Included in Build Change Evil Stormy Start into Free Play Opening Scenario Choice

[jsv]

Not a big deal and something that's easy to work around. But it keeps annoying me and I keep commenting it out in the code, for years now, so I've decided I might just as well complain here.

I typically play on Ironman/Swashbuckler and I like to select Stormy Start option in the game opening, because it's less talking that way and it randomizes the starting location nicely.

But, that combination of options never fails to trigger the Evil part of the stormy start, which is currently implemented like this:

// The Diamond: Evil Stormy Start -->
                if (GetDifficulty() == DIFFICULTY_SWASHBUCKLER) {
                    PChar.skill.Leadership = 1;
                    PChar.skill.Fencing = 1;
                    PChar.skill.Sailing = 1;
                    PChar.skill.Accuracy = 1;
                    PChar.skill.Cannons = 1;
                    PChar.skill.Grappling = 1;
                    PChar.skill.Repair = 1;
                    PChar.skill.Defence = 1;
                    PChar.skill.Commerce = 1;
                    PChar.skill.Sneak = 1;
                    PChar.skill.freeskill = 0;

                    GiveShip2Character(PChar,"Tartane2","Leaky Bucket",-1,GetServedNation(),true,true);
                    PChar.Ship.SP = MakeInt(GetCharacterShipSP(PChar) * 3 / 5); // Evil Stormy Start further damages sails

                    PChar.money = 0;
                    PChar.wealth = 0;
                }

Getting the ship I've spent time selecting replaced by a leaky bucket can be fun once or twice, but it gets old rather quickly. And the replacement is silent. When it happened to me for the first time, I've spend hours (Ironman, remember) circling around the island looking for my ship, just as the journal instructed me to do. Only after I've looked at the source code, I understood that leaky abomination I'm in possession of is the only "ship" I'm going to find. That's a memorable experience, sure, but not the one I enjoy repeating each time I start a new game.


And while I have no problems with skill reduction, it makes zero sense plot-wise: why would a storm cause that?

I think, the skill reduction would be better as a part of difficulty level. For free play games I'd simply make the starting player's level to be 1 for Swashbuckler, 3 for Adventurer, 5 for everything else.

Personally, I'd remove everything else Evil Stormy Start related without giving it second thought, but if we want to keep the entire thing as a challenge, it can probably be made into a free play opening. Say, you were born into slavery, which kinda explains why nobody bothered to teach you any useful skills like grappling and gaming. And then you start without any money or possessions and you have to actually steal that tartane to run away.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Since Evil Stormy Start is linked to difficulty, you could start the game on Adventurer and switch to Swashbuckler after the opening scenes.
That could be an immediate work around.

That being said, now that we have those different Free Play starts, I like your idea of linking it to that instead.
Would you be willing to make the necessary changes?

 

[jsv]

Since Evil Stormy Start is linked to difficulty, you could start the game on Adventurer and switch to Swashbuckler after the opening scenes.
That could be an immediate work around.

Yes, that's what I'm doing currently, as the code changes too often to keep commenting that out

That being said, now that we have those different Free Play starts, I like your idea of linking it to that instead.
Would you be willing to make the necessary changes?

The coding part of it, yes. The "story" part (general description, journal entry, etc.) is better to be done but someone else. I'm not good at writing fiction even in my mother tongue, much less in English.
Not this week, though, and probably not this year. Let's revisit it in a month or two, then.
I still plan to finish that payment stuff, today or tomorrow, if I'm lucky.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The coding part of it, yes. The "story" part (general description, journal entry, etc.) is better to be done but someone else. I'm not good at writing fiction even in my mother tongue, much less in English.

I'm sure somebody else could handle the "fiction" part of it. If need be, I can do that.
Doesn't have to be fancy anyway; as long as it gets the point across.

The coding part of it, yes. The "story" part (general description, journal entry, etc.) is better to be done but someone else. I'm not good at writing fiction even in my mother tongue, much less in English.
Not this week, though, and probably not this year. Let's revisit it in a month or two, then.

Hmm.... If I can spare a bit of time, I might make a quick start on it just to get it functional.
Would be nice, for example, to give Henri Caesar that as a start, instead of him being a second Rebel.
And that would make the feature more visible and accessible AND less potentially annoying.
So it's a good idea all around and should not be a huge amount of work; just moving some code around.

But indeed, not the highest priority I suppose. I'll mark this as "Planned Feature" though.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Today I was looking into making this feature request happen for Beta 4, as I figured it should not be so hard.
As a start, I already eliminated the Evil Stormy Start from the Standard Storyline.
But I then ran into something else that we should consider first: Fix in Progress - Stormy Start Does Not Use Correct Contraband Goods | PiratesAhoy!

@jsv, please have a look at the file I attached there and let me know if that seems like a good idea.
If that does seem like a good idea, then this becomes a bit easier to implement, because we can then replace this:

if (i > 0) AddCharacterGoods(PChar, i, (2.0+rand(2))/10.0 * GetCharacterFreeSpace(PChar, i) ); // PB&Levis: Between 20%-40% contraband

With:

if (i > 0) AddCharacterGoods(PChar, i, 2); // The Diamond: Evil Stormy Start

And then we've got those "vastly limited goods" for the Evil case done with one line of code, instead of having plenty different switches.

I also like your idea to make this an "Escaped Slave Start" start instead of "Evil Stormy Start".
Based on that, are there any things we could do to maintain the original "proper challenging start", but make it fit more naturally into an "Escaped Slave" story?

Do we, for example, need the full "random starting location" functionality for that? Maybe we can actually make it quite different instead!
For example, by loading the player immediately to one of the two "slave plantation" locations and have the player actually run for his life.
In other words: What if we make something a bit more interesting and fun out of this?

 

[Jason]

On this general topic, I always play free play and always start on stormy start. And now you want to make it evil stormy start? I guess I will have to try that before I have an opinion.

I always start on journeyman. Where do I find or how do I get to evil stormy start?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

On this general topic, I always play free play and always start on stormy start. And now you want to make it evil stormy start?

The very opposite; we want to NOT have "Evil Stormy Start" anymore at all,
but for that to be 100% replaced by a "Profession" you choose at the start of the game.

I always start on journeyman. Where do I find or how do I get to evil stormy start?

Start Free Play on Swashbuckler difficulty, then select the Stormy Start option.

 

[Talisman]

The very opposite; we want to NOT have "Evil Stormy Start" anymore at all,
but for that to be 100% replaced by a "Profession" you choose at the start of the game.

Or as an interim fix - have a profession called Castaway. ( or Marooned).

While the Escaped Slave Start is being written.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Either way is fine by me.
If people give some thoughts, we can think about how to work it into the game.

Main question for starters is: Do we want the Evil Start to remain in combination with the Stormy Start option?
Or would it suffice to have a brand new Evil Start that doesn't also contain the Stormy Start functionality?

 

[jsv]

@jsv, please have a look at the file I attached there and let me know if that seems like a good idea.

Looks ok to me. But @Levis is our expert on all things contraband, he might notice something we don't.

Main question for starters is: Do we want the Evil Start to remain in combination with the Stormy Start option?

What I want is to make normal Stormy Start available at swashbuckler difficulty. I do not particularly care what will happen with the original Evil Start.
Technically, the simplest solution would be to add yet another option to Malcolm dialogue, something about "Even if that approaching storm look unnaturally EVIL...". But that would look a bit awkward.

Or as an interim fix - have a profession called Castaway. ( or Marooned).

I'm ok with this solution as well. I originally proposed a slave because I thought for a slave it's slightly more likely to steal a tartane that for a marooned to find one. That and low starting skills in everything sea-related.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

At the moment I am getting a bit confused; is there any actual interest in a truly difficult "Evil" starting scenario?
I have added a poll to the opening post to try and figure out if this feature is worth adding and exactly how.

If nobody would care to use this feature, we might as well remove it and not substitute it with anything else.
So PLEASE VOTE!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@ANSEL: Could you describe how exactly you would like this function to work? Ideally?
Then we can see what we can do.

@Everyone else: Don't forget to vote!

 

[ANSEL]

@ANSEL: Could you describe how exactly you would like this function to work? Ideally?

I like both ideas the marooned one and the Escaped Slave Start. The marooned one
could start at a little island like Petit Tabac (dont remember if it is used for something else).
The first thing I will do , if I was marooned , is to search the coast line, and there could be
a boat or a little ship, who was driften to the shore, containing some stuff to keep you to life
and give you a reasonable start ( juvels, weapons, money etc.) Maybe some corpses to lot to.
The Escaped Slave Start: I remember in some of C. S. Foresters books, there is a story about
an escaped slave who manage to make a crew of escaped slaves and got a ship(dont remember
if it was a slaveship or not) and become the most bloody and scarring Pirat Captain. Just some
thoughts from me.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If we put the player on an island without anyone on it, you won't be able to smuggle or loot to get some money.
But that could be part of the challenge, I suppose.

So very few items, no skills and a tiny tub on the other side of the island.
Would that be an "evil" enough start for your liking then?

 

[ANSEL]

Would that be an "evil" enough start for your liking then?

Sounds good

 

[Levis]

Do you mean that you ALWAYS got goods, but it wasn't always contraband on that island?
Or did you sometimes not get goods at all?

The original intention was that you should always get contraband.
But what good you got was hardcoded per island. Then "what is contraband" changed.
So then the goods you got may or may not have been contraband.
Now I rewrote the code so now the goods you get should ALWAYS be contraband for the island where you arrive.

That is how it was originally intended to work.
Whether we still want it to work that way is a different question though.
So if you don't like getting contraband, now would be a good time to mention that.

well if we really want to make this story start evil I sugest giving them goods which this island exports .

 

[Pieter Boelen]

But that would be less fun, no?
You already get only 2 contraband good units, which seems evil enough to me.

 

[Levis]

But that would be less fun, no?
You already get only 2 contraband good units, which seems evil enough to me.

It just means you first need to find a port where you can sell your stuff instead of doing in there . So you could choose to sail your almost falling apart ship or take your losses and sell the cargo you have for a low sum and then fix your ship a bit.
I would even go as far as maybe not giving them any cargo at all and have them find the loanshark to fix theire ship that would make for an interesting start for an experienced player too. The first few months you are working to pay back the loanshark .

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Ideas aplenty. But no clear consensus on what we actually want.
Which means I am not going to make any fancy changes to this for the foreseeable future.

I think I'll do as @jsv suggested and link the current "Evil Stormy Start" functionality to a player type instead of to Difficulty Level.
Is there any player type that already exists that I could (ab)use for that?

Also @Levis: With all the Levelling changes, what is now the best way to reset a character to level 1 with no skills and abilities?

 

[Levis]

@Pieter Boelen this function

ResetSkillsandPerks(ref chref)

Will reset a characters skills and perks (if it's not a questchar).