In fact, thinking back at this bug there is something even more weird. Not about the crash itself : it's obvious it was because the ship was overloaded, and it did happen at a certain hour in the night.
But what I cannot understand is : how could Vigilia's ship could have been overloaded? What I haven't said in my first post is that even if it was asked by quest_reactions.c to load 500 of ebony and then 500 of linen, in the ship there were only 364 ebony and 6 linen. But that was still 3cwt bigger than the maximum capacity. So what the heck?... So there are some control somewhere to prevent the ship being overloaded, but either it's quite unperfect, either this might be linked to another problem.
I first thought about Seadogs - in Seadogs you are clearly told that the commerce capacity deals with the goods prices AND your knowledge on how to store them with maximum efficienty in the ship. Which means the better you are in commerce, the more goods you can actually put in the cargo - when you have a low skill there are always 3-4 cwt which should be empty but are not. Some tests in PotC seems to prove the Seadogs system is nowhere to be found, so it mustn't be that. (and if it was there, it should do the opposite - less goods for the same volume.)
So what happen to Vigilia Mendes? When he's joining you he have a pretty low level, and all skills to 1. So he's always gaining levels and free skill/ability points (in Build 13). Especially at the place where I run into the problem : FdF store, you gain some experience here as a reward for having excorted him to FdF. It was late in the evening, I talked to him and he earned a level. I gave him his new skills and a new ability. Then I saved, talked to the storeman, traded - and when the trading was more than 1 or 2 hour it crashed (as we had reach midnight). After loading back the game and the savegame again and again, during a while, I checked the cargo and noticed thoses strange 3 extra cwt for Vigilia Mendes ship, and corrected the whole thing via console.c as said before. I think the new ability I had given him was 'basic commerce' (or was it advanced? ) But I've checked all this and couldn't find a case in which your ship gets actually overloaded when the captain gains this ability - excepted when I played again this quest, Vigila Mendes did suddenly gain 1cwt more without doing any trading when he earned a level and when I had given him the basic commerce ability (I think...). But I wasn't able to recreate that afterwise.
Another strange point : you've seen that when goods are loaded in the ship via a line in quest_reaction.c there is this kind of control to avoid overloading. But when you try to use those same very lines in console.c there isn't. The ship can ends up with a negative value for the total volume of merchandise onboard, or on the opposite is extremly overloaded, depending in what you've written (-5000 ebony, +500 linen, etc).
But what I cannot understand is : how could Vigilia's ship could have been overloaded? What I haven't said in my first post is that even if it was asked by quest_reactions.c to load 500 of ebony and then 500 of linen, in the ship there were only 364 ebony and 6 linen. But that was still 3cwt bigger than the maximum capacity. So what the heck?... So there are some control somewhere to prevent the ship being overloaded, but either it's quite unperfect, either this might be linked to another problem.
I first thought about Seadogs - in Seadogs you are clearly told that the commerce capacity deals with the goods prices AND your knowledge on how to store them with maximum efficienty in the ship. Which means the better you are in commerce, the more goods you can actually put in the cargo - when you have a low skill there are always 3-4 cwt which should be empty but are not. Some tests in PotC seems to prove the Seadogs system is nowhere to be found, so it mustn't be that. (and if it was there, it should do the opposite - less goods for the same volume.)
So what happen to Vigilia Mendes? When he's joining you he have a pretty low level, and all skills to 1. So he's always gaining levels and free skill/ability points (in Build 13). Especially at the place where I run into the problem : FdF store, you gain some experience here as a reward for having excorted him to FdF. It was late in the evening, I talked to him and he earned a level. I gave him his new skills and a new ability. Then I saved, talked to the storeman, traded - and when the trading was more than 1 or 2 hour it crashed (as we had reach midnight). After loading back the game and the savegame again and again, during a while, I checked the cargo and noticed thoses strange 3 extra cwt for Vigilia Mendes ship, and corrected the whole thing via console.c as said before. I think the new ability I had given him was 'basic commerce' (or was it advanced? ) But I've checked all this and couldn't find a case in which your ship gets actually overloaded when the captain gains this ability - excepted when I played again this quest, Vigila Mendes did suddenly gain 1cwt more without doing any trading when he earned a level and when I had given him the basic commerce ability (I think...). But I wasn't able to recreate that afterwise.
Another strange point : you've seen that when goods are loaded in the ship via a line in quest_reaction.c there is this kind of control to avoid overloading. But when you try to use those same very lines in console.c there isn't. The ship can ends up with a negative value for the total volume of merchandise onboard, or on the opposite is extremly overloaded, depending in what you've written (-5000 ebony, +500 linen, etc).