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Feature Request Sea Battles Can Lead to Officer Deaths

Pieter Boelen

Navigation Officer
Administrator
Storm Modder
Hearts of Oak Donator
Now here's a crazy idea indeed!

Add some sort of "random chance of random officers getting killed from random cannonballs" that is affected by their HP.
Or, at least, for any cannonball hit to be able to apply a HP hit to random officers which, eventually, could lead to their death.
(Should officers then be able to use potions during sea battles???)

In other words: This would change the game that officers outside the Shore Party would NOT be safe from death any longer!


That would obviously have a potentially massive impact on the game, which is not necessarily a good thing.
And important quest-officers must obviously be exempted from that.
But maybe.... perhaps.... there could be some value to it as well?
 
It does sound logical to me. You could extend it even further and give boarding crew "damage" already depending on how much damage is done to your ship.
 
You could extend it even further and give boarding crew "damage" already depending on how much damage is done to your ship.
Not necessary. Boarding crew damage is already simulated by the number of crew decreasing on every cannon hit (and them getting wounded).
So crew is already covered. But officers are currently exempted, which technically doesn't make realistic sense.
 
Maybe this could work so long as you could reduce or nullify the chances of officers randomly dying by having a doctor (and medicaments) with you.
Otherwise, if there's no way to guard against it, I could see this becoming a nuisance if you lose officers too often to random chance.

Either way, probably something for Realistic or Ironman mode, wouldn't you say?
 
Maybe this could work so long as you could reduce or nullify the chances of officers randomly dying by having a doctor (and medicaments) with you.
Otherwise, if there's no way to guard against it, I could see this becoming a nuisance if you lose officers too often to random chance.
Reducing the chance with a doctor certainly makes sense.

Not completely nullify though, since realistically, it could happen.
Plus if it is fully nullified, then the feature might as well not exist.

It'd definitely keep you busy, having to replace a former good officer.
But if it happens only once in a while, it could add to the fun.
If it is all the time, then it becomes massively annoying. Balance would need to be found.

Either way, probably something for Realistic or Ironman mode, wouldn't you say?
For certain. :yes
 
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With a toggle tied initially to ironman, and the base chance exposed in the internal settings, I do like the idea. :)

Doctors should indeed reduce it in proportion to their skill.

But I'd suggest not linking the chance of death to HP. The reason is simple, some officers with high HP (like boatswains) are also likely to be the ones running around on deck and more in danger. I'd link it to officer role, actually, based on how exposed that person would be in combat.

However, I think a basic officer injury system should be created as well. So if a cannonball hits, the officer is usually given a "recovering" status that lasts several weeks. A doctor speeds that, and increases the chance of recovering rather than straight dead, in proportion to their skill. And only a small chance the officer is outright killed.

Then, this becomes more of a feature as a reason for you to keep some backup officers perhaps, rather than a reason to hit the reload key when you favorite officer dies. ;) basically, for the feature to be seen often, it needs to be calibrated to show up somewhat often, but we can only do that if there are injury possibilities short of death.
 
But I'd suggest not linking the chance of death to HP. The reason is simple, some officers with high HP (like boatswains) are also likely to be the ones running around on deck and more in danger. I'd link it to officer role, actually, based on how exposed that person would be in combat.
My thought was to quite literally apply HP damage to your officers during sea battles.
Then you could see it coming and, potentially, do something about it before it actually leads to someone dying.

You do make some valid points though about whether they're exposed or not.

However, I think a basic officer injury system should be created as well. So if a cannonball hits, the officer is usually given a "recovering" status that lasts several weeks. A doctor speeds that, and increases the chance of recovering rather than straight dead, in proportion to their skill. And only a small chance the officer is outright killed.
That does add a substantial extra layer of complexity.
Might be possible to handle it similarly ro Levis' suggested "drunk" situation though.
So it could be feasible.

Then, this becomes more of a feature as a reason for you to keep some backup officers perhaps, rather than a reason to hit the reload key when you favorite officer dies. ;) basically, for the feature to be seen often, it needs to be calibrated to show up somewhat often, but we can only do that if there are injury possibilities short of death.
True point.
 
My thought was to quite literally apply HP damage to your officers during sea battles.
Then you could see it coming and, potentially, do something about it before it actually leads to someone dying.

What would you do about it? Cannonballs will, regardless, be high damage low frequency, so if your quartermaster takes a hit, and is now at half health, are you going to turn and flee the battle because there is a tiny chance of another officer being hit and a tiny chance it will be him? And lose the prize, and risk taking damage in retreat?

If doing something about it means using health items, the holy micromanagement. ;) so every sea battle monitor your officer list health every couple of minutes, and distribute healing items..

If they use healing items on their own, I give all my officers 20 bandages, the system won't do anything, except force me to check their inventories and restock every few hours of play.

So I think, cannonballs should be random, low chance, unavoidable risk of sea battle. But mostly they should injure, so the player has non micromanagement ways of dealing with the consequences...

I also think the new secondary skill shared XP system will help. Your carpenter was injured, but you had the your bosun study repair in his spare time, so you place him as temporary carpenter...it will also give incentives to keep some backup officers around even if you hire better ones later.

Basically, the doing something about it is dealing with the aftermath of the random low chance but devastating cannonballs, making them do hp damage at a lower amount than a horse pistol just waters down the mechanic. ;)
 
Well, I do admit that was a thought. But I didn't have much of a clue on whether it was a good one. ;)

What you describe does sound like far better gameplay. Especially if these injuries couldn't be instantly fixed, like health items can do with HP.
 
hmmmm.....so if we are going to create contoversy let's make it worse ;).

What about:
Normally officers dont contribute theire skills to the ship. They are just sitting belowdeck somewhere playing cards :aar.
If you ask them in dialog to man the ship (you can do this whenever you want) they will contribute theire skills to the ship, but now they also have a chance of being hit by cannonballs and potentional dieying during battle.
We could add an interface thing too where you can assign an officer to help on the ship or not.
We could also produce an onscreen message if an officer was hit by a cannonball.
So say you have a navigator which boosts your sailing skill, but he is hit very bad so you tell him to go below deck, he will now not contribute his skills anymore so chances are you're ship will manouver poorly now because you lack the righ sailing skill.
 
If you ask them in dialog to man the ship (you can do this whenever you want) they will contribute theire skills to the ship, but now they also have a chance of being hit by cannonballs and potentional dieying during battle.
We could add an interface thing too where you can assign an officer to help on the ship or not.
We could also produce an onscreen message if an officer was hit by a cannonball.
So say you have a navigator which boosts your sailing skill, but he is hit very bad so you tell him to go below deck, he will now not contribute his skills anymore so chances are you're ship will manouver poorly now because you lack the righ sailing skill.
That might be a way of reducing the chance to get them killed.
Similar to Hornblower putting Lady Barbara in a "safe spot" during a sea battle.
Even there, there'd still be a risk though.

I think this would be for a second stage. First have to get it to the point that they can get injured and killed.

Normally officers dont contribute theire skills to the ship. They are just sitting belowdeck somewhere playing cards :aar.
Better swap that around. Default behaviour is that they DO contribute.
But you can tell them to stand down for safety reasons if you so choose.
Then it's just an extra option available to the player.
 
I think I'm going to ignore this topic for now else I might accedently implement it in the current mod :p.
 
Interesting suggestions, here. Going with the theme of an officer's position on a ship affecting their chance to take a hit, maybe your doctor should be immune to random damage, seeing as he'll be below deck helping the wounded? Otherwise, you might end up needing a doctor for your doctor... :p
 
Interesting suggestions, here. Going with the theme of an officer's position on a ship affecting their chance to take a hit, maybe your doctor should be immune to random damage, seeing as he'll be below deck helping the wounded? Otherwise, you might end up needing a doctor for your doctor... :p
Oooh... that would be SUPER annoying! :shock
But then.... aren't there several instances in films/literature specifically mentioning that the original surgeon got killed and a random character had to take over?
Apparently that's not unheard of.
 
I'd say the surgeon should have a very low chance. The chance of any officer should be also lower the larger the ship is. And the chance should start very small when the ship is undamaged for anyone below the decks. It should go up as the ship gets more damaged.

So a surgeon in a tier 3 that has only taken light damage should be close to invulnerable. A surgeon in a sloop that is already at half destroyed should be vulnerable.

Edit: Gameplay wise, adds interesting strategic choice to a player taking his ship into a battle where it might be half destroyed, he'll have to think of losing more than the cost of repair and rehiring faceless crew for a few hundred gold at the nearest tavern. He'll have to consider that such an egagement may mean the loss of dear friends.
 
Oooh... that would be SUPER annoying! :shock
But then.... aren't there several instances in films/literature specifically mentioning that the original surgeon got killed and a random character had to take over?
Apparently that's not unheard of.
If you're thinking of Master & Commander, the Acheron's doctor had died from a fever I think. The sick bay is under the waterline in most cases, so as long as the ship is afloat the surgeon should be safe from cannonballs.
About the chance for officers to be hit, as it is random, it could be affected by Luck. I like the idea of them being injured for a few days, and if during that time you run out of medicine or lose your doctor, there'll be a higher chance that the injured will die.
 
That does add to Luck's current status of being a very magical skill.
If possible, I'd hope we can move away from that....

The doctor dying happened in the Hornblower series too.
Lady Barbara had to step in and do the job, if I recall.
 
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