I am working on allowing certain unique ships to be encountered at sea. Two good examples here would be the Black Pearl and HMS Victory. So potentially, both ships could end up in the same battle (although time periods could prevent this). In addition, the former would always be captained by Hector Barbossa and the latter by Horatio Nelson.
This might allow for a bit of logic which applied to Sid Meier’s, whereby the player could hunt for known pirates and put them out of the game. While it is a way off right now, this could also give rise to other possibilities such as bounty prizes, unique loot and maybe even undead crew.
This might allow for a bit of logic which applied to Sid Meier’s, whereby the player could hunt for known pirates and put them out of the game. While it is a way off right now, this could also give rise to other possibilities such as bounty prizes, unique loot and maybe even undead crew.
I’m not sure if I properly have my head around how names are generated for ships, but I’ll use an example here to illustrate what I’m getting at.
RN_SuperiorWarship
This is the Arrogant-class 3rd Rate. Naturally, that will be the name given in icons but this is not what I’m concerned with. What I’m looking at is the individual name for a randomly-encountered ship.
I am assuming that a random name will be grabbed from the array for the relevant nation, English in this case - and therefore this ship could just happen to be called “HMS Victory”, which would be rather unfitting (even if they had the same designer). When it comes to generic ships it really doesn’t matter, but if we’re concerned with unique ships or a more-specific class of ships, particularly ships-of-the-line, then it might be better to limit the random names to historically-relevant ones.
In the case the Arrogant-class, we have a relevant bunch of names to use (with the HMS prefix of course)...
On a side-note, is the Culloden-class pretty much the same as the Arrogant? If so, the array of names could be extended in this case to include the Culloden-class types.
What I’m essentially looking to do is to go through ships_init.c and set an array of unique names to some of them. Therefore, before a random ship name is applied a check could first be done to see if the particular ship already has a unique array. I feel this would be more immersive.
RN_SuperiorWarship
This is the Arrogant-class 3rd Rate. Naturally, that will be the name given in icons but this is not what I’m concerned with. What I’m looking at is the individual name for a randomly-encountered ship.
I am assuming that a random name will be grabbed from the array for the relevant nation, English in this case - and therefore this ship could just happen to be called “HMS Victory”, which would be rather unfitting (even if they had the same designer). When it comes to generic ships it really doesn’t matter, but if we’re concerned with unique ships or a more-specific class of ships, particularly ships-of-the-line, then it might be better to limit the random names to historically-relevant ones.
In the case the Arrogant-class, we have a relevant bunch of names to use (with the HMS prefix of course)...
- Arrogant
- Audacious
- Bellerophon
- Cornwall
- Edgar
- Elephant
- Excellent
- Goliath
- Illustrious
- Saturn
- Vanguard
- Zealous
On a side-note, is the Culloden-class pretty much the same as the Arrogant? If so, the array of names could be extended in this case to include the Culloden-class types.
What I’m essentially looking to do is to go through ships_init.c and set an array of unique names to some of them. Therefore, before a random ship name is applied a check could first be done to see if the particular ship already has a unique array. I feel this would be more immersive.
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