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Secret Agent Officers?

S

SeymourSan

Landlubber
I was starting a new game as an evil plundering git, and severely struggling to loot any of the nearby merchants with my pittiful class 7 ship with its tiny crew. Getting more and more frustrated by getting killed over and over. :modding
I started thinking about how I would overcome the issue of superior enemies if it was me personally, and the idea struck me.
How about if, from the dock, you could send one of your officers to attempt to join the crew of a prospective target (much like what you do to the french ammo transport in the vanilla main quest.), in effect infiltrating thier ranks, and perhaps performing acts of sabotage?

For instance, how about if the "sleeper agent" could poison the crew? (spawn them with less health when you board them.) Or sabotage the weapon locker so that all of their weapons broke when they tried to defend themselves?
They could even attempt to steal gold right from the cargo hold perhaps.

Having not looked very far into the code yet, I'm not 100% sure of the possibility of this, but it doesn't seem to0 unrealistic to me.
Add the dialogue to the officer chat, and then the chances of success are based on the officer's luck/streetwiseness. If he fails, he is captured/ killed. If he succeds, put the effect in place. What do you guys think?

I would love to write this mod myself, as it is exactly the sort of thing I like in this game, but I would obviously need a lot guidance. :mm
Let me know if you guys would be interested in this sort of feature, and if you think it is plausable. :shrug
Cheers
Seymour.
 
I will just tell you one thing, the enemies dont get "half health" the health generated is dependant on how much crew the ships has (so if you board a fully crew MOW with a lugger you might have the same amount of people but yours would have a health of 50 to their 500)
 
Dont forget the possibility to board a ship from the shore/port, like Jack Sparrow did in the Curse of the Black Pearl, but, of course, you would board the ship with your crew, not alone :ixi
 
Captain Maggee said:
I will just tell you one thing, the enemies dont get "half health" the health generated is dependant on how much crew the ships has (so if you board a fully crew MOW with a lugger you might have the same amount of people but yours would have a health of 50 to their 500)
Click to expand...

Well, you see, that is the sort of thing I would be needing guidance on ;p

So how about when he poisons them, the enemy crew is reduced, having the same effect. Similar sort of thing to when you encounter an enemy ship that already has reduced crew, only you can affect it when you are in port, for the other ships which are docked. I'm sure I will be facing this sort of problem a lot, but half the fun is working around them right? :nk

Other ideas I was jotting down last night;

Possible missions:

*Wepon sabotage
*Poisoning/ assasinating
*Theft
*Damaging the enemy ship (hull/ sails)
*Rig their cannons to explode during the battle
*Encite mutiny on the enemy ship (lower their moral (do enemies have moral?) or make them go pirate.)
*Bribe the enemy crew to join up with you
*Blow the enemy ship up! (obviously a very difficult misssion, which only the most skillful officers can pull off.)
*Spy on the enemy cargo hold?

If the officer fails the mission, the enemy could tail him when he tries to report back to you (say on some secluded shore?) and ambush you with their band of bloothirsty cut-throats.

It could even be adapted to one of the standard quest shells, so that the governer you are working for, instead of asking you to sink a ship, tells you to sneak into some faraway port and spy on the enemy fleet?

Am I being too ambitious here?

Cheers
Seymour
 
Indeed, very ambitious...but i like it :onya

*Starting to count the necessary money to bribe some seadogs*

...i like your ideas :doff
 
This does sound very possible, but you have to consider reasonable gameplay also.
If you can send an officer to infiltrate the enemy crew and poison them,
if he fails, he shouldn't just be lost and no other harm done, I think.
Instead, maybe he would've said to the other ship who sent him,
and then you would get into trouble with the crew of that ship and the applicable authorities too maybe.

Of course if you want to decimate the enemy crew, that's what you've got grapeshot for. :shrug
 
Splinter effects? You mean the changed cannonballs damage values?
 
It does sound like a good idea but I agree there does need to be something if they fail... Like your relationship to that nation decreasing and them being able to recognize you being increased maybe
 
Well, it would have to be calculated the amount of loyalty of your officer.

If the officer is a bad guy and is new in the crew, he wont be loyal to the captain and will tell who sent him in case of failure.

If the officer is a good guy (matey, dashing, etc) and is in the crew a long time already, then he will die without telling a word to the enemy.

Shouldnt be hard if you calculate that way.
 
This does sound very possible, but you have to consider reasonable gameplay also.
If you can send an officer to infiltrate the enemy crew and poison them,
if he fails, he shouldn't just be lost and no other harm done, I think.
Instead, maybe he would've said to the other ship who sent him,
and then you would get into trouble with the crew of that ship and the applicable authorities too maybe.
Click to expand...

^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v

If the officer fails the mission, the enemy could tail him when he tries to report back to you (say on some secluded shore?) and ambush you with their band of bloothirsty cut-throats.
Click to expand...

See, I did have that concideration in my head already :p

Also other things I was brainstorming last night as possible consiquences:

*Obvious worsening of relations with the target ship's nation.
*Enemy ready for attack, so any previous damage / crew loss is repaired in preperation.
*The soldiers of the port you are in get involved as the police?
*The ship you tried to sabotage/ its allies wait for you when you attempt to leave the port, ready to sink your ass.

Well, it would have to be calculated the amount of loyalty of your officer.

If the officer is a bad guy and is new in the crew, he wont be loyal to the captain and will tell who sent him in case of failure.

If the officer is a good guy (matey, dashing, etc) and is in the crew a long time already, then he will die without telling a word to the enemy.

Shouldnt be hard if you calculate that way.
Click to expand...

Do officiers have some sort of value for loyalty? If this is the case, that could be most helpful :)
 
There IS a value for loyalty on the officers, BUT it is used ABSOLUTELY nowhere in the code.
Looks like this is some code left over from when Akella had the intention of adding such a feature,
but never got the chance to actually add it.

I think this is leading back to the "officer personality" mod I have proposed in the past.
That's definitly something I think could add a lot to the game. :yes
 
Pieter Boelen said:
There IS a value for loyalty on the officers, BUT it is used ABSOLUTELY nowhere in the code.
Looks like this is some code left over from when Akella had the intention of adding such a feature,
but never got the chance to actually add it.

I think this is leading back to the "officer personality" mod I have proposed in the past.
That's definitly something I think could add a lot to the game. :yes
Click to expand...

Oooh! The plot thickens!
I have written a little bit of very rough draft pseudocode at present and would be interested in hearing your ideas for the officer personalities! If it wouldn't offend you/ breach your copywrite terms, I would love to try and work them in. Eager to start work on the mod HOWEVER there are 2 things that I should really be doing first.

1: Get my version of the game (newly updated to 14.10) running smoothly, as I am currently experiencing crashes very regularly, and I think it may be related to my AGP speed, but can't find the bloody options for my crusty old radeon x600 (They are not in the catylist control center...). :modding

2: Checking out the actual code of the game, because I am very much at point one when it comes to that. Need to get to grips with it propperly before I start changing it! :facepalm

Cheers
Seymour
 
You would be most welcome to do all required code changes; we don't have any offence/copyright issues with that.
In fact, we're a collaborative community and we WELCOME other people doing things. A LOT! :onya

Please do post your pseudo-code; that should certainly be interesting to have a look at. :woot
And maybe we can then point you to some relevant files where you could make the changes you want.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
You would be most welcome to do all required code changes; we don't have any offence/copyright issues with that.
In fact, we're a collaborative community and we WELCOME other people doing things. A LOT! :onya

Please do post your pseudo-code; that should certainly be interesting to have a look at. :woot
And maybe we can then point you to some relevant files where you could make the changes you want.
Click to expand...

Please bare in mind that I have pretty poor coding skills, and havn't done anything like this for some time, so it's very much a learning process right now for me, but I am willing to learn at least :p :mm
Also, the pseudocode may only make sense in my head right now... AND is full of holes... :modding


Algorithm.

1. Request mission
1.1 Get Mission Type
2. Get Target (not sure how to go about this as of yet... is there some sort of array that stores the ships in port?)
3. Calculate sucess or failure
4. Enable mission consiquence.
5. Report Back to Player


Subproblem 1

1.1 IF in town DO
1.2 Add dialoge option to officer
1.3 Else
1.4 End

Subproblem 1.1
(Chose from a list of possible types of mission)

Subproblem 2

(Call up array of ships in port, and thier nationalities, and give dialoge option to chose which ship to target)
(arange a rendevous time and place)
(Officer leaves temporarily)


Subproblem 3

3.1 Mission Luck = Officer luck + RNDM num < officer luck (to add the element of chance)
3.2 Enemy Luck = Enemy Cpt luck + RNDM num < enemy cpt luck (if the ships in port have captains with skills before you engage them?)
3.3 IF Mission Luck > Enemy Luck
3.4 Sucess = True
3.5 Else
3.6 Sucess = False

Subproblem 4

4.1 IF Sucess = True DO
4.2 (Edit the stats of target according to the type of mission selected and create a log of changes.)
4.3 Goto Report_back
4.4 Else
4.5 (Selects a consiquence based on officer's loyalty for instance
IF Officer_Loyalty <= 20% (tell enemy who sent him and arange an ambush for player instead of reporting back)
AND officer is lost
AND Relation with enemy nation -20
ect ect)

Subproblem 5

5.1 IF sucess= True DO
5.2Spawn officer at agreed place and time
5.3(Reports the sucess of the mission and the amout of damage ect done based on the log created in step 4)
5.4 IF sucess= False DO
5.5 Spawn an enemy ambush (Or whatever other consiquence has been determined by the officer loyalty.)
5.6 END

:shrug

As I say, I really don't know an awful lot at this point about the practicalities of such a mod, but this is (VERY roughly) how I see it playing out.
Can you guys make sense of my rambling? Let me know what you think, and of course, offer any help you can ;)

Also

Don't forget the splinter effects in Beta :3 ]
Click to expand...
What did you mean by that SWS??

Cheers
Seymour.
 
I do think it is possible. :yes

Relevant files for you:
PROGRAM\DIALOGS\Enc_Officer_dialog.c: here is the officer dialog, so this is where you would add the main code.
PROGRAM\QUESTS\quests_common.c: in case you need to add some quest cases.
PROGRAM\Locations\locations_loader.c: here is the code that puts all the ships in port.
 
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