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Planned Feature Friendly Contact on High Seas

Pieter Boelen

Navigation Officer
Administrator
Storm Modder
Hearts of Oak Donator
At the bottom of PROGRAM\globals.c is the following toggle:
Code:
//**********WIP MODS***********
#define FCOHS         0     // Erwin Lindemann: Friendly Contact on High Seas / Hail Ship Mod

The idea behind this mod is that you can hail any friendly ship at sea and reload to the other ship's deck.
You'll then get into a dialog with her captain where all sorts of things could be handled.

This always seemed like a very promising idea to me since right now non-enemy ships at sea basically serve no gameplay purpose.
This feature was never finished, though I did spend some time in the past to make it at least vaguely operational.

Would be pretty cool if some time in the future, we could continue this work as there is a vast potential here.
 
Second highest priority Beta 3.5 feature as far as I'm concerned. A lot of the work is already done, we just have to fix and finish it.
Would unlock an incredible amount of gameplay potential!
 
Open PROGRAM\globals.c and set this value to 1:
Code:
#define FCOHS         0     // Erwin Lindemann: Friendly Contact on High Seas / Hail Ship Mod
Then start playing and there should be a "Hail Ship" icon in your on-sea [Enter] menu.

I cannot remember to what extent this was working or not,
so it would be great if you could try and post a list here of things that obviously don't work yet. :doff
 
Ok, so I was testing it:

- Ship behaviour works fine, as soon as I hail a ship, it lowers its sails and waits for me
- I can visit the ship without problems

- On the ship, the first thing that I noticed was that the crew had the wrong models (I visited a dutch merchant and his crew were english soldiers, probably because I had english soldiers)
- The crew behaves as I am the captain, I can even let them wait the hours, what Levis added. But I don't have an idea what we could do with the crew, besides giving them the right models

- I can enter the crew quarters and captains cabin, gun deck and cargo hold are locked (fine by me, what should you have to do there?)
- BUT: When I enter the captains cabin, I find myself in the middle of the ocean (the cabin doesn't get loaded) and I am unable to move at all anymore.. so here is probably where the previous work has stopped^^

So, at this point, this feature has absolutely no meaning
 
Two further questions:
1. Is the other captain anywhere to be found?
and
2. Can you return to your own ship?
 
Since a lot of code for this has already be done, it would be pretty awesome if we could fix and finish this and have it in Build 14 still.
Expanded features can be added in Build 15, but putting the system in place in advance would be a great help.
 
@Pillat how is the coding going? Do you think you could have a look at it? We can always help you, but I got my work cut out for me for the next few weeks at least trying to increase performance etc :p.
 
I think the only thing I REALLY don't know how to do is to enable to "return to sea after visit" part.
If that could be sorted, I can probably figure out placing the captain character and writing up a dialog.
And then anyone can take it from there, because dialogs are relatively easy to deal with.

So there is just a little bit to be done to sort out the "support" for this system and then after that it should get a whole lot easier.
 
Just look at the dialog for captains. There is an option to just spare there ship and crew etc right? So that should call the return to sea function.
 
I had been thinking of the "Go to Sea" locator/Enter Menu while on your own ship deck. But indeed the dialog may be much easier to accomplish.
If we auto-trigger the dialog with the ship's captain, then you also would never notice any other weird effects while on deck there.
 
Well, for that a captain has to spawn there at all :D If we let him spawn on deck, we could also leave out this bug about the captains cabin^^

@Levis : Sorry, but my coding skills are somewhere between 0 and 0.1 .. I can tweak things for balancing, add simple stuff like new items, or copy and paste the codes you give me, so I can test it.. but writing my own code? Nah, that wouldn't help you at all :D
 
Don't worry about it, I'll have a look at this after Beta 3.4.

In the meantime, we do need those citizens returned to the new towns. :onya
 
Is it possible to demand surrender or a toll for passage, currently? If not, talking to a friendly or neutral captain outside of combat might be a good place to negotiate that. Realistically, the captain isn't like to come over to a threatening ship unless really desperate, and you wouldn't do the reverse; but it might work for game purposes and simplicity.
 
At the moment there is indeed no such thing. But once the system is in place, we can add all sorts of random stuff.
From bartering with the other ship to get some supplies while at sea to convincing the other captain to defect and join your cause.
And all sorts of stuff inbetween.
 
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