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Included in Build Sea Relations: Improve Consequences from Sea Battles

Pieter Boelen said:
Starting your relation with the pirates further down, for example at -90 (halfway between the hostile limit and the minimum).
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This one's done too. Pirates start at -89 now so it'll take a while before the pirates turn neutral from "unrespectable acts" alone.
 
Considering that at level 25 I had managed to get the pirates from -60 to -58, it looks like I will never get the pirates friendly again.
 
Hylie Pistof said:
Considering that at level 25 I had managed to get the pirates from -60 to -58, it looks like I will never get the pirates friendly again.
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Good! If you do manage to get them friendly, it should at least happen on purpose rather than completely by accident as was the case until now. :cheeky
 
My work on updating the effect of Governor Ship Hunting quests got me thinking and it led down some quickly complicating paths....

At the moment we basically have two types of "update sea relations" behaviour when you capture/sink a ship.
Either you get the full "Update Relations" function call or that is completely skipped.
So that means that either you get plus/minus points with ALL nations depending on the situation or you get no points whatsoever.

While definitely a simple approach, it is also very limited.
Here are some examples of the current situation and how they may be improved:

Governor Ship Hunting Quests
Original: Treated the same as all other ships
15 Nov 2015: Don't gain plus/minus points directly, but DO gain those points after reporting back to the governor;
allows you to gain points even if you don't have a LoM, but ONLY with the nation you did the job for
Future: I think the above is fine. Though in the code at the moment it is a bit of an extra exception, so if we could bring some "shared logic" into it, I wouldn't object.

Crewmembers on Shore triggered Enemy Quest Ships
Original: Treated the same as all other ships
15 Nov 2015: Nation relation update completely skipped
Future: While I think you should get no NEGATIVE points for sinking/capturing these, plus points if you have a LoM should ideally be fair game.

Escort Quest Enemy Ship
Original: Treated the same as all other ships
15 Nov 2015: Nation relation update completely skipped
Future: While I think you should get no NEGATIVE points for sinking/capturing these, plus points should ideally be fair game.
With ONLY the nation of the merchant you're escorting if you don't have a LoM, but with ALL affected nations if you do.

Animists Quest Ship
Original: Nation relation update completely skipped
Future: Rather than getting negative points with the pirates for this, you should get POSITIVE ones. And of course points with all other nations you have a LoM with too.
Or perhaps only with the nation of the governor you did this job for? But then for ALL the ships you captured/sank during the quest and even if you don't have a LoM?


So that brings us to the following points:
- Are there any other types of ships that may *have to be treated differently than the "default behaviour"?
- Most of the above could be handled similarly to yesterday's Governor Ship Hunting Quest update so that you get the points later when you complete the quest.
- How many different behaviours would we need and how much can we simplify this and bring them all in line?
 
Governor ship-hunting quests: I agree with no negative points, and full plus points for all nations with which you have a LoM and are hostile to the ship. You've effectively got a temporary LoM from the governor so it's a legal kill/capture if you have no regular LoM; it's also a ship of whatever nation it is, with all the consequences that implies, including losing a LoM if it came from that ship's nation. Something else to be careful about if you have multiple LoM's.

Escort quest enemy ship: that quest didn't come from a governor so you have no temporary LoM covering you. At best, no negative points so people who hate getting LoM's can still play the quest without turning pirate. No positive points unless you have a relevant LoM, and as usual, lose the LoM if the ship you sank/captured belongs to the nation who sold you the LoM. (If you have an English LoM, you shouldn't be immune to losing it if you then take a mission to escort a Spanish ship and end up facing an English enemy. You're supposed to be sinking Spanish ships, not escorting them!)

Animists: leave it as is, nation relations update skipped. If we do want to reward the player with improved relations, the best place to do it is probably in the quest code.

Others: mostly likely to be specific quest ships so again, have them follow standard rules and modify where necessary in the relevant quest code.
 
Grey Roger said:
Governor ship-hunting quests: I agree with no negative points, and full plus points for all nations with which you have a LoM and are hostile to the ship. You've effectively got a temporary LoM from the governor so it's a legal kill/capture if you have no regular LoM; it's also a ship of whatever nation it is, with all the consequences that implies, including losing a LoM if it came from that ship's nation. Something else to be careful about if you have multiple LoM's.
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Yikes, that may be quite tricky. Basically that means no negative points, unless the ship belongs to a nation you've got a LoM from.
It may be easier to ensure that the ship generated WILL be of a nation hostile to you so that possibility becomes a non-issue.
In fact, that may already be the case, but I'd have to check to be sure.

Adding points to all other affected nations you have a LoM with would have to be done "after the fact", just like the adding of points is done now.
That would mean looping through all nations and checking if you have a LoM with them. I suppose if we do need to do that, loosing LoMs based on that should be possible as well.

Grey Roger said:
Escort quest enemy ship: that quest didn't come from a governor so you have no temporary LoM covering you. At best, no negative points so people who hate getting LoM's can still play the quest without turning pirate. No positive points unless you have a relevant LoM, and as usual, lose the LoM if the ship you sank/captured belongs to the nation who sold you the LoM. (If you have an English LoM, you shouldn't be immune to losing it if you then take a mission to escort a Spanish ship and end up facing an English enemy. You're supposed to be sinking Spanish ships, not escorting them!)
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In that case it may be simplest to revert to the normal UpdateRMRelation behaviour then.
Maybe I should start feeding the character you killed to get those points into that function too.
That should make it easier to add in additional exceptions as right now there is basically no flexibility at all.
Gets weird though if that function is called without a character being "killed".

I was originally thinking of having these ships excluded from the normal behaviour and then give points upon completing the quest as well.
But that is tricky as well since you don't NEED to sink/capture that ship at all. Escaping is an option as well, of course.
Maybe at the very least that sort of enemy should be REMOVED upon completing the quest.

Simplest solution would be: Exclude these ships from the relations mod altogether. Upon quest completion, remove the ship.

Grey Roger said:
Animists: leave it as is, nation relations update skipped. If we do want to reward the player with improved relations, the best place to do it is probably in the quest code.
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Doing it in the quest code is indeed my preferred option as well.
Would you reckon that is important to actually do or is there enough reward to that quest as it is?
 
At the moment you get some skill, some reputation and payment from both the Kralendijk governor and Father Bernard, plus the Mefisto itself if you capture rather than sink it. I hadn't even considered a further reward in the form of improved relations with anyone, that was your idea - I was just suggesting the easiest way to do it. ;)
 
Grey Roger said:
I hadn't even considered a further reward in the form of improved relations with anyone, that was your idea
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Very well then; I'll take responsibility for that one.... :wp

Main reason I thought of it is because you are sinking/capturing a bunch of pirate ships during that quests and your nation relations don't change at all.
When it comes to being a simple-but-not-wrong approach, I reckon that does suffice.

But it isn't entirely fair either, is it? So I was wondering what "ideal situation" might be preferred.
If nobody minds the current situation though, I'll happily yield so that I have to do less work. :cheeky
 
For comparison, what does defeating the Black Pearl do to your relations with nations or Pirates? Or, for that matter, sinking the Flying Dutchman?
 
Grey Roger said:
For comparison, what does defeating the Black Pearl do to your relations with nations or Pirates? Or, for that matter, sinking the Flying Dutchman?
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Same as the Animists at the moment: nations relation update completely skipped.
 
As the above sounds like relatively a lot of figuring out for potentially not all that much gain, I might leave it until player feedback actually indicates it is needed.

At the moment, at least you don't get negative points when you probably shouldn't, e.g. for all the examples mentioned above.
This may be a bit "too forgiving" in some cases, but it may be better to not make everything too hard straight away.
The "Unrespectable Act" behaviour for random ships is probably going to take enough getting used to as it is.

You may also occasionally not gain points in situations where perhaps you should.
But there is an infinite amount of ships out there, so it should be easy enough for players to get their points elsewhere.

In fact, it seems that nobody ever noticed until now that you didn't use to get any points at all if a ship surrenders.
Or at least, nobody reported it and I only found out and rectified this when I was updating the code a while back.
So apparently people aren't taking all that much notice of when they do and don't gain points. :facepalm
 
Do you get zero points for a ship which surrenders and you then board it? Or only if a hostile ship surrenders and you then leave it alone?

If the game's way of making a ship surrender is to change its nation, does boarding it now count as an unrespectable act?
 
Grey Roger said:
Do you get zero points for a ship which surrenders and you then board it?
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Used to, yes. Until I fixed it.
You also got no Ship's Log entry for it since all related code was being skipped altogether.
It should all be working correctly as per the last few months though.

Grey Roger said:
If the game's way of making a ship surrender is to change its nation, does boarding it now count as an unrespectable act?
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The game does change its nation to NEUTRAL, but stores the original nation. That is now used to determine the points as well.
So as far as that is concerned, surrendered ships are treated the same as non-surrendered ones.

My main point here is that there were same massive "missed points" here before and it seemed nobody noticed.
So surely nobody is going to miss them in the few specific scenarios that we have still got left now.... :wp
 
I'd say this is okay now. Haven't noticed anything weird lately. Agree if we Close this?
 
Fine by me. While further improvements could certainly be made to everything related to Nations Relations,
it should be much better than what we had and is good enough for Beta 4.
At least the worst mess is cleaned up now.... :cheeky
 
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