CoAS Combined Mod Version

[ugeen]

Diff. Flags mod works similar one from Build_14 with serious differences in code ( in SeaLoad() function at sea.c )
Every ship has nation flags and one special flag - Merchant, Warrior, FlagShip or Hero flag (owned by main Hero and it's companions).

 

[Darkhymn]

Found a bug. On my way over to the bug tracker to report it. More (not really) importantly, though, I have gripes with the patch. As far as I can tell from a few hours of testing, the most common start ships are the Barque and the Bounty... That's fine, I suppose, except that both of those ships are mediocre for the class, you start with 50% hull, and a full rack of 4lb guns. With the new cannon prices, you have little choice but to depart from port with 14 or 16 4 lb cannons... To put that in perspective, I'll provide an image that I took for the sake of bug reporting but which also portrays the source of my frustration at this... In this particular savegame, this screenshot was taken at the end of my first naval encounter.

I'm aware that I was slightly overmatched, but for the sake of testing, this game was started on Sailor. I started that fight with all 14 4 lb cannon equipped, 600 grape shot, 90% hull and 75 crew (pretty much the average start I have had thus far). This means that I fired ~150 times at that opponent, lost every last gun on the starboard side, took about 22% hull damage and 7% sail damage, and when I was finally unable to outmaneuver the opponent and was boarded (the other ship was faster and more maneuverable, if not by much) I lost 70 crew (I had lost 3 in the very long pointless firefight leading up to the boarding). Then I started a new game. Not sure if I've got terrible luck or perhaps the wrong attitude on the difference between "challenging" and "sadistic and unfun," but I'm thinking the changes I've experienced thus far this patch most definitely lean toward the latter.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Diff. Flags mod works similar one from Build_14 with serious differences in code ( in SeaLoad() function at sea.c )
Every ship has nation flags and one special flag - Merchant, Warrior, FlagShip or Hero flag (owned by main Hero and it's companions).

That sounds pretty good. No actual pennants then though?
Of course the CoAS default flags already ARE pennants, just really large ones.
I suppose it's better to have only pennant-like flags than only ensign-like ones.

 

[FireBat]

Found a bug. On my way over to the bug tracker to report it. More (not really) importantly, though, I have gripes with the patch. As far as I can tell from a few hours of testing, the most common start ships are the Barque and the Bounty... That's fine, I suppose, except that both of those ships are mediocre for the class, you start with 50% hull, and a full rack of 4lb guns. With the new cannon prices, you have little choice but to depart from port with 14 or 16 4 lb cannons... To put that in perspective, I'll provide an image that I took for the sake of bug reporting but which also portrays the source of my frustration at this... In this particular savegame, this screenshot was taken at the end of my first naval encounter.

I'm aware that I was slightly overmatched, but for the sake of testing, this game was started on Sailor. I started that fight with all 14 4 lb cannon equipped, 600 grape shot, 90% hull and 75 crew (pretty much the average start I have had thus far). This means that I fired ~150 times at that opponent, lost every last gun on the starboard side, took about 22% hull damage and 7% sail damage, and when I was finally unable to outmaneuver the opponent and was boarded (the other ship was faster and more maneuverable, if not by much) I lost 70 crew (I had lost 3 in the very long pointless firefight leading up to the boarding). Then I started a new game. Not sure if I've got terrible luck or perhaps the wrong attitude on the difference between "challenging" and "sadistic and unfun," but I'm thinking the changes I've experienced thus far this patch most definitely lean toward the latter.

Well, this is to be expected. As a privateer would be just starting out, the resources they have access to would be quite limited. For the first little while, the only way to get out of a battle unscathed would be to run. Granted things are a bit tough at the beginning, but it wont take long until you the most fear pirate in the seas

 

[giuliootto]

:gday Mates,

I've to decided if it's the time to definitely swap between POTC-Build14 and CoAS or continue with POTC-Build14.

Actually POTC-Build14 have a lot of feature more then CoAS, but when is time to attack the enemy town there are still too bug...
I didn't play soo much (compared to POTC) with CoAS, but the stock game is quite stable, and there are many thing to do compare to POTC (even with Build).

Now the questions are:

1) Do someone already try CoAS with mod ultill the town conquer? Does it work?
2) In CoAS-CMV3, I see that now I can choose Jack Aubrey with a lieutenant uniform (or something like that). During the game is there a way to change the uniform after a promotion (something like the Tailor shop in POTC-Build14)? If not is there a planned time for this in Combined Mod Version 3?
3) I've seen that CMV2 installed on a Italian version of CoAS works without problem, and only a parts of dialog are swtched to English. What about make a multilanguage version of this mod?

Bye, bye,
giuliootto

 

[Darkhymn]

Well, this is to be expected. As a privateer would be just starting out, the resources they have access to would be quite limited. For the first little while, the only way to get out of a battle unscathed would be to run. Granted things are a bit tough at the beginning, but it wont take long until you the most fear pirate in the seas

I know this. I played AoP: CT, and have played the vanilla CoAS for some time. Until a few hours ago I was using CMv3 sans patch. I'm quite used to starting the game in a limited situation. I do enjoy a challenge. My gripe, really, is the 4lb cannons. Limited is understandable, however the 4lb cannon takes limited to an extreme. The first and most obvious limitation is range. Using grape shot essentially places you at the edge of boarding range. Even a small slip will result in being boarded prematurely. That is fine, in itself. We all love a challenge and most of us can probably handle that dance for a while. However, after over 150 shots (and losing all of my starboard guns, which really is much too funny to be frustrating), as far as I could tell, I hadn't killed a single crewman aboard the opposing vessel. Add to that that the opposing ship was faster than mine and more maneuverable and that I was incapable of causing damage to the opposing ship, and the two possible endings to that fight were a) I got sunk and b) I got boarded and hopefully managed to kill the entire opposing crew all by my lonesome.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a deal-breaker or anything. In fact, had I not found that bug and decided to try a fresh install (ensuring it was not an error on my end) I probably would have just captured the Greyhound and gone with it. The ~7x (based on cannon caliber and number of cannon, not actual modifiers, as I do not have them memorized) firepower increase would have made life a bit easier. What I am trying to say, I suppose, is that the 4lb cannon really are so underpowered as to be frustratingly useless. Now, for you or I this may seem relatively easy to overcome; simply capture the first hostile ship you see. However, think of it from the potential perspective of a new player. You've just picked up the game, found this site, downloaded and installed the mod, because what the hell, everyone says it's better, right? Then you start the game, probably don't even notice your cannon caliber, leave port... And use hundreds of shots, either run out of ammo or cannons (at the rate my cannon were falling out, I actually would have run out of guns long before I ran out of ammo), realize that you've done almost literally no damage to your opponent... and the odds are he's faster than you, so you can't run. In the case of you or I, this basically means boarding and sacrificing the crew, but without the level of ability that comes with having played for a while... do you get where I'm going with this? For a brand new player, as it is currently (with CMv3 Patch 1), this game would be, literally, impossible.

After all of that, I should probably clarify that I am loving this mod, including this latest patch (though I think the pricing of the cannons is a little extreme). For all of the short novel I just wrote about one gripe, the rest of the mod is thus far fantastic. In fact, my only other complaint is how fast the reloads are, now (even my complaints are bipolar - it's too hard, but it's also too easy). Speaking of which, what do other people think of the new reload speed. I'm on the fence. On the one hand, it cuts out the need to spastically rotate your ship in order to keep up a steady stream of fire. On the other hand... it cuts out the need to rotate your ship... hahaha thoughts anyone?

 

[Luke159]

Ok tactics in the early stage are more important, for example the enemy ship could moneuver better than your and was faster, so you take the enemies strong points and weaken. When i start playing i alway's load knopple shots and aim for the sails as high as i can, reducing the speed of the enemy helps me keep the upper hand in the battle. I don't plan on demasting the ship just slowing the ship down enough so when i have half sails i am still faster even if its only slightly. That way i don't take heavy sail damage. I will then switch to grapse shot and pound the enemy ship, i will alway's try to hit the enemy ship from its stern as i can get a little closer. Since at the start of the game your skills are so low it is hard to do much damage, most shots will miss there target and those that do hit will have little efect. The 4Ibs cannons are fine, the higher the calibure the longer it will take for those guns to reload. The next problem increasing the amount of damage the 4Ibs cannons do means every calibure has to be increased otherwise you'll only be upgrading to higher calibures for there extended range.

In CMV3 the ships was reworked, in previous version you would have a full crew and almost everyone would board, that is unrealistic and was fixed, you need to be able to have some crew left because on the more difficult levels you can't use sail to or exit to the world map in less you have at least minimum crew. So this had to be done for that reason. You battled a ship that was out of your class really and you was lucky to win that battle, you was out crewed not only by maximum crew for each ship but the amount of crew you could board with. You was out gunned, your was weak in every departement. In CMV3 it was even harder to do more damage to ships and the cannons fell out much faster. The trick is to get an officer asap, then board a small ship thats close to your kind of specs, use that ship to get some money to upgrade your cannons and get a new officer or two. If the ship you capture has nice cannons as the Greyhound did, then you put those cannons on your ship in less your keeping the other ship. Sell any cannons that remain from both ships and repair your ship. Hire crew, get more officer's if possible and alway's have at least 1 officer (doesn't matter how good he/she is) as a fighter.

My starting tactics are.
1. Sell everything i don't need.
2. Repair ship
3. Hire as many crew as i can
4. Sleep in the tavern and search the room
5. Search the store for goods
6. Sell all the goods
7. Hire a officer if i can
8. Load knipple shots
9. If i have an officer put him/her as a fighter
10. Go out and rise the jolly roger
11. Attack a small ship (if there is more than 1 ship leave it alone)
12. When i find a ship to attack i board it asap, i try not to fire at it
13. If the ship is better than mine after capturing it i will keep it otherwise i will sell it
14. Take which ever ship your going to sell back to port and sell all cannons that are not needed, all cargo that is not needed and then sell the ship.
15. Repair damage
16. Hire more crew
17. Hire more officers
18. If i can upgrade cannons, in less the ship i captured had better calibure than mine
19. Go back out and do it all again.

I tend to stay close to Bermuda so no need to rise a different flag.

 

[Officerpuppy]

Something else to think about is that the Bounty is one of the weakest ships in the game, it only has 14 4lb cannons, historically it should only have four cannons, but we gave it 14 to include all the small hand cannons scattered about.

@Ugeen

Thats a cool screenshot, having seperate flags in CoAS is something I've been wanting to do since I started modding it.

@giuliootto
1)I don't think we've tried that out, I know there is some left over code from AoP in there somewhere along with some unused MP code.

2)There are different uniforms avialable for certain players (anyone can use them but only certain characters actually have a new texture) But we don't have a tailor like POTC. Currently the different uniforms are sold in stores and stalls at certain levels, and even when you attain these levels they hard to find. The primary reason for their rarity is because they give status boosts to the character. For example if you found the Admiral uniform you would get an up to 20% boost to authority. That uniform doesn't show up until you are at least level 15 I think. It would be cool to implement something like tailors into CoAS but we lack the coders for it.

4)There are a few requests for multilanguage versions of CMv3, but atm I don't think anyone on the team is qualified. For example there is a thread on here for German but no one on the team knows German and it would be a large task for one person to mod all the changed dialog.

 

[Darkhymn]

In CMV3 the ships was reworked, in previous version you would have a full crew and almost everyone would board, that is unrealistic and was fixed, you need to be able to have some crew left because on the more difficult levels you can't use sail to or exit to the world map in less you have at least minimum crew. So this had to be done for that reason.

Not to contradict you, but according to my screenshot, I had exactly one surviving crew member after that boarding action, so either I'm misreading or something went wrong.there. Additionally, in the age of sail it was quite common for nearly everyone, sailors included, to take some part in a boarding action. So, in fact, while your way is obviously better for the situation where your crew is decimated in a less-than-successful boarding, it is actually less realistic than the previous model.

You battled a ship that was out of your class really and you was lucky to win that battle, you was out crewed not only by maximum crew for each ship but the amount of crew you could board with. You was out gunned, your was weak in every departement.

I am aware of all of these things. I was also playing on the 'Sailor' difficulty setting, which is generally incredibly easy. Did I also mention that I fired over 150 grapes and literally did not move the crew bar. I also spent some time attempting to damage the sails. 39 shots and 3% sail damage later I gave up on that tactic. Point is, tactics have little to no bearing in a situation where you're firing baseballs at your enemy, who is presumably hitting them away with glee and shouting "home run!" Yeah, I think I just reinvented baseball.

 

[Luke159]

Who boarded who?

How much crew did you have to start with?
How much crew did the enemy have when boarding? (in less you cheated and have one of the best spy glasses you can't answer that question)

4Ibs cannons aren't ment to deal heavy blows to enemy ships or there crew. As i said the better your skills the more damage you will do. You can have around 119 to mayve 140 while they have 152 to 190. There is a big difference there, and no matter how easy the game you will loose alot of crew. I see you have 64 weapons, you need to have weapons for each and every crew, so if you have 10 crew you will need 10 weapons. If that was your first encounter then i'm guessing you couldn't afford any weapons which ment you was weak there too. If you have for example 100 crew and only 60 weapons you are going to loose anything from 50+ of your crew.

 

[Darkhymn]

Who boarded who?

How much crew did you have to start with?
How much crew did the enemy have when boarding? (in less you cheated and have one of the best spy glasses you can't answer that question)

4Ibs cannons aren't ment to deal heavy blows to enemy ships or there crew. As i said the better your skills the more damage you will do. You can have around 119 to mayve 140 while they have 152 to 190. There is a big difference there, and no matter how easy the game you will loose alot of crew. I see you have 64 weapons, you need to have weapons for each and every crew, so if you have 10 crew you will need 10 weapons. If that was your first encounter then i'm guessing you couldn't afford any weapons which ment you was weak there too. If you have for example 100 crew and only 60 weapons you are going to loose anything from 50+ of your crew.

I only had 75 crew. The opposing ship's crew bar was ~2/3 full, putting them at ~180 crew... More than enough to kill my puny 75.Also, now that I think about it, I believe they boarded me. As weapons go, I had 64 left after losing 71 crewmen in boarding, meaning I had 135 weapons going into the fight. I'm well aware that I had no right winning that boarding action at all.. Only reason I did was some spare pistol ammo and health potions I had the foresight to pick up

Actually, I noticed in CMv3, the excellent spyglass did not show crew amounts, much to my consternation. Was that intentional? If not, has it been fixed, or was I the only one having the problem?

As far as the 4lb cannon thing goes, I'm really not too worried about it. In fact, the Colonial Schooner Cheese Muffin has had a fair bit of success just skipping the shooting phase altogether and just boarding :ixi (Actually has only taken two ships this way so far, but the ball is now rolling, so to speak) Also, Colonial Schooners seem to be missing something, here:

But you probably already knew that. Cheese Muffin, however, is heart broken:

 

[Luke159]

If they boarded you then that explains why you lost almost all your crew, however the same would be said if you had boarded them, you may have had a few extra crew but i don't think it would have been many more.
You certainly had enough weapons for the battle. The spy Glass was done like that to make it more realistic, i think at some point it will be made as an option you can turn on or off, but we need a coder for that.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

In the PotC Build mod we've got Realistic and Arcade game modes.
That shouldn't be too hard to implement in CoAS.
In the "worst" case, you'll just stick in some if-statements with #defines,
like the old BuildSettings.h from the PotC Build mod.
That's not hard to do.

 

[Darkhymn]

If they boarded you then that explains why you lost almost all your crew, however the same would be said if you had boarded them, you may have had a few extra crew but i don't think it would have been many more.
You certainly had enough weapons for the battle. The spy Glass was done like that to make it more realistic, i think at some point it will be made as an option you can turn on or off, but we need a coder for that.

What kind of code are we talking about? C++, Python? Do you know? I was very sad indeed to find that my shiny new excellent spyglass was roughly exactly the same as my regular one, though I figured it had to do with realism. So what you're saying is that the person actually doing the boarding uses a smaller percentage of their crew? How exactly does that work? Do you have it set so it uses all but the minimum crew requirement? Or is it more complicated than that?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The code in your PROGRAM folder is close to C and can be edited with Notepad.

 

[Luke159]

I decided i would give it a test, i entered a battle with a Spanish Barque and after around 12 broadsides from my 4Ibs cannons i decided to board, so i could see the damage done. Now my ship has a maximum of 8 cannons front 3 on each side and 1 front and rear gun. I only used the one side and after a few broasides i was down to 2 guns remaining. I only used round shot for this test. I set the game as sailer, lowest experience gain, and 78 crew. I had 100 weapons before setting sail, here is the resault of the battle.




No cheats was used for this as you can see from my character and i have no officer's, couldn't afford any this time.




i think the 4Ibs cannons did very well, i was out gunned, out crewed, out everything but i wasn't trying to capture a new ship i was testing the cannons, more spacifically the 4Ibs cannons. And as you can see from the Barque they had better cannons than me, not to mention 8 more than me too.

In the PotC Build mod we've got Realistic and Arcade game modes.
That shouldn't be too hard to implement in CoAS.
In the "worst" case, you'll just stick in some if-statements with #defines,
like the old BuildSettings.h from the PotC Build mod.
That's not hard to do.

Thanks Pieter, i will look into it, and see if we can get it in place for the next patch. :will

If they boarded you then that explains why you lost almost all your crew, however the same would be said if you had boarded them, you may have had a few extra crew but i don't think it would have been many more.
You certainly had enough weapons for the battle. The spy Glass was done like that to make it more realistic, i think at some point it will be made as an option you can turn on or off, but we need a coder for that.

What kind of code are we talking about? C++, Python? Do you know? I was very sad indeed to find that my shiny new excellent spyglass was roughly exactly the same as my regular one, though I figured it had to do with realism. So what you're saying is that the person actually doing the boarding uses a smaller percentage of their crew? How exactly does that work? Do you have it set so it uses all but the minimum crew requirement? Or is it more complicated than that?

We have taken the amount of gunner's 1 crew member per gun, and 2 cannoners per gun and the minimum crew. Added all that together and what ever is left out of the maximum crew is for boarding. Not complicated at all.

 

[modernknight1]

For myself, I avoid ship to ship fights like the plague when I'm starting a new game no matter how easy the difficulty setting - that is until I have gone up a couple/three levels and have a few officers to use as support fighters. I run merchant and passenger missions only and avoid all confrontations. Once I feel I can take on a little lone merchant I will, but still avoiding a gunnery fight and closing to board as quickly as possible.

The way I look at it is that when you start out you are at a kindergarten level on gunnery - period: meaning you're gonna miss a whole heck of a lot and the enemy no matter how wimpy is gonna have the advantage. Only until I pick up a few levels, have a cannoneer and pick up some gunnery perks and experience do I try to slug it out with anyone. This may be boring I know, but it allows you to pick up sailing and commerce experience as well as swordsmanship experience in caves, with robbers/rapists and with enemy guards outside and just inside the city gates of their towns. This is also a quick way to level up and pick up additional items for sale/ for yourself. In the words of the great JEDI Master Yoda, "patience, learn you must, mmmmm".

MK

 

[Darkhymn]

The code in your PROGRAM folder is close to C and can be edited with Notepad.

Is this is the case, I'll take some time to familiarize myself with it, and can perhaps be of some small help coding.

i think the 4Ibs cannons did very well, i was out gunned, out crewed, out everything but i wasn't trying to capture a new ship i was testing the cannons, more spacifically the 4Ibs cannons. And as you can see from the Barque they had better cannons than me, not to mention 8 more than me too.

Yeah, I'm thinking the particular fight I was griping about was on the extreme end of the bad luck spectrum. I have since had some limited success with the 4lb cannons. Though I still believe they're close to useless, they managed to get me through 2 whole fights in my most recent gamestart, before my entire starboard battery fell off in a single volley in the third (I wish I had thought to take a screenshot, it was really quite funny). The good news being that the broadside I lost all of my cannons on was the final volley of a pre-boarding assault, and I sunk the poor Cheese Muffin after winning the new ship with just one casualty :ixi

We have taken the amount of gunner's 1 crew member per gun, and 2 cannoners per gun and the minimum crew. Added all that together and what ever is left out of the maximum crew is for boarding. Not complicated at all.

So, current crew - (minimum crew + (3 x cannons)) = crew used in boarding? Seems fair enough, particularly on larger ships, though on smaller ships I could see a disproportionate number of crew staying behind. Haven't had an issue yet, so it seems to be working well enough. Just out of curiosity, if, say for the sake of both realism and convenience, I wanted to modify those numbers on smaller ships specifically, while leaving them in place on larger ones... Would that even be possible, and if so, how complicated would it be?

For myself, I avoid ship to ship fights like the plague when I'm starting a new game no matter how easy the difficulty setting - that is until I have gone up a couple/three levels and have a few officers to use as support fighters. I run merchant and passenger missions only and avoid all confrontations. Once I feel I can take on a little lone merchant I will, but still avoiding a gunnery fight and closing to board as quickly as possible.

The way I look at it is that when you start out you are at a kindergarten level on gunnery - period: meaning you're gonna miss a whole heck of a lot and the enemy no matter how wimpy is gonna have the advantage. Only until I pick up a few levels, have a cannoneer and pick up some gunnery perks and experience do I try to slug it out with anyone. This may be boring I know, but it allows you to pick up sailing and commerce experience as well as swordsmanship experience in caves, with robbers/rapists and with enemy guards outside and just inside the city gates of their towns. This is also a quick way to level up and pick up additional items for sale/ for yourself. In the words of the great JEDI Master Yoda, "patience, learn you must, mmmmm".

MK

You quoted Yoda. How can I argue? Fortunately, I don't need to. I agree. Generally I prefer boarding over artillery combat in most cases, choosing to carry mostly grape shot and only small amounts of everything else. Unfortunately, I don't have the patience to do legit missions early game, so combat and the slave trade are my profession right up to the point when I start sacking cities up and down the Spanish Main.
I've found that spending most of my beginning money on maintaining the largest crew possible makes this possible, so long as I choose my fights carefully.

 

[Luke159]

We have taken the amount of gunner's 1 crew member per gun, and 2 cannoners per gun and the minimum crew. Added all that together and what ever is left out of the maximum crew is for boarding. Not complicated at all.

So, current crew - (minimum crew + (3 x cannons)) = crew used in boarding? Seems fair enough, particularly on larger ships, though on smaller ships I could see a disproportionate number of crew staying behind. Haven't had an issue yet, so it seems to be working well enough. Just out of curiosity, if, say for the sake of both realism and convenience, I wanted to modify those numbers on smaller ships specifically, while leaving them in place on larger ones... Would that even be possible, and if so, how complicated would it be?

No its not difficult to change the crew value's. In your game directory for COAS go to Program\Ships and open ships_init, You'll need to etit each of these lines of codes for the ships you wish to edit.

refShip.MaxCrew         		= xx;
refShip.MinCrew         		= xx;
refShip.BoardingCrew				= xx;
refShip.GunnerCrew				= xx;
refShip.CannonerCrew				= xx;
refShip.SailorCrew				= xx;

Min crew and max crew obviously do as they say, boarding crew is how many crew will board, gunnery crew is how many crew will fire the guns, cannon crew is how many will reload the guns. Sailor crew is how many crew you can have at max. There is some where in another file a code that effects this line of code, for example all ships are set bellow there max crew yet you can still carry more than the max crew because the sailor crew has so many % added on so 100 sailor crew could mean 125 crew at max for that given ship.

By increasing the amount of crew a small ship can carry will make it more unrealistic for the battles with large ships because no small ship ever carried enough crew to capture large ships like Frigates, Corvette's, MOW's etc. An example is the crew on the Soleil Royal )quest version) is bassed on the Soleil Royal after it was refitted, the none quest version is based on the ship before it was refitted. The Victory's crew is also based of real value's and all MOW's have had there crew's based around that of the Victory and early Soleil Royal. Slamm ships have had there value's based as close as we can to realistic as we dare go, if we had it any more realistic then we would have even less boarding crew.

In small ships almost all the crew would board, in large military ships the crew was more organised so many fired the swival guns and musketeers fired from the rigging and onboard deck. They also had musketeers on each of the gun decks to try and stop any one from getting down and killing the gunnery crew. In most battles the crew continued firing bradsides into one another even though there crew had boarded each other. And if we calculated to a more realistic value it would have taken anything from 2 to 6 crew to load those cannons depending on calibure, but unlike COAS in real life the ships didn't have just 1 calibure mounted. They had as many as 5 different calibures mounted throughout there ships (depending on ship type and amount of guns capable of been mounted). So if we worked out how many crew was firing all of say Victory's guns we would see that it would be lower than if we increased the crew for the cannons, due to not all there guns requiring the same amount of crew to load the guns. This is why the 2 per cannon was ellected as been a better trade off.

Anyway back to the editing. letg go with an example ship, the ship has 200 max crew, and a boarding parts of 90, you will need to edit the sailor crew aswell since that effects how many more crew of the maximum you can carry. The sailor crew in this example is say 150, you increase the max crew to say 250 that means boarding party is increased by 50 from 90 to 140, sailor crew is increased from 150 to 200. Minimum crew, gunnery crew and cannon crew shouldn't need editing in less you want to have more crew remain onbaord your ship while your boarding enemy ships.

Hope this helps.

 

[Darkhymn]

We have taken the amount of gunner's 1 crew member per gun, and 2 cannoners per gun and the minimum crew. Added all that together and what ever is left out of the maximum crew is for boarding. Not complicated at all.

So, current crew - (minimum crew + (3 x cannons)) = crew used in boarding? Seems fair enough, particularly on larger ships, though on smaller ships I could see a disproportionate number of crew staying behind. Haven't had an issue yet, so it seems to be working well enough. Just out of curiosity, if, say for the sake of both realism and convenience, I wanted to modify those numbers on smaller ships specifically, while leaving them in place on larger ones... Would that even be possible, and if so, how complicated would it be?

No its not difficult to change the crew value's. In your game directory for COAS go to Program\Ships and open ships_init, You'll need to etit each of these lines of codes for the ships you wish to edit.

refShip.MaxCrew         		= xx;
refShip.MinCrew         		= xx;
refShip.BoardingCrew				= xx;
refShip.GunnerCrew				= xx;
refShip.CannonerCrew				= xx;
refShip.SailorCrew				= xx;

Min crew and max crew obviously do as they say, boarding crew is how many crew will board, gunnery crew is how many crew will fire the guns, cannon crew is how many will reload the guns. Sailor crew is how many crew you can have at max. There is some where in another file a code that effects this line of code, for example all ships are set bellow there max crew yet you can still carry more than the max crew because the sailor crew has so many % added on so 100 sailor crew could mean 125 crew at max for that given ship.

By increasing the amount of crew a small ship can carry will make it more unrealistic for the battles with large ships because no small ship ever carried enough crew to capture large ships like Frigates, Corvette's, MOW's etc. An example is the crew on the Soleil Royal )quest version) is bassed on the Soleil Royal after it was refitted, the none quest version is based on the ship before it was refitted. The Victory's crew is also based of real value's and all MOW's have had there crew's based around that of the Victory and early Soleil Royal. Slamm ships have had there value's based as close as we can to realistic as we dare go, if we had it any more realistic then we would have even less boarding crew.

In small ships almost all the crew would board, in large military ships the crew was more organised so many fired the swival guns and musketeers fired from the rigging and onboard deck. They also had musketeers on each of the gun decks to try and stop any one from getting down and killing the gunnery crew. In most battles the crew continued firing bradsides into one another even though there crew had boarded each other. And if we calculated to a more realistic value it would have taken anything from 2 to 6 crew to load those cannons depending on calibure, but unlike COAS in real life the ships didn't have just 1 calibure mounted. They had as many as 5 different calibures mounted throughout there ships (depending on ship type and amount of guns capable of been mounted). So if we worked out how many crew was firing all of say Victory's guns we would see that it would be lower than if we increased the crew for the cannons, due to not all there guns requiring the same amount of crew to load the guns. This is why the 2 per cannon was ellected as been a better trade off.

Anyway back to the editing. letg go with an example ship, the ship has 200 max crew, and a boarding parts of 90, you will need to edit the sailor crew aswell since that effects how many more crew of the maximum you can carry. The sailor crew in this example is say 150, you increase the max crew to say 250 that means boarding party is increased by 50 from 90 to 140, sailor crew is increased from 150 to 200. Minimum crew, gunnery crew and cannon crew shouldn't need editing in less you want to have more crew remain onbaord your ship while your boarding enemy ships.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for that. Very informative and it's nice to know you have done your research. Not that I'll likely be editing any of this just yet, but I've been poking around in backups of a few files, pulling things apart to get to understand them, if you will. So anything that I can learn here rather than the hard way gets me a step closer to perhaps modding sometime down the road
My thoughts on the smaller ships was not to increase crew capacity, but to increase the number of crewmen who boarded, but I did some playtesting in a sloop for a few hours this morning, and I'm finding that the current numbers are working pretty well.