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Feature Request Discussion about captain and crew bonusses

Pieter Boelen said:
Are you getting a ridiculous amount of log entries by any chance?
That could potentially harm performance quite a bit.
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Just repeating this one in case you accidentally missed it.
I'm not sure if this would indeed explain it, but we might as well rule it out. :doff
 
This is my log. But now I relay have to rest a little.
 

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Ok so for me Ship speed is good in arcade, but I tweaked it, since I use a mix between realistic and arcade sailing (to use the realistic ship rudder).

I dont see any performance problems but I have an I7 CPU, so that might be my hardware which compensates potential frame drops.

As I play the 4.0 version I don't know if you already fixed that but I have to report a few new issues, if you wish I make seperate threads for them:

1. If I go into boarding with 3 officers, the game will crash right after the boarding loading screen. I then get an error.log which refers to Lai_boarding at 122 (dont have the error.log anymore, can reproduce it)

2. english townguards dont really like their townfolk, since they always fight with them. especially funny at the residence square at port royale, where they all meet, the townfolk and guards, and then fight with each other. This occasionally happens in taverns too, and most of the guests there then get in the "frighten" mode, as english guards try to kill them. This broke almost 2 times the standard story, as Pintell and Ragetti got with in the townfight and wouldnt talk to me for several minutes and Danielle wasnt able to talk in Port Royale Tavern after some guards slaughtered all guests they could reach.

3. There's a chance that the game crashes when you make a surrendered captain your officer.

And I encountered some minor dialog issues.
 
Pillat said:
I play the 4.0 version
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You mean the last ModDB release?

Pillat said:
2. english townguards dont really like their townfolk, since they always fight with them. especially funny at the residence square at port royale, where they all meet, the townfolk and guards, and then fight with each other. This occasionally happens in taverns too, and most of the guests there then get in the "frighten" mode, as english guards try to kill them. This broke almost 2 times the standard story, as Pintell and Ragetti got with in the townfight and wouldnt talk to me for several minutes and Danielle wasnt able to talk in Port Royale Tavern after some guards slaughtered all guests they could reach.
Click to expand...
Probably this evil one again: Confirmed Bug - Unintentional Fights or Lack Thereof (aka. AI Group Relations) | PiratesAhoy!
 
Yes. Which probably makes things even worse.

Had another issue right now:
Captured a french Centaure class. Ordered one of my officers to sail it so I can sell it. Since it was captured, crew morale was dangerously low and they eventually mutinied. After a grapeshot salvo I boarded the Centaure (again) and fought to the first gun deck. Then the captain surrendered (which was my officer) and then he wanted to fight me.. well it didnt go well for him, which was kinda sad cause he was actually a pretty good officer. That's the first point - if you successfully slay down the mutiniers, shouldnt your officer be back under your flag? Anyway, after I killed him, I got to the end screen where you can switch crew etc. I thought "well, I have enough officers left, not that big problem". But: in the end screen was now a Lateen Caravel with every stat at 0. And when I wanted to leave the screen, my game crashed.
 
Pillat said:
That's the first point - if you successfully slay down the mutiniers, shouldnt your officer be back under your flag?
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It was the officer who mutinied. Especially if morale keeps dropping, it is probably because his reputation doesn't match his own.

Pillat said:
Anyway, after I killed him, I got to the end screen where you can switch crew etc. I thought "well, I have enough officers left, not that big problem". But: in the end screen was now a Lateen Caravel with every stat at 0. And when I wanted to leave the screen, my game crashed.
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That sounds like a bug @ANSEL reported quite a while back.
As far as I'm aware, it should be fixed in the Mod Release - Build 14 Beta 4.1 WIP [Last Update: 23 sept] | PiratesAhoy! version.

If you want a stable game experience, you may want to AVOID the later ZIPs.
Those are still quite experimental.
 
Thats why I downloaded the 4.0 ;) But I guess most of the things I reported here with 4.0 are also there in 4.1. Those two crash-reasons in post#23 are quite important to track down IMO.
 
Pillat said:
Thats why I downloaded the 4.0 ;)
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The 4.1 WIP dated 28 July 2016 is pretty safe and actually comes quite recommended as it has some pretty important fixes.

Pillat said:
Those two crash-reasons in post#23 are quite important to track down IMO.
Click to expand...
I think at least one of those two is indeed already fixed. The other one, I'm not sure.
 
@Pieter Boelen None of this system was created or implemented by me, I just know how it works. The only parts that came from me, or to my knowledge have changed since I have joined up, are the difficulty modifier to captain level and the switch of guards from per level to base hp.

This is the same basic system that was in place in the July 28th version, as far as I know.

@Grey Roger It is most certainly a bug if a guard gets a pickaxe, shovel or such. A basic sword (cutlas, sabre) is fine, because they have been buffed at the low tier to allow for this and some random worsening of weapons is intentional to make up for armor, but pickaxes, shovels and such should be blocked, as they will certainly lower performance too much.

I think there is a check in LAi_equip that looks if a soldier has a nationality, and then if they do blocks them from weapons that have another nationality defined in init_items (ie, all the truly crappy weapons are defined as "pirate" in init_items to block them from guards). Something must be going wrong with that check if they are getting those. That check has been around since before I arrived, I didn't do anything with it or change any nationality defines, not sure why it doesn't work.

I could probably find a quick moment to see what is going on, I think I know where to look.
 
I never paid much attention to it, but now reading this thread, I have to agree. I too did notice that boarding is significantly more difficult, to the point where I often used Godmode to survive an encounter where my crew easily outnumbers the enemy. That while my morale is always between High and Excellent.
 
@Joer You've noticed the difficulty increase compared to which prior version?

I'm not sure when we moved to the new system I describe (again, it happened before my time here, it hasn't substantially changed in months), but it would be good to figure out what prior changes might have been at issue, and if you know what previous version you used it might help to narrow things down.

EDIT: unless the system was not really working prior to the recent Captain generation unified system--ie, the formulas were the same but not applying to most encounters. If that is the case it would be good to know as well.
 
@Pillat Interesting.

My suspicion is one of these two is happening:

1) Something in LAi_boarding is getting overwritten and no longer functioning to create the full differences
OR
2) The differences in LAi_boarding were balanced under an older system and sometime in the past several months to a year the way HP and leveling generally works changed, meaning they no longer exert as strong an effect as they were intended to.

One of these probably happening sometime prior to the July 28th version.
 
I'd be very interested to hear how the current version compared to the last EXE I posted.
Especially when the Soldier Weapons line is disabled in the 28 July version.
 
@Tingyun

It definitely all started after the july 28 update. Before that, boardings were definitely quicker and easier if you were decently levelled and with a strong crew.
 
Seriously, I'd like this Crew-to-Level-Ratio gone. I usually have the playstyle of capturing quite heavy ships at the beginning by using the advantage of the small vessel you have at the beginning, speed and turnrate. Then I grapeshot the crew away from spots where I am clear of enemy fire and then board it. This doesn't work at all now, and I really think it's a legit and reasonable playstyle.
 
I am pretty sure Lord Cochrane would approve of that type of playstyle. It certainly would feel more realistic. :)
 
@Pieter Boelen I wish I could playtest it for you, but this long lunch I'm taking is about to end, and have to work through the weekend. So someone else would have to see.

I do suspect it that exe would end up with similar difficulty, based on the reports above, and the formulas being the same, sometime before the July 28th exe something happened to make it harder.

The thing to check would be when the current formula for crewmember rank was created, as that is the likely culprit. Before the unified Captain function, it was in the CreateOfficer file I think, now it is in the CreateCaptain file, both in Loc_ai. Here it is:

Code: 
int GetBoardingCrewRank(ref Crewmember)
{
    int crank = sti(Crewmember.rank);
    int rank = crank*0.6 + 0.2*rand(crank);
    rank += GetOfficTypeRankBonus(Crewmember.quest.officertype);
    if(rank < 1) rank = 1;
    return rank;
}

If that was introduced at some defined time in the past, I'd bet it accounts for the difficulty change. But all of this predates my time here, so I don't know.
 
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