do it yourself.
As I said, that particular change applies ONLY to Divide the Plunder mode.
I figured that if you've got a First Mate whose leadership is better than your own, wouldn't your crew want that First Officer as their captain rather than you?

But as a bonus, as the player skill is checked in those instances, any "fleet mali" aren't being subtracted.
So if you have high leadership and sailing, but are still early in the game and manage to get, say, a Tier 1 ship, you won't have as much trouble handling her.

Anyway, it is easy enough to change this around; it just depends on what function is being called where.
Since I had to go through rather a lot of files to decide that on a case-by-case basis, I thought I'd be a bit create with it. ;)

EDIT: Also, thanka lot for commenting on this one!
I posted about it on the forum since I'd want to check if my reasoning for that change was sound.
So I appreciate the feedback and hope that we can decide which we want it.
As I said, it's easy enough and I don't actually mind so much either way.

Goind further, I wouldn't object to someone else checking the function calls to make sure I didn't accidentally have the whole party skills used where it should be personal or the other way around. :facepalm

Possibly tie it into the new officer loyalty feature? If the first officer is loyal then he supports you so his Leadership is included, otherwise you're on your own.
I do like that idea. "Officer Loyalty" isn't 100% operational yet, but that is one thing that could be included when we get round to setting up the fully playable and version of that system. :yes

But I agree that Fame should be based on your personal Leadership rather than combined Leadership. People are supposed to be telling tales about Captain Jack Sparrow, not Boatswain Joshamee Gibbs.
:doff
 
Last edited:
I think it's good if there is a way to prevent the fleet mali. When you are a pirate its very annoying if you capture a ship only to find out you can't handle her.
 
At the moment the implementation of my idea is an extremely simplistic method as it is just handled by which function is called in which part of the code.

I thought of an alternate approach though: Have an if (DividePlunder) check IN the GetShipSkills function.
We can then return the PLAYER skill for Leadership and SKIP fleet mali for Sailing IF you are on Divide the Plunder mode.
That way you would actually see the effect of this in the F2>Ship and F2>Passengers screens instead of it being 100% invisible.

Does that sound like an idea worth pursuing? If so, any thougths of things to consider for this one?
 
I can't think of any realistic reason why the method of paying the crew would directly affect your ability to handle the ship. Indirectly via crew morale, perhaps, as that affects their reaction times to orders, reload time for guns etc., but that's already accounted for by the fact that they can achieve higher morale when being paid by division of plunder. Also remember that just because some of us like payment by division of plunder doesn't mean everyone else does, and those who don't are already being penalised because now they have to buy a merchant licence rather than simply change a setting in "InternalSettings.h".

I'm not sure what is meant by "mali", but from context I'm guessing it's something to do with the penalty you suffer for trying to command too large a ship when you have low "Leadership" and "Sailing" and don't have suitably skilled navigator and first mate to help you. As well as being a reasonable obstacle to you capturing a battleship and blasting everything in sight early in the game, this also provides a challenge to those who start a free-play game with something outsize - they have to grow into the ship. (Also, if you're concerned about realism, how many real pirates sailed in battleships? ;)) I ran into this problem when I started an "Early Explorers" free-play game with an English War Galleon and actually liked the idea that being a novice captain of one of the best warships of the time, with an inexperienced crew, I had to gain experience and gradually improve my handling of the ship.

I figured that if you've got a First Mate whose leadership is better than your own, wouldn't your crew want that First Officer as their captain rather than you?
That depends. The first mate might be a fearsome second in command who can easily keep the crew in line, but might not have the strategic competence to make a good captain. He might prefer you to be captain. That's where the loyalty check comes in. :D
 
I can't think of any realistic reason why the method of paying the crew would directly affect your ability to handle the ship. Indirectly via crew morale, perhaps, as that affects their reaction times to orders, reload time for guns etc., but that's already accounted for by the fact that they can achieve higher morale when being paid by division of plunder.
True, that. I do think perhaps the morale when paying by salary should be toned down a bit.
That "Divide the Plunder" option should be an attractive feature that actually plays a notable role in the game; not something that people just ignore.
Otherwise there is little point in even having it, which seems rather a shame to me.

Likewise, I'd want the "double rum rations" option to become something that people might actually use too.
Cool features are so much cooler when they have enough purpose that players actually starting making use of them! :cheeky

Also remember that just because some of us like payment by division of plunder doesn't mean everyone else does, and those who don't are already being penalised because now they have to buy a merchant licence rather than simply change a setting in "InternalSettings.h".
Not sure if that can be considered penalising. Rather than a completely arbitrary cheat setting, it is now factored into the game in a somewhat more realistic way.
It also affects only those players who DO want to have a LoM, but really, really, REALLY don't want to use Divide the Plunder.
(For whatever reason that I still do not understand but would like to address if I did :facepalm ).

I'm not sure what is meant by "mali", but from context I'm guessing it's something to do with the penalty you suffer for trying to command too large a ship when you have low "Leadership" and "Sailing" and don't have suitably skilled navigator and first mate to help you.
On Realistic Game Mode, the F2>Character screen gets a ship icon with number just below your portrait that shows the level of ship that you can command.
At that stage that is based purely on the character's skill, excluding any contributions of officers because adding that was too complicated and caused CTDs due to infinite loops and functions calling each other back and forth.
Then if you command a ship of a higher tier than that number, the difference is subtracted from your "ship skills" as shown in the F2>Ship and F2>Passengers screens.
So effectively you'll get lower skills because your ship is too big.

Similarly, you'll get another -1 if you have a fleet of ships while still on low level. I think the limit is "4" though, so probably hardly anyone would get to notice that functionality.
But it IS there.

Basically there are two "stages" of the skills that are actually used in the game:
- CalcCharacterSkill = Character skills + item modifiers: This is used wherever anything is linked to specific characters (shore fights and many quest checks in dialogs)
- GetShipSkill = Combined effective skills of captain + all officers taking into account their role assignments - applicable fleet mali (see above): This is used everywhere else

Just for fun, currently specific Divide the Plunder code uses CalcCharacterSkill instead of GetShipSkill .
But if you actually use that feature and don't think this is a good idea, I'll change those to GetShipSkill too.
We can always figure out more fancy systems later; for now my main concern was getting something working (and a bit different) based on what is already there for now.

That depends. The first mate might be a fearsome second in command who can easily keep the crew in line, but might not have the strategic competence to make a good captain. He might prefer you to be captain. That's where the loyalty check comes in. :D
Could be. Though I wonder if the crew would see that the same way.
Anyway, I do like your suggestion of factoring loyalty in there. :onya
 
True, that. I do think perhaps the morale when paying by salary should be toned down a bit.
That "Divide the Plunder" option should be an attractive feature that actually plays a notable role in the game; not something that people just ignore.
Otherwise there is little point in even having it, which seems rather a shame to me.
It is attractive, for those who don't plan on accumulating lots of spare cash with a view to buying a big ship from Vanderdecken, or whatever else they plan to do with the money. You get better morale if you pay by dividing plunder. You get a share of the plunder yourself, adding to your personal wealth and thereby your fame (though that may be considered either a positive or negative factor).

Likewise, I'd want the "double rum rations" option to become something that people might actually use too.
Cool features are so much cooler when they have enough purpose that players actually starting making use of them! :cheeky
Again, what we might consider cool might not be what someone else considers cool. For that matter, what you consider cool may not be what I consider cool and vice versa. :p But to me, the big strength of PoTC is (or at least, was) that people can play it the way they want, rather than being coerced into playing the way we want.

Double rum rations would be a celebration, so what are you likely to do to merit such a celebration? It's basically another way of rewarding the crew for a particular job that they've done well. Winning a battle would qualify. Possibly completing a routine quest (cargo, fetch, treasure - not necessarily side quest). Give them double rum at the right time and morale should increase sharply, possibly add a point or two to your "Leadership" as well. Do it at the wrong time and you increase the risk of drunken disorder. Maybe also allow the option for grog, which is watered down rum, to give a lesser morale boost and reduced risk of drunkenness.

Not sure if that can be considered penalising. Rather than a completely arbitrary cheat setting, it is now factored into the game in a somewhat more realistic way.
It also affects only those players who DO want to have a LoM, but really, really, REALLY don't want to use Divide the Plunder.
(For whatever reason that I still do not understand but would like to address if I did :facepalm ).
The obvious one is to accumulate lots of cash, possibly to then visit Vanderdecken. Or to rise in the ranks via that LoM and then be able to buy a big warship from a regular shipyard. Also, paying by dividing plunder means some of the plunder goes into your personal wealth, which increases your fame, which could perhaps do with getting some positive consequences to balance out the negative of having your false flag being easier to recognise (even more significant now that forts can join in).

On Realistic Game Mode, the F2>Character screen gets a ship icon with number just below your portrait that shows the level of ship that you can command.
At that stage that is based purely on the character's skill, excluding any contributions of officers because adding that was too complicated and caused CTDs due to infinite loops and functions calling each other back and forth.
Then if you command a ship of a higher tier than that number, the difference is subtracted from your "ship skills" as shown in the F2>Ship and F2>Passengers screens.
So effectively you'll get lower skills because your ship is too big.
So my guess was correct then. ;)

Similarly, you'll get another -1 if you have a fleet of ships while still on low level.
You can't get a fleet of ships until your "Leadership" is high enough anyway. That, however, does include the effect of officers - if you have a first officer or boatswain with high enough "Leadership" then you can command a fleet even if your own "Leadership" is 1, and if you then try to assign that officer to command a ship then you get a warning that you won't have high enough "Leadership" to command the fleet. (It sometimes gets that wrong. I can't remember for certain, but it may have been because I had more than one officer with high "Leadership", so I could put one of them onto a prize ship and still get enough of a boost from the other.)

Just for fun, currently specific Divide the Plunder code uses CalcCharacterSkill instead of GetShipSkill .
But if you actually use that feature and don't think this is a good idea, I'll change those to GetShipSkill too.
Is that using "Leadership" to increase your personal share of the loot? If so, it makes sense for that to use CalcCharacterSkill - you're on your own here because, loyal or not, if the first officer can use "Leadership" to get a higher share of the loot then he'll be putting it in his pocket, not yours.

Could be. Though I wonder if the crew would see that the same way.
Anyway, I do like your suggestion of factoring loyalty in there. :onya
It's his job to make the crew see things your way. If he's loyal, that is. ;) The old line of "You didn't think of that, he did, which is why he's captain and you're not" comes to mind...
 
It is attractive, for those who don't plan on accumulating lots of spare cash with a view to buying a big ship from Vanderdecken, or whatever else they plan to do with the money. You get better morale if you pay by dividing plunder. You get a share of the plunder yourself, adding to your personal wealth and thereby your fame (though that may be considered either a positive or negative factor).
True. Though of course it very much IS possible to use Divide the Plunder and save up your personal wealth to buy a Vanderdecken ship.
Would fit in well with a pirate playstyle. Works especially well once you get LOTS of money for selling pirated ships if you actually join the pirates.
I'm hoping to set that up this weekend.

Again, what we might consider cool might not be what someone else considers cool. For that matter, what you consider cool may not be what I consider cool and vice versa. :p But to me, the big strength of PoTC is (or at least, was) that people can play it the way they want, rather than being coerced into playing the way we want.
You know I want it to stay that way! :whipa

The only thing I want to see changed is that EACH game feature actually serves an actual purpose, so that by ignoring one or the other, you ignore something that could be cool.
Not like now, where you can ignore certain things and it doesn't make a difference.

And I want each way of playing the game to have advantages and disadvantages so that there won't be any "best" way.
Then it'll depend on what the players themselves like best or they can try different ways on separate playthroughs or try to "mix and match" during the game.
It isn't about forcing anything on anyone; it is about choices having consequences, both good and bad. So you have to balance those consequences in whichever way you see fit.

Double rum rations would be a celebration, so what are you likely to do to merit such a celebration? It's basically another way of rewarding the crew for a particular job that they've done well. Winning a battle would qualify. Possibly completing a routine quest (cargo, fetch, treasure - not necessarily side quest). Give them double rum at the right time and morale should increase sharply, possibly add a point or two to your "Leadership" as well. Do it at the wrong time and you increase the risk of drunken disorder. Maybe also allow the option for grog, which is watered down rum, to give a lesser morale boost and reduced risk of drunkenness.
I mentioned that because it is a feature that is already there. When you enable it, morale goes up, but occasionally will plummet again as well due to a drunken brawl.
As far as I'm aware, absolutely nobody ever uses it. Which seems rather a shame for a feature that is actually in the game.

My thinking was to require the player to deal with the aftermath of such a drunken brawl by talking to the boatswain to prevent morale from deteriorating further.
But that doesn't actually give players an incentive to use that feature.

The obvious one is to accumulate lots of cash, possibly to then visit Vanderdecken. Or to rise in the ranks via that LoM and then be able to buy a big warship from a regular shipyard. Also, paying by dividing plunder means some of the plunder goes into your personal wealth, which increases your fame, which could perhaps do with getting some positive consequences to balance out the negative of having your false flag being easier to recognise (even more significant now that forts can join in).
Indeed the chance increasing with fame was originally my idea, mainly because I figured it would make logical sense.
But of course it is no so nice from a gameplay point of view. You can decrease that chance again with Luck and some abilities though.

My hope always was that in the later game, when you're more famous, the gameplay would shift so you end up focusing on different things and using false flags won't be so important anymore.
For example because you took over all the towns in the Caribbean and are busy with managing them instead.
But of course the game isn't like that and probably won't be for quite some time to come.

I do agree that there should be more positive benefits to being famous in addition to the adverse effect on false flag detection.
At the moment the only thing I can think of is that eventually that allows you to marr a governor's daughter/niece.
But then.... that serves very little purpose right now, other than to further increase your Fame.
Definitely room for improvement there!

Originally "Fame" was mainly added to the game as a way of "keeping score", but I don't think much of anyone actually uses it like that.
Perhaps we should have a forum "Wall of Fame" at some point where players can post screenshots/saves showing their "high scores".

So my guess was correct then. ;)
Yup. :onya

You can't get a fleet of ships until your "Leadership" is high enough anyway. That, however, does include the effect of officers - if you have a first officer or boatswain with high enough "Leadership" then you can command a fleet even if your own "Leadership" is 1, and if you then try to assign that officer to command a ship then you get a warning that you won't have high enough "Leadership" to command the fleet. (It sometimes gets that wrong. I can't remember for certain, but it may have been because I had more than one officer with high "Leadership", so I could put one of them onto a prize ship and still get enough of a boost from the other.)
Indeed I'm not sure how that all works together. @Levis added those warnings in the interface at some point in the past.

Is that using "Leadership" to increase your personal share of the loot? If so, it makes sense for that to use CalcCharacterSkill - you're on your own here because, loyal or not, if the first officer can use "Leadership" to get a higher share of the loot then he'll be putting it in his pocket, not yours.
It very well may do. I'd need to check....

It's his job to make the crew see things your way. If he's loyal, that is. ;) The old line of "You didn't think of that, he did, which is why he's captain and you're not" comes to mind...
True. I've got to admit I am looking forward to the time where Beta 4 is released and we'll be able to put such things actually in the game.
Should be interesting! :woot
 
@Grey Roger: I'm now checking exactly where the CalcCharacterSkill vs. GetShipSkill difference applies:
- GetCrewShareRatio to determine how much your crew gets compared to the player
- GetRaiseMoraleCost to determine how much money you have to pay when you press the "Raise Morale" button in the Ship>Crew Interface
- DividePlunder for call to SetSquadronCrewQuantityTotalRatio to determine how many crew stay with you after dividing the plunder
- GetRandCharMoney to determine how much money NPCs carry (takes player Luck skill rather than party to keep this low for a longer time)
- CalculatePrisonRansomCost takes player Luck skill rather than Ship Party
- GetFame checks only player skills and abilities, so that should keep you Unknown for longer
- Same for MRGetAddTalkpoints which relates to talking to Governors' Relatives
- GetShipMinClassForCharacter mainly to prevent the game crashing
- Enc_Officer_dialog.c so that haggling over the officer pay isn't affected by your passengers
- Other than that, pretty much ALL quest checks also take player character skill, to hopefully make the "low level" options more likely
- Loanshark interest rates also aren't affected by your passengers
- Escape chance from worldmap encounters is also purely based on personal Luck
- Surrender chance for enemy ships during boarding
-
Whether you can command a fleet according to the Ransack Interface warning screen
- Personal commerce skill and Abilities is checked for making money from the estate you were awarded on a Privateer promotion


The following points DO take your passengers into account:
- Everything involving sea battles, including visibility ranges
- Crew hire cost
- Ship repair
- Crew payment while on Salary mode
- Escape chance from worldmap encounters does take into account the PARTY Sailing skill (not that the Luck factored in here IS personal)
- Everything during boarding EXCEPT surrender chance (see above)
- Store Goods price
- Money received upon looting a town
- Shore Leave payment
- Time required for moving goods when buying/selling
- Various chance-related items when applying Ship Upgrades
- Scalar on morale ALWAYS takes passengers into account, even on Divide the Plunder mode
- All luck on the Daily Crew Update is PARTY skill and affects: chance of "drunken brawls" on Double Rum Rations, number of crew that dies when you have no food left, chance that prisoners escape
- Shipyard pricing


Looking through this again, it does seem overall fair enough to me.
I made a few corrections while going through, so hopefully with the next update it'll be a bit better still.

If there are any points above that you think aren't right, feel free to let me know and I'll swap them around. :doff
 
I'd say that most things involving crew discipline ought to factor in your officers. That includes GetRaiseMoraleCost. Unless you've specifically changed it, the ability to command a fleet also takes the relevant officers' Leadership into account and I'd rather like that to continue to be the case - it's possibly the single biggest reason for me to hire a competent first officer or boatswain. Unless your intent is to reduce the importance of officers and require the player character to do more for himself, let the officers continue to contribute there. But I'd agree that the check on how many crew stay with you after dividing plunder should be based on your skills alone - the crew have gone off to the tavern or wherever they go, they're no longer under the influence of your officers, so the only thing bringing them back is what they think of you as captain.

As for double rum rations, I knew it already existed and was trying to come up with ways to do exactly what you want, which is make it more interesting and useful so people may actually do it. ;) At the moment there are two ways to raise morale in an emergency - give the crew extra money or give them double rum. Only one of these carries the risk of drunken disorder, so that's probably not the one anyone will use unless they have much rum and not much money. So, as I say, the proper time to issue double rum is as a reward for success, therefore raise crew morale sharply and give the player a few points of Leadership for doing that. But keep the crew on double rum for too long, or give them double rum because morale is slipping and you want to raise it, and that's when the drunken brawls will start...

Fame plus reputation could factor into the enemy's chance of surrendering early in boarding. If you're Hero then you're likely to treat prisoners well; if you're Horror of the High Seas then you're liable to slaughter the lot if they annoy you; none of which matters if the enemy captain has never heard of you. Fame in a hostile port increases your chances of being recognised and the shopkeepers refusing to deal with you; perhaps allow fame to influence your prices in a friendly port as the shopkeepers want to do business with you, then they get to put "Captain Famous buys his stuff here" on their windows as an advertisement.
 
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