Need Help Upgrading a Manilla Galleon

[Bathtub-pirate]

I recently purchased a Royal Manilla Galleon that had a max speed of 8.9 knots, despite no speed increasing upgrades in advance. I figured that this was an excellent attribute for such a ship, bought it and wanted to uppgrade it. But when I did so, (adding the higher masts and cotton sails) she somehow actually became slower!

I reloaded the game, tried it again .... same thing. I understand that there has an element of volatility been introduced to how effective which upgrade ends up being on any given ship. Which I actually do quite like. But it definetely shouldn't become slower ....... or should it? Could it be that the stats of the Manilla Galleon (and possibly some other ships) produce implaussible results when getting speed related upgrades? Or am I missing something?

Edit: Alright, the problem now also occured with a Light Fluyt of War. All of this hapened in the "shipwright's office" on the French settlement of St. Martin.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Does sound quite weird.

Relevant files are the "KB_*.c" ones in the PROGRAM folder.

 

[Bathtub-pirate]

Looking at this stuff:

if (rand(11) <= GetShipSkill(_char, SKILL_SNEAK)) { pertoadd=pertoadd+1; } // KK
if (rand(11) <= GetShipSkill(_char, SKILL_SAILING)) { pertoadd=pertoadd+(0.5*j); } // KK

Am I understanding this correctly? Your Luck ("Sneak") and sailing skill influence the degree of success when upgrading ships?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Yep, looks like it.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Ohh, so you bought a ship that is too good for your skills. Yes it will be slower until you build yourself up.

 

[Bathtub-pirate]

No, my skills were up to speed. I thought maybe it was because my Luck was terrible (carried two dead Albatrosses). But getting rid of them didn't cut it.

Or does the player need to have really good skills (like way better than the skills for commanding the ship), when it comes to upgrading bigger ships?

I would only get a net gain in speed when I would make all thre upgrades (cotton sails, bigger masts and the performance imorovement for the hull). Then I ended up having like 9.26 (I believe) top speed. Which is not too bad for a Manilla Galleon. But if I would go for just one or two of the three upgrades, I would in fact lose speed top speed and become slower. Very weird.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Grey Roger, do you have any thoughts on upgrading ships?

Personally I wonder if there should be a random element to this at all.
Wouldn't it be simpler and safer to just use a straight percentage and be done with it?

 

[Bathtub-pirate]

It probably would. There should imo only be an element of volatility to the ships' stats, when they are first generated by the game. But I think the national differences have this already covered. In my current "cursed" free play playthrough, I chose a carrack with pirate nationality. And it really shows in the speed department.

 

[Grey Roger]

Looking at those modifiers for luck and sailing skills, they should provide a slight further increase to the boost provided by the upgrade - they should not reduce it and certainly should not cause the ship to slow down!

The maximum and minimum percentage increases for the various upgrades are defined in "InternalSettings.h". For example, for long topmasts:

#define TMSPEEDRANGEMAX           10       //int 0-100
#define TMSPEEDRANGEMIN           0       //int 0-100

If you want to eliminate the random element, change them to be the same.

What puzzles me is why any of the speed upgrades would slow the ship down? A useful experiment might be to save game while you're standing in the shipyard with an unmodified ship. Apply one of the upgrades and see if it increases or decreases the speed, and while you're at it, check to see whether the ship's design nation has changed. Then reload the savegame, pick a different upgrade and do the same.

Incidentally, there are actually four upgrades which affect your speed, though one of them can be harder to get. The corsair refit boosts both speed and turn rate but is only available from Pirate shipyards, and they won't do it unless you're a Pirate, or at least not hostile to them.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

The only way I can see to make a ship slow down would be to buy and then sell upgrades. It might then be possible to end up with a slower ship because of the random numbers being generated being lower than before.