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trade quests - balancing question

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DocMoriarty

Powder Monkey
Ok i finally got build mod (12) to run with my game and started out a new game. Really great stuff what ya'll did here. I played stock PotC a couple times before and even fixed a few bugs before i discovered your website.

I really like the new economic balancing (for example less profit from selling ships, less profit from most trade quests) with the exception of one point:

Occassionally i get exceptional well paid tradequests. Yesterday i got something like 140,000 gold for one cargo run, which gave me 3 levels on my low level toon plus of course a new ship from the profit. From what i can tell, these exceptional profits always come from cargo runs where i have to deliver ammo, doesnt occur with other trade items.

I think in a new build you should reduce these profits a tad since they are really kinda cheat, i easily could earn my pinace with just a few cargo runs and that slightly reduces the fun of working my way up the hard way, you know what i mean.

Just a suggestion. Keep up the good work !
 
<img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dunno.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shrug" border="0" alt="dunno.gif" /> You could always spend your money on OTHER things... <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="icon_wink.gif" />

<img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" /> What I mean is this - in the beginning, hire as many officers as you can afford; then you can build them up with you as you grow in the game. This, I find, is a good way to build the officer contingent you NEED - as opposed to hoping you'll find someone to "fit the bill' a ways down the road. <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/poet.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":hmm" border="0" alt="poet.gif" />

Glad you're having a good time with the mods - I'm continually amazed at the talent that has added such incredible features to this game. <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/doff.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":doff" border="0" alt="doff.gif" />
 
<!--QuoteBegin-CatalinaThePirate+May 12 2005, 09:04 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(CatalinaThePirate @ May 12 2005, 09:04 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin--><img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dunno.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shrug" border="0" alt="dunno.gif" /> You could always spend your money on OTHER things...  <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="icon_wink.gif" />

<img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" /> What I mean is this - in the beginning, hire as many officers as you can afford; then you can build them up with you as you grow in the game.  This, I find, is a good way to build the officer contingent you NEED - as opposed to hoping you'll find someone to "fit the bill' a ways down the road.  <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/poet.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":hmm" border="0" alt="poet.gif" />

Glad you're having a good time with the mods - I'm continually amazed at the talent that has added such incredible features to this game.  <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/doff.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":doff" border="0" alt="doff.gif" />
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Well basically i mentioned it, since i guess its an unintenional bug (as if there are intentional ones). It always happens when i get cargo missions for ammo (balls, grapes, knippels, bombs) and i guess, tho didn't test yet, that i get the whole profit from selling the ammo. It might happen since the usual calculation for prices doesnt work with ammo, maybe because some min or avg value isn't defined for ammo as opposed to normal trade items.

Anyway it's really too much. I mean i don't mind a warm gold shower here and there, it helps getting started, but not as warm as a 200k in one turn (with a Galleon).

Now that you mentioned officers. I once had the idea too to generate officers with profession related perks, which the stock PotC doesn't do. But i think, these should be pretty much more expensive than officers without profession perks.

Not sure what formula build 12 uses, stock was 100 gold per talent point. I think officers should cost at least that plus 500 gold per perk (or even more) initially and some reasonable fraction of that per month.

Oh and i suspended my modding when i discovered Pirates Ahoy. Your mod here has everything plus a lot more that i had in mind to mod.
 
Heh, well if you have any more ideas, please do not hesitate to mention them or get to work on them! <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheeky" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />

Officers, the way the system is set up now, are tailored to YOUR level - I believe you'll get some that are perhaps one or two levels above yours, but most are at your level, pretty much. That means that if you are at level 20, you should expect to find level 20-22 (or so) officers to hire, and yes, their skills are more and they DO cost more to hire. Not sure what the scale is, tho. <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":?" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />

This is why I like to nab them early - you don't pay as much, and can make them into the officer you WANT as opposed to finding someone and their randomly assigned points are just not quite what you'd wish for.

My main concern is that they have sailing capabilities because I might need them to captain a prize ship at one point or another.

Otherwise, depending upon whether they are boarding party officers or shipboard officers, I assign the skills &tc tailored to what I need them to do.

Perhaps as you grow in the game there should be a level where you can take all the points these officers have and assign them yourself - rather than rely upon points placed randomly by the game. <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/yes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":yes" border="0" alt="yes.gif" /> <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/par-ty.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheers" border="0" alt="par-ty.gif" />
 
The reason for that is because tradequest money is based on good quantity alone, not modified by good weight or good price. Since ammo is 20 units / 3weight or so (IIRC), thus you get 20x (or more!) as much money.

NB all below this is build, not stock:
(Also, the internal name for level is "rank", thus when I say rank I mean level)
Officer rank--well anyone's rank--on generation is scaled by difficulty level; officers and other friends have the scaling inverse though (so rank highest at Appr and lowest at Swash).
Taghmon rewrote officer generation--and now it works for any character--so that they are made _just_ like the player--they get 2sp and 1 perk per rank, and 100 per SP. Price is 100 gold per SP, yes, though when you higher them their base cost can be lower.
Note that in the build they're now payed that officerprice per month, and companions get more pay (since they're captains, not just officers).

Now, regarding trade quests.
First, thanks for bringing that up--there was a longstanding bug in my code (I _always_ do this, call CheckAttribute(thing.attribute) rather than the correct CheckAttribute(thing, "attribute") ). So ammo and repair goods were not properly skipped. They are now.
Also, I up and rewrote the whole price system, too. Now you'll get ( distance * goods weight * distance_scalar + price_difference * commission ) as pay, where:
distance = distance in wdmap units between towns
goods weight = weight of the total qty of goods you're carrying
distance_scalar = 0.02 for now, but tweakable in BS.h
price_difference = difference in price between the good price there and here (note pchar commerce has no effect on the price difference)
commision = 0.1 for now, tweakable in BS.h

Note that the whole shebang is then multiplied by player_price_mod in sell mode (i.e. 0.75 to 1.0 based on commerce and commerce perks of the party).
 
<!--QuoteBegin-NathanKell+May 13 2005, 12:11 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(NathanKell @ May 13 2005, 12:11 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The reason for that is because tradequest money is based on good quantity alone ...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Guess that explains it and great that you could find and fixed it that fast. Means a lot of hard work when starting a new game with the new build <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/bounce.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":b:" border="0" alt="bounce.gif" />

About officers:

At level 20 i got a few officers level 30 and above for hire at the tavern. I was playing at 2nd easiest difficulty level if i remember right. Also, these had nearly all perks set, usually all perks at least for their profession (plus the close combat stuff that they always have), so currently there is no point in levelling and setting perks for them yourself. On one hand this is good, if you loose officers when boarding enemies, but also its kinda against the fun of levelling them up yourself. The highest toon i have seen so far was a captured level 60 captain, while i am level 22 atm. Are you sure that the generated ones are just "slightly" above my level ?

I also had a problem with boarding a ship from a kill mission from a governor, which also indicates that there must be somethign wrong with this just "slightly" above at times.
I tried to board the ship several times but got killed nearly every time in an instant, unlike all other boardings that i did so far. Perhaps that had to do with crew morale too tho. Later i noticed that my crew morale was very low for some unknown reason.

Well i will have an eye on that.

Currently don't have too much time to mod or play due to lots of work in RL for the coming 3 or 4 weeks.

Or i would do stuff like female random officers at the brothel ... i was always missing an opportunity to hire female ones. <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/doff.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":doff" border="0" alt="doff.gif" /> ... Hmmm that would mean a change to tailors too, need female clothes if its for a female officer.
 
There are female outfits at the tailor. Heck, you could dress one of your male officers up as a female because when you choose a female skin, you get the female attributes (sorry, that sounds like a euphemism, but it is not) such as height and sex for the new model generated.
 
<!--QuoteBegin-DocMoriarty+May 13 2005, 11:23 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DocMoriarty @ May 13 2005, 11:23 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Guess that explains it and great that you could find and fixed it that fast.
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<img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/doff.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":doff" border="0" alt="doff.gif" />
<!--QuoteBegin-DocMoriarty+May 13 2005, 11:23 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DocMoriarty @ May 13 2005, 11:23 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Means a lot of hard work when starting a new game with the new build  <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/bounce.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":b:" border="0" alt="bounce.gif" /> <div align="right">[snapback]105278[/snapback]</div><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Heh.

<!--QuoteBegin-DocMoriarty+May 13 2005, 11:23 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DocMoriarty @ May 13 2005, 11:23 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->About officers:

At level 20 i got a few officers level 30 and above for hire at the tavern. I was playing at 2nd easiest difficulty level if i remember right. Also, these had nearly all perks set, usually all perks at least for their profession (plus the close combat stuff that they always have), so currently there is no point in levelling and setting perks for them yourself. On one hand this is good, if you loose officers when boarding enemies, but also its kinda against the fun of levelling them up yourself. The highest toon i have seen so far was a captured level 60 captain, while i am level 22 atm. Are you sure that the generated ones are just "slightly" above my level ?<div align="right">[snapback]105278[/snapback]</div><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

First, on upping them yourself: the advantage is their salary will be much lower, since they get a salary increase of 100 per level-up, vs. if you hired them it would be 200 per rank.

No, it's not slight. <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

Plus, it's a multiplier, so at high ranks the difference in additive terms is greater.

The formula is, where Diff is difficulty (1-4), pRank is player rank, pLead is summonedleadership, and pLuck is summoned luck.
Rand(x) gives a random number from 0 through x.

Friend: (pRank /2.0 + rand(pRank) + pLuck /3.0) * ( 0.66 + 4-Diff/5.0)
Enemy: ""................"".....- pLuck /3.0) ""....."" + (Diff-1)/5.0)
However, when the character is a captain, there are two more factors.
One is the multiplier, different for trade, navy, and pirate captains.
Trade is 0.5 * (0.66 + (Diff-1)/1.5)
Navy is 0.8 * "".............""
Pirate is 1.0 * "".........""
(Note that difficulty is thus exponential for captains).

The second factor is the captain's ship's class, and the floor for the resultant rank is (8-ship_class) ^ 1.25, where a fort is treated as class 0 (thus the floor for fort commanders is 8^1.25, 13). But that's not such a factor for player ranks of above, oh, 15 (because the floor of the other calc will be higher).

<!--QuoteBegin-DocMoriarty+May 13 2005, 11:23 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DocMoriarty @ May 13 2005, 11:23 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I also had a problem with boarding a ship from a kill mission from a governor, which also indicates that there must be somethign wrong with this just "slightly" above at times.
I tried to board the ship several times but got killed nearly every time in an instant, unlike all other boardings that i did so far. Perhaps that had to do with crew morale too tho. Later i noticed that my crew morale was very low for some unknown reason.

Well i will have an eye on that.

Currently don't have too much time to mod or play due to lots of work in RL for the coming 3 or 4 weeks.

Or i would do stuff like female random officers at the brothel ... i was always missing an opportunity to hire female ones. <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/doff.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":doff" border="0" alt="doff.gif" /> ... Hmmm that would mean a change to tailors too, need female clothes if its for a female officer.
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