Fixed Standard Story - Fort Commander sending Reinforcements

[Talisman]

When Silehard sends you to sneak into Speightstown for the first time.

Go through jungle - challenged by 2 french soldiers at Speightstown gate - kill them

Then Fort commander sending Reinforcements - Log message appears

Gate Locked - player now has to fight 4-6 soldiers who run through jungle towards them.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

AH! I hadn't expected that to happen as I tried to limit that functionality to towns and port only.
But of course the town outskirts ALSO have "town" in their location ID so it would still happen.

Try the latest update I posted here: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/build-14-beta-4-internal-wip-for-testing.25696/
With that, the whole "soldier reinforcements" is disabled based on the "vcskip" attribute,
which is used in many quest scenes and hopefully solves similar issues in other situations as well.

 

[Talisman]

- Yes that works

 

[Pieter Boelen]

- Yes that works

"Fixed" then it is! Be sure to keep an eye out for similar situations. I hope my generic fixes for this have prevented them all; if not, we'll need to add "vcskip" attributes to those scenes too.

 

[Kpax7]

Sometime in that mission you have to convince a French Captain to sail to Port Royale with you. When he accepts to come with you and Tobias, you have to go through Port and kill all soldiers (too many!) and then board the ship!
But I fast traveled to the French ship (now replaced my own ship) and didn't go to port! I sailed all the way to Port Royale and didn't find my ship there! (As the Quest book said)
So I got back and went to Speightstown port and then I got in a big fight and after killing all those soldiers with sidestep cheat (Normally can't beat all that French soldiers with Muskets!! No way!) Tobias and the French Captain appeared in my officers and I could complete the mission!

 

[Talisman]

Sometime in that mission you have to convince a French Captain to sail to Port Royale with you. When he accepts to come with you and Tobias, you have to go through Port and kill all soldiers (too many!) and then board the ship!
But I fast traveled to the French ship (now replaced my own ship) and didn't go to port! I sailed all the way to Port Royale and didn't find my ship there! (As the Quest book said)
So I got back and went to Speightstown port and then I got in a big fight and after killing all those soldiers with sidestep cheat (Normally can't beat all that French soldiers with Muskets!! No way!) Tobias and the French Captain appeared in my officers and I could complete the mission!

This is from the 2nd time you go to Speightstown - the original post was about the first time Silehard sends you to Speightstown and you find out about the Ammunition Ship waiting at Martinique.

However, what you say is true - when you have to escape through Speightstown Port with Tobias - all the French soldiers attacking you, and being unable to board your ship until you have killed them all - if they have muskets it is really hard - best place to fight them is at the top of the steps in the port where it is very narrow and they can only approach you one at a time.

You do have to play through this bit - if you try to avoid it by using Fast Travel to go straight to the Ship - then the quest breaks as you have found out.

 

[Kpax7]

This is from the 2nd time you go to Speightstown - the original post was about the first time Silehard sends you to Speightstown and you find out about the Ammunition Ship waiting at Martinique.

However, what you say is true - when you have to escape through Speightstown Port with Tobias - all the French soldiers attacking you, and being unable to board your ship until you have killed them all - if they have muskets it is really hard - best place to fight them is at the top of the steps in the port where it is very narrow and they can only approach you one at a time.

You do have to play through this bit - if you try to avoid it by using Fast Travel to go straight to the Ship - then the quest breaks as you have found out.

Yeah! I exactly did the same! went to that narrow point but they are very very strong and my crew and officers get killed in a blink and I can only kill 4-5 of them and always there remains at least 2-3! I tried everything including Grenades ! But at the end I had to cheat to skip this part! Game doesn't allow me to use muskets yet!
It's really unfair!

 

[Hylie Pistof]

That is one of those places where the special weapons like grenades, stink pots, and poisoned throwing knives come in very handy. Oh yeah, and track shoes as I do lots of running around.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If anyone has any thoughts on how to make that part a bit more reasonable to play through, I'd certainly be interested to hear it.
General town guards should, as far as I'm concerned, be quite a force to be reckoned with. But quests shouldn't become unplayable because of that.
This is why the level and skills for soldiers depends on Difficulty and the Standard Storyline is on Apprentice level.

Were there any of the "soldier reinforcements" occurring in that scene as well? If so, those are probably gone as per today's Beta 4 WIP update.
That functionality isn't intended to occur in quests anyway, but is a side-effect of a generic added feature.

 

[Kpax7]

Were there any of the "soldier reinforcements" occurring in that scene as well? If so, those are probably gone as per today's Beta 4 WIP update.
That functionality isn't intended to occur in quests anyway, but is a side-effect of a generic added feature.

Yes some more soldiers get added to the 3 standing soldiers by the door.
I'm playing Apprentice on Beta 3.4

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Yes some more soldiers get added to the 3 standing soldiers by the door.

In that case it should probably be a lot more playable in Beta 4; it wasn't intentional that the story would be quite that hard.

 

[Kpax7]

Ok, Great! Thanks!

 

[Talisman]

When after talking to Silehard in his bedroom you go to Bridgetown and talk to Prison Warder Ronald Blacklock about idol.

Fight Blacklock in prison - exit Prison then have to Town fight soldiers outside

Then Fort commander sending Reinforcements - Log message appears

And masses more soldiers appear

OR is this instance correct and supposed to happen


Save is after fighting Blacklock - about to exit prison.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Not intentional; will check early next week.
With the last rewrite, it should be an easy fix by adding a vcskip attribute for those scenes.

Basically this is NEVER intentional for quest scenes.
It is just intended to make the soldiers less of bunch of pushovers during general play.

 

[Kpax7]

I just passed this part of story too! There were a lot of soldiers outside of prison! I had to use sidestep to run away through the walls LOL

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Save is after fighting Blacklock - about to exit prison.

I think the lines marked "PB" in the below excerpt of the Standard Storyline quests_reaction.c file should solve this problem:

      // PB: Corrected so this is not overwritten by the next few lines -->
       pchar.quest.escape_from_greenford.win_condition.l1 = "location";
       pchar.quest.escape_from_greenford.win_condition.l1.location = "Oxbay";
       pchar.quest.escape_from_greenford.win_condition = "escape_from_greenford";
       // PB: Corrected so this is not overwritten by the next few lines <--

       pchar.quest.prepare_escape_from_greenford.win_condition.l1 = "ExitFromLocation";
       pchar.quest.prepare_escape_from_greenford.win_condition.l1.location = "Greenford_prison";
       pchar.quest.prepare_escape_from_greenford.win_condition = "prepare_escape_from_greenford";

       pchar.quest.return_idol_from_frigate.win_condition.l1 = "Character_Capture";
       pchar.quest.return_idol_from_frigate.win_condition.l1.character = "Eng Captain Idol";
       pchar.quest.return_idol_from_frigate.win_condition.l2 = "SeaEnter"; // to allow boarding PW
       pchar.quest.return_idol_from_frigate.win_condition = "return_idol_from_frigate_complete";
       pchar.quest.return_idol_from_frigate1.win_condition.l1 = "NPC_Death";
       pchar.quest.return_idol_from_frigate1.win_condition.l1.character = "Eng Captain Idol";
       pchar.quest.return_idol_from_frigate1.win_condition.l2 = "SeaEnter"; //to allow boarding PW
       pchar.quest.return_idol_from_frigate1.win_condition = "return_idol_from_frigate_complete";
     break;

     case "prepare_escape_from_greenford":
       PChar.vcskip = true; // PB
// KK -->
       //LAi_group_SetRelation("ENGLAND_SOLDIERS", LAI_GROUP_PLAYER, LAI_GROUP_FRIEND);
       LAi_group_SetRelation("ENGLAND_SOLDIERS", LAI_GROUP_PLAYER, LAI_GROUP_ENEMY);
// <-- KK
       LAi_group_SetRelation("ENGLAND_CITIZENS", LAI_GROUP_PLAYER, LAI_GROUP_FRIEND);
       if(GetRMRelation(PChar, ENGLAND) > REL_WAR) SetRMRelation(PChar, ENGLAND, REL_WAR); // RM - SetNationRelation2MainCharacter(ENGLAND,RELATION_ENEMY);
       LeaveService(PChar, ENGLAND, false); // RM
     break;

     case "escape_from_greenford":
       DeleteAttribute(PChar, "vcskip"); // PB
     break;

Does technically require a reload from prior to your save, because the "Greenford_commander_fight_exit" was already executed.
That would get you stuck with the "vcskip" attribute causing NO more random characters at all.
You can continue from that save by executing this through console after loading it:

      pchar.quest.escape_from_greenford.win_condition.l1 = "location";
       pchar.quest.escape_from_greenford.win_condition.l1.location = "Oxbay";
       pchar.quest.escape_from_greenford.win_condition = "escape_from_greenford";

       pchar.quest.prepare_escape_from_greenford.win_condition.l1 = "ExitFromLocation";
       pchar.quest.prepare_escape_from_greenford.win_condition.l1.location = "Greenford_prison";
       pchar.quest.prepare_escape_from_greenford.win_condition = "prepare_escape_from_greenford";

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Above changes now included in here: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/build-14-beta-4-internal-wip-for-testing.25696