Correct the number of crewmembers

[Capt. Daniel Wolf]

Currently alot, if not all ships have surprisingly LARGE number of crewmembers.

I suggest taking a great wiki-search, or other sources, to determine the correct number of troops these vessels had.

more than 300 man for a 32 gun light frigate... (used to be corvette, but I appreciate the change)

more than 100 for a two mast class 4 fast schooner...
Even for first blink while at see seems too mutch.
The pure vessels isnt long enough, to support the sleep of half of it down the hold,
as they used to sleep in changed turns, in hammocks.

Come on.

I dont know mutch about these, so until I didnt found each type's standard, I dont modify them,
but if noone interested, I can do it with a little search, until <b>all</b> types found.

So, no changes "by my taste", only with historical proof.

OR if anyone have great sources for this, I will appreciate it.

Im sure, it isnt change gameplay mutch, as it seems that enough ships have ALOT more crew, than used to be back then, ^^
so almost all the numbers had to be lowered to be historically correct, so the difficulty of boarding remains the same.

I like to know, whats your opinion about this, and if you have anything against it, let me know, what.

Changing these only corrects a great historical hole, in the MOST historically correct sail simulation game (with build mod) at the gaming world.

Or, I like to ask your help for any sources you have, and proven thrustworthy, about sailships.

<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/keith.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="keith.gif" />

Good winds, and godspeed.

Cptn. Daniel Wolf

 

[LarryHookins]

I'm not sure why you think the crews are too large.

Let's take your schooner as an example. It probably has 20 guns, 8 on each broadside. Gun crew is 6 men per gun, for a total of 48 for just one broadside. You also need crew to man the sails at the same time. We're looking at 60-70 men as a *minimum* crew here to man one broadside and sail.

So the game assigns 100 crew with a minimum crew of 20. If you haven't noticed, things happen very slowly when you're at minimum crew on a ship. All these things have already been factored into the game.

Hook

 

[LarryHookins]

I had a look in the ship database I compiled for another sailing game. The typical British 32 gun ship had a crew of 180 plus 45 marines. The typical Spanish 34 gun ship had a crew of 230 plus 50 marines. Other nations fell between those two numbers.

I also had a look in the ships_init.c code. The corvettes were originally 200 crew and I raised them to 300. This was done to make the cannon code work properly. At 200 crew the guns loaded too slowly. You can see the effect without changing the code by going to the tavern and firing some of your crew. The effect is greater if you're armed with long guns, as carronades take fewer crew.

At one time a lot of people were complaining that the crews were too small. They wanted the ability to carry more crew. This was a common complaint. No matter what the "standard" crew for a ship was, they figured you could always add a few more.

So there were a lot of factors that went into the crew size on the ships. Some were game mechanics, some were people's preferences at the time. It's dangerous to mess with either.

Hook

 

[Capt. Daniel Wolf]

Ok, I see your point. Anyway, if you somehow decide to change these values, I will happy to help.
But this explains a lot of things-

Thank you

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'm wondering, with newly added ships how much thought goes into their stats?
Probably they're just copied from other ships.

 

[bumpkin]

Merchantmen carried the minimum for working the ship. More mouths begets more stores and less space for cargo, ergo lower voyage profit. Down side of this was ship nearly defenseless.
Privateers carried large crews for the purpose of detailing prize crews but having enough space for some cargo. Logic being if hunting was bad you could recover some of the cost of the trip.
Pirates carried enormous crews but rarely stayed at sea for long periods of time.

Maybe the solution would be three crew levels being Max, Suggested and Min. Where Max would be the number of crew for which you could carry enough food to last for 2 weeks at sea. Suggested would be the Privateer model. Enough crew to efficiently fight the ship but say 30% available storage for cargo. Having not looked at the code I would assume this may not be easy to accomplish.

Just an idea. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />
Maybe not a good one. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="sad.gif" />o)
Greg.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Actually, it doesn't sound all that bad. But that does mean that if you go over the suggested amount of crew, your cargo space should suffer. The minimum amount of crew would be required to sail the ship at all; at the suggested amount of crew, the ship will operate at 100% efficiency. If you go over that amount, you will have reserves in battles in case crew is killed off so you can remain at full efficiency, you have an advantage in boardings, but your cargo space will suffer and you'll get huge monthly pays. And maybe the chance of diseases should increase too. We don't have diseases at the moment, but we should. No diseases = no doctors/medicine needed and we DO have those! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/mybad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="mybad.gif" />

 

[LarryHookins]

Easy to implement. Doesn't even require code changes. Just don't carry the full amount of crew. You an fire some crew at the tavern.

We can't go over max crew in the game. You get black crew bars on the ship, and a chance of CTD. The number you're suggesting for recommended crew is built into the code, but never posted anywhere. You'll figure it out soon enough by trial and error. It's just a computed value that's probably different for different parts of the code.

Hook

 

[Pieter Boelen]

LOL! But does "too many" crew cause a hit on cargo space? And if you have a number of crew between the internally calculated "recommended crew" and the maximum crew, does the ship still function at full efficiency?

 

[LarryHookins]

The hit on cargo space is from having to carry extra rations. But rations don't weight much, not nearly what you need in planks for repairs. As far as I know, as long as you have over the calculated number of crew the ship functions at full efficiency. Min and max crew are fairly critical to these calculations. If some of the new ships have had random numbers chosen as crew without studying the other ships in the game, then they'll likely not function at full efficiency.

If a trader is counting paper clips to save money, he's likely running at very low efficiency on his trades. If you don't have enough crew, *I think* you sail slower. I know you turn slower. You can't fight off a pirate because it takes forever for guns to load. You can't replace crew on the sea, so you stay crippled until you get to a port. If you're not carrying repair materials, you'll end up sailing slower if you take any damage.

Prices on some goods change a lot if you buy or sell a lot of them. It's possible to LOSE money on a lot of gold taking it from an island that exports it to an island that imports it. Similar with some other goods, but not as bad.

If you think you can save money by running a short crew, have at it. Report back your results. I've personally found that there will be times when getting a few extra days out of your rations is worth the problems of having the smaller crew. I don't do it often.

Hook

 

[Pieter Boelen]

<!--quoteo(post=306337:date=Mar 12 2009, 08:09 PM:name=Hook)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Hook @ Mar 12 2009, 08:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=306337"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If a trader is counting paper clips to save money, he's likely running at very low efficiency on his trades. If you don't have enough crew, *I think* you sail slower. I know you turn slower. You can't fight off a pirate because it takes forever for guns to load. You can't replace crew on the sea, so you stay crippled until you get to a port. If you're not carrying repair materials, you'll end up sailing slower if you take any damage.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Having the ship sail slower if you don't have enough crew sounds rather weird. Once you've set all sails, you can sail straight at the same speed. You will be less manoeuvrable though, of course.

<!--quoteo(post=306337:date=Mar 12 2009, 08:09 PM:name=Hook)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Hook @ Mar 12 2009, 08:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=306337"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Prices on some goods change a lot if you buy or sell a lot of them. It's possible to LOSE money on a lot of gold taking it from an island that exports it to an island that imports it. Similar with some other goods, but not as bad.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->That sounds a bit unfortunate. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/mybad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="mybad.gif" />

 

[bumpkin]

Not really because less crew could mean more cargo. Hence the ship would sit lower in the water and be slower. It would make sense that less crew could affect ship handling. But in the real world that would only be for setting and dousing sail. We had about 15 trainees tailing the main tops'l halyard to raise the sail on the Rose and it took about 5 minutes. Sail and yard weigh 800 - 1000 pounds. Re-bracing the yards & sails after changing course requires only minimal crew.

Sounds like the best solution would be to bump up Max crew, and advertise max efficient/suggested.

Greg.

 

[LarryHookins]

Thanks, Greg. I've done a lot of work on the sailing model. If you see anything that's not right, let me know and maybe I can fix it.

I can't find anything that would slow the ship if there wasn't enough crew, but turning is certainly affected.

Hook