Thankyou! and Ship Berthing

[FlayedOne]

New version of KB_routines.c . In the last one the main character didn't get the money for the upgrades during berthing, although I have no idea why this doesnt work

GetMainCharacter().Money = sti(GetMainCharacter().Money) + cost;

while this does

char = GetMainCharacter();
char.Money = sti(char.Money) + cost;

Have I spent too much time with C# lately?

-edit- instead of keeping the updated file here, I updated the download in the post above(the one with all files)

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Question. Would any of these files have anything to do with ship speed? I am asking because my ship, a class 4 merchant fluyt, is not going as fast as I think it should. With the upgrades it is rated for 10.65 knots but this morning in a 30 knot wind at its best sailing point it could only do 8.6 knots. That is with full holds. It has seemed slow for a while now, but it was always in light winds until now.

PS: I just got a ctd blamed on the old KB_routines.c I just dled the new one and will report back.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

For the economy/game balancing side, it would be great if we could do it by just making small adjustments to scalars and such.
Introducing new concepts and complex stuff would take a lot of effort, but getting good values shouldn't be too difficult.
The main challenge with that is we'd need values that actually work well, so that'd mean lots of testing.
We didn't do a lot of balancing in the game up to this point, which is why the economy and difficulty is a bit messed up.
So any work on this would be very much appreciated.

This indeed doesn't work with the game's code:
GetMainCharacter().Money = sti(GetMainCharacter().Money) + cost;

This should work though:
Characters[GetMainCharacterIndex()].Money = sti(Characters[GetMainCharacterIndex()].Money) + cost;

 

[irR4tiOn4L]

Question. Would any of these files have anything to do with ship speed? I am asking because my ship, a class 4 merchant fluyt, is not going as fast as I think it should. With the upgrades it is rated for 10.65 knots but this morning in a 30 knot wind at its best sailing point it could only do 8.6 knots. That is with full holds. It has seemed slow for a while now, but it was always in light winds until now.

PS: I just got a ctd blamed on the old KB_routines.c I just dled the new one and will report back.

Well as you know a ship with full holds wont go as fast as an empty one - try dumping all that cargo overboard (just to test) and seeing how quickly you go in that wind.

 

[FlayedOne]

Question. Would any of these files have anything to do with ship speed? I am asking because my ship, a class 4 merchant fluyt, is not going as fast as I think it should. With the upgrades it is rated for 10.65 knots but this morning in a 30 knot wind at its best sailing point it could only do 8.6 knots. That is with full holds. It has seemed slow for a while now, but it was always in light winds until now.

PS: I just got a ctd blamed on the old KB_routines.c I just dled the new one and will report back.

Yes, I got a ctd with the old file too, that's how I noticed that this piece of code doesn't work

I didn't change anything that should influence speed. Although closest point seems to influence it, because of a fault in a source code, my changes shouldn't affect ships with cp>=0.15 .

 

[FlayedOne]

Question. Would any of these files have anything to do with ship speed? I am asking because my ship, a class 4 merchant fluyt, is not going as fast as I think it should. With the upgrades it is rated for 10.65 knots but this morning in a 30 knot wind at its best sailing point it could only do 8.6 knots. That is with full holds. It has seemed slow for a while now, but it was always in light winds until now.

PS: I just got a ctd blamed on the old KB_routines.c I just dled the new one and will report back.

Yes, I got a ctd with the old file too, that's how I noticed that this piece of code doesn't work

I didn't change anything that should influence speed. Although closest point seems to influence it, because of a fault in a source code, my changes shouldn't affect ships with cp>=0.15 .

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I dumped cargo and saw that the ship sat higher and went faster. From 8.6 knots to 11.2 knots. That is quite a jump! :will


About the ctd. I made 9 more attempts and got 9 ctds, all with a different "culprit". I was trying to sail from Willemstad to Speightstown. It could be I'm losing Barbados in this game. Will try a different island today.


Ayup. Barbados is gone. Every other island I've tried today works fine.

 

[irR4tiOn4L]

I dumped cargo and saw that the ship sat higher and went faster. From 8.6 knots to 11.2 knots. That is quite a jump! :will


About the ctd. I made 9 more attempts and got 9 ctds, all with a different "culprit". I was trying to sail from Willemstad to Speightstown. It could be I'm losing Barbados in this game. Will try a different island today.

Yes this is one of those great features of the build mod - when attacking or being attacked you have to choose wisely between cargo or speed.

It would be even better if cannons themselves had a weight. Real cannons were very heavy, rule of thumb being 300lb (135kg) of metal for each pound of ball. So EACH 9 pound cannon might weigh 2700 lb (1215 kg). Remember also that approximately for each 4% increase in weight (displacement), you get a 1% reduction in speed.

Lets take VOC Amsterdam as an example. Her displacement is recorded as 1100 tons and she had a length of 157 feet and beam of 38 feet. Using builder's old ( measurement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_Old_Measurement ) we can calculate her estimated cargo capacity in tons through her length and beam. This gives a result (by my calculations) of approximately 548 tons of cargo carrying capacity. VOC Amsterdam carried 42 guns - lets assume these are, on average, 12 pounders. Thats 3600 lb (1620kg) per cannon, for a total of 151200 lb (68040kg). Add to that 1-2 tons of gunpowder and other assortments and 500x12lb cannonballs (6000lb, 2700kg) and you have a total of some 73 tons for cannons and ammunition alone. Thats 13% of the ships total cargo carrying capacity. Thats also a 6% increases in displacement over 1100tons, making for a 1.5% reduction in speed - not very significant.

Filled to capacity, however, the ship's 1648 tons is 49% over 1100 tons - making for a now significant 12.25% reduction in speed. If the VOC Amsterdam could do 11 kn (dont know that) then that would mean, fully loaded, it would now make 9.6kn. These are all rules of thumb, however to see 11.2kn drop to 8.6kn ingame is not far off.

All in all the cannons dont take very much out of cargo capacity, but for an astute merchant - may be something to think about.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Compromise? Bah. The purpose of a merchant ship is to carry cargo. That is why they have thin hulls, small crews, and light armament. The best ones are also pretty fast to help them escape. Combat damage reduces profit.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

@ Flayed One: Could you please take a look at your "ships_init.c" file? I ran into a problem with the shipyard interface not working and when I replaced yours with one copied from another install and hit F11, it started working again. Yours is a bit smaller than the other one.

 

[FlayedOne]

@ Flayed One: Could you please take a look at your "ships_init.c" file? I ran into a problem with the shipyard interface not working and when I replaced yours with one copied from another install and hit F11, it started working again. Yours is a bit smaller than the other one.

hmmm.... strange.... do you have an error log?

I can't check it, but IIRC an unmodified ships_init file should be ~730 kbs, yet you have a 755kbs one... how come? Could it be, you have some mods installed beyond the standart build + patch 5?

 

[Armada]

It's probably the Xmas Ship Pack causing this confusion.
That contains ships_init.c with important updates to allow the new Interface Screenshots mod to work.
If you replace it with one which doesn't have those updates, the screenshots revert to how they used to be.

In other words, I recommend you get the Xmas pack, and merge the appropriate files with your own, FlayedOne.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Aha! I didn't think of that. ops2 You owe it to yourself to get the Christmas Ship Pack.

I'm sailing a XebecAS now and its performance is unrealistic. Guess it's time to berth it and get another ship.


Would it be possible to get an interim patch to hold us over until May or June? :mi

 

[Armada]

Would it be possible to get an interim patch to hold us over until May or June? :mi

Um... probably... but that needs someone to compile everything new, especially code-wise, since Patch 5.
That includes all the important files from the Xmas pack, plus all other little changes from around the forum.
I might be capable of doing that, but not until at least a week tomorrow. Even then, I have the ship pack to compile and release...

And actually, that's led me to a good idea... :will
How about we have a public folder on the FTP reserved for new content intended for patches?
So, every time some new content is approved for an upcoming patch, it is uploaded to a sub-folder within this main directory, which is formatted in the same way as the main game folder.
That way, we can progressively compile the content, making it ten times easier to keep track of the new stuff, and when ready someone needs only put the whole lot into one compressed folder for download.
Then, that folder is left as an archive, and a new sub-folder is started, which will start to compile all subsequent content, and so on...
So the structure might go like this:
PotC Files FTP/ Patch Content/ PatchX/ (game folders containing new content)/
Then, once PatchX is released, a sub-folder 'PatchX+1' is added as the next one.

My thinking is that this would relieve the burden from one person's shoulders, and allow everyone to keep track of new content as and when it is made.
Plus, it would help keep things compatible, since people could always access the latest file versions without having to download entire packs.
Does all that make sense?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I can see where that would lessen the load on the one person responsible for compiling it if everyone doing things would be using the same data base. I for one can't remember just what has been done since last November. Having a central database would make it easier on me as a lab rat because there are so many little mods in my install that it makes deciding which mod is doing what a problem.

So yes, it does make sense.

 

[Armada]

That's good then.
Sorry for hijacking the topic for a bit; I'll talk to Pieter about it, and no doubt start a separate thread informing people of any changes.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

FlayedOne: I tried to use Winmerge for the first time ever last night to compare shipsinit.c files. It turned out I don't know what I'm looking for. What are the names of the files you changed? The performance of the xebecs is just too much better than the square sail ships.

 

[irR4tiOn4L]

FlayedOne, what changes did you make in ships_init.c? I looked over the latest original file (from the christmas ships pack i think) for closest point values under 0.15 and compared them to your version but apart from experimental frigates/dutchman which is intended, no other ships had a closest point under 0.15.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

FlayedOne, how are things going?

 

[FlayedOne]

Hi guys,

sorry for the late reply, I had a very busy period at work.

IIRC the only ships that had cp lest than 0.15 were sloops(not counting the experimental ones).
I'll install the Xmas pack and try to work out the problems that my patch creates.