The Captain's Challenge mods add a few features that IMHO make shipmanegement a bit more realistic and challenging. But as many players will find that more annoying than entertaining you can of cousre switch all those features off in Buildsettings.h
It is part of Pieter Boelen's modcompilation <a href="http://millenniumdock.bravepages.com/storage/others/potcmods.htm" target="_blank">http://millenniumdock.bravepages.com/stora...rs/potcmods.htm</a>
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Boardingparty
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Boarders will attack in a compact formation, and you can select common outfits and weapons for your party. I did this for three reasons:
1. It's sometimes difficult to distinguish your sailors from pirates, and it would be nice if YOU could determine their outfit.
2. I personally don't like it that the bordingscene jumpstarts with you and your men spread evenly over two ships, each one locked in exactly one duel with exactly one enemy. It would IMHO be more realistic if each crew starts on their own ship and starts to attack as one more or less closed swarm. "Boardingparty" positions the enemycrew in one compact swarm on the opposite ship, and the two swarms attack each other in a nice melee. Apart from looking much more realistic this allows you to apply some battle tactics like attacking the enemy"formation" from the rear or blocking the attack at the "gangway" plank.
3. You usually capture so many weapons that they are no real reward anymore. Now there is an incentive to collect weapons of a certain type: you can equip your boarding party with them. Choose one standard weapon, and all weapons of that type that you have in your inventory will be used by your boarders. Imagine what you can do if some of your boarders have excellent windmill slayers and blunderbusses.
<b>[EDIT] You can now select default models and weapons for you boarders BEFORE STARTING THE GAME IN BUILDSETTINGS.H</b>
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Prisoner Ransom Options
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In the original game you can get ransom money for your prisoners as soon as you capture them, even at sea. That's IMHO a bit too easy and unrealistic. In reality you would have to make contact to some relative or neutral negotiator and deliver the prisoner before getting money.
The ransomoptionsmod tries to simulate that challenge. In the Buildsettings you can choose two options:
1. You can define at which type of location you must be to cash in the ransom. E.g. you could say that the church is the neutral, humanitarian institution that takes care of hostages, so you can set the ransomlocation to "church". Or to "residence" if you think that it should be conducted by government officials. Or to "jungle" for clandestine or "tavern" for comfortable negotiations.
At all other locations the "Ransom Captive" interface is dactivated.
2. As additional challenge and inducement for some voyages you can activate the "Ransom at home only" option. In that case you can ransom a prisoner only at his nation's island.
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Firedrill
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In the Age of Sail fire was one of the most feared disasters. On a wooden ship with tarred rigging fire was difficult to contain and often meant the loss of vessel, stores AND lifeboats.
To reflect this a little more in PotC I increased the damage and especially the burntime of the fires. This can be a tactical ADVANTAGE for you cause only you can extinguish fires by letting your crew perform a "firedrill". You must have the "Basic shipdefense" ability for that. Once an enemybomb has started a fire on your ship you must only press the "C" potionuse key to extinguish THAT fire. If there are several fires repeat the drill for each one.
During each firedrill the sails will be furled and the charges of your guns will be dumped.
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Realistic Shiprepairtime
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There have been -justified- complaints that you ALWAYS spend two days in the shipyard if you open the menu, no matter if you order any work or how extensive that is.
Now the waiting time is based on the amount of work the shipwright does for you.
Another feature that is not quite to my taste is the "Instant repair" ability. IMHO that is no ability but a cheat: press a button in the midst of a battle and by magic your damage disappears within seconds.
I rewrote the "instant repair" perk so that you can use it only if the "Go ashore" option is availlable, i.e. only if you are at a SAFE anchorage.
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Attributeviewer for debugging
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In order to find a bug it is often helpful to know which attribute has been assigned to a character. E.g. if a character doesn't talk to you he may have been attributed with the wrong dialogfile or node, or he may be hostile. I inserted this section into seadogs.c as a tool to view characterattributes.
All these features can be tweaked or disabled in buildsettings.h . Detailed information for players AND modders is in a readme file in the Buildinfo folder.
And as always:
It is part of Pieter Boelen's modcompilation <a href="http://millenniumdock.bravepages.com/storage/others/potcmods.htm" target="_blank">http://millenniumdock.bravepages.com/stora...rs/potcmods.htm</a>
-------------
Boardingparty
-------------
Boarders will attack in a compact formation, and you can select common outfits and weapons for your party. I did this for three reasons:
1. It's sometimes difficult to distinguish your sailors from pirates, and it would be nice if YOU could determine their outfit.
2. I personally don't like it that the bordingscene jumpstarts with you and your men spread evenly over two ships, each one locked in exactly one duel with exactly one enemy. It would IMHO be more realistic if each crew starts on their own ship and starts to attack as one more or less closed swarm. "Boardingparty" positions the enemycrew in one compact swarm on the opposite ship, and the two swarms attack each other in a nice melee. Apart from looking much more realistic this allows you to apply some battle tactics like attacking the enemy"formation" from the rear or blocking the attack at the "gangway" plank.
3. You usually capture so many weapons that they are no real reward anymore. Now there is an incentive to collect weapons of a certain type: you can equip your boarding party with them. Choose one standard weapon, and all weapons of that type that you have in your inventory will be used by your boarders. Imagine what you can do if some of your boarders have excellent windmill slayers and blunderbusses.
<b>[EDIT] You can now select default models and weapons for you boarders BEFORE STARTING THE GAME IN BUILDSETTINGS.H</b>
-----------------------
Prisoner Ransom Options
-----------------------
In the original game you can get ransom money for your prisoners as soon as you capture them, even at sea. That's IMHO a bit too easy and unrealistic. In reality you would have to make contact to some relative or neutral negotiator and deliver the prisoner before getting money.
The ransomoptionsmod tries to simulate that challenge. In the Buildsettings you can choose two options:
1. You can define at which type of location you must be to cash in the ransom. E.g. you could say that the church is the neutral, humanitarian institution that takes care of hostages, so you can set the ransomlocation to "church". Or to "residence" if you think that it should be conducted by government officials. Or to "jungle" for clandestine or "tavern" for comfortable negotiations.
At all other locations the "Ransom Captive" interface is dactivated.
2. As additional challenge and inducement for some voyages you can activate the "Ransom at home only" option. In that case you can ransom a prisoner only at his nation's island.
---------
Firedrill
---------
In the Age of Sail fire was one of the most feared disasters. On a wooden ship with tarred rigging fire was difficult to contain and often meant the loss of vessel, stores AND lifeboats.
To reflect this a little more in PotC I increased the damage and especially the burntime of the fires. This can be a tactical ADVANTAGE for you cause only you can extinguish fires by letting your crew perform a "firedrill". You must have the "Basic shipdefense" ability for that. Once an enemybomb has started a fire on your ship you must only press the "C" potionuse key to extinguish THAT fire. If there are several fires repeat the drill for each one.
During each firedrill the sails will be furled and the charges of your guns will be dumped.
------------------------
Realistic Shiprepairtime
------------------------
There have been -justified- complaints that you ALWAYS spend two days in the shipyard if you open the menu, no matter if you order any work or how extensive that is.
Now the waiting time is based on the amount of work the shipwright does for you.
Another feature that is not quite to my taste is the "Instant repair" ability. IMHO that is no ability but a cheat: press a button in the midst of a battle and by magic your damage disappears within seconds.
I rewrote the "instant repair" perk so that you can use it only if the "Go ashore" option is availlable, i.e. only if you are at a SAFE anchorage.
-----------------------------
Attributeviewer for debugging
-----------------------------
In order to find a bug it is often helpful to know which attribute has been assigned to a character. E.g. if a character doesn't talk to you he may have been attributed with the wrong dialogfile or node, or he may be hostile. I inserted this section into seadogs.c as a tool to view characterattributes.
All these features can be tweaked or disabled in buildsettings.h . Detailed information for players AND modders is in a readme file in the Buildinfo folder.
And as always:
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" border="0" alt="mybad.gif" /> , i will try to rename an existing officer (cant find the file for AI captains) "Charles Couch". anyway great work, i absolutely love any effort to make potc more realistic and challenging.
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