Questions regarding morale and white flag hoisting

[FlayedOne]

Hi guys I have a couple of questions regarding your thoughts on a couple of issues.

1. What do you think about current morale system? It sems it is never an issue unless you regularly skip payments and/or sail without supplies - even for a newbie captain. I think it lacks a bit of randomness.

I was thinking about implementing a system of random events such as for example:
- An argument between crewmembers ended up with one of them wounded slightly lowering morale.
- An argument between crewmembers ended up with one of them dead loweing morale.
- A full blown fight between many cremembers happens - several dead and wounded. Morale plumets.
- An accident with a sail happened wounding a crew member and damaging sails slightly, lowering morale.
- An accident with cargo happened wounding a crew member, resulting in a loss of cargo and lowering morale.
- During the night a crewmember fell overboad. Morale get's damaged.
- A crewmember spotted a mermaid - the good omen raises morale.
etc.

Most of them would have chances of occuring based on a skill, and a chance to lower the negative effect by successful use of leadership.

What are your thoughts on this?

2. I seem to remember there used to be an option to surrender by hoisting a white flag in the earlier builds. Why was it removed? Perhaps some good surrendering mechanic would be useful?

3. I'm looking for a way to either display some additional text in the dialog interface or/and on the game screen when you approach a character, you can see their miniture profile pic, name and last name in the upper left corner. My search through the program led me nowhere (besides overriding the name). Perhaps someone here knows how to achieve this?

 

[Grey Roger]

1: Those random morale losses would need to be very infrequent, even for a player character with Leadership 1 and no supporting officers, otherwise the game may become unplayable when starting most storylines or even a FreePlay with most character types. Besides, a ship whose crew discipline was so poor that these events occur often would soon cease to be a floating vessel.

There can already be fights among the crew and loss of morale if you put them on double rum rations. If you can find the code for this, it may give you a starting point.

2: What would you want to happen if the player surrenders? Bear in mind what happens to an enemy who surrenders to you - you take his ship and then have the choice to ransom him, execute him or release him for reputation. So if you surrender, you certainly lose your ship and probably lose a lot of money.

On the other hand, a white flag as a flag of truce might have uses. You could enter an enemy port safely, but you'd need to behave yourself - either block the player from drawing weapons at al, or impose severe penalties if the player gets into a fight, while under a flag of truce.

3: I've no idea, but it should be possible to add things to the display. The stock game does not show the profile and name in the top left, so this must have been added. What sort of additional text do you want to add?

 

[FlayedOne]

1. I was thinking of tying it to crew number relative to leadership somehow. Would it be bad if an inexperienced (leadership 1) captain would have to hire an experienced officer to manage 300 crew on a frigate?

Thanks, I'll look them up.

2. I was thinking of a somewhat symmetric scenario. Enemy captain would come up to the player character, and decide what to do based on some stats (relations, reputation, luck and so on). IIRC it used to simply have a chance of stopping the enemy from attacking you.

3. Thanks, I'll dig into this some more. Just some short text about how the player character perceives the npc for my mod.

 

[DavyJack]

Hi guys I have a couple of questions regarding your thoughts on a couple of issues.

1. What do you think about current morale system? It sems it is never an issue unless you regularly skip payments and/or sail without supplies - even for a newbie captain. I think it lacks a bit of randomness.

I was thinking about implementing a system of random events such as for example:
- An argument between crewmembers ended up with one of them wounded slightly lowering morale.
- An argument between crewmembers ended up with one of them dead loweing morale.
- A full blown fight between many cremembers happens - several dead and wounded. Morale plumets.
- An accident with a sail happened wounding a crew member and damaging sails slightly, lowering morale.
- An accident with cargo happened wounding a crew member, resulting in a loss of cargo and lowering morale.
- During the night a crewmember fell overboad. Morale get's damaged.
- A crewmember spotted a mermaid - the good omen raises morale.
etc.

Most of them would have chances of occuring based on a skill, and a chance to lower the negative effect by successful use of leadership.

What are your thoughts on this?...

Those are very interesting indeed. If you do plan to add these though, I suggest you put not only the Leadership skill for calculation but in combination with Luck or "sneak" as well.
BUT as @Grey Roger has mentioned these should be activated when you're at a higher level, like say level 20 or above-ish, this way the player is already well established-ish else it would be really hard to start for newbies/starting the game. Some players complain about the difficulty in skirmishes. Adding this would absolutely destroy them. Lol.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

1. What do you think about current morale system? It sems it is never an issue unless you regularly skip payments and/or sail without supplies - even for a newbie captain. I think it lacks a bit of randomness.

If you switch to Double Rum Rations, then drunken brawls can randomly occur that temporarily cause a drop in morale.
PROGRAM\WorldMap\DailyCrewUpdate.c:

           if(rumQ <= 0)
           {
               moralescale = moralescale * RUM0_SCALE;
               //Log_SetStringToLog("No rum! Scale down to " + moralescale);
           }
           else
           {
               if(rumrations == 1)
               {
                   if(!rand(rum2chance))
                   {
                       Log_SetStringToLog(TranslateString("","Drunken brawl breaks out, morale plummets!")); // NK 05-03-19 added detail
                       moralech = moralech - RUMDEC * (2-moralemod);   // PB: Corrected to prevent morale INCREASING when this happens
                       ResetTimeToNormal();                           // PB: Slow down game to normal speed so you can deal with the situation
                   }
                   else
                   {
                       moralescale = moralescale * RUM_SCALE;
                   }
               }
               else
               {
                   moralescale = moralescale * RUM2_SCALE;
               }
           }
       }

Not sure how many people ever bother using that feature; or would even notice when this does slip by in the daily logs.

Personally I always liked the idea of the player getting to actually interact with the crew.
So for example, if you occasionally TALK to your crew on your ship's deck, chances of morale dropping would be far less.
If you only ever go from dock to 3D sailing and back again and never walk around your ship, you might start heading towards trouble.

I was thinking about implementing a system of random events such as for example:
- An argument between crewmembers ended up with one of them wounded slightly lowering morale.
- An argument between crewmembers ended up with one of them dead loweing morale.
- A full blown fight between many cremembers happens - several dead and wounded. Morale plumets.
- An accident with a sail happened wounding a crew member and damaging sails slightly, lowering morale.
- An accident with cargo happened wounding a crew member, resulting in a loss of cargo and lowering morale.
- During the night a crewmember fell overboad. Morale get's damaged.
- A crewmember spotted a mermaid - the good omen raises morale.
etc.

Definitely sounds like fun to me!

2. I seem to remember there used to be an option to surrender by hoisting a white flag in the earlier builds. Why was it removed? Perhaps some good surrendering mechanic would be useful?

It was removed because it basically just worked as a cheat.
Hoisting a white flag would make ALL ships around friendly to you.
But you could still continue about your business, because an actual surrendering mechanic was not included.

The button can easily be restored though at the bottom of PROGRAM\INTERFACE\NationRelation.c:

bool IsFlagSelectable(int iNation)
{
   // PB: ALWAYS allow changing flag, though which flag you fly may affect the consequences of your actions
/*   if (bSeaActive) {
       if (bMapEnter)
           return bChangeNation;
       else
           return false;
   }*/
   if (!bSeaActive && !ownDeckStarted()) return false; // PB: Allow only on deck or at sea
   if (iNation == NEUTRAL_NATION) return false; // PB: Unfinished feature, better disable for now
   return bChangeNation;
}

3. I'm looking for a way to either display some additional text in the dialog interface or/and on the game screen when you approach a character, you can see their miniture profile pic, name and last name in the upper left corner. My search through the program led me nowhere (besides overriding the name). Perhaps someone here knows how to achieve this?

I'm still not 100% sure what you're after.
Some text about a character when facing him/her?
Maybe that could be added to the on-screen interface thing with the portrait and character name?
Alternatively, use @konradk's method to put the Date/Time at the top of the screen?

1. I was thinking of tying it to crew number relative to leadership somehow. Would it be bad if an inexperienced (leadership 1) captain would have to hire an experienced officer to manage 300 crew on a frigate?

No, that would be GOOD!
A bigger ship SHOULD be more difficult to handle than a small one.

One alternate idea I had was to try switching the game to the 100-skill points system from Age of Pirates 2.
That way, you could have a progression that maxes out much later.
And you could have large ships require higher skill values.
And instead of the HIGHEST skill counting between yourself and all officers, it could become the TOTAL ACCUMULATED SKILL.

So if a ship required Sailing of 20, then you might need two 10-point characters; or 3 7-point ones.

 

[Grey Roger]

Personally I always liked the idea of the player getting to actually interact with the crew.
So for example, if you occasionally TALK to your crew on your ship's deck, chances of morale dropping would be far less.
If you only ever go from dock to 3D sailing and back again and never walk around your ship, you might start heading towards trouble.

I'm not sure about that. Some players just want to get from port A to port B to progress a story or quest; this would force them to take time out to do something they don't generally want to do.

There are already some benefits to talking to crew or officers on deck. You can practice your melee against crew, or pass some hours by asking the time - primarily to wait for the correct time for smuggling, also useful if you arrive in port at night and can't do anything useful until morning. And now you can talk to your quartermaster to divide plunder, saving you a trip to a loanshark, and very useful if no port in the vicinity has a loanshark.

One alternate idea I had was to try switching the game to the 100-skill points system from Age of Pirates 2.
That way, you could have a progression that maxes out much later.

That might mess up storylines which require you to be pretty well maxed out. "Tales of a Sea Hawk" and "Ardent" both require you to board a tier 1 ship near the end, while "Assassin" requires you to board a tier 2 ship long before the end.

Besides, does the 100-point system mean you take 10 times as long to max out; or does it mean you get a visible increase more often because skill 5.9 in PoTC shows up as 5 while skill 59 in CoAS shows up as 59?

And you could have large ships require higher skill values.
And instead of the HIGHEST skill counting between yourself and all officers, it could become the TOTAL ACCUMULATED SKILL.

So if a ship required Sailing of 20, then you might need two 10-point characters; or 3 7-point ones.

That I do like. A tier 2 ship with several hundred crew will need more carpenters to repair it and surgeons to care for a crew, compared to a tier 5 brig.

However, what does it mean for companion and other NPC ships? You can at present assign one secondary officer to a companion ship, and other NPC ships don't tend to have secondary officers at all. If a ship with only one captain and no secondary officers is penalised, especially a large warship, does that make an enemy tier 1 ship a sitting target? Perhaps automatically assign secondary officers to NPC ships, and figure out some way to capture them as well as the captain if the ship surrenders...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

First things first: I am just brainstorming freely here.
As cool as these ideas are, I have absolutely zero plans of implementing them.
I'm just suggesting them in case @FlayedOne finds it of some use.

I'm not sure about that. Some players just want to get from port A to port B to progress a story or quest; this would force them to take time out to do something they don't generally want to do.

Having a Boatswain could good First Mate could take over this role.

There are already some benefits to talking to crew or officers on deck. You can practice your melee against crew, or pass some hours by asking the time - primarily to wait for the correct time for smuggling, also useful if you arrive in port at night and can't do anything useful until morning. And now you can talk to your quartermaster to divide plunder, saving you a trip to a loanshark, and very useful if no port in the vicinity has a loanshark.

But they're not CREW. They're just some 3D models with dialogs that function as menu's.
Your interactions with them might be useful to you as player; but nothing you do there affects THEM.

That might mess up storylines which require you to be pretty well maxed out. "Tales of a Sea Hawk" and "Ardent" both require you to board a tier 1 ship near the end, while "Assassin" requires you to board a tier 2 ship long before the end.

For sure IF this were done (big "if" right there!!), then a fair bit of rebalancing would likely be needed.
Not quite the 5-minute-job then...

Besides, does the 100-point system mean you take 10 times as long to max out; or does it mean you get a visible increase more often because skill 5.9 in PoTC shows up as 5 while skill 59 in CoAS shows up as 59?

That would depend on the balancing too, of course; but I'd imagine it would indeed have to be sped up a bit.
Maybe not by a full factor of 10; but maybe... 5? For example?

That I do like. A tier 2 ship with several hundred crew will need more carpenters to repair it and surgeons to care for a crew, compared to a tier 5 brig.

Exactly.

However, what does it mean for companion and other NPC ships? You can at present assign one secondary officer to a companion ship, and other NPC ships don't tend to have secondary officers at all. If a ship with only one captain and no secondary officers is penalised, especially a large warship, does that make an enemy tier 1 ship a sitting target? Perhaps automatically assign secondary officers to NPC ships, and figure out some way to capture them as well as the captain if the ship surrenders...

That's indeed a very valid question.
Yet another reason why this change wouldn't really be a trivial one.

Automatically giving NPC ships a sensible officer complement would be by far the best solution.
But as a placeholder, perhaps NPC ships could have their "effective skill ratios" divided by 10 (so just 1 captain will do), while the player ship would be divided by 100 (so you need officers).

 

[FlayedOne]

All the difficulty problems can be alleviated by making the difficulty setting a big factor and creating a setting so that everyone can tailor their experience to their tastes.
Having said that, I think that we need to go back one step before changing anything and discuss what the skill numbers are actually supposed to mean.

Does skill 1 represent a total greenhorn that can barely keep a dinghy afloat or a decent captain, just not as experienced as some in the carribbeans?
Does skill 5-6 represent an average captain or an experienced captain that outclasses most that he meets.
Does skill 10 represent an almost unattainable ideal or simply a very experienced captain.

Also, there is an issue of skill items being really cheap which devalues skills and officers, but I guess thats for another discussion.

 

[Grey Roger]

If you have "ITEM_REALISM" set to 1, gems and trinkets don't give you any bonus. So you can only get bonuses from books and navigational items such as compasses. That's fair enough; you might not yet know enough by heart but you can read the manual. (In the film "Captain Horatio Hornblower RN", Hornblower has to care for Lady Barbara Wellesley when she's sick. Not knowing much about medicine, he consults books. In game terms, that's using the Doctor's Toolkit and a couple of books to boost your Defence skill from 1 to 4.)

Many items have MinLevel requirements. They might not cost much but you won't find them until you have risen a few levels.