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Steal cargo from enemy store owners

L0M3N

L0M3N

Sailor
I think we should be able to sail into an enemy port under false flag and get a cargo mission from a store owner and then just sail off and sell it for yourself without being considered evil or whatever happens when you don't deliver cargo. I was sorely tempted when I saw my cargo was over 2000 units of paprika! That stuff is expensive! The only consequence should be like a few enemy ships come after you or something like that. What do you guys think?
 
no not really, apart from the false flag code being a bit 'iffy' sometimes, players finding ways to expolit the game for huge amounts of gold(what you going to spend it on anyway?) is already a problem in the game, so we don't need more ways for players to get rich, we actually need less. So maybe the penalties for such an action should be very harsh instead, like being declared a pirate in the colony that you stole from the merchant in?

iirc you can simply 'steal' from merchants but you do suffer a reputation hit, which if you want to be a bad-ass pirate is ok. The choice is yours to make, but there are realistic consequences. :)

I have a rough idea of introducing a tax inspector(Customs and Excise) that will take much of the players legaly earned gold in tax and ask awkward questions about the 'illegaly' aquired loot. They will persue the player around the Caribbean, and the more the player 'evades' them, the higher up the priority chain the player will rise until a full battle fleet on behalf of the tax man is chasing the player down! ;) (just joking!)

But overall we need ways to reduce the amount of player cash, rather than increase it(as that just devalues it and results in a broken economy).
 
the amount of player cash is only borked because of the way swords are currently valued and assigned to characters. the rest isn't so bad.

and if you really want to screw the NPC's over, try this:
-take a cargo transporting mission
-sell the cargo to the smugglers
-kill the smugglers
-steal back the cargo
-deliver the cargo to the place it was meant to go in the first place
-quadruple the profit, and noone's the wiser!
 
Morgan Terror said:
the amount of player cash is only borked because of the way swords are currently valued and assigned to characters. the rest isn't so bad.

and if you really want to screw the NPC's over, try this:
-take a cargo transporting mission
-sell the cargo to the smugglers
-kill the smugglers
-steal back the cargo
-deliver the cargo to the place it was meant to go in the first place
-quadruple the profit, and noone's the wiser!
Click to expand...

he's not called 'Morgan Terror' for nothing! :cheers

Actually in relation to your point on the blades(it also is an issue with the higher end pistols/musketoons also), i've started the slow process of re-adjusting the whole basis of the economy for personal items(starting with reduction in top end prices). It's on my list of things to test out for sure.
 
be careful with the top end prices. they were raised to that high because those are actually the historical values of such weapons. a better solution to fixing this is making the cheap swords more common, making more cheap weapons, and making the expensive weapons only very rarely used by your enemies. the problem is though that by my knowledge item generation doesn't work with a % chance of spawning, but with a level based spawn chance.

i've never tried killing one of those, no, but i know what happens. i also know that the problem could very well be gone by having one of your officers kill him, but i'm not sure of that yet.

the only downside to my magnificent tactic for fun and profit is that the smugglers get bugged if you killed them before.
 
Morgan Terror said:
be careful with the top end prices. they were raised to that high because those are actually the historical values of such weapons. a better solution to fixing this is making the cheap swords more common, making more cheap weapons, and making the expensive weapons only very rarely used by your enemies. the problem is though that by my knowledge item generation doesn't work with a % chance of spawning, but with a level based spawn chance.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it would be great to associate those really expensive blades with single NPC-quest encounters only. The 'royal' quality blades of the period were incredibly expensive, but very unique items. And i'm thinking exactly as you are on the prospect of making cheap/common weapons much more likely to found. Compared to the issues we were getting in Build 12 over the player finding the best weapons in chance random pick-up location(barrels/behind trees etc), Build 14 is streets ahead of those issues, i can't fault it on that. But we do have an issue over the best way to deal with really valuable items. That quad-shot 'mercenry's pistol' for example - that IS just too commonly found(mostly on recruitable officers) at low levels for it's current value! But yeah the aim is to tweak the rareity values a bit, adjust the level certain top tier items become available in the game and then look at the general pricing of items vs their 'rareity' and stats etc.

I've got a bunch of good info on much of this type of thing from other projects i've worked on in associated fields(weapon and armour costs through history etc), so will do my research before making drastic changes etc. Here is one interesting example of the sources i have to draw upon(just for those historicaly interested):

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/medievalprices.html#WEAPONS
 
The problem is that there IS rarity in place; it just DOES - NOT - WORK - PROPERLY. To my VERY big annoyance!!! :whipa
 
then i suppose there may be another way of implementing rarity, since the existing system doesn't work anyway.
 
well it's not a bad system, it's a huge improvement on build 12's 'random items' generation for example, so there has been progress :yes
 
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