Build 14 Beta 1

[Sulan]

I think, I maybe overdid it with the goods prices, so I'll tweak some more there. However, the prices you mention are not too unrealistic for trades with a fleet of three ships. At least compared to item prices.

 

[morgan terror]

as i recall, pistol shots were made to take out a large chunk of your hp for the sake of realism. if that's something to be kept, then i suggest increasing pistol damage along with hp, unless you prefer gameplay over realism.

do you suggest i run my tests on possible new values for skill increase ratios soon, or after the game has undergone some tweaking? the extent of the tweaking is the main point here.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Sulan: Those three ships together haul around 3,200 cwt, or whatever, of cargo. There are single ships out there that haul far more. There is a class1 Spanish War Galleon that can carry more than twice that and can almost clean out Havana. If I had that ship right now I wouldn't make it from the merchant shop to the ship without getting into a mutiny. I don't mind getting filthy rich, but I do mind getting into mutinies every trip.

Crickey! What are the smugglers making now?


Morgan Terror: It depends on how you play. I picked up Baldewyn Coffier on my first run with three ships. He was a 1 or 2 at everything. He is still a 1 or 2 at everything except Commerce where he is an 8!

 

[morgan terror]

yes, that's why i'll be needing results from quite a lot of people once i start running tests. i'm not even going to look at the skills officers have, mainly because they're heavily based on player actions and things would just get WAY too complicated. they come secondary to the player's stats in my opinion.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Would you reckon lockpicks should be a bit less rare?
And when you do find them, do they still occasionally get stuck in the locks? :d:

Black Bart, the skill changes you did are what made it into the Patch 7 WIP 2 files.
Not sure if I got them from forum posts of your or whether or not they're you final intended ones.

We should be able to use your skill changes only if Auto Skill System is OFF and use the original code if it's on.
That might not be ideal, but at least your changes for the better of Auto Skill System OFF won't make the game worse with it ON.

Are you sure? I was under the impression, that the "hidden" tag only means the item's skill bonus is not displayed, if hidden == 1. Would make sense for the Albatross or any other "bad luck"-item anyway.

Good point; I forgot about that. I got myself completely confused, it would seem.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

In the last game I played up to level 37 and the year 1703 in Patch 6 I never used the lockpicks, and I ended up with 5 of them. Is that too rare?

Oh, they do occasionally get stuck. That's why I don't use them.

 

[Black Bart]

Profits from trade good used to be a little easy to make on most trips, i haven't been able to try the game yet as i'm still melding the items prices i'd been testing into this new file format(not easy as quite alot of the formating has changed!). I would suggest what we wouldn't realy want is for trading to become too profitable, not more than it already was, and actually LESS profitable might be better!

With the trade runs in the game currently we need to keep in mind you can sail in the navigation map(overhead view) mode with NO danger of combat or getting attacked by enemy/pirate ships(unless you specifically go for it!), so no risk at all.

Also in the direct sail mode, with the Luggers current stats(as in fast) as a starting ship you can pretty much outrun anyone anyway, so very little risk at all.

Risk at sea from pirates and enemy(or bad weather!) was the main danger to trading. So if those mechanisms don't really work in the game currently we should reduce the profits from trade rather than increase them imho.

One thing i would add is you need to playtest tweaks alot, by 'alot' i mean more than you might think. I've been playtesting my tweaks for about a month and a half now, and they have changed over the course of this. I've started about 50 new chars in total and taken a dozen to around level 12-16. I've not used the console, letting the 'natural' game flow that a new player would find, as this is where any 'broken' things will show themselves easily and without confusion. So yeah you need to playtest stuff alot before releasing it, this is not on a commercial deadline so better to do it well than fast


@ Pieter, in terms of the reduced(about half) XP thing, i've been playing all my rpg-system games with the full system(developed for the default PotC progression system) and i don't think it is that much an issue that we need seperate it out. The default leveling was completely broken and needed that tone down in XP, but the issues with the rpg system are all to do with the rate and rarity of the various skill increases in the seperate rpg system itself. If Sulan can see how to make XP work in that system like it does in the default levelling system then that would fix the issues around companion officers leveling very slowly, and if Sulan can also work out how to better represent the rpg system so that skills across the range level a bit more often, then that will get rid of the problems of having high level but low skill chars( as seems to be the common complaint with those playing the rpg system).

In short if you used some of my examples to reduce XP in the direct sailing mode(as that was all i mentioned in the thread i think), it won't make any/much of a difference to the rpg system here as it only ever gave very limited XP(and only to the player char it seems? at least it only reports on the player char XP gains in the on screen log readouts) anyway.

How does the XP thing work on land in the rpg system, as i suspect this is where most of the player XP comes from? Do all your active officers get XP or just the player, how often do players see XP being given to their officers in the rpg system? Just from my recolection, and it wasn't something i was looking at too closely(but will now), it seems hardly ever, which means something is missing or 'broken' within the rpg system currently in terms of party XP and also the skill gains percentages.

 

[Black Bart]

Changes in attached initItems.c file: http://www.pyratesahoy.com/potc/Pieter%20Assorted%20Files/initItems.zip

Shotgun set to "Unique" properly with Weaponsmod ON; apparently that wasn't set up properly before.
Albatross and tattoos are set to "hidden" and should appear only in your inventory but nowhere else.
So you can't get rid of the albatross so easily anymore!

I set the min.level of unique weapons to 99 just to help with their rarity.
Please try attached file and let me know if you run into any of the following items at random ever:
.........................
edit
..........................

Pieter, re that file, i found the 'rarity' levels set at my early test settings still: // BB added min.level of 10 (to jack sparrows pistol etc) So i'm not sure this was the file you thought it might be?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Hmm. OK, last night I started seeing pump shotguns and in one fight the mercenary pistol appeared, but I died and haven't seen it again. It has been nearly a year since the last time I saw that pistol.

Combat seems harder now. I'm dying much more than usual. Last night in a fight against 7 French soldiers by myself I used 43 grenades and still had to kill the last two with my sword.

 

[Black Bart]

Hmm. OK, last night I started seeing pump shotguns and in one fight the mercenary pistol appeared, but I died and haven't seen it again. It has been nearly a year since the last time I saw that pistol.

What level were you at roughly? the mercenry pistols are now min.level 15(they had none before, and i found them about 10-15% of the time on recruitable officers at game start(when they were worth 20,000gold!)). I've never seen the pump shotgun in the game yet - but i think Pieter said it 'should' be a unique quest item, that is before this last patch update of initItems.c, where it definately should be so(but i think might be the wrong file uploaded!)?

Grenades do a min damage of 60 now(compared to 100) and have the same high damage value of 120hp. That was to try to better represent the un-reliability of the grenade of the period, but if that 40 less min damage makes such a big difference i can change that back.

 

[morgan terror]

keep in mind that the swordfighting code was also slightly modified. i don't remember all the things that were changed though.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I was at level 15 or 16. I just made level 17 today. I picked up another shotgun today too.


My officers and myself all have gilded curiass's and excellent Venetian Navy cutlass's and we are dieing all over the place. It's possible to die from a single sword strike but usually it takes 3-5. I just switched to a Knights Templar sword because it has the best defensive numbers. The armor doesn't seem to be very effective anymore. But we will see how thing go as the levels go higher. I don't want to become Superman.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Maybe something did go wrong with the upload of my initItems.c .
Please try again: http://www.pyratesahoy.com/potc/Pieter%20Assorted%20Files/initItems.zip
New game required, of course.

Oh, they do occasionally get stuck. That's why I don't use them.

Sorry about that; that's just me being evil! :d:

 

[Hylie Pistof]

New game! You are an evil man Pieter. I have over $4million piasters and some cool ships, my crew is all fitted out with golden cuirasses and Venetian cutlasses and and.................

now it is back to the good ship Lollipop.

The worst part is that I'm about 1/3rd of the way done with redoing a Caravel. That is a good little ship! :luv Maybe I could change my name to Hylie Pistogee.


ALERT! ALERT! I now have no weapons at all! ERROR!

 

[Black Bart]

ALERT! ALERT! I now have no weapons at all! ERROR!

Just to confirm that last initItems.c file results in no weapons in the game(yep non for yourself during the tutorial or carried on people in Speightstown or in the traders etc!) and no Map(you do have gold, and other items(like spyglass, books, gems etc).

@ Hylie indeed it is a case of always doing a new game to be sure nothing gets weird. I think once we have ironed out a few hickups and move out of Beta it might be safe to just use F11 where suitable, but for now i always go with a new game to be sure all the new code is initialised and working properly in my test games.

 

[Sulan]

I did have a look at the goods economy and trade missions. Please find attached a few changes:


- decreased prices for silver & gold a bit
- decreased the influence of good availability (quantity) vs townsize on price, thus reducing trading profits and thereby trade mission profits
- trade missions make more sense now (not exporting import goods and vice versa)
- mutiny as a result of much gold carried is now based on reputation and much less likely for a honest trader than for a pirate

Hope you like it. Please test thoroughly. A new game is not required - pressing F11 will do.

Cheers,
Sulan

 

[morgan terror]

i dunno about the new reason for mutiny, actually. it was related to gold so the player would share it out at some point, but i've never done that myself. your system works better, i guess, but a bad reputation was not that often a reason for mutiny among historical pirates. simply because they were pirates; it's what they did.

 

[Sulan]

i dunno about the new reason for mutiny, actually. it was related to gold so the player would share it out at some point, but i've never done that myself. your system works better, i guess, but a bad reputation was not that often a reason for mutiny among historical pirates. simply because they were pirates; it's what they did.

It is still based on gold, but an infamous pirate can now possibly have around 1 to 2 millions of piasters without decreasing the morale drastically, while a trader of good reputation can have around 5 to 10 millions. Morale will still decrease, but at a slower rate.

 

[morgan terror]

ah, that sounds good. it makes a lot of sense too. pirate captains are actually expected to share, while merchant captains are not. i'd imagine that a rich merchant might eventually become a rather tempting target among some of your crew.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Ok, let's see how this works. It was mainly the runs between Martinique and Puerto Rico where I was hauling shiploads of gold and silver that were giving the huge profits. The trigger for mutiny is at the $1,000,000 piaster mark and the farther you get above it the faster the crew wants to mutiny. Once past the 2million P mark by the time you are done trading the crew is already talking mutiny. But you need 1-2 million P just to fill your holds. And that was with small ships.

Still, it was a lot of fun. I had never gotten so rich so fast before. Usually it take 3 times that long to amass that much loot.