Spawning Enemy Officers for Captured Ships

[Mere_Mortal]

I have the idea to spawn officers into the slots after capturing a ship.

My idea is that there would be a chance for either none at all (most likely) or all three (highly unlikely) officer slots to be occupied after capturing a ship (this wouldn’t need to happen during boarding itself, only when the ransack menu appears). Putting them in the slots would be easy enough, but what I don’t know at the moment is how to generate them in the first place and in a balanced way according to the player’s level. Oh, and I also intend to make them captive, whilst allowing for some way to hire them (probably costing umpteen pieces of eight).
I think the best start I could make is to look at the code for creating officers in taverns... but where exactly is that?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If you want to do this, I think the best way is to generate those officers right at the beginning of the process: When the ship itself is generated.
Then they can boost the skills of the captain also during the sea battle, rather than just being there somewhere at the end of the boarding.

Would have to be worked into this project though: Planned Feature - Use Generic Captain and Ship Generation Functions | PiratesAhoy!
If and when that actually happens, that is....

Then would they join in the boarding fights?
Would they automatically be captured or would you get a choice somewhere through dialog/interface?

What happens to balancing? There might end up being an abundance of officers in the game.
But you can only put very few of them to use at the same time.

One idea I had:
- Having the skills go up to 100 instead of 10, but DON'T change the current skill balancing at all
- Have different ships require different skills to work at full efficiency
- For example, a Tier 1 ship may require 50 Sailing skill, so you'd need plenty officers to accumulate their skills to get to that number

Very crude version of my idea and I don't think we can make this happen any time soon.
But it does seem like an interesting idea to me.

 

[Mere_Mortal]

Then would they join in the boarding fights?

This is actually something I was thinking about, but I would only look at spawning them at the end of the boarding in order to keep it simple. If I were to establish a working model then I could work backwards from there.

Would they automatically be captured or would you get a choice somewhere through dialog/interface?

I guess that depends on the above. Initially they would automatically be there in the slots, meaning the player could move them into their own passenger list where they would sit there as captives. If they left them there while sinking the ship, then they sink with it.

But I do like the idea of them fighting, and if the captain surrenders at the end like they sometimes do then so will the officers. In other words, the officers wouldn’t fight until the player reaches the cabin (or one officer fights per deck, possibly not including the first one depending on how many decks there are). This would then allow for dialogue.

What happens to balancing? There might end up being an abundance of officers in the game.

Well for starters, the tavern almost always spawns an officer so this could be cut down somewhat. Another way to balance it is by making their skills typically sub-standard in comparison to those in the tavern, albeit with a reasonable chance for a decent one.

So yeah, I could at least get them to be spawned in the first place for testing purposes and then investigate the other stuff in due course.

 

[Mere_Mortal]

   ref newChar = CreateOfficerType(GetRandomOfficerType(),sti(MainChar.skill.Leadership))
   LAi_Create_Officer(rand(8),&newChar)
   AddPassenger(MainChar,newChar,-1)

 

[Levis]

I was thining about this a while back too.
If you add the officers to the captain of the ship theire abilities and skills will help just like they do for you, so its always good to add officers to the captain.
I was thinking of checking how many decks a ship has during boarding and add so many officers to the ship so you will encounter 1 officer on each deck, and finally you will encounter the captain when boarding.

But things to keep in mind for example are what happens to them if the ship just surrenders instead of fighting.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

But things to keep in mind for example are what happens to them if the ship just surrenders instead of fighting.

You might be quite interested in some of the files posted here: Brainstorming - Personal Modifications for Feedback and Testing | PiratesAhoy!
@Mere_Mortal started on rewriting the Passengers Interface to make it easier to have multiple officers on the same ship.
He never finished it, so I did not include it in the main mod. But those files still exist and may prove useful.

What I did do is to fix the relevant interface to include your convenient "colour coding for skill contribution".
And it also now ensures that companion officers DO properly contribute their skills (this was a bit messy before).