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Build your own town

konradk

konradk

Privateer
Storm Modder
Storm Modeller
I'm thinking if we could leave one island completely free for a gameplay period - it would be "Pine island" (we would need to resign from implementing "Eleuthera" into the game) or Khael Roa (after "cataclism" at the end of standard storyline and at any time when that island isn't used in any quests in storyline). After achieving of some high level main character could be allowed to "build" custom town on that island from existing models (in connection with CCC's Building Set that would make some effect and dfference in location look). What I mean is to give player possibility to set which location is to be a port, and then to which ones various reload points should lead (other town location, inside house, to jungle, etc). People needed to run the town (governor, fort commandant, shop and tavern keepers, shipwright, etc.) would appear as former main character's officers. Also, trade/escort/pirate hunting quests would be automatically set as proper characters appear in town.

Would it be some interest in such mod, but again, although I believe it's doable, it's at the same time project I would make in some undefined (and distant, for sure) future?

pirate_kk
 
I think something like that would be pretty cool. But choosing ingame exactly how the town should look like sounds rather complicated to me. I'd recommend adding some sort of "building your town ingame" mod, but not allowing the player the choice on everything. Just to keep things simple. Perhaps just have a pre-defined town scripted that can be enabled by the player. But not allow the player to choose what models are used or how big it will be.

We could add two pre-scripted towns: One on Khael Roa and one on Eleuthera. Khael Roa is only used in one main quest, so it can be used as uninhabited island in all other quests and you migth also be able to build a town there after the Nathaniel Hawk quest is over. Also Eleuthera can be uninhabited until the last two era's when the US come into the game. So the pre-scripted town belongs to the US in the last two periods and you can't make your own town there, but you can in all earlier periods. That way we don't need to resign from implementing Eleuthera either. I do want that island, because I think it would be cool if the US would be added to the game and they do need a town. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":?" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />
 
How about a choice of several different town layouts, which you'd be allowed to explore before you make your choice.
 
Sounds complicated though. I'd prefer to keep things as simple as possible to make it easier to code and generate less chance of bugs. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":?" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />
 
Here's my thought on the Americans:

The United States didn't have much of a presence in the Caribbean during the 1770s and 1780s as the colonies were focused on winning and maintaining their independence. So once we get to the 1790s in "The Corsican", we would finally begin to see signs of the Americans in the game. Almost all of the American presence would be merchant ships plying the trade routes while another extremely small fraction would be American citizens "visiting" British islands (Because Franco-American relations began to turn sour with the approach of the XYZ Affair and the Quasi War.)... the only American warships present in the game would be the player's and possibly one or two other frigates somewhere. This is because the United States Navy was comprised of only thirty or so vessels in 1794 (All of which were sloops-of-war or smaller) and by 1800 it was eighty vessels (Including the six superfrigates, three subscription frigates, and a good number of heavily armed merchantmen.)
The reason we don't see American ships in the area during the revolutions period is because there would be only one or two in the entire Caribbean, and maybe more if the player chooses to be American.

I think that there would need to be some scripts to switch the American characters from British Islands in the 1790-1808 period to French islands between 1808-1815. There also need to be scripts to limit American ships to merchants and tiny armed vessels only; the larger brigs, sloops-of-war, corvettes, and all frigates would only be avaliable if the player joined the US Navy. American ships of the line wouldn't be seen until after 1810 and most likely wouldn't even be deployed to the Caribbean, as their presence in the Atlantic against the British and in the Med against the Barbary Pirates were top priority.

I would suggest adding Commodore Thomas Truxtun as a character, so you can go to the Royal Navy base in St. Martin and talk to the English admiral; he'd say, <i>"Or, if you wish, you may talk to Commodore Truxtun there in the corner. He's with the Americans, a small yet formidable force here in the Caribbean."</i>
 
I would leave task of adding Americans to some more competent people. I can only assist in allowing that possibility.

The only thing I know about American navy is that George Washington founded some fleet, that during war with England for independence some argue general K. Pułaski died on board of some American brig (according one of version; other was that he died during battle near Savannah - I can't judge what's true) and finally, that after 1797 three 44-gun fregates was launched <i>Constitution</i>, <i>Constellation</i> and <i>United States</i>, which British started to call "pocket battleships" because they were too small for ships of the line and big as for frigates (they were fast enough to escape British ships of the line and strong enough to defeat largest British frigates - idea which was copied by german Kriegsmarine in 1920s and 1930s).

Then, that ship <i>Abraham Lincoln</i> tried to fight with cpt. Nemo submarine <i>Nautilus</i>, but it was fiction and I don't know if sailer with the name of that president even existed.

That's all for my knowledge about US in XVIII/XIX century - everything in one sentence. This is so impressive that I won't touch subject "putting Americans into PotC" at all.

pirate_kk
 
It'd be great if some code were put into place to replace Portugal with the US in the last two periods. Once we actually have something like a US nations, we can expand and improve the code to be more historically correct. I'm not sure if it's possible to limit the amount of American ships on the worldmap. It might be handled by the engine. Or not. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/razz.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":razz" border="0" alt="razz.gif" />
 
I suggest getting a copy of <u>Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy</u> by Ian W. Toll. Its a good 600 pages about the early American Navy, starting with a brief history of the Continental Navy and starting off in the year 1790, when the Federalists began to argue to the Demecrats that the new nation needed a fleet.

I am about 250 pages in and am currently in the year 1804. Lieutenant Stephen Decatur has just snuck into the jaws of a Barbary Pirates' nest and set charges to the captured USS <i>Philidelphia</i>, which set the pirates' harbor into a "most brilliant inferno" that "lit up the old castle walls with an orange glow that could be seen from ten miles out."

Truly exciting. If you don't want to get the book, head over to wikipedia and start reading about Stephen Decatur, Thomas Truxtun, Oliver Hzard Perry, William Bainbridge, Isaac Hull, and others... might also want to read about the "Original Six" and the Battle of Lake Erie.

It is a vibrant and dashing history, but it is rather overshadowed until 1812 because the Royal Navy was at its climax during this period.
 
<!--quoteo(post=256800:date=May 13 2008, 07:54 PM:name=Pieter Boelen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Pieter Boelen @ May 13 2008, 07:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=256800"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It'd be great if some code were put into place to replace Portugal with the US in the last two periods. Once we actually have something like a US nations, we can expand and improve the code to be more historically correct. I'm not sure if it's possible to limit the amount of American ships on the worldmap. It might be handled by the engine. Or not. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/razz.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":razz" border="0" alt="razz.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Maybe we would try to keep Portugal also in two last periods and add USA as a separate nation. Make a replacement only when making additional nation wouldn't be possible.

In case of period mod we'd need to properly recode how encountered people talk about towns history, as well as update names of kings for all nations for appropriate eras (in case of France after revolution 'king' would be named "Republic of France" and I personally would prefer not even mention Bonaparte as I hate him and consider him to be someone to be described as hitler from XIX century - he had utterly corrupted all positive and good ideas French revolution offered after such heavy sacrifices French citizens made to make World better).

pirate_kk
 
<!--quoteo(post=256925:date=May 14 2008, 03:56 PM:name=pirate_kk)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (pirate_kk @ May 14 2008, 03:56 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=256925"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Maybe we would try to keep Portugal also in two last periods and add USA as a separate nation. Make a replacement only when making additional nation wouldn't be possible.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Fine by me. An additional nation would be even better. I just thought a replacement might be easier to code in and save us work. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dunno.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shrug" border="0" alt="dunno.gif" />

<!--quoteo(post=256925:date=May 14 2008, 03:56 PM:name=pirate_kk)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (pirate_kk @ May 14 2008, 03:56 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=256925"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In case of period mod we'd need to properly recode how encountered people talk about towns history, as well as update names of kings for all nations for appropriate eras (in case of France after revolution 'king' would be named "Republic of France" and I personally would prefer not even mention Bonaparte as I hate him and consider him to be someone to be described as hitler from XIX century - he had utterly corrupted all positive and good ideas French revolution offered after such heavy sacrifices French citizens made to make World better).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Why don't we re-change the names of the kings back into "His Most Christian Majesty", "His Most Catholic Majesty", etc. like it was before? If the kings and queens aren't named, they don't need to be updated for the era's either. Also solves the naming of Napoleon: just refer to him as "the Emperor" and be done with it. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />

From what I read in the Hornblower books, you're quite right about Napoleon. Too bad really, because the original ideas of the French revolution were actually <i>good</i> ones.
 
Personnaly I would like to keep Portugal as well. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

About King/Queen names : having the actual ones wouldn't be that hard to implement, would it?

About Napoleon, yes, a lot of people don't like him because in a certain way he burried the French Revolution and its ideas. However Napoleon and Hitler have very few in common, excepted the brillant idea of attacking Russia at the wrong season.
That was really two different epoch & men. I don't like those kind of comparison.
 
well, napoleon didn't do only bad things. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":?" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" /> spreading the metric system and excavating the sphinx come to mind, but you are all right about the bad things, of course.

i'd keep portugal, as i like to see them in the caribbean, though i don't really know why. they don't originally belong here in this period, after all.
 
My original proposition was replacing Portugal in the last two periods, but keeping it in the other periods. Just to prevent any confusion.
 
Building your own town might be a bit too big a modification to do any time soon, but maybe we can discuss managing your own towns in this thread now. Alpha 8 <i>has</i> the Capture Colonies mod, allowing you to take towns for yourself. However, there's not much management involved. Any ideas on (simple) things that could be done to improve the player's involvement with his towns?
 
I think you already can set the taxes and you even gain income from that every day. But there's no disadvantage to setting them as high as possible. The town folk don't get anrgy and don't start to revolt and nobody is going to recapture your town either.
 
Capture colony mod isn't finished yet. When I solve problems with changing town nationality (not to break any quest) I'll add option that also nations will be able to capture colonies of those they're at war with. That includes also a main character: when some town is catured and taken as own, it could be liberated by original nation or captured by any other nation hostile to player. That process would be easier as taxes raise. Also, town inhabitants would mutiny, overthrow player's governor, fort commandants and soldiers and set town to belong back to their homeland.

I worry about some limitations the game posseses in regard of forts. There's little chance of improving them (unless we won't allow to mount even heavier cannons on them) since we can't swap models (i.e., initially having small fort, we can't easy upgrade it to medium or large). That would be possible to do (creating various fort models for a single town and code game to load a specific one) but require substantial amount of work and heavy editing of fort's gm files. Even worse, in case of say, island of Oxbay where there are two forts for Oxbay town and Greenford, model of Oxbay fort is at the same time connected with a city walls. Additionally, both forts are put in one model file, so the case is if it was to be moved somewhere else we could end up with one fort properly aligned (that alignment require modyfing a gm file) and a second one in some strange place (for example, floating at some altitude over waves). Adding a custom fort to town which initially didn't have it is convoluted because of similar reasons.

pirate_kk
 
In that case I think we should not add the option of installing different forts.
This is actually interesting: if you can easily take a town (eg. the fort isn't very good), you can easily lose it too. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheeky" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />
 
Hi, I'm new to this board and I just want to say what an awesome job all you guys are doing. I have no experience with modding, but I can appreciate how much time and effot everyone must be putting in to it.

Just going back to Pirate kk original message, I have been playing POTC with build 13 mod for about a year now and the thing I love about it is the economy side of the game. The idea of starting off a game already owning an Island really apeals to me.

I can understand that creating an in-game town builder would be difficult, but would it be easier to start the game with a 'stock' town with very few population and effectivly let the town build itself.

The quest could be to attract people to your island by having low taxes, low crime and lots of jobs. To do this you would probably have to travel the map to recuit the best blacksmiths, shipwrights, soldiers etc and set up good supply routes with the other colonies whilst trying to fend off the attention of Pirates.

I'm sure there is a whole host of other idea's that could be implimented but the idea would be to have the biggest and most profitable colony by the end of the period.

It's just an idea and I know you guys are busy. Keep up the very good work and hopefully I'll be able to help you out in the future as I will be trying my hand at modding very shortly.

Cheers.
 
If you had your "own town", would that mean that you could get goods cheap there? I see that various town's merchants have different amounts of money. Would you be able to collect the profits of the town, or have to support the stores/shipyards/merchants, etc?
 
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