Upgrade ships to warships

[KillPhil]

I just had the idea after battling some merchants, and many of them had some very nice Pinnaces. We have many -of-War versions of certain ships, Fluyts, Pinnaces, Sloops.. it would be really cool if you could upgrade the base versions of this ships to the War-Versions. E.g. you capture a Pinnace and then you can go to the shipyard and upgrade her to a Pinnace-of-War (for a huge amount of gold/or maybe a fetch quest of course). It would fit quite good, because it was not unusual for pirates to capture normal slave and merchant ships and upgrade them to quite heavy armed warships, according to wikipedia.

I think this shouldnt be too hard to code, because it would simply require a check if you have a suitable ship and if you have, make a extra dialog option at the (pirate?) shipyard. I can't code this, but if you think about this idea, I can at least write the necessary dialogs

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It may be possible through a lot of hardcoding.
Having it dynamic so that it works regardless of what ships exist and automatically taking into account the proper upgrade prices based on ships_init.c would be decidedly harder.

 

[KillPhil]

Well I think hardcoded is fine enough? Or are you planning to add another 100 ships to the game?

If someone can do the code, I can do the copy and paste from ship_init.c that would be needed for this.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Well I think hardcoded is fine enough? Or are you planning to add another 100 ships to the game?

I don't, no. Never do know though. But I admit it is unlikely.

If someone can do the code, I can do the copy and paste from ship_init.c that would be needed for this.

In theory I know what might be necessary. But time is not on my side.

 

[Grey Roger]

Converting a basic pinnace ("Pinnace1", tier 5, 600 tons, 18 guns of 9lb) into a pinnace of war ("HeavyLineship", tier 3, 1200 tons, 82 guns of 12lb) would be a pretty neat trick - one is double the displacement of the other!

A sloop is not even remotely comparable to a sloop of war. A basic sloop is a little single-masted ship which doesn't need to be converted to a fighting ship because it's already dual purpose. A sloop of war is a much larger, three-masted ship, almost a frigate.

So just because ship type 1 has the same name as ship type 2 with "of war" added on does not necessarily mean that type 1 is simply type 2 with some extra guns.

The obvious candidate for such a conversion is the fast merchantman, which is basically an Aurora class frigate converted into a merchant, so a shipyard should be perfectly capable of converting it back again. And converting a basic fluyt ("Fleut1", 450 tons, 20 guns of 6lb) into a light fluyt of war ("FleutWar", 450 tons, 34 guns of 12lb) may be practical.

Historically, Blackbeard's ship Queen Anne's Revenge was formerly the French slave ship La Concorde de Nantes. But that in turn was originally the British frigate Concord, so again, it's not so much a ship which was originally a merchant being upgraded, so much as a ship which was originally a warship and then turned into a merchant being converted back into a fighting ship. Putting too heavy guns onto a ship which was not intended to carry them would probably raise the ship's centre of gravity, making it less stable and possibly liable to capsize.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Historically, Blackbeard's ship Queen Anne's Revenge was formerly the French slave ship La Concorde de Nantes. But that in turn was originally the British frigate Concord, so again, it's not so much a ship which was originally a merchant being upgraded, so much as a ship which was originally a warship and then turned into a merchant being converted back into a fighting ship. Putting too heavy guns onto a ship which was not intended to carry them would probably raise the ship's centre of gravity, making it less stable and possibly liable to capsize.

Absolutely: