Some suggestions

Oldtimer · Mar 31, 2009

Hi all,

Re Build 14/9/1 I have the following suggestions and remarks:

- still too easy to make money, even on hardest settings and articles I become stinking rich in a few voyages because of very well paid freight missions.
And do not tell me to divide plunder, donate to church and so on because in a voyage or two after that I am stinking rich again. And do not tell me to decline these missions because they are a good way to explore the game world. Also, do not tell me to buy expensive items because

- I get excellent loot(option is all loot/item qualities available from lvl 1, which is realistic) and seldom need to buy anything.

Just make it much harder to earn money by:

- much lower mission pay-outs,

- much lower chance to find good items or get them by fighting. I think this could be configurable in options, where you could set the chances to your liking. Maybe even specify no finding of items at all.
Some Oblivion mods do that and it works swell.

I am aware that if you are on salary and have a high multiplier for it money can be a problem indeed, but this seems to me to be an artificial work around.

What is much better now IMO is that leveling is slower when choosing auto leveling and random start stats. Bigger challenge, good... I like slow, arduous leveling, it gives a much better sense of achievement and forces you plan ahead in order not to die too often.

However, I would like to markedly decrease the xp awarded to your officers, they become uber all too soon.

Fighting is now much more challenging also, good...

In general I must say that this build is coming along very well indeed and I look forward to future versions.

Regards, Oldtimer

Pieter Boelen · Mar 31, 2009

Which are the main ways in which you're making (too much) money? Perhaps certain jobs are overpaid?
The pay for a trader escort should outweigh the costs of the trip, but not by insane amounts.
The difference between the costs of the trip (based on your ship and crew and the distance) and the yield should depend on your commerce and luck skills and the distance, I think.
So a 0-distance trip should yield nothing and a large distance trip should give you the most profit.
But, considering the distance is the greatest, so is the chance of enemy encounters.

When it comes to enemy encounters, is it just me or are they ridiculously easy to avoid nowadays if you do not wish to engage?
I know in the stock game on the worldmap, you could avoid worldmap encounters only sometimes, based on your skills and abilities.
However, it seems nowadays that, at least on the worldmap, you can always select the "do not engage" button, even if you have no skills yet at all.
And in DirectSail mode, when enemies are generated on the horizon, I imagine it is fairly easy to avoid them by steering clear of them.
Does anyone have any input on experiences with that?

BTW: Do trader escort quests ever generate that require you to transport the trader to a town that is hostile to you?

zorglub · Mar 31, 2009

I agree with most of your points OldTimer!
Tell me, when you were talking of the fighting system - which system were you using?
Ron Losey changed values or original Build13 stats Hook added back?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>And in DirectSail mode, when enemies are generated on the horizon, I imagine it is fairly easy to avoid them by steering clear of them.</div>Naah. Playing the Bartolomeu main quest with the first ship, and been chased several times by pirates - first time coming back from Douwesen I was able to reach Redmond port which saved me, but second time going to St Martin I thought I'd escape them, looking at the wind direction, how far they were, etc, but the first one (chebec) caught me rather quicky (~ two or three hours) and when the computer crashed, I was really loosing and desesperatly trying to board the smaller one to restock my gunpownder...

Oldtimer · Mar 31, 2009

Hi,

many transport jobs generate 30000-50000 ducats for medium distance. I run a cutter with skeleton crew on articles, so you can imagine the net profit earned... However, if the game took into account the value of the cargo, then some short runs could be very well paid. I mean the jungle telegraph could spread the word and you could risk harder attacks. This was done in the "Return of Sea Legend" mod and added quite a lot of excitement...

And income from found items and loot is much too high also.

Yes, it is incredibly easy to avoid encounters.

I do not use Rons mod, at least I think so. But I play at the hardest settings meaning enemies have often around 300 HP, I 60 - 70 when at low lvls. The main difference is that it is now impossible to block everything indefinitely.
Actually I would like to see realistic blocking, i e succesfull block negates all damage, instead on working with percentages. But it is an OKish approximation anyway.

Regards, Oldtimer

Oldtimer · Mar 31, 2009

Hi Pieter,

I THINK that at least once I was requested to enter a hostile harbour.
So if you could check both map AND relations before accepting, it aould be good.

Regards, Oldtimer

Pieter Boelen · Mar 31, 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (a simple virtual sailor @ Mar 31 2009, 12:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309873"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Naah. Playing the Bartolomeu main quest with the first ship, and been chased several times by pirates - first time coming back from Douwesen I was able to reach Redmond port which saved me, but second time going to St Martin I thought I'd escape them, looking at the wind direction, how far they were, etc, but the first one (chebec) caught me rather quicky (~ two or three hours) and when the computer crashed, I was really loosing and desesperatly trying to board the smaller one to restock my gunpownder...</div>That does sound pretty darn cool if things like that happen! Maybe I should try DirectSail as well.
Can anybody confirm or deny that it IS easy to avoid unwanted encounters on the worldmap?

Pieter Boelen · Mar 31, 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Oldtimer @ Mar 31 2009, 01:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309881"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>I THINK that at least once I was requested to enter a hostile harbour.
So if you could check both map AND relations before accepting, it aould be good.</div>That'd be interesting. Maybe we could somehow add ports onto the map as well?
And then have the ports shown with a crest of the nation and a red/gray/green glow around it (think of the Fast Travel at sea) to show whether its hostile?
Provided you have actually VISITED that port, of course.

That makes me think of SuperDurnius' work on qualitized maps.
The lowest quality maps would show only (some of) the islands, but the highest quality maps would show the routes between towns and their nationalities and such.
Of course such a feature would be a long way off, but it's an interesting concept to be sure.

It does make me wonder... do people actually buy and refer to the maps currently in the game?
The maps we have currently were taken from the SLiB mod and are rather inaccurate as far as inland routes and towns are concerned.
SuperDurnius was working on making new Build mod accurate maps, but I don't know how far he is with that. He lost all his work at some point. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/modding.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=" :modding

" border="0" alt="modding.gif" />

Grega · Mar 31, 2009

From my experience. Every map encounter ive had allways had a sail away option while using alpha 8 and 9.

The direct sail can be a bit more tricky. The major problem is the transition to the island. The flags mod to be exact. Since you cant switch the flags while you are allready at the island. So if you dont swich flags before transition you can enter a hostile island without preperation.

I suggest a small pause to happen with a choice of what flag to raise for the enxt island along with the "Land ho" message. Would help a lot since we dont really know when the transition happens. And once it happens its to late.

Pieter Boelen · Mar 31, 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Oldtimer @ Mar 31 2009, 01:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309878"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>many transport jobs generate 30000-50000 ducats for medium distance. I run a cutter with skeleton crew on articles, so you can imagine the net profit earned... However, if the game took into account the value of the cargo, then some short runs could be very well paid. I mean the jungle telegraph could spread the word and you could risk harder attacks. This was done in the "Return of Sea Legend" mod and added quite a lot of excitement...</div>It would indeed be interesting if the risk of being attacked would be higher, depending on the value of the cargo in your fleet.

As Hook said before, with which I very mcuh agree: there should be a direct relation between the chance of success and the monetary return.
If there's a high risk of dying, it should be profitable and if there's a low chance of dying, it shouldn't pay much.
This should also work in reverse: if it's profitable, there should be a high chance of dying.
So if a trader is willing to pay a rather luxurious sum for a short trip, it should be because the chance of being attacked during that trip is fairly high.

Additionally, are merchant ships ever loaded completely to the brim with goods?
And do navy ships only have ammunition and rations and not much else?
And do "treasure fleets" ever occur? I think I've seen some code and compile.log messages related to that every now and then,
but I've never done enough playing to notice these during actual gameplay.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Oldtimer @ Mar 31 2009, 01:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309878"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>I do not use Rons mod, at least I think so.</div>Ron's mods are included only in the experimental mods, so if you didn't install those, you wouldn't have them.
Probably you'd notice if you did; you'd probably end up dying real quick.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Oldtimer @ Mar 31 2009, 01:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309878"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>The main difference is that it is now impossible to block everything indefinitely.
Actually I would like to see realistic blocking, i e succesfull block negates all damage, instead on working with percentages. But it is an OKish approximation anyway.</div>I wonder if the pierce and block values actually do ANYTHING at the moment.
What I think should happen is that, based on the difference between pierce and block, a block might or might not be effective.
An effective block would negate all damage. But if you keep blocking, eventually your block will fail and you will take damage.

The blockdamage mod that we added gives you a HP hit when blocking, based on your and your opponent's fencing skill.
This sort-of simulates your opponent hitting your block very hard, which still hurts you, even though you managed to avoid a direct hit.
The purpose of this is to get rid of the "infinite blocks" that were there ever since the stock game.
As per that purpose, this mod was succesful. But it probably still isn't perfect. Does anyone have any specific suggestions on how to make it better?

BTW: Did we recently discuss the concept of stamina instead of/in addition to the HP system? Does anyone have any thoughts on that?

Grega · Mar 31, 2009

How about a combination with weapon wear mod. Like 3 blocks decrease your weapon state by 1.

That way the more you block the worse your weapon becomes. And broken weapons would occur more often.

Though while that does limit the player. It makes a problem for the NPCs. Since they just stand there and do nothing if their weapon breaks, while the player can quickly equip something else.

So i guess NPCs should be imune to weapon wear or something like that.

zorglub · Mar 31, 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Pieter Boelen @ Mar 31 2009, 07:26 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309887"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>It does make me wonder... do people actually buy and refer to the maps currently in the game?</div>I don't. Only the whole archipelago map, it's usefull with direct sail...

Grega · Mar 31, 2009

Regarding the maps.

I bought the Jamaica map. And it has a path going to a skull thats not on the actual island ^^

konradk · Mar 31, 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Megla @ Mar 31 2009, 01:48 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309894"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Regarding the maps.

I bought the Jamaica map. And it has a path going to a skull thats not on the actual island ^^</div>
That's because map is really from A&M mod. I added maps into game hoping that some day proper would be made for Build, but till now the only "Build" map is for Cozumel/Khael Roa made by Petros.

pirate_kk

Pieter Boelen · Mar 31, 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Megla @ Mar 31 2009, 01:27 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309888"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>From my experience. Every map encounter ive had allways had a sail away option while using alpha 8 and 9.</div>I was afraid so; that's not intentional, is it? It didn't use to be like that in the stock game! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=" :shock

" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Megla @ Mar 31 2009, 01:27 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309888"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>I suggest a small pause to happen with a choice of what flag to raise for the enxt island along with the "Land ho" message. Would help a lot since we dont really know when the transition happens. And once it happens its to late.</div>Absolutely true. What if the relations based on your flag are only decided when you get in sight of another ship or a fort?
I also find the log screen messages telling you whether your flag had effect or not to be a bit counter-productive.

Imagine reaching an island and raising a false flag to enter an enemy port and you have to actually sail to the fort and see if they fire upon you before you know if they buy your fake flag.
Or how about the same thing with an enemy treasure fleet. You'd have to bring yourself within cannon-range to know.
And even if they do buy your false flag at first, when you appear to just be passing, the chance of you being detected should increase as you come closer to your prey.
After all, it becomes rather obvious if a supposedly friendly ship is sailing very close to a treasure fleet.

Basically, you should only know when enemies are really hostile to you when they actually fire on you.
Unless you're flying a flag that is hostile to them on its own.

And that reminds me of the changing nation relations mod. Does that still work? Has anybody seen nation relations changing at random?
It'd be really cool if you could influence those too. And if they do change, it would be fun if the player would not be aware of this until he's told
(for example through an encounter with another ship at sea) or until he finds that he is/isn't fired upon, while,
based on the previous relations and the current flag he's flying, he should/shouldn't be fired upon.

Grega · Mar 31, 2009

Wouldnt that bring some problems with having multiple ships.

I mean you can be surprised but the other ships in your fleet cant. Theyll either operate by the relation setting and shoot the now friendly ship. Or open fire on a supposed friendly and now hostile ship.

But i like your way of thinking

Pieter Boelen · Mar 31, 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Megla @ Mar 31 2009, 01:46 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309892"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>How about a combination with weapon wear mod. Like 3 blocks decrease your weapon state by 1.
That way the more you block the worse your weapon becomes. And broken weapons would occur more often.
Though while that does limit the player. It makes a problem for the NPCs. Since they just stand there and do nothing if their weapon breaks, while the player can quickly equip something else.
So i guess NPCs should be imune to weapon wear or something like that.</div>That mod is actually already in the game. To some extent, that is.
Your blade is supposed to take damage over time, especially when blocking. Once the damage goes over a certain level, the quality of your blade will decrease.
Has anybody observed that happening to the player or officers at any time recently?

NPC weapons breaking is already accounted for. When that happens, sometimes they will flee (I DEFINITLY have seen that happening recently)
and sometimes they are given their fists as a replacement weapon instead.
Although you cannot block with your fists (can't you? I seem to have noticed recently that you can! NOT intentionally, that!),
you can still do a lot of damage, especially on higher character levels. And NPCs can be knocked out when using your fists.
The same happens when NPCs use their fists: they can knock out your crewmembers. I have seen that happening recently too.
On boardings, enemies whose weapons break will always continue fighting and never run away,
firstly because there's nowhere to run to and secondly because all enemies MUST be killed before you can continue to the next deck. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="

" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />

Pieter Boelen · Mar 31, 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (a simple virtual sailor @ Mar 31 2009, 01:46 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309893"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>I don't. Only the whole archipelago map, it's usefull with direct sail...</div>I was afraid so. What could we do to give them more of a purpose in the game?

As for using the archipelago map, does anyone ever make use of the chronometer+sextant combination to see your ship's present position on the map?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (pirate_kk @ Mar 31 2009, 01:55 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309896"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>That's because map is really from A&M mod. I added maps into game hoping that some day proper would be made for Build, but till now the only "Build" map is for Cozumel/Khael Roa made by Petros.</div>Indeed. SuperDurnius did some work on that, but subsequently lost it. I think there's still some Redmond/Jamaica map of his somewhere, but I don't know if that's usable yet.
I think it didn't have any names on it, thinking we can add names through code afterwards, just like on the archipelago map.
How about having the TOWN names somewhere on the map? Those aren't on the archipelago map right now.

Grega · Mar 31, 2009

Well i managed to barely escape death in a fort by blocking most of the hits. Though i killed every soldier there my weapon state didnt decrease.

So i suggested to speed up the wear on blocking even more. Hence 3 blocks = lower level.

Pieter Boelen · Mar 31, 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Megla @ Mar 31 2009, 02:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309901"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Wouldnt that bring some problems with having multiple ships.
I mean you can be surprised but the other ships in your fleet cant. Theyll either operate by the relation setting and shoot the now friendly ship. Or open fire on a supposed friendly and now hostile ship.
But i like your way of thinking

</div>Good point. Maybe different on-sea groups should operate by their own relations.
So the treasure fleet* can decide to go hostile to you without your ships immediately going hostile to them.
Your group would go hostile only at the moment when you're fired upon by the treasure fleet OR you personally deliberately fire on the supposedly friendly fleet.
IF you personally fire on the treasure fleet while the treasure fleet hadn't yet decided to go hostile with you, you get the regular reputation hit.
However, if the treasure fleet had already gone hostile to you, but hadn't yet fired on you (because they couldn't find an angle just yet?,
you wouldn't take the reputation hit.

[ * = I'm using the term "treasure fleet" to mean "other fleet" - it is just more understandable than using vague terms like "this fleet" and "that fleet" ]

Pieter -- Happily brainstorming at random <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/par-ty.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=" :cheers

" border="0" alt="par-ty.gif" />

zorglub · Mar 31, 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Pieter Boelen @ Mar 31 2009, 09:21 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=309903"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>As for using the archipelago map, does anyone ever make use of the chronometer+sextant combination to see your ship's present position on the map?</div>
What? How can you do that? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/huh.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":huh" border="0" alt="huh.gif" />

Some suggestions

Master Mariner

Navigation Officer

Privateer

Master Mariner

Master Mariner

Navigation Officer

Navigation Officer

Landlubber

Navigation Officer

Landlubber

Privateer

Landlubber

Privateer

Navigation Officer

Landlubber

Navigation Officer

Navigation Officer

Landlubber

Navigation Officer

Privateer