New skills

[MarKr]

Would it be possible to change the skill tree? Or to add some skills? I mean most of the officer posts (Carpenter, Navigator, Chief gunner and Bosun) have a lot of skills that are available for you if they learn them. But both Doctor and Treasurer have just two skills and that’s it. I realize that Bosuns are mostly usable as Doctors too and Treasurers are mostly also Carpenters (if they learned Multitasking) but in early game when they mostly cannot be appointed in more than one positions they just spend Ship points in skills that are of no use to them and benefit the player in no way.

So I how about some new skills for these officers?
Treasurer:
Basic commerce: 10% better prices while buying in shops (already in game)
Advanced commerce: 20% better prices while buying in shops and 5% better prices for resell goods (already in game)
Experienced trader: Boost to previous two skills (like 25-30% better prices in shops and 10-15% for resell goods)
Connections: 25% chance that shop owners would buy a contraband goods (let’s say for some lowered prices)
Good connections: 50% chance that shop owners would buy a contraband goods and higher chance to find rare items in shops

Doctor:
First two perks lower casualties from naval battles
Another perk could lower the number of medicaments used
And another one could heal main character’s health condition faster while on sea

Chief gunner has already a lot of perks, but there could be added one, that lowers the probability of a “Gun fell out”

Also some extremely beneficial perks could cost more than one skill point…

And another thing, but this would probably change the game a lot:
After some time main character learns all the ship skills and thanks to these books they can collect, can have all abilities in 100 quiet soon. At this point all officers (except for fighters) are of no use anymore and mostly are fired. This might be good, because we don’t have to pay salaries, but It seems improbable that a Capitan would command 500 men on his own (ok, with a help of 3 bodyguards). So, if some skills were available only to officer classes and not to main character (main character would access them through officers), it would force player to keep officers around even in late game. But that would mean to create new ship skills only for main character, because as it is now, the only skills left would be those, that allow him to fake nationality by changing ship flag….

I hope that you understand what I mean

What do you think? Is this a good idea? And would it be possible to do these changes, or is it too di and not worth the time?

 

[Edmaroon]

Yes i thought the same sometime ago. I did something similar to what you say. I removed Doctor, Treasurer and boatswain from the game, then i assigned every one of the 3 officer 9 perks, and about 9 more only for the player. I didn't try to add new perks because perk effects are dispersed among many functions and it was confusing, but perhaps it's possible to do it. The things i did like removing officers and changing perks was doable and worked.

It was something like this (perks are in perks_init.c):
Captain perks: SharedExperience, IronWill, ShipEscape, Brander, Troopers, BasicCommerce, AdvancedCommerce, Trustworthy, nation flags
Navigator perks: SailsMan, WindCatcher, shipSpeedUp, ShipTurnRateUp, StormProfessional, SandbankManeuver, SailingProfessional, Doctor1, Doctor2
Cannoner perks: FastReload, HullDamageUp, SailsDamageUp, CrewDamageUp, CriticalShoot, LongRangeShoot, CannonProfessional, MusketsShoot, InmediateReload
Carpenter perks: Carpenter, Builder, LightRepair, InstantRepair, BasicBattleState, ShipDefenseProfesional, LongRangeGrappling, GrapplingProfessional

The russian people who made COAS (from a POTC mod named Sea legend is back) had a system of officers which i like. There was a 1st mate with captain perks who could take another ship command in turn, and there were the other officers. 1st mates made captains could have officers in their ships too.

I was thinking in having 1st mates and 3 officers and 2nd mate and 3 officer assistants. No fighter officers because your fighters would be picked from your officers, so they would be more than simple perk collectors and skill enhancers in your ship, and there would be a reason to arm them well to keep them alive. And as you say it's easy to get all perks and skills so i'd make harder to get perks, something like 50 levels to get 9 perks. This way every officer would be a specialist and so would be the captain and the 1st mate because noone could get more than one speciality without losing perks.

But all this last paragraph belongs to the hipothetic realm.

 

[MarKr]

Not a bad idea, but my point was to make perks like "Medic" and "Life saver" available only for their specific classes (in case of these just to Doctor) and add some perks to Treasurer and Doctor, because they both have just two. Player would benefit from these perks only if he/she hired an officer who has that or another perk and that would force player to keep officers around even in late game. I wouldn't remove any officer and pass their perks to another one - basically that's what "Multitasking" and "Jack of all trades" do.

 

[Edmaroon]

There are no specific classes of perks. There are only two flags, player only and NPC only. Some perks are related to some officer types but all officer types can aquire all perks excepting the player only perks. Perhaps it's possible to make perks specific to an officer. Right now, when the game has to check a skill it looks for player skill, plus related officer skill, plus player possible modifier perks, plus related officer modifier perks. If the officer required is changed in the code (like i did changing doctor to navigator f.e.) then it looks for that officer skill.

My idea was to make some sense of all this and removing excesive number of officers who do nothing but stay stickied in your list. I wanted the same as you, only i preferred to have less officers, and all of them with the same number of perks.

 

[Luke159]

I like the idea but the problem is i think the perks already make the game to easy, they are over done. I would rather see each store owner having a relationship bar to your character than perks that improves trade for all store owners. Then as you trade with a given town more the relations with that store owner increases and the goods are sold to you at a lower price and giving you a little more for goods they buy from you.

The only perks that i think don't make the game to easy are the carpenters perks, which another perk for carpenters would be a welcome addition so that even less planks and sailcloth is required to fix a ship. Gunnery perks also make the game far to easy, although with RTBL aka realistic cannon damage on the effects of the gunnery perksp are less noticable but with the realistic cannon damage switched to stock those perks make a huge difference in naval battles.

 

[MarKr]

I know that there are no specific classes of perks. What I meant was this - Perk Life Saver is available to player in two ways a) player learns it OR b) player hires an officer, appoints him as a Doctor, the doctor learns the perk player benefits from it. - so if a carpenter knows perk Life Saver player won't benefit from it. As you said there are only two flags - player only and NPC only. So what I wanted was to create flags like player only (these perks would be only for player and NPC couldn't learn them); NPC_carpenter only (for carpenter NPC - or just NPC with a lot of points in Repair skill); NPC_doctor only (for doctor NPC - or just NPC with a lot of points in Defense skill) and so on for every officer.
But that wouldn't probably even be possible... so how about make some perks cost more than one point? Something like - Canoneer related perks are Quick Reload (1 point); Foresight (Quick Reload needed; 2 points); Wrecker (1 point), The Shredder (1 point), God of Death (1 point); Critical Shot (Wrecker, Shreder, GoD neede; 2 points); Distant Fire (1 point); MasterGunner (Critical Shot, Distant Fire, Quick Reload neede; 3 points) point # represents how many points you have to spend to learn that perk - This way, in order to get Master Gunner perk, player would have to spend 10 points instead of current 7. So if every perk that requires some other perk in order to be learned costed more than one point, it would take significantely more time to learn all perks. And since NPCs generate perks based on players level (this is just my deduction, but it seemes it works this way), they can have perks sooner, than player could afford them and that would force us to keep officers around longer....

But as I think about it, I guess Luke 159 has made a good point - perks are kind of overpowering player. It would be good to reduce perk effects... let's say to half? Instead of 40% chance to score a critical hit it would be just 20% or so...that would need more time to think about... But perk effects reduction in combination with increasing point demands for perks would make game more difficult, but in the right way.

Thoughts?

 

[Grega]

Or you could combine the increased perk cost with eliminating the player from gaving the majority of the perks. Only leave the ones that have something that deals directly with the player character and not one of the NPCs.

So the flags, fencing skills and so on would stay character perks, while perks that affect the ship itself would be divided only amongst the NPC characters. Adding the higher cost for those perks would make the player think harder of what to select.

Additionally (not sure if this is possible) have a check to see if the person who is requesting the perk has enough experience in the perk category. So canon accuracy improvements and damage would only be available if that character has a good enough canons and accuracy ability and so on.

 

[Post Captain]

Or you could combine the increased perk cost with eliminating the player from gaving the majority of the perks. Only leave the ones that have something that deals directly with the player character and not one of the NPCs.

So the flags, fencing skills and so on would stay character perks, while perks that affect the ship itself would be divided only amongst the NPC characters. Adding the higher cost for those perks would make the player think harder of what to select.

Additionally (not sure if this is possible) have a check to see if the person who is requesting the perk has enough experience in the perk category. So canon accuracy improvements and damage would only be available if that character has a good enough canons and accuracy ability and so on.

Generally, though, a good captain would know how to do all of these things, except the medical stuff. Maybe NPCs could add a bonus to the current perks, which could be weakened to compensate.