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What happens at Saint Martin?

Rad

Rad

Privateer
I was at Saint Martin and looked as some French soldiers fought with another soldiers (Dutchmans or Spaniards? ) I don´t know exactly. And under my feet constantly blasted something. I tried to figure out what it is whether it is some minefield or some exploding bomb shells I really don´t know. Can you anybody tell me what is it? What was meant by that? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/huhh.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":eek:k" border="0" alt="huhh.gif" />
 
At Saint Martin there are Dutch soldiers fighting the French. It's basically a warzone between outside both towns. There is artillery there that fires at all characters that come into it's range. That is the explosions that you see. Try to stay away from the artillery. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/whistling.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":wp" border="0" alt="whistling.gif" />
 
Thanks. I can see the point now. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/mybad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":facepalm" border="0" alt="mybad.gif" />
 
<!--quoteo(post=165041:date=Oct 2 2006, 02:25 PM:name=Rad)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rad @ Oct 2 2006, 02:25 PM) [snapback]165041[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
Can you anybody tell me what is it?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

The soldiers on the battlefield and in the towns can tell you what's going on, and they can also give you hints how to deal with the situation.
 
I am hyjacking this thread for further discussion on the goings on at Saint Martin.

Pirate_KK once asked why the Dutch and French soldiers outside the towns were set to the player's AI group. The locations outside the towns are set as dungeons with the result that there will be pirates generated there all the time. The intent is to have a battlefield going on outside the towns. CCC's way of acchieving this is to have these pirates fight against the Dutch and French soldiers all the time. he did this by setting the soldiers to the player group, so they'll be fighting.

The ideal solution would be to have the Dutch and French soldiers be generated nonstop who would fight each other all the time. And the soldiers would also fight the player if the player is hostile to their nation. The cannons there would then fire on any characters. And there would be no pirates generated at all, just French and Dutch soldiers.
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Pirate_KK removed the shipyards that CCC added to the ports. CCC added these shipyards because it makes the ports look quite differently from the original versions. And these shipyards were supposed to have full shipyard functionality. However, I made it so that these shipyards still ARE in the ports, but if you talk to them, they'll tell you you need to visit the Shipwright's Office in town to use the shipyard. The Shipwright's Office is the regular shipyard that Pirate_KK added. I think my solution is pretty good, becuase the shipyard works as usual, but we do still have the shipyard buildings in port as well.
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As far as CCC's taverns and stores go: His idea was to have the store and tavern owners be generated automatically the same way as the house owners in the game. The result was that sometimes there is no-one in there, sometimes there are enemies in there and sometimes the owner is in there. This was quite confusing for people, so perhaps it's better to have things as usual with your changes.

I think we should discuss the above things with CCC here to get clear what his original intent was? Perhaps we can think of a way to have everything work better, while keeping CCC's original intent, but also not confusing the players.

To CCC: Please correct everything I wrote above if it is not right. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />
 
Pieter, don't worry about conusing players. Just put it in a FAQ somewhere and if anyone asks, tell them to read the FAQ. I haven't been to that island, but the effect sounds just too good to get rid of.

Hook
 
At the moment the shipyards and stores have been made to work like the normal ones do. The fightzone outside the towns have remained though.
 
Most certainly. I don't want to lose that. But it'd be nice to have only French and Dutch soldiers fighting instead of a bunch of crazy pirates added in. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":rolleyes:" border="0" alt="rolleyes.gif" />
 
What pirates? As the soldiers tell you, those are irregular Geuzen and Franctireurs in civilian garb! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="icon_wink.gif" />
Actually 17th century armies didn't consist entirely of soldiers in posh uniforms. Mercenaries wore whatever their employer could afford, and each army had a train of labourors, sappers, coachmen and looting scavengers.

You are of course right, those guys are being generated because the locationtype is "dungeon". I chose that locationtype cause it generates no FRIENDLY NPCs (would be even more out-of-place), and I found the eerie sound and the rats very appropriate for a stalemate-battlefield killingzone.

I'll try to find an easy fix to prevent VC generation, but I won't recommend any complicated changes. This mod (and the Build as a whole) is IMHO already complicated enough.


Same applies to setting the defending soldiers to LAI_player group. Reasoning: at sea you may be commander of a French or Dutch ship, but to the soldiers on the battlefield you'll look like a simple civilian who stumbled into the fight while trying to get out of/into a besieged town. Therefore the besiegers will try to stop you, while the defenders will support you, regardless of the nation of your ship's flag.

Actually, unlike the sea engine, the landpart of the whole PotC game NEVER checks your nation. That's why you are able to walk through an enemy town. The landcharachter AI only checks whether their LAI group is currently hostile to the LAI_player group. Now you COULD set the siegesoldiers to SOLDIER_FRANCE and _HOLLAND and set them to fight each other or the player under certain conditions. But that may mess up the already messy relationsystem even further, and the result may be that you may not be able to visit French or Dutch towns anymore.

Or one could create special LAI groups only for the battlefields, define their relationships, change their relationship to the player depending on any flagchange, or LOM change, or from which town the player enters the battlefield etc.... I don't know HOW many things we needed to take into account to make this work perfectly, and each change would affect existing code, risking messing up other things. Is it really worth the effort? Just to make the battle in two insignificant locations look better?

My experience with PotC has made me very reluctant to change any existing code. Nowadays I TRY to keep my code within selfreliant files and make it work with the rest of the code as that is. I'd rather twist my mod to make it work with the game as it is, than twist the game to make it work with my mod. Even if it makes my mod look a little odd.

As for the traders/taverns/shipyards on the new islands: I'm quite happy that KK added regular characters for them. I only used generated characters because it seemed to be the easiest and fastest way, cause the code for that was already in the random locations mod. I'm fine if we leave everything as it is in the latest update <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/yes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":yes" border="0" alt="yes.gif" />
 
Thanks a lot, CCC. Whatever we do, we'll keep everything as-is for Build 13. Perhaps we can improve some things for Build 14, but definitly not for Build 13. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/no.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":no" border="0" alt="no.gif" />
 
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