Included in Build Naval/Privateer Promotion Steps

[Grey Roger]

Hardly. Remember, as a fleet admiral your official job is to run a desk. If you have a vessel at all, it's something personal. You can have a fishing boat.

 

[Grey Roger]

The Spanish fleet now welcomes loyal captains ready to fight for the glory of Spain!

There are a lot of ships specific to Spain listed in "Ships_init.c" and you get to play most of them. At lower rank you can get the Espadina gunship. A couple of historic ships, Apostól Felipe and San Felipe, are credited to "pgargon" and you'll get those at appropriate ranks.

The after-effects of overdosing on "Hornblower" are evident. @Pieter Boelen and I had some discussion about which ships to give Hornblower in free play, including whether he should get the Natividad, a Spanish ship which he captured in one of the books as well as the old Gregory Peck film. Hornblower doesn't get to play that ship but you get to play her while she was still Spanish. Also, in the video which shows Hornblower being captured along with Le Reve by the Spanish, it is explained that his deception failed because an officer aboard the San Isidre knew Le Reve and the manner of her capture. Now we know why - someone who plays PoTC and therefore knows exactly what happened to Le Reve can now command San Isidre.

Some "Early Explorers" names were taken from the Spanish Armada, in particular Girona. Part of my childhood was spent living in Northern Ireland, and during that time the wreck of the Girona, which went down near the coast of Antrim, was found and various artifacts and treasures brought to Belfast Museum, which duly put on a special exhibition and I got to see it.

 

[Bartolomeu o Portugues]

Incidentally, De Ruyter did actually show up in the Caribbean somewhat later in his career, in the Spiegel in 1665. (I've given De Ruyter a ConvoiShip of that name at rank 8.) Which means if @Bartolomeu o Portugues wants to extend either the "Bartolomeu" or "Assassin" storylines, De Ruyter is there at about the right time to be used for them.

By the way, I had Laurens de Graaf to use but he's a bit too young for my storylines. Ruyter would be a better choice.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

By the way, I had Laurens de Graaf to use but he's a bit too young for my storylines. Ruyter would be a better choice.

Hmm.... Would that Laurens de Graaf character model look appropriate for De Ruyter? Then we'll just repurpose him altogether!

The Spanish fleet now welcomes loyal captains ready to fight for the glory of Spain!

Brilliantly awesome and awesomely brilliant!

 

[Grey Roger]

Portugal is done; Britain is re-done to bring it into line with other nations. I've tried to be fair so that you don't get a significant advantage or disadvantage depending on your choice of nation, so in general rank 1 gets a lugger, rank 2 gets a sloop, rank 3 gets a brig, rank 4 gets a 6th rate frigate, rank 5 gets a corvette or frigate, rank 6 gets a super frigate, rank 7 gets a companion ship, rank 8 gets a 2nd or 3rd rate ship of the line, rank 9 gets a 1st rate ship of the line if available or another companion if not, rank 10 gets a companion with the most powerful ship available. Depending on nation and time period, various equivalents are substituted for these. Some people have put a lot of work into creating detailed historical specific ships and I've used as many of those as I could, e.g. Britain's HMS Victory, France's La Couronne, Spain's San Felipe.

I'm going to test this when I next play, not to actually play a naval officer but just to check that I haven't made any typos which cause it to crash the game, after which it's going to be released. But first...

There are two problems unique to America. One is that the USA doesn't exist in four of our six time periods. I have an idea about that. The other is that America doesn't seem to exist as a choice of nation for free play, so is there any point in me doing its promotion ships?

Pirate does exist as a nation for free play and you can choose to be a commissioned officer for Pirate nation. I've got some ideas for that, too.

And Personal is also a nation which can be chosen! I'm not going to bother with promotion ships for that - Personal is your own nation, so you can look after your own promotion ships!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Portugal is done; Britain is re-done to bring it into line with other nations. I've tried to be fair so that you don't get a significant advantage or disadvantage depending on your choice of nation, so in general rank 1 gets a lugger, rank 2 gets a sloop, rank 3 gets a brig, rank 4 gets a 6th rate frigate, rank 5 gets a corvette or frigate, rank 6 gets a super frigate, rank 7 gets a companion ship, rank 8 gets a 2nd or 3rd rate ship of the line, rank 9 gets a 1st rate ship of the line if available or another companion if not, rank 10 gets a companion with the most powerful ship available. Depending on nation and time period, various equivalents are substituted for these. Some people have put a lot of work into creating detailed historical specific ships and I've used as many of those as I could, e.g. Britain's HMS Victory, France's La Couronne, Spain's San Felipe.

There are two problems unique to America. One is that the USA doesn't exist in four of our six time periods. I have an idea about that. The other is that America doesn't seem to exist as a choice of nation for free play, so is there any point in me doing its promotion ships?

You CAN select America as a choice for free play. But only if the selected year is in the Revolutions or Napoleonic time frame.
I know that works, which is one of the reasons why I want the tutorial to actually work for America too.

Since they exist only in the last two periods, setting up the promotion reward ships should be 66% less work.
Other than that, I see no complexity arising from this. So I'm not sure what kind of clever idea you want to apply here, but it may not be necessary.

Pirate does exist as a nation for free play and you can choose to be a commissioned officer for Pirate nation. I've got some ideas for that, too.

And Personal is also a nation which can be chosen! I'm not going to bother with promotion ships for that - Personal is your own nation, so you can look after your own promotion ships!

At the moment I have the game set up so that if you select a pirate/personal nation naval officer, then you DO get the starting stats of a naval officer, but you do NOT get the "professionalnavy" attribute and won't actually BE in any navy.
So it'll be like regular play as if you didn't actually select "naval officer".

There is no such thing as "promotions from your personal nation", so indeed there is no point in setting that up.
However, there ARE promotions now when you officially join the "Brotherhood of the Coast". So indeed something could be set up for the pirates.

 

[Grey Roger]

Fair enough. I didn't think to change the year before choosing character type and nation. What I had planned, if America wasn't limited to the last two periods, is that America is a Spanish colony in "Early Explorers" and "Spanish Main", and a British colony in "Golden Age" and "Colonial Powers". So I was going to copy the promotion ships from the Spanish and British sections accordingly. I still might, just so that the promotion code is in place if the free play code changes or if someone finds a sneaky way to join the US Navy in 1690...

How do you give the player the cursed attribute? Because at Pirate rank 9, I'm considering giving the player the Flying Dutchman...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Fair enough. I didn't think to change the year before choosing character type and nation. What I had planned, if America wasn't limited to the last two periods, is that America is a Spanish colony in "Early Explorers" and "Spanish Main", and a British colony in "Golden Age" and "Colonial Powers". So I was going to copy the promotion ships from the Spanish and British sections accordingly. I still might, just so that the promotion code is in place if the free play code changes or if someone finds a sneaky way to join the US Navy in 1690...

Shouldn't be necessary, but since that code wouldn't be used it shouldn't matter either way.
I suppose if there is something in place, then that acts as a safeguard "just in case" so that isn't a bad thing.

How do you give the player the cursed attribute? Because at Pirate rank 9, I'm considering giving the player the Flying Dutchman...

At the moment that works by just giving the player the "Cursed_Coin" item. (I think that was the spelling, but check initItems.c to make sure)
Specific Davy Jones/Flying Dutchman type behaviour isn't yet in place. I was thinking of implementing a "Chest of Davy Jones" item for that purpose.

 

[Grey Roger]

Now working on the pirate promotion ships. One tricky bit is going through "Ships_init.c" trying to find something suitable for each rank in each period, and while that can be made easier by using the same ship for two or even three periods, it doesn't help when there's no 6th rate frigate or equivalent available to pirates in "Revolutions" or "Napoleonic". So I did what any self-respecting pirate would do. Portugal barely exists in those periods. The Portuguese version of "Volage" is therefore unlikely to be used much, so I stole it.

The other tricky bit is names. Anyone have any pirate ship names they'd like to see?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I can indeed imagine pirates being tricky. In fact, I'm not entirely sure if we should treat them exactly the same as the navies at all.
While it IS fun to get some cool stuff for free, why would the pirates logically give you any ships at all?

Also, the pirates have a maxclass defined (I think it is Tier 3 or 4) so they shouldn't be able to get any ships bigger than that.
Should the promotion rewards exceed that limitation? Again, I think logically they shouldn't.

That would mean that if you get any ships at all, they would remain somewhat small.
Perhaps then there wouldn't need to be a ship for each rank but only for a few of them?

The advantage of being a pirate would be that you don't have all the navy limitations but still can gain ranks with some rewards.
That could be a pretty big advantage if we manage some time to implement the navy to take some of your money even when you have a LoM.
But until that is done, you might as well just get a LoM and perhaps even join the pirates TOO and there's no real disadvantage to doing that.

 

[Grey Roger]

If you choose Free Play, you can choose character type "Naval Officer" and nation "Pirate". What happens if you do this?

Edit: sorry, didn't see this bit above:

At the moment I have the game set up so that if you select a pirate/personal nation naval officer, then you DO get the starting stats of a naval officer, but you do NOT get the "professionalnavy" attribute and won't actually BE in any navy.
So it'll be like regular play as if you didn't actually select "naval officer".

Of course, a commissioned officer in the Pirate Navy is silly. Just in case it does happen (same as just in case someone manages to become an officer in the American Navy in the wrong time period) it's my job to ensure that suitable silliness results. Wait till you see some of the names I've already assigned...

 

[ANSEL]

If you want to play as naval officer, the start menu is now wrong.
There is no ships for certain charathers, needs to be controlled again.
The icon for the ship says "Navy Assignment" but is empty, and you
will not have a ship.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If you choose Free Play, you can choose character type "Naval Officer" and nation "Pirate". What happens if you do this?

Nothing does!
This function from NK.c is applied to all Naval Officer characters upon game start:

void JoinNavy(int iNation)
{
   int i;
   ref ch;
   string model;
   ref pchar = GetMainCharacter();

   if(iNation == PERSONAL_NATION)
   {
     DeleteAttribute(pchar, "professionalnavy");
     return;
   }

   PChar.nation    = iNation;
   SetRelationsAsNation (iNation);
   ReceiveLetterOfMarque(iNation);
   SetRank(pchar, iNation, 1);

   if(iNation != PIRATE)
   {
     pchar.professionalnavy = true;

     pchar.boardingmodels = "Soldiers";
     pchar.boardingmodels.nation = iNation;
     for (i = 1; i <= 5; i++)
     {
       ch = CharacterFromID("Crewmember_0" + i);
       model = GetRandomModelForTypeExSubCheck(true, "Soldiers", "man", iNation);
       SetModelfromArray(ch, GetModelIndex(model));
     }
     for (i = 1; i <= 10; i++)
     {
       ch = CharacterFromID("Treas_Crewmember_" + i);
       model = GetRandomModelForTypeExSubCheck(true, "Soldiers", "man", iNation);
       SetModelfromArray(ch, GetModelIndex(model));
     }
   }
   else
     DeleteAttribute(pchar, "professionalnavy");
}

You can see there that for pirate and personal nation characters, the "professionalnavy" behaviour is cancelled.

Of course, a commissioned officer in the Pirate Navy is silly. Just in case it does happen (same as just in case someone manages to become an officer in the American Navy in the wrong time period) it's my job to ensure that suitable silliness results. Wait till you see some of the names I've already assigned...

When you join the pirates, you do get a rank, but not the "professionalnavy" attribute. That means all the "Fleet" promotion rewards are skipped.
This is because those are cancelled by this line:

if (!CheckAttribute(pchar, "professionalnavy")) return; // only for navy characters

If we WOULD want pirates to get extra rewards upon promotion, that line can be replaced with this:

if (!CheckAttribute(pchar, "professionalnavy") && LocationNation != PIRATE) return; // only for navy characters and pirates

That would unlock pirate reward ships as well. Not sure if we should do that though. I'll leave that up to you!

 

[Grey Roger]

As I said, a commissioned officer in the Pirate Navy is silly, so I'm happy to leave things as they are. But then, my ideas of what is silly don't necessarily match everyone else's, e.g. a cursed coin which turns you into a skeleton until you take it to be with its mates. So, in case anyone ever decides to let Pirates have their own navy, their promotion ships are now added. I had a lot of fun with names. The usual source, threedecks.org, didn't have much for pirates, though it did provide the name of a real pirate schooner which I duly applied to the schooner you'll get at rank 2. That replaced the name I already had in mind, but I liked the name so I reassigned it to something rather bigger which you'll get at rank 9. Who's going to be first to figure out the meaning of the name "Armeartes"? For other names, I turned to another source, the starships of Iain M. Banks' "Culture" stories. They have some amazing names and I grabbed quite a lot, e.g. "Ultimate Ship II" and "So Much For Subtlety".

Anyway, here's the finished product. Have fun!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

As I said, a commissioned officer in the Pirate Navy is silly, so I'm happy to leave things as they are.

Should there be *any* rewards for the pirates?
Seems a bit of a shame to let your work go to waste, but we can also figure it is "standby until needed some time in the future" or something.

But then, my ideas of what is silly don't necessarily match everyone else's, e.g. a cursed coin which turns you into a skeleton until you take it to be with its mates.

Damn right that's silly! But not quite as silly as the things from the other PotC films!
At least that particular game feature is now no longer active by default in the Free Play storyline.

For other names, I turned to another source, the starships of Iain M. Banks' "Culture" stories. They have some amazing names and I grabbed quite a lot, e.g. "Ultimate Ship II" and "So Much For Subtlety".

Wait, WHAT!?!?

 

[Grey Roger]

Ships for lower ranks were named with a theme. Rank 1 ships all begin with "R". Rank 2 ships all begin with "Ar". (At least, they did until I found that "Zaragozana" was the name of a real pirate schooner in the later time periods, so the final "Ar" name got moved.)
At rank 6 you can get Queen Anne's Revenge. At rank 3 you'll have to settle for Montezuma's Revenge.
Another "Culture" name, applied to a ship which is being used for pirates despite "Ships_init.c" saying they can't use it, is Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence.

Back to the more serious ships:
Portugal is effectively Spain minus the interesting bits. Spain has a lot of specific or unique ships in "Ships_init.c", e.g. Apostól Felipe, San Felipe and San Martin, which I used. Portugal doesn't - about the only special ship Portugal has is the Fragata Latina.

Britain no longer gets the steam frigate assigned as a promotion ship. America built a steam-powered gun battery in 1815 which never achieved much, otherwise nobody had even small steam warships until the 1820's. Putting steam frigates in the "Napoleonic" era therefore makes about as much sense as putting guided missile destroyers into a WW2 game because Germany was experimenting with missiles late in the war. However, since someone went to the effort of putting steam frigates in the game, they're not entirely left out; an American rank 6 in the "Napoleonic" period has a 1/4 chance of getting a steam frigate, otherwise he's getting either a generic Constitution style frigate or the actual USS Constitution. Beyond that, the steam frigate is a secret weapon being developed by enemy powers and it's your duty as a naval captain to seek out and destroy or capture it! (Meaning I haven't done anything to reduce the steam frigate's chances of appearing in general, you're just less likely to get one handed to you.)

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Ships for lower ranks were named with a theme. Rank 1 ships all begin with "R". Rank 2 ships all begin with "Ar". (At least, they did until I found that "Zaragozana" was the name of a real pirate schooner in the later time periods, so the final "Ar" name got moved.)
At rank 6 you can get Queen Anne's Revenge. At rank 3 you'll have to settle for Montezuma's Revenge.

Back to the more serious ships:
Portugal is effectively Spain minus the interesting bits. Spain has a lot of specific or unique ships in "Ships_init.c", e.g. Apostól Felipe, San Felipe and San Martin, which I used. Portugal doesn't - about the only special ship Portugal has is the Fragata Latina.

There are some Portuguese retextures done by Petros. PO_Caravel50 if I recall. That one's used as the Portuguese worldmap ship too.
But indeed not a lot of interesting stuff for them at all. Shame, really. But at least they get the Bartolomeu storyline to compensate.

Britain no longer gets the steam frigate assigned as a promotion ship. America built a steam-powered gun battery in 1815 which never achieved much, otherwise nobody had even small steam warships until the 1820's. Putting steam frigates in the "Napoleonic" era therefore makes about as much sense as putting guided missile destroyers into a WW2 game because Germany was experimenting with missiles late in the war. However, since someone went to the effort of putting steam frigates in the game, they're not entirely left out; an American rank 6 in the "Napoleonic" period has a 1/4 chance of getting a steam frigate, otherwise he's getting either a generic Constitution style frigate or the actual USS Constitution. Beyond that, the steam frigate is a secret weapon being developed by enemy powers and it's your duty as a naval captain to seek out and destroy or capture it! (Meaning I haven't done anything to reduce the steam frigate's chances of appearing in general, you're just less likely to get one handed to you.)

The steam frigate functionality was done by Snow White Sorrow and myself. Can't remember why we did it, though.
I think it was SWS' idea and I assisted with the implementation. Then when I found out how to make the engine work for REAL, I did some more work to get that operational too.

I understand that they aren't quite historically appropriate even at the end of the last time period, but I like them because they offer a fair bit of variety compared to all other ships.
Ideally there should be an actual sidequest that involves the steam frigates in such a way that it makes more sense. But that is again a lot of work, of course.
Only "simple" solution to that would be to update the "Pirate frigate at Martinique" sidequest to use it.

It would be nice if players in the Napoleonic period were encouraged to try the steam frigates though.
Would be a shame if such a feature would go largely unused because it is historically wrong by several years, despite it actually working quite well and potentially offering interesting gameplay.

I'm not entirely sure why you would possibly give players a generic Constitution style frigate upon promotion when the real Constitution exists.
That is a unique ship that cannot be encountered at random and the promotion rewards are a great opportunity for having such ships used.
Otherwise the only way to get her is from Vanderdecken and I like the idea of most ships being used somewhere that isn't Vanderdecken too.

Thinking of that, I recall there is a large Portuguese ship of the line that is never ever used anywhere in the game, but only available from Vanderdecken.
Should that one be used in the promotion rewards in any way? Also, Portugal has the same effect as Holland and doesn't have any truly large ships available in the first and last time periods.

 

[Grey Roger]

Depending on the result of a random roll, you can get either the generic frigate or the Constitution. In fact, you'll get Constitution 1/2 of the time, the generic frigate 1/4 of the time, and the steam frigate the other 1/4. And only from America, at least for now, which may encourage you to try their navy... (I could incorporate a similar random roll for Britain and possibly France, since they each have their own version of steam frigate.)

You can still get steam frigates by other means. I haven't touched anything else. So if they were available to buy in shipyards then you can still do so - you're presumably a rich admiral sponsoring the steam experiment out of your own funds. Or you can capture one from a rival nation, which is exactly how I got mine when I was playing the "Nelson" storyline in an earlier build version.

I already found out that Portugal and Holland don't have large ships in some periods. That's why they get an extra companion ship at rank 9.

Do you happen to know the name of that large Portuguese ship of the line? When I was going through "Ships_init.c" looking for suitable ships, I was always looking at the "ref.period" and "ref.<nation>" lines to pick ships suitable for a given nation and time. If that Portuguese ship has no such lines then I probably assumed it was something quest-specific and skipped over it.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Depending on the result of a random roll, you can get either the generic frigate or the Constitution. In fact, you'll get Constitution 1/2 of the time, the generic frigate 1/4 of the time, and the steam frigate the other 1/4. And only from America, at least for now, which may encourage you to try their navy... (I could incorporate a similar random roll for Britain and possibly France, since they each have their own version of steam frigate.)

Would it be an idea to have a 50/50 chance of either the Constitution or the Steam Frigate? I don't quite see the point of potentially getting a "boring generic ship" if more intesting ones are available.

I do like encouraging play for America, but many players may hardly know that America has a steam frigate available. So that wouldn't encourage much because nobody knows.

You can still get steam frigates by other means. I haven't touched anything else. So if they were available to buy in shipyards then you can still do so - you're presumably a rich admiral sponsoring the steam experiment out of your own funds. Or you can capture one from a rival nation, which is exactly how I got mine when I was playing the "Nelson" storyline in an earlier build version.

I'm just thinking that the steam frigates are being pushed further and further away from the player. Used to be the last two periods, now only the last. Used to always be a promotion ship, now only with 25% chance.
Of course they do occasionally show up at sea and in shipyards, but players might not notice them or not be able to get them.
At least as far as I'm concerned, I find it a very cool feature and would like players to be encouraged to give them a try.

I already found out that Portugal and Holland don't have large ships in some periods. That's why they get an extra companion ship at rank 9.

Do you happen to know the name of that large Portuguese ship of the line? When I was going through "Ships_init.c" looking for suitable ships, I was always looking at the "ref.period" and "ref.<nation>" lines to pick ships suitable for a given nation and time. If that Portuguese ship has no such lines then I probably assumed it was something quest-specific and skipped over it.

If I recall, it was PO_Trinity . If that isn't it, just visit Vanderdecken because he is the only place anywhere in the game to get that particular ship.
That ship was part of Noriruru's(sp?) Trinity variants and the PO_ version was his personal one. Since it didn't match in colour scheme with any of the nations, we couldn't actually use it.
For the sake of keeping his version anyway, we kept it as Vanderdecken-only ship. But it is used absolutely nowhere else. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to make that one a bit more useful?

 

[Grey Roger]

"PO_Trinity" is valid for periods 2 and 3, which are "Golden Age" and "Colonial Powers". I assumed "PO" meant "Portugal". And that's why a Portuguese Contra-Almirante (rank 9) will get a "PO_Trinity" during those periods. If you want to reserve a ship for personal use, don't put a national registration code in its name.