Gold

[Sulan]

Ahoy mates,

about one year ago I retired from privateering, but alas - I am a sea dog, so I went out to sea again.

The build mod is already very near to perfection, but I am still disappointed by one thing: It is far too easy to get rich. Not by plundering ships, finding treasures or trading, but simply by slaughtering people (at sea or on land, does not really matter). Looting the bodies of the fallen enemy (and own) crew is most often much more rewarding than selling off the plundered cargo. Apart from that it does not make any sense for me why simple sailors would run around with thousands of pieces of gold.

Also goods' prices in comparison to ordinary (not special) weapons' and items' prices seem to be unbalanced. One trade unit of gold, which equals around 300 pounds (3 cwt) of gold, trades for around 450 gold pieces, while an ordinary short pistol costs 600 gold pieces.

Maybe for pirates I should do a different calculation: 50 litres (1 cwt) of rum cost 15 gold pieces, an average short pistol costs 600. That means for one short pistol you'd get about 2.000 litres of rum. Why on earth would any pirate keep his pistol?

Is there already something planned for balancing that or is that too deep in the code? I must admit, I have not yet looked intensely at this topic myself. I am just a little annoyed, that I am already millionaire again

So long.

 

[Armada]

No man can resist the allure of the sea; welcome back, matey!

This is definitely something we'd like to rectify, since getting easy millions is simply ridiculous in a pirate RPG.
No-one has yet had a go at balancing things out, as far as I know, so you'd be welcome to make any modifications yourself if you wish.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Sulan! You made a difference last summer.

Black Bart has been making noises along those lines too. You should look into what he is doing.

 

[morgan terror]

you know what might work? (that is, aside from increasing the rarity of the more expensive swords that i keep mentioning) increasing the price of goods overall. trading is supposed to be a bit of an investment anyway. however, i am no fan of just increasing prices overall, since it just compensates for the problem instead of fixing it. lowering the value of weapons is an obvious solution, but i'm pretty sure that the current prices were selected based on actual historical value. i do recall several topics on that matter.

but anyway, increasing the rarity of expensive swords is not something that will work because the code for doing that doesn't work properly.

 

[Jonty]

I would agree on the fact that getting gold is way too easy

I mean, I'm an actual billionaire in gold pieces . 2 billion gold and counting, placed across several loansharks and toting up tens of millions each month in each. To be honest, I don't think that's very realistic. I guess as long as you just leave a high amount of money in a loanshark for a few years, and keep adding any significant amounts in, you'll be insanely rich not all that far off. Unless a cap is placed on how much your money can go up to when keeping money in a loanshark, everyone will become mega rich in no time if you have 10 on commerce.

Of course, you don't have to put money in a loanshark. You could just challenge yourself and prevent yourself from putting in money, but I thought I would just point something out to do with this getting rich to quickly problem

 

[morgan terror]

a loanshark cap wouldn't solve the problem. it would just force the player to deal with a mutiny in a few months. there shouldn't be a reason to put money in with more than one loanshark in the first place.

 

[Jonty]

Well you see, I only did it just for the number basically. I had a couple of million in the ship's chest, just in case I needed some money. I just kept in that insane amount of money because I wanted to see how high I could get it. No proper, practical reason Just curiosity.

 

[Black Bart]

hello fellow modder concerned about the abundant cash flow problem :gday

As hylie mentioned i have been making progress in this problem, you can see some of it in my 'tweaks and balancing' thread in the modders forum. In short i've reduced a huge slice of 'easy' cash flow by re-pricing all the day-to-day items in the game. It's made a huge difference in general, for example my prefered starting goal of leaving Speightstown with 9 Officers hired is now really hard to do with the funds available, you have to work hard to make big money, either by being good at piracy/ship captures or focusing on profitable trade routes.

The exploit of using the money lenders is still there, although i never use them so will have to look into all that later on. I'm thinking if maybe we could link the players level and reputation(or just level for ease?) into their ability to get big loans that might shut down that exploit?

But in general play now in the modded files i'm using, it is very hard to make a fortune(enough to buy a new ship for example) simply by looting corpses and selling their weapons and items. This feels like a step in the right direction, but also my gut feeling on playtesting this early item-money rebalance is i need to maybe look through the top level blades and weapons and increase their comparitive costs a bit more, finding the 'sweet spot' of the higher player levels(10 and over) and larger probable cash pool at that stage vs the balance of top weapon/item costs and availability is not super easy, so it still needs some work.

If you like i can post my current Items.c file(and any others if i can remember!) on my 'tweaks and balancing' thread for you to test out and see what you think so far? I've also removed ALL 'magical' effects from regular items(e.g. no +1 melee on a ruby etc) where not logical, books still give(lesser) advantages etc.

But yeah the 'economy' is currently foobar and needs some work for sure

 

[Sulan]

I must say: I am rather surprised to see all you pirates agreeing there is too much gold. I thought of you as a greedy bunch of swearing sea dogs

Since I have been doing some code work during the last year, my Build is Alpha 5 (or Alpha 7, as it has features such as Ship's Log, which are not in Alpha 5 or 6). I'll release my changes once I have figured out how to merge them to Alpha 6 together with Pieter. Then I'll be able to use the most current files of Alpha 6.

Then I'd have a look at balancing the money flow - please post any already existing code snippets here (I'd love to see the file in which the own and enemy crew is equipped with Money). I'd really like to make earning money a challenge - such as in real life.

I am currently thinking about the following general approach (exceptions possible):
1. increase general goods prices by factor 2 or 3
2. decrease general weapons and items prices by factor 10
3. decrease the NPC carried amount of money by factor x, so that they carry 5 to 50 gp, maximum limit 150 gp
4. leave quest rewards roughly as they are to make quests more rewarding, but maybe decrease governors' "sink that ship"-missions by factor 5 and escort-merchant-missions by factor 2

Comments and more proposals welcome.

 

[morgan terror]

the leadership and luck experience for quests needs tweaking. they are always either around 5 or several hundred percent, and the quests that fall in between those two numbers can be counted on one hand. this is the case for the original plotline, mind you. i don't know about the others. i do agree on sulan's modifications for moneymaking. escort missions are supposed to be quite hard in regards to not having that flimsy merchant sink, so this should be reflected in the reward.

if all skill bonuses for items are removed, the rate at which some skills increase should be modified. i've already mentioned luck and leadership, but sailing is another skill that needs tweaking, in this case upwards. not by much, but it gets stuck at 6. another note on the leadership skill: the total percentage you recieve is actually pretty good. it's the way the leadership experience is distributed over the individual quests that needs adjusting.

 

[Sulan]

if all skill bonuses for items are removed, the rate at which some skills increase should be modified. i've already mentioned luck and leadership, but sailing is another skill that needs tweaking, in this case upwards. not by much, but it gets stuck at 6. another note on the leadership skill: the total percentage you recieve is actually pretty good. it's the way the leadership experience is distributed over the individual quests that needs adjusting.

I wouldn't remove the skill bonuses. I'd rather make those items more difficult to come by (rarity + high price).

I'd have to look into that luck and leadership experience thing in quests. Didn't notice it so far, but didn't pay attention either.

 

[morgan terror]

i don't want the skill bonuses to be removed either, but black bart isn't really going to be convinced not to from what i've seen.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Sulan! It's good to see you again; welcome back!

Is it Alpha 5 that you have? That really IS quite old. We're up to Build 14 Beta 1 Patch 6 now.
Let me know if you need any help with merging and I will do what I can;
I'm a bit busy with real-life work, but I'll do what I can anyway.


Indeed I also agree with the messed up economy; it'll be great to have that addressed properly!
One thing in relation to this that DEFINITELY needs to be addressed is the rarity code.
There is several high-level weapons that should NEVER appear in the game because they're unique.
These weapons are supposed to be limited to quests or promotions by governors.
If you could look into that, it'd be a great help also.
At the moment, this bugged code rather interferes with any attempts at game balancing,
because you sometimes find these items randomly for free and even early in the game!

 

[Black Bart]

i don't want the skill bonuses to be removed either, but black bart isn't really going to be convinced not to from what i've seen.

............
If you like i can post my current Items.c file(and any others if i can remember!) on my 'tweaks and balancing' thread for you to test out and see what you think so far? I've also removed ALL 'magical' effects from regular items(e.g. no +1 melee on a ruby etc) where not logical, books still give(lesser) advantages etc.

Most people complain they don't use many of the items that give skill bonuses(i think you have also iirc?) as they are too powerful. I often get the distinct impression you have 'beef' with whatever i suggest Morgan?

Anyway look at what i wrote just above and take heart ok If you can convince me sticking a ruby in the pommel of a sword makes you a better swordsman i'm all ears

And the file is there to be looked at by Sulan if he wishes to comment on it. As Pieter mentions the rariety code is a bit odd currently, it can seem to work sometimes, and othertimes not, so we can't just rely on it to provide all the answers to the issues sadly.

In terms of skill improvements my feeling is the 'rpg' system of leveling is a bit broken, and as that is the one most people seem to play with it does indeed need adjustment to the various variables that control the amount of each type of action you need to perform to see an improvement in that skill imho.

The stock PotC system of leveling was also a bit broken in that as many previous posts i've made on it show, you could get skill level 10 Officers in most of your key ship positions by the time you were on the mission to meet the Osieau. I've pretty much adjusted all the sections that gave out too much XP that ended up in these quick leveling up issues for that mode, but the 'rpg' system is going to take more work as it uses two systems, the XP one AND the amount of times a skill is used one, so both need to be balanced out to work better than they currently do. Overall in the rpg system you don't improve your skills quickly enough currently, and in the stock PotC system your skills improve too quickly. That's about the long and short of it currently.

 

[Sulan]

Sulan! It's good to see you again; welcome back!

Thanks! It feels really good to be back with such a warm welcome

Is it Alpha 5 that you have? That really IS quite old. We're up to Build 14 Beta 1 Patch 6 now.
Let me know if you need any help with merging and I will do what I can;
I'm a bit busy with real-life work, but I'll do what I can anyway.

Ehm - I think you are lucky, I have Build 14 Beta 1 Patch 5 (not Alpha 5). I was somewhat confused, I think.

I'll do my best reviewing the random / rarity / money-balance things ... however, I would first like to have the Beta 1 Patch 6 merged with my files. It's difficult to work with another version

Cheers!

 

[morgan terror]

the point is not that the item bonuses have to make sense. it's that the player NEEDS them in order to play the game properly. what do you want to do with 3 luck skill? gambling accounts to only a single point in it before people don't want to play against you anymore, and quests hardly give any luck at all. i have no objections to removing those skill items (other than the books, microscope, etc.), but please do so AFTER the skill ratios have been properly fixed. luck is actually a pretty important skill, and you'll never get enough of it the way things are now. also, how big of a bonus could you possibly get to your sailing and leadership skill from books and equipment alone without gemstones and such? you really need that bonus early on in the game.

 

[Sulan]

I agree that keeping the skill bonuses (although I'd limit the bonus to +1 per item, +2 items are too much) makes sense - also, because it's a sort of fantasy-game. Of course an ordinary ruby doesn't make you a fighting machine, but the Magic Ruby of Combat Reflexes might do. Especially I like the indian idols giving skill bonuses - kind of voodoo!

On the other hand I agree that there might be people, who like more realism, so the easiest way would be: Loading two itemtables, one for realism settings with few skill bonuses, and one for arcade settings with more skill bonuses. I thought about adding a separate advanced option for this, but I think, that's too much ...

As Pieter is very busy and a long way abroad, it might take some time until he has merged my mods into the Patch 6, so I'll take the current Patch 6 init_items.c file and include my changes along with the proposal from Black Bart for balancing and redo it alltogether (with a definite emphasis on reducing the gold prices). I'll then post the files for review and testing.

 

[Jonty]

Just as a side note, I've noticed that when I "die", and I end up in a tavern, I hardly seem to lose anything? A bit of gold, and simply the weapons I am carrying and that's it. Maybe as more of a consequence when you end up in a tavern, that you should lose a lot more stuff? Maybe lose certain skill items? Not the very expensive ones, perhaps just the cheaper ones that are less rare for example. Not just a very limited amount of stuff you have. Just a little thought I'd bring up while I still remember.

 

[morgan terror]

personally, i only use waking in the tavern for LP's. otherwise i just reload when i die wether i survive or not.

 

[Black Bart]

And it just depends on what you had on you at the time. For example if you had a Masterworks spyglass or rare piece of expensive jewelry you would be pretty fed up if you lost it! The lower quality, more common place items are not such a bother tis true. It could appear that when you are badly wounded, your officers try their best to stop the crew from taking everything, you should buy them some rum(or give them a pay rise to say thanks)