ERAS 2 Ahistoric Surrender Behavior

[unity100]

I tried to post this at the ERAS mod's developers forum at Forums Archive -, but that forum's registration is broken because the confirmation link in the email that comes after registration goes to a 404 page and you cant just complete registration - so after some Internet search, I'm posting it here since this mod seems to be a mod of the Sea Dogs COAS.

I found out that when you take a ship that has surrendered, your honor goes down, along with the loyalty of the honest officers. This seems to be quite different from actual history where the combatants took over a ship that they were at war with upon its surrender. Not to mention that any captive officer or noble was released or ransomed upon the discretion of the captors.

Taking the cargo but releasing the crew and ship as they are is a behavior that was considered honorable only for pirates when they were dealing with merchant ships. Privateers or the navy did not operate like that since its utterly foolish to let an enemy ship sail away after its surrender in a war. Dutch-English wars come to mind.

So Im have a conundrum that causes me to lose honor and officer loyalty when ships surrender and I take over the ship, whereas if I turn off surrender altogether its also quite ahistorical.

Is there a way to modify that behavior in game files or anywhere so that taking over a surrendered ship or ransoming officers to the crown won't cause honor loss?

 

[ChezJfrey]

That behavior is a holdover from original COAS and was always a problem.

Quite some time ago, I do remember MK asking me to change that, and I evidently forgot to note it and had since forgotten about it. I have now modified the behavior to take into account whether you or your enemy is a pirate, whether you have a Letter of Marque/Patent, whether the enemy is a trader/war, whether you release them, kill them, take them into custody, etc. It should now better reflect how your reputation and crew loyalty should go, based upon those factors.

It should now be possible to better retain a "good" crew as a pirate, which was near impossible before, by simply releasing many ships after looting and ransoming prisoners. Possessing a LoM, if you keep or sink war prizes (releasing a warship will be "bad"), and are merciful to merchants, your rep and "good" crew relations will actually increase, instead of decrease. If you ransom prisoners, that will now be considered a "good" action, whereas it was always "bad" in original COAS.

This change will take effect with the next ERAS update when I upload it.

 

[unity100]

That behavior is a holdover from original COAS and was always a problem.

Quite some time ago, I do remember MK asking me to change that, and I evidently forgot to note it and had since forgotten about it. I have now modified the behavior to take into account whether you or your enemy is a pirate, whether you have a Letter of Marque/Patent, whether the enemy is a trader/war, whether you release them, kill them, take them into custody, etc. It should now better reflect how your reputation and crew loyalty should go, based upon those factors.

It should now be possible to better retain a "good" crew as a pirate, which was near impossible before, by simply releasing many ships after looting and ransoming prisoners. Possessing a LoM, if you keep or sink war prizes (releasing a warship will be "bad"), and are merciful to merchants, your rep and "good" crew relations will actually increase, instead of decrease. If you ransom prisoners, that will now be considered a "good" action, whereas it was always "bad" in original COAS.

This change will take effect with the next ERAS update when I upload it.

Thanks a lot. That does sound much more historically accurate. Hopefully the update will be backwards compatible with the saves.

I also noticed that there is a lot of research that has gone into ERAS mod. In some ships' descriptions, it is explained how the Dutch played a big role in Spanish shipbuilding, shipping, and trade in the relevant period. So much so that the majority of Dutch shipping was happening between the Spanish main and Europe. A lot of people don't know that.

Actually, it goes even further than that - the Dutch were integrated with Spanish shipping and trade even while Spain and Low Provinces were at war during the 80 years' war, all the way from 1560s. The Dutch (from low provinces) would immigrate (permanently or temporarily) to Spain, registering themselves as part of the 'Flemish Nation' inside Spain, therefore participating in the Spanish economy. I recently read a very interesting paper on the subject. You may find it interesting as well.

A network-Based Merchant Empires: Dutch Trade in the Hispanic Atlantic (1680-1740)

Gert Oostindie & Jessica V. Roitman, eds., Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680-1800: Linking Empires, Bridging Borders, Leiden, Boston, Brill, 2014.

www.academia.edu

 

[Cannon_Ball]

great a bit of knowledge is always good .. great job