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Included in Build Distinguish between different playstyles

Pieter Boelen said:
Your first point sounds a bit odd to me. Though I'm not familiar enough with the nation relation coding to say for sure what happens.
As far as I always understood it, nations should not turns hostile to you without you giving them a proper reason. o_O
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Attacking their ally is a proper reason. That's what alliance is supposed to mean. :cheers

The hero pirate, eh? Only in films and games! :rofl
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Yes, films and games such as "Pirates of the Caribbean". ;)

As I figure it, the choice of enemies IS up to the player even if all nations DO turn hostile upon joining the pirates.
Except that you manually have to crave for forgiveness and pay a price for it. Sort-of makes sense, doesn't it?
If you ARE a known pirate, why would any nations still trust you. Unless you specifically gave them a reason.
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They might not trust you, which is why you're not getting a letter of marque. But if you're not attacking them, they'll prefer to use their limited naval resources to go after pirates who are. Why would Britain send its ships to attack a pirate who is only attacking the French, when those same ships could be more usefully sent to attack a pirate who is attacking British ships, or for that matter, sent to attack the French as well? Besides, at the start of the game you're not a known pirate, you're not known as anything.

That gives me an idea for another loop-hole. Set all your relations to be hostile but only marginally so. If Spain and Holland are at war and you attack a Spanish ship, that raises your relations with Holland, doesn't it? Do that a few more times and don't attack anything Dutch, and it shouldn't be too long before Holland gets the idea and isn't hostile to you any more. Thus you cancel their hostility by action rather than by talking to a governor. And that way, if you've decided your background is that the Spanish attacked your home town and killed your family, so you hate Spain and don't care about anyone else, you'll end up very hostile to Spain and nobody (except, perhaps, Spain's allies) cares much about you. Holland likes you because you're attacking Holland's enemies even if you're not doing it on their behalf. Officially, you're a pirate. Unofficially, you're their sort of pirate, so provided you aren't stupid enough to be flying a Jolly Roger when you approach Kralendijk, you'll be allowed in.
I don't see Brave Black Flag starting you as a "proper" pirate, since you did not choose to join the brotherhood.
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I did. :g2 One of the first things I noticed was that I'd started with enough positive relation points with Pirates to turn it green, meaning I was due a promotion right away, so I went and collected it. Got a shiny new sword as a result. Britain was still hostile of course, but everyone else was only wary. They didn't trust me but weren't actively hostile.
 
So here's the save. The relations is +1, first level land grant. total land = 4600. first, fight french on land, then auto jump to sea for an sea battle with french. Then the relations should down to -61. Total land is still 4600.
 

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Ah, that'd be good indeed. In fact, would be nice to move a lot of the relevant stuff into separate files.
Just disallowing professional navy characters from getting LoMs was a huge pain because it required 100+ manual search-and-replace actions. :modding
 
Grey Roger said:
Attacking their ally is a proper reason. That's what alliance is supposed to mean. :cheers
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True. I was referring to a "proper code reason". I'm not sure if alliances are in there properly at all.

Grey Roger said:
They might not trust you, which is why you're not getting a letter of marque. But if you're not attacking them, they'll prefer to use their limited naval resources to go after pirates who are. Why would Britain send its ships to attack a pirate who is only attacking the French, when those same ships could be more usefully sent to attack a pirate who is attacking British ships, or for that matter, sent to attack the French as well? Besides, at the start of the game you're not a known pirate, you're not known as anything.
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True. That would actually give some value to the "Wary" nation relation. Right now, "Wary" is as good as "Friendly" because either way, you're not getting attacked.

Grey Roger said:
That gives me an idea for another loop-hole. Set all your relations to be hostile but only marginally so. If Spain and Holland are at war and you attack a Spanish ship, that raises your relations with Holland, doesn't it? Do that a few more times and don't attack anything Dutch, and it shouldn't be too long before Holland gets the idea and isn't hostile to you any more. Thus you cancel their hostility by action rather than by talking to a governor. And that way, if you've decided your background is that the Spanish attacked your home town and killed your family, so you hate Spain and don't care about anyone else, you'll end up very hostile to Spain and nobody (except, perhaps, Spain's allies) cares much about you. Holland likes you because you're attacking Holland's enemies even if you're not doing it on their behalf. Officially, you're a pirate. Unofficially, you're their sort of pirate, so provided you aren't stupid enough to be flying a Jolly Roger when you approach Kralendijk, you'll be allowed in.
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I do think I like the sound of that....

Not sure if EVERY ship you attack automatically adds/substacts points from ALL nations though. I recall hearing that before, but have never seen it.
Good thing we talk about these things now because then I'll know what to look out for when doing some actual playing soon.
I need a better idea of what is currently coded and how that works. Then we can hopefully figure out how to lead that towards something more sensible.

Grey Roger said:
I did. :g2 One of the first things I noticed was that I'd started with enough positive relation points with Pirates to turn it green, meaning I was due a promotion right away, so I went and collected it. Got a shiny new sword as a result. Britain was still hostile of course, but everyone else was only wary. They didn't trust me but weren't actively hostile.
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Ah, yes in Brave Black Flag the pirate leader has a governor style dialog.
That is actually not a truly intended feature, but more an unintentional side-effect that we sort-of kind-of made use of.

If you try that in any other storyline, you will not ever be able to do that because the pirates aren't "supposed" to have a normal governor.
 
Confirmed that indeed you turn hostile to France because the quest code forces that to happen here in quests_reaction.c:
Code: 
  case "French_Ship_Khael":     
     SetCharacterRelationBoth(GetCharacterIndex("Clement Bossicar"),GetMainCharacterIndex(),RELATION_ENEMY);
       
       Group_CreateGroup("Clement Bossicar");
       Group_AddCharacter("Clement Bossicar", "Clement Bossicar");
       Group_SetGroupCommander("Clement Bossicar", "Clement Bossicar");
       Group_SetPursuitGroup("Clement Bossicar", PLAYER_GROUP);
       Group_SetTaskAttack("Clement Bossicar", PLAYER_GROUP);
       Group_LockTask("Clement Bossicar");
       Group_SetAddress("Clement Bossicar", "KhaelRoa", "Quest_ships", "Quest_ship_12");
       characters[GetCharacterIndex("Clement Bossicar")].nosurrender = 2;

       SetActualRMRelation(FRANCE, REL_WAR);
So this isn't technically a bug.

Perhaps we should edit the SetActualRMRelation function to check for your previous relations and call LeaveService properly?
Not sure if that is worth the effort though....
 
My thoughts on piracy:

Psycho Pirates: If you attack everything like a rabid dog, no one will like you; even the pirates will want to string you up. So long as you don't cause trouble, pirate havens still will let you dock so they can make money off you. If you attack the pirate havens... you better start looting necessities over gold. The advantage to this is a lot of action and looting targets. The problems are too numerous to count.

Less Psycho Pirates: All pirates are fairly psycho. These average pirates will at least try to survive. This tends to mean keeping relations with pirate havens, and sometimes other pirate captains or alliances. Their advantage is that not everyone is trying to kill them or run away from them, and they have more places to stay than total psychos. They still have plenty of targets. These pirates often will try to be sponsored pirates or idealist pirates.

Sponsored Pirates: Your not technically a privateer, but a certain nation is turning a blind eye to your activities if you keep away from their ships (and probably their allies' ships). The level of sponsorship ranges from less military patrols in the area, to allowing you to sail into their towns and trade your plunder, depending on your personal reputation with that nation or on the reputation of the pirate haven you operate from (or on some kind of pirate alliance you're with). Disadvantage is that you can't attack ships which will annoy your sponsor.

Idealist Pirates: You want to form your own legacy as a pirate king. Your goal is to amass a great pirate alliance that will put the fear of the devil into even the great navies of the Caribbean. This route involves gaining a high reputation, increasing relations with various pirate havens, captains, alliances, then getting to the top of your own formed on lofty promises and too much alcohol. The pros and cons range from everyone focusing their efforts on you and crushing you into the dust, if they catch wind of you and you have no friends, to you becoming a great armada that changes history with your own ports and infrastructure. This would be one of the hardest and most rewarding goals in the game.

Iffy Privateers: Your crew occasionally tortures sailors as they force you below deck, or you take some plunder from your enemies that was taken by them from your allies. Sometimes you get away with these mild slights, and something the hand of bureaucracy smites you without warning or fair trial.

Secret Pirate: It might be possible to secretly perform piracy, killing witnesses or disguising your identities well enough to fence goods and not get caught. This could lead to some interesting quests when survivors turn up you want to silence, or a member of your crew is going to testify against you and you need to, "prove," he's lying or have him assassinated.


Pirates and Letters of Marque: Overall, I don't think pirates will care if you have a letter. If you don't actively hunt them too much and sell goods at their havens, they'll probably consider you a good ally to have. Killing a few pirates just means less competition for the others, after all. Of course, too much association with pirates might hurt your reputation with civilized nations.

Havens, Captains, Alliances: As alluded to, I think relations should be separate for each captain, haven, and alliance of pirates. Your reputation with one would have some effects on the other two (positively or negatively).
 
Here's something on crew morale, while on the subject: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/morale.24600/

For PotC, I'm not sure what the cleanest solution is. If it's purely based on morale, then I'd say have combat give stiffer morale penalties (based off your casualties, and the risk of the encounter) even if you win, so avoiding combat makes your crew stay for longer. You might need to increase the bonus from having an experienced crew, to make up for the lower morale that regular combat will bring.


EDIT: Oh yeah. How developed the Merchant career path is just depends on how developed the economy is, how many variables you can play with. There are certain options which mightn't appear in the world economy at first, appearing in the player's options. One is that you might get cheaper rates trading with certain people or in certain quantities. I go into some of this in a write up I made about some merchant quest options.
 
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Not sure if this was went into in the thread, but being recognized as a privateer by one nation but as a pirate by another could be an interesting concept to play with.
 
I suppose a privateer for nation #1 is a pirate to all nations that are hostile to nation #1?
 
Pieter Boelen said:
Confirmed that indeed you turn hostile to France because the quest code forces that to happen here in quests_reaction.c:
Code: 
  case "French_Ship_Khael":    
     SetCharacterRelationBoth(GetCharacterIndex("Clement Bossicar"),GetMainCharacterIndex(),RELATION_ENEMY);
      
       Group_CreateGroup("Clement Bossicar");
       Group_AddCharacter("Clement Bossicar", "Clement Bossicar");
       Group_SetGroupCommander("Clement Bossicar", "Clement Bossicar");
       Group_SetPursuitGroup("Clement Bossicar", PLAYER_GROUP);
       Group_SetTaskAttack("Clement Bossicar", PLAYER_GROUP);
       Group_LockTask("Clement Bossicar");
       Group_SetAddress("Clement Bossicar", "KhaelRoa", "Quest_ships", "Quest_ship_12");
       characters[GetCharacterIndex("Clement Bossicar")].nosurrender = 2;

       SetActualRMRelation(FRANCE, REL_WAR);
So this isn't technically a bug.

Perhaps we should edit the SetActualRMRelation function to check for your previous relations and call LeaveService properly?
Not sure if that is worth the effort though....
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doesn't sound to hard if you can explain to me what the different things are cause I haven't looked good at the relation things yet.
If the relation to you is set to WAR you will always leave bad right? I mean the only way to not leave bad is trough the dialog at the gouvernor, all other instances where you leave service are bad right?
So we should just add a check to the relation setting to trigger the leaveservice when relation is set to war right?
 
Find where SetActualRMRelation is defined, then add a check there on previous relation and call LeaveService if you had a LoM before.
 
can't we just check if we have a LoM atm and if so call leave service. I assume the LoM is stored somewhere in PChar?
 
That is pretty much what I meant. Perhaps the GetRank function can be used for that purpose.
 
No. As far as I can tell from reading the Wikipedia articles about Letters of Marque and Prize law, a privateer was effectively an auxiliary of the nation's navy, and was expected to behave accordingly. He was no more a pirate than a commissioned officer of the same nation. A privateer captured by the enemy nation could expect to be treated as a prisoner of war rather than hanged as a pirate.

Technically if you're operating as a privateer under a letter of marque, you're only supposed to attack ships belonging to enemies of the nation which issued it. If I've got a British letter of marque and Britain is at war with France and neutral to Spain, I'm fine if I attack French ships but a pirate if I attack Spanish ships. And if Britain makes peace with France then I have to stop attacking them, which is going to be hard if player relations are kept separate from national relations because France will still hate me and its ships will still attack me. On the other hand, if you tie a privateer's relations to those of the nation which issued the letter of marque, things get messy if you have more than one letter of marque.

On the subject of multiple letters of marque, the first of those articles has this to say:
For this reason, enterprising maritime raiders commonly took advantage of "flag of convenience" letters of marque, shopping for cooperative governments to license and legitimize their depredations. French/Irishman Luke Ryan and his lieutenants in just over two years commanded six vessels under the flags of three different nations and on opposite sides in the same war.
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Which is exactly what I do in the game. :rpirate
 
Of course the game gives you bonus points for each promotion. So more LoMs = more promotions.
But real life never worked like that, right? :facepalm
 
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