This or TEHO?

[Lamias1]

Hey guys, I am being troubled and would appreciate some thoughts.

I had played PotC without mods back in 2003, and both AoP and AoP 2, so I have a general idea of the game mechanics. Now, I wanna give the game another run, and I have narrowed it down to PotC (modded with NH of course, it looks amazing), and Sea Dogs - To Each His Own.

So the question is, which of the last two is better, feature-wise?

I don't care about graphics and eye candy at all. What I am looking for is new features, content and gameplay. Story-line plays a role in my head too, but it's secondary.

Which game gives you more things to do while free playing?
Which game gives you more options to choose from and different paths to go down?
Which game offers new gameplay features (possibly new islands, new mini-games, trade routes, new gameplay mechanics etc)

Generally, which game has more content? I am not talking about new items and ships, I am talking about gameplay features, doing things that you couldn't do in previous game.

Thanks for any input!!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Ahoy there, @Lamias1 and welcome aboard!

I had tried to make a fair comparison of the pros and cons of the various games in the series in this post:
Need Help - Landlubber's guide to games and mods?
You might also want to have a look at the various PotC:NH features explained here: New Horizons | PiratesAhoy!
Maybe @LarryHookins can provide additional details on SD:TEHO, as he made the switch to the newer game.

A lot depends strongly on personal preference and what exactly you want to do.
I hope this helps you in making the right choice that fits with your wishes.

 

[Lamias1]

Ahoy Pieter Boelen! Thanks for the welcome.

Also thanks for the links you provided. They really help me and I will study them, but I still have one big question mark.

You say for example that "TEHO has additional gameplay features compared to CoAS". What does that mean? What additional gameplay features are those that TEHO has? I can't find them in any review.

Essentially, if TEHO is just a remastered CoAS with better graphics, new ships and items, a new storyline and 2-3 new side quests, then I wouldn't bother with it.

But if TEHO has new gameplay mechanics, like for example, setting up shops, creating trade caravans and trade routes, capturing colonies and building stuff, then it may be worth it.

TEHO or NH? Which is closer to what I am describing?

Thanks for replying!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You say for example that "TEHO has additional gameplay features compared to CoAS". What does that mean? What additional gameplay features are those that TEHO has? I can't find them in any review.

To be honest, I haven't a clue. I've never really played CoAS, nor TEHO. Hopefully somebody else can give a better answer.

 

[Homo eructus]

I only recently have tried TEHO and to be honest, I don't see myself putting nearly as much time into it as I've put in POTC NH. It seems to have some features absent from previous games but it also lacks some quality of life features that NH has.

From looking at the Steam achievements for TEHO, it seems that you can indeed own a house and rent warehouses, but I haven't got that far and don't know how deep these mechanics are. There is also a crafting system, and a couple of gambling minigames, maybe a little bit more variety in the repeatable quests and several DLCs with extra content.

On the downside, the English translation is really atrocious, dialogs are terrible (and not just due to the god-awful translation) and the tutorial/prologue drags on way more than it should, isn't even that useful as a tutorial and forces you to read way too much badly translated terrible dialog.

NH has much more freedom form the get go, you can choose different historical periods and is generally better written, both the text remaining from the vanilla POTC and most of the community-added content (there's some slightly broken English in some storylines but not as bad as the consistently terrible English writting in TEHO).

 

[STARk7]

It's very hard to survive in TEHO and that's the thing I liked while I was playing it.In every town you need to pick as many jobs as possible message delivery,escort,goods delivery and some awesome side "jobs" like attacking the fleet or kidnapping.

Best thing in NH is Direct Sailing (my opinion) which is unreachable by TEHO and COAS.

 

[Antiscamp]

From looking at the Steam achievements for TEHO, it seems that you can indeed own a house and rent warehouses, but I haven't got that far and don't know how deep these mechanics are. There is also a crafting system, and a couple of gambling minigames, maybe a little bit more variety in the repeatable quests and several DLCs with extra content.

Yeah, you can own a house, but it's only one, on Antigua, and you get it in a special quest. I never got the achievement either, because I made that quest for the wrong side. I did it for the Dutch and you're supposed to do the quest for the English, I believe, to get that achievement. Crafting is basic. Gambling is something you never use. I like TEHO, but so far, the only thing it has going for it over NH is its better looks.

I'd recommend NH over TEHO if you want a feature-packed pirate game rich with options and don't care about looks.

Best thing in NH is Direct Sailing (my opinion) which is unreachable by TEHO and COAS.

You can do direct sailing to some extent in TEHO, but when you reach area borders, you need to jump out to the "campaign map" and cross those borders like that. Hook's mod with ActiveMap is great for that. I do direct sailing a lot in TEHO, because I find it relaxing.

 

[LarryHookins]

I do direct sailing a lot in TEHO, because I find it relaxing.

A man after my own heart.

You might find NH to be better than TEHO. It is certainly a lot easier, and has a LOT more content. But there is no reason why you can't try both.

Hook

 

[Antiscamp]

Yeah man, there's nothing like passing an island in the early morning sun, with a nice summer breeze filling your sails, and that relaxing TEHO sailing music in your ears and the contented creaking of the ship.

 

[STARk7]

Yes you can sail until border but you can't encounter ships.I love sailing in NH I don't even use "R" button to speed up time to get most realistic experience.

 

[LarryHookins]

Well guys, I went one further than that. I was getting a little bored with TEHO so I bought Vehicle Simulator (the successor to Virtual Sailor). I found a variety of good boats, and eventually discovered the L'Aurore, a 38 gun square rigged frigate. Of the 2064 hours I have in the sim, that one ship accounts for 414.

I generally sailed in the Caribbean but there is some good Spanish terrain. I was sailing the HMS Surprise in and out of Port Mahon.

Check out the screen shots of the L'Aurore and separate expansion here:

Vehicle Simulator Addons - DVO Marine Design Shop

Hook

 

[STARk7]

Wow,beautiful ship and I can see that it's not the only one there.I will definitely try Vehicle Simulator and looking forward seeing the difference between sailing in VS and NH/TEHO.

Thank you for this

 

[Antiscamp]

I haven't seen that game before. It's definitely of interest! I bet there's a downloadable Titanic model too.

Oh, and I see people mod scenery. It should be possible to recreate a 17th century Caribbean environment within that program as well.

 

[LarryHookins]

There are several versions of the Titanic, the most detailed being Hudizzle's. It was made for Virtual Sailor so not everything works right in VSF (Vehicle Simulation Framework or Vehicle Simulator). Check the VSF forums on Steam for more info.

The Aurore has a couple of problems, and I've modified it extensively. For example, the name on the stern now reads Surprise, from O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books. But even the pure stock version is good. The main problem is that the furled main sails use the wrong model, but a correct model is available directly from the developer (not from DVOMarine as far as I know).

Sailing is very different from our simplified sailing models in the Storm games. Heel is modeled, apparently accurately, and when coming about through the wind (tacking) you have to lower and raise the main and jib sails or you'll miss stays (sometimes called being "in irons" although getting out of that is easy enough). In higher winds I have to reduce sail to prevent the ship heeling too much. Speeds seem accurate for any given wind speed. The apparent wind speed and direction are modeled, which means if the real wind is coming directly from the side, the apparent wind is faster and comes from farther forward. You can guess the effect this will have on how close you can sail to the wind.

If you buy the L'Aurore, email the author to get the correct furled sails file (if not already included in the original download), and please do mention my name. I've told him I post about his ships on Steam and it would be nice for him to see how effective my promotion of his ships is. He's also made the Bellona 74 gun ship of the line, and the Ontario 14 gun brig, which are both good as well. For freeware there is a version of the HMS Victory and the USS Constitution (if you can ever get it to download, keep trying as it's worth it) on

HMS Victory - All-Aircraft-Simulations • View topic - HMS Victory for VSF
USS Constitution - All-Aircraft-Simulations • View topic - USS Constitution for VSF

and both are fairly good.

Hook

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Best thing in NH is Direct Sailing (my opinion) which is unreachable by TEHO and COAS.

It was "hacked" into PotC by a modder who wasn't even a real-life programmer at all.
I'm certain a modder could add the same functionality to CoAS too.
And didn't @LarryHookins already add it to TEHO? Sounds like something he would do!

You might find NH to be better than TEHO. It is certainly a lot easier, and has a LOT more content. But there is no reason why you can't try both.

Exactly! Why bother choosing at all?

Vehicle Simulator Addons - DVO Marine Design Shop

Wow, that has taken flight! I still remember the days when ALL addons were 100% free and available from my Virtual Sailor Shipyard.
How times have changed...

I bet there's a downloadable Titanic model too.

There has been one for as long as I can remember here: Visual Sailor Simulator - Marine, Ship and Naval Simulator Game.
But that one isn't very detailed. I'm curious to see the new one!

Obviously this is the best model available for Virtual Sailor/Vehicle Simulator:

Yep, that's some shameless self-promotion on my part.
But in my defence: She's got toilets and a cinema showing the first Pirates of the Caribbean film!
And there's an updated version that I think isn't available online anymore that adds pretty girls in bikini's around the pool area.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

It was "hacked" into PotC by a modder who wasn't even a real-life programmer at all.

I seem to recall that it took 2 years and the game became almost unplayable until the worst of the bugs were worked out. Check out the minimap.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I seem to recall that it took 2 years and the game became almost unplayable until the worst of the bugs were worked out. Check out the minimap.

For clarity's sake, the DirectSail mod was made by @CouchcaptainCharles.
Despite not being a real programmer, he was EXTREMELY creative and made such other amazing mods like Vice City (random characters in towns) and also that funky BuildingSet.

He effectively single-handedly proved to me that where there is a will, there is a way.
He would somehow accomplish the impossible by sheer lack of realisation that it couldn't be done, by not giving up and always finding a workaround!

He would also always take great care to rigourously test his mods before releasing them to the public.
And he would make them modular to an unbelievable extent to ensure his work would never interfere with anyone else's.
The actual DirectSail mod he released for Build 13 was the best example of that.
All code was inside a single file and it was enabled through one single line in another file.
As a consequence, it was easily the biggest yet safest mod ever created.

Long story short: we had a lot of rough patches and a lot of bugs on the way to New Horizons.
But @CouchcaptainCharles was in absolutely no way to blame for any of that.
If other modders (myself included) had better followed the example set by him, the development would have been a far smoother ride.

Also, please forgive me for fanboying a fair bit here.
The guy fully deserves credit where credit is due!
He is one of the heroes of New Horizons and a truly inspiring person altogether.

Plus he gave us DirectSail which, years after its release, some of the original game developers still thought could not be done in this game engine.
Except he did it! And people still massively enjoy it to this day.

 

[LarryHookins]

It was "hacked" into PotC by a modder who wasn't even a real-life programmer at all.

I'm not sure where "not a real-life programmer" came from. He did a good job in any case.

I didn't try to add direct sail to TEHO. They use some different concepts in their game map data and while it is possible to use a method similar to NH (I've seen it in COAS code) it's got too much potential for problems beyond anything we experiences in NH.

Hook

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

There are several versions of the Titanic, the most detailed being Hudizzle's. It was made for Virtual Sailor so not everything works right in VSF (Vehicle Simulation Framework or Vehicle Simulator). Check the VSF forums on Steam for more info.

The Aurore has a couple of problems, and I've modified it extensively. For example, the name on the stern now reads Surprise, from O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books. But even the pure stock version is good. The main problem is that the furled main sails use the wrong model, but a correct model is available directly from the developer (not from DVOMarine as far as I know).

Sailing is very different from our simplified sailing models in the Storm games. Heel is modelled, apparently accurately, and when coming about through the wind (tacking) you have to lower and raise the main and jib sails or you'll miss stays (sometimes called being "in irons" although getting out of that is easy enough). In higher winds, I have to reduce sail to prevent the ship heeling too much. Speeds seem accurate for any given wind speed. The apparent wind speed and direction are modelled, which means if the real wind is coming directly from the side, the apparent wind is faster and comes from farther forward. You can guess the effect this will have on how close you can sail to the wind.

If you buy the L'Aurore, email the author to get the correct furled sails file (if not already included in the original download), and please do mention my name. I've told him I post about his ships on Steam and it would be nice for him to see how effective my promotion of his ships is. He's also made the Bellona 74 gun ship of the line, and the Ontario 14 gun brig, which are both good as well. For freeware, there is a version of the HMS Victory and the USS Constitution (if you can ever get it to download, keep trying as it's worth it) on

HMS Victory - All-Aircraft-Simulations • View topic - HMS Victory for VSF
USS Constitution - All-Aircraft-Simulations • View topic - USS Constitution for VSF

and both are fairly good.

Hook

Well, you sold me. Not just on Vehicle Simulator, but the Aurore as well. If you're willing to share your modifications, I would be most grateful.

 

[Cerez]

I didn't try to add direct sail to TEHO. They use some different concepts in their game map data and while it is possible to use a method similar to NH (I've seen it in COAS code) it's got too much potential for problems beyond anything we experiences in NH.

I'm not sure how POTC/NH handles the passage of time (and related weather changes, if any), but I've been thinking about implementing something like this for CT from the start (I'm a big real-time sailing fan, too). @Grey Roger gave me an idea perchance based on @CouchcaptainCharles's work on how I could make it work in CT.

The problem is that, since CT is programmed to impement weather changes on location reload and not in real-time, and since the weather is constantly changing in the day as hours pass, this would require me to trigger a location reload every time the weather changes -- which, needless to say, is less than optimal for an uninterrupted and smooth sailing experience.

By default, the game handles real-time sailing without any passage of time, but if we take this to across the sea to reach another island, it becomes quite jarring that we have travelled the entire trip frozen in time and weather.

In other words, in order to make this work, I would essentially have to rewrite how the game handles time and weather changes to make time and weather transition real-time, which would be an enormous undertaking, more than I have time for without getting paid for my work -- if you get my meaning. I think this may be reason DirectSail has not been implemented in later games in the series.

But I'd be very interested to hear how NH handles DirectSail and the passage of time!