Ship Encounter Size?

[dualhammers]

So everytimeI spot a ship on the world map and move to intercept I find it to be a convoy of ships, often heavily guarded. One of the things I really enjoy about the Combined mod for COAS is that there are many more single ships roaming around so I can have fun 1v1 battles. Is there any way to change the average encounter size so I get more single-ship encounters?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'm not entirely sure how the encounter code works, but it's in the PROGRAM\Encounters folder.
The easiest way to find single ships is by just roaming around islands.
The fleets around islands consist usually only of about two ships or so.
However, single ship encounters are in the game.

 

[Armada]

That is an interesting point, there really aren't many single encounters in PotC.
I'm wondering if we should increase the probability of them, particularly in medium-sized ships, perhaps?
Might add a certain characteristic to the game, especially to practice naval tactics.

 

[dualhammers]

That is an interesting point, there really aren't many single encounters in PotC.
I'm wondering if we should increase the probability of them, particularly in medium-sized ships, perhaps?
Might add a certain characteristic to the game, especially to practice naval tactics.

I will plod around in the Encounters code, but I am not a really proficient coder - that being said all my reading of Naval Warfare they would almost always try and find a single ship alone to take. I think it would be amazing.

 

[dualhammers]

Necroing my own thread out of sheer frustration.

I've been trying to ply my trade as a British Brig Captain out on the open sea and every-time I sigh some merchants I find myself against a rank 3 merchantmen and 1-2 rank 2 ships with hundreds of men on each and no chance of success even in boarding. I've been studying the encounters code and there are NO comments of any use, so I cannot make heards or tails of it. If any of the coders who wrote the encounter code are still around can you please contact me?

From all that I've read about the era of Naval Warfare Merchants were far outclassed by Men of War even if their ships were larger. A British Naval brig would carry 100 men or more whereas even a modest sized Merchant ship would carry nomore than 50 or 60.

So questions:

Is there a way to reduce the size of merchant ship crews closer to their minimum?


Is there a way to reduce the size of encounters to 1-2 ships for the most part, and to reduce their ranks closer to the 7-5 ranks?

 

[Armada]

Is there a way to reduce the size of merchant ship crews closer to their minimum?

If you alter the values 'refShip.MaxCrew' and 'refShip.MinCrew' for each ship in ships_init.c, you can set the number of men to your liking.
However, we've found before that if the MaxCrew is below a certain percentage of the hull strength, weird things start happening with the cannons, even to the point where only one fires each time.
So as a general guideline, going by the current merchant vessels, I'd say you should keep the crew to at least 3-4 men per cannon to be safe.
However, some of the smaller ships can be exceptions, such as the Luggers having 12 guns and 24 crew maximum.

As for encounter modifications, I can't help you there.

 

[dualhammers]

Is there a way to reduce the size of merchant ship crews closer to their minimum?

If you alter the values 'refShip.MaxCrew' and 'refShip.MinCrew' for each ship in ships_init.c, you can set the number of men to your liking.
However, we've found before that if the MaxCrew is below a certain percentage of the hull strength, weird things start happening with the cannons, even to the point where only one fires each time.
So as a general guideline, going by the current merchant vessels, I'd say you should keep the crew to at least 3-4 men per cannon to be safe.
However, some of the smaller ships can be exceptions, such as the Luggers having 12 guns and 24 crew maximum.

As for encounter modifications, I can't help you there.

Thanks for the Help Aramda. After meeting with a friend well-versed in C and some extensive searching of the forum I finally found the answers. I plan on doing an extensive writeup so that future amateur modders will not have the same questions.

 

[Armada]

Thanks for the Help Aramda. After meeting with a friend well-versed in C and some extensive searching of the forum I finally found the answers. I plan on doing an extensive writeup so that future amateur modders will not have the same questions.

No problem mate! And that write-up sounds excellent- thanks for doing that!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The encounter code looked quite confusing to me too when I last looked at it. It also doesn't quite work as intended, I think.
If you can improve things and write an explanation, that would be absolutely great!

 

[dualhammers]

The encounter code looked quite confusing to me too when I last looked at it. It also doesn't quite work as intended, I think.
If you can improve things and write an explanation, that would be absolutely great!

It does work as intended, but the variable names are not very clear in what they do. I am going to make a modded ships_init file with my changes that I wanted and with a ton of added comments inside the file. The comments can then be added to a vanilla file as needed.

The changes I am making are going to reflect my more realistic style of play. Pirates never had men of war or anything larger than a fast xebec so I'm lowering the classes they use, and I am also reducing the size of all encounters. It will make it a lot easier for people who insist on buying 4 fifth rates and calling themselves privateers, as I think the current ships file is built to accommodate that style of play, but for those of us who Want to be a Jack Aubrey with our own Sloop of War it will work quite well and, as always, you can always change them to suit your desires.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

ships_init.c? That file should be fine. You mean the encounters_init.c file? :?