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    Maelstrom New Horizons


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Editing Ships & Cannons

yeah,i'm a boarder myself,so hp has never been a concern for cept in late games
when i have a 1st class ship and i sink the ships too quick.i also have
a bad tendency to only keep normal round cannon balls,and sell all other types
i may reverse it though at some point and only keep grapes,since i like to
board more than sink.and since for the most part you can raid/capture a town without messing
with the forts so the lack of bombs/round wont hurt me too bad.
 
I was thinking of making ships carry more crew but that makes it less realistic and harder to maintain a fleet without cheating, the new hp levels are proving to work well. I entered a battle last night, 4 French ships which was, Galleon, Packet Brig, Corvette and a Lugger. Against the Spanish who had 7 ships, 66 gunner Liner Ship, Warship, Frigate, Light Frigate, Fluyt and a Corvette, i entered the battle with my ships a 42 gunner Colonial Frigate, 2 Galleons and 2 Pinnace. i ordered all my ships to bare down on the Line Ship which they did and the masts fell leaving the now Stricken Line Ship to be left for target practise however she's still very much dangerous with 32 cannons on each side, 2 on the rear and 2 on the front.

The Warship tries to go around my cluster of ships but i order my clostest ships to attack which was the 2 Pinnace's, the Warship is now blocked from reaching me and is ingaged in a decent scrap, i order the Galleons to attack a Frigate each, the French chased the Spanish Corvette and about 30 minutes (or there abouts) into the battle they boarded her and she was sunk.

I was taking hits from the Liner Ships who was trying to broadside me but lucky for me one of my Galleons took the brunt end of the broadside which damaged her sails very bad, The Spanish Fluyt boarded and captured a Galleon on mine (my first casualty) at this point i serveyed the battle looking all around me. every way i looked a battle was taking place and right in the centre of it was this Liner Ships completly demasted, it looked so much like the Battle of Trafaglar with the H.M.S. Victory played by the Line Ship in the centre of the battle. I ordered 1 of my Pinnace's to attack the Galleon i had lost while i tried to take out as many of this Line Ships crew as i could whilest avioding her broadsides (not that easy) as i was doing this a broadside from each of the Frigates hit me, luckily for me when in battle i alway's sail with half sails otherwise known as battle sails so very little damage to the sails was taken but my ships health had lost a 2 thousand hit points. The now enemy Galleon was sailing around the Line Ship with my Pinnace following so i ordered the Pinnace to attack the Frigate and i started firing broadsides at the Galleon. I boarded the Galleon and recaptured her but the original captin was lost.

At this point the Warship was chasing my Pinnace that was attacking her, so i sailed directly for the Pinnace firing chainshots at the Warship trying to slow her down enough for the Pinnace to have a speed advantage over her since the Pinnace's sails had been hit badly aswell this would mean the Warship's sails would need to be almost destroyed. To cut a long story short i captured the Warship and then went after the Frigates, destroying the Light Frigate's central mast and began firing grapeshots into her, after the other Frgate turned and started trying to sail away i boarded the Light Frigate sacrificing the Galleon near her so i could capture the Light Frigate. I then chased down and boarded the Frigate which i had sunk the Pinnace so i could capture her and i did so. I turned and sailed back towards the other Pinnace which i wanted to sink so i could capture the Line Ship, this part took a few game hours since the wind was against me. Finally i reached the Pinnace and sunk her, i reached the Line Ship who's troops was less than 200 thanks to the Warship firsing at her, i fired a broadside of grapeshots into the rear of her and boarded her. I didn't have enough crew to capture the Line Ship and keep my Colonial Frigate which was very battered and browsed now, i ellected to sink the Colonial Frigate and keep the Line Ship.

This battle took a very very very long time. in game hours it took almost 24 hours and was the longest battle i had ever been in. The wind was on my side for most of the battle so speed wasn't a problem till i started to sail back towards the final ship (Line Ship) thats when i used the speed boost x6. The problem in this battle was the fact that the masts was easily destroyed, the Line Ship's masts fell almost 5 minutes into the battle, ok she had about 6 or 7 ships firing at her but still she should have been able to hold off a little longer, the sails also was eaily destroyed so they have been fixed however the masts hp value is not so eay to find inless its included in the sail hp which means that all ships have the same value of 100 now increased to 5000 which if it does turn out that mast hp is included with sail hp then i will adjust the sail hp value's depending on ship class and type.

I have increased the ships hp levels 1 last time to make the low class ships more battle worthy, i know they are ment to be weak and they still are the weakest of the ships by a large scale aswell, however since the other ships hp value's have been increased, the smaller ships can at least have a little effect in battles and can escape if they coose to without been destroyed so quick, i guess reballancing the game out again. Its just the masts hp levels now, i was also thining the speeds of the ships need to be re-edited since i have increased some ships speed too much, an example is i saw a Galleon with 15 knots of speed for sale (which i bourght and fully upgraded)she could do 18 knots after speed upgrade had been completed so the speeds need to be re-edited. For that i need to do research, if anyone knows of good sites for researching ships speeds then that will be a big help.
 
Some testing has shown better resaults, i use to hate the facts that when you was in a battle the enemy could wipe our cannons out without you taking too much actual damage the enemy ships however could be sunk having not lost a single cannon (not now.:D) i have seen most ships after been captured having several cannons destroyed which makes the gameplay better and more realistic, of course for the more inpatient player's who want the battles to be more realistic without having to battle for several hours at a time this will need more testing but for those who want the battles to be as realistic as possible its getting there. The masts are been tested now, the sails strengths have been increased which i hope increases the mast strengths if not then i'm back to square one on that part of the mod but its getting there.

The cannon parts have had a look into and i have tried to add 8 pounders to ships but the game crases which means there are more files that need to be edited, i will start looking into that once i have finished the ship and masts strengths.

On my list to do is.
Ship HP (currently been tested)
Mast HP (currently been tested)
Cannon Smoke (need to find a way to edit smoke effects)
Add More Cannon Calibures (spyglass updated but other files need to be looked at)

The one thing i would love to do is edit the way the weather changes, so it can be a very misty day at 7am, nice sunny skies at 11am and raining at 3pm. That would really make the 3d sailing feel more realistic, the other thing that needs looking at is the amount of ships chasing you on the world map, it can get rather annoying and the way it seems everything is against you like the wind changing direction and if you manage to miss all that and have good wind you get courght by a storm directly infront of you that appears out of no where like a freak storm, normally storms take a while to build up not on this game it seems. I have noticed the storms are more likely to start near edges of the map, so down by Port Of Spain, Bermuda and over by Port Royal are often storm locations the centre of the map see's less of them or are those that started out on the edge and have worked there way across the map.

A short update:
A little more testing shows that even with the increase in ships hp levels the enemy ships will still run as i found out when a Dutch military fleet of 2 ships attacked my fleet which had 2 Galleons and my ship the Interceptor, the enemy ships had The Black Pearl and a Chase Frigate so a combined 78 cannons to my 58, i did send my 2 Galleons to the fort and we did have the weather gage on our side so we could have inflicted a serious amount of damage to them before they would have reached us and we had the fort that would have done more than enough damage to even bigger ships so the Ai did what most real captains would have done and sailed away firing a few cannons at anyone in range at that moment which was me since i had taken up a position just behind the Galleons. I haven't used cheats in this game and the skill increase is on the lowest setting so i can only sail at best a class 4 ship but my cannon skills are weak as are most of my other skills hence the reason i have bourght the letter of marque now and will start helping out in battles to give my crew experience and my character the chance to further improve his cannon and aiming skills, the Galleons are in storage so it will ohnly be me that will enter any battles now. I need to get my skills up so i can test the sail hp levels out and see how that effects the masts.
 
Well i couldn't wait any longer so i used the cheats on a new game and bourght the Constitution, upgraded the cannons calibure to 32 and fitted her with 54, 32 calibure cannons (not Culverins) i sailed around looking for a battle i could join and there wasn't one i liked ie it was normally 2 pirate ships vs a military or trade fleet with superior numbers, so i tried to search for a battle between 2 military fleets. For 2 months i sailed and nothing just small battles so i joined a battle and started heading for the nearest enemy with chainshots loaded, i fired 1 broadside into the Lugger, 1 broadside into a Lugger from the Consitiution normally wipes a mast out stright away not this time, so i carried on sailing past then when i had enough time to turn i did so and rigged my sails so that my broadsides was aiming stright at the bow of the Lugger, i fired and damaged the sails really bad but still no masts feel. I turned and fired a broadside into the Luggers right side destroying a mast, so my testing shows so far that the sails and masts hp are included as one, i will keep testing just in case this was just a weird moment and my manual aiming was poor or something. It didn't help having to rush to beat the English Coastal Frigate that was chasing the Lugger either so perhaps i should search for a fleet to attack rather than join a battle thats already taking place.
 
Here is the ship.int file i've been talking so much about. Warning this will mean restarting your game if you want the effects to take place and the battles will last for much longer periods of time. The edits in this have been to every ship, these edits include the following.

1. Sails hp increased to 10,000 (mast strengths are now much tougher as are sails, so you won't slow a ship down as quick as you could with a single broadside or wipe the masts out quickly)

2. Ships hp have been increased, the amount depends on ship type and class but its a large increase on all ships (now when in battles enemy ships will have cannons been destroyed too)

3. Prices, well you do moan about not having anything to spend those piasters on, now ships cost a little more, depending on ship type and class)

Another File included is the Cannon init file which will increase the hp of the cannons for you making the 32 and 42 calibure cannons last longer in the battles and not full out so fast as they did.

Download the Mod bellow:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=A2653LUE
 
Very cool! Will start a new game to try it out. I enjoyed your narrative on the 24 game hour battle.

V/R AS
 
modernknight1 said:
Very cool! Will start a new game to try it out. I enjoyed your narrative on the 24 game hour battle.

V/R AS
Click to expand...

Excellent, thanks, let me know what you think.

I have edited the ships hp levels since then so they are more stronger now, that could mean a 48 game hour battle, the reason for the increase was because of the sail hp levels increased to 10,000 ment that at the time the sails was stronger than the smaller ships so i increased those ships so that there hp levals was higher than that of there sails and increased some ships i felt was a little too weak. This is only the test files so the more testing done on it the better, i think the prices are still to low for example if i was in a Lugger and i saw the Sloop which has a 1500 cargo hold i would buy it and thats the problem the Lugger costs about the same as the Sloop and had 4 cannons less and has a cargo hold of only 700 some 800 units less than the Sloop. So i will update them ready for final release which hopefully won't be too far away now.:D
 
Here is the updated mod which has had a large amount of edits made to make it not only harder at the start but give you all something to spend your hard earned piasters on, an example is ships prices are much higher, ships hp levels have had a small increase and the sails hp levels have also had another increase, ships speeds have been twicked a little to reflect the ship types etc. The cannons have been made a little stronger and thats it for this release.

Download Version 1.2 here

Have fun and please report what you think, be warned this is not for the quick gaming person who wants to get in and out of battles asap, this is ment to be far more realistic battle times. My own personal battle has lasted for 27 hours now and that is a good sign, with this update it should last longer.

This mod is worked from the mod new characters and ships, link to that mod's discussions can be found here
 
Version 1.3

Yep another edit, in the previous version 1.2 i had increased sail hp and ships prices. The ships prices was increased drastically which at the time of doing it i thourght would make the game more challanging since you wouldn't be able to replace your starting ship for a while, however if you found yourself the the perfect option to attack a ship and take it you would as would i and most people in need for extra money. This is where the problem started, if the amount of money you would be given for selling the ships was easy to change it would have been ok but if you sold the ship you captured (which you most likely would) you could end up with a large sum of money far more than you would normally have even for an experienced player, at that point most player's thinking i need to make money would start trading and focus on capturing and selling ships which means its now easy for people to become rich and the challange of pleasing a wife is well far more easier when you have a large sum of money and have no need to capture any ships or smuggle any goods.

This update see's the main change been the ships prices, they are much lower and near to there starting value's. Trade ships such as Caravel's, Fluyt's, Galleon's etc etc have had there prices left a little higher than other ships in there class.

Sail hp has been changed, originally all ships hp levels was 20,000 mainly for testing reasons, how ever testing proved that sail and mast hp are as one, the sails damage needs to be a certain level before masts will full. With that in mind and the fact that smaller ships should be weaker has made each class now have a minimum and maximum sail hp value while the higher the class the higher the sail hp with ships only available via quests been much higher than any ship in there class and the ship like the Flying Dutchmen having a sail hp of 25,000 the highest any sail hp is set at. Most class 1 ships have between 18,000 and 22,000 hp allowing for long battles while class 6 ships have 3000 hp which is much less than they was originally on, but still allows them to be a little tough to slow down at first and able to last longer in battles.

No other edits was made, so all ship hp value's are still the same as are there respective speeds. Download HERE
 
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