Feedback from Ardent playthrough

[Grey Roger]

If you have a savegame from just before going into the fort, it ought to work with the updated version. I've a savegame from just before I talk to Angelique Moulin when I was trying to recreate what you'd done, and used it as a test for the fixes. So you shouldn't need to replay the whole thing just to see if the fix works.

 

[salonikasurf]

Gave it a try Grey Roger.
Played without doing the Moulin side-quest and normal - pay for a pardon - all worked well.
Played after getting the release docs from Lucia both with and without changing into the French uniform - all worked OK.
Unfortunately, I overwrote my save before getting the release papers from Lucia - so haven't checked the issue I had earlier. I do note that PChar is immortal throughout??? and continues as such. Is this intentional?

 

[Grey Roger]

Not only is that not intentional, it's not my doing. I've just checked through the quest code, searching for any statements which make anyone immortal. There are occasions when some NPC's are made immortal - during this part, for example, Lucia is made both immortal and unremovable so that she's definitely present to say her bit during various parts of the forgery routine. At no time does the code make PChar, i.e. the player, immortal. Perhaps you've put the game into cheatmode?

I can tell you from personal experience that, unless you've made yourself immortal via cheatmode, releasing the crew by fighting guards is difficult, as they attack you the moment you go through the door to another part of the fort. Which is fine, since there's another way to get them out.

 

[salonikasurf]

Hi Grey Roger- PChar is definitely immortal from around the fight with the guard after trying to arrest Piers - not sure exactly when - I don't use cheatmode at all. (Sidestep saves me if I need it during testing ).

 

[Grey Roger]

Do you have a savegame from around that time? I certainly haven't put anything in the code which ought to make you immortal, so I'll need to see if it's an unwanted side-effect of one of the functions.

 

[Grey Roger]

Update: I found the problem! It's not from the fight straight after trying to arrest Piers Downing, it's from the fight if you are caught after burgling the naval building. Now fixed.

Technical detail: this is the line which did it:

LAi_SetCheckMinHP(Pchar, LAi_GetCharacterHP(Pchar)-5.0, true, "hunt_back_in_prison");

I'd copied that from a different storyline in which you're trying to sneak around and if you get hit, bad things happen. The problem is that "true". The way 'LAi_SetCheckMinHP' works is that after the check has happened, it turns you immortal if that boolean parameter is "true". Replacing it with "false" means you don't become immortal after the fight.

 

[salonikasurf]

@Grey Roger - I have just replayed through this storyline and again am very impressed with your work. I did have a few issues with varying the capture of the Dauphin Royal. Played it a number of ways - it all worked well if you capture the ship at Port Royal. Not so good if you try to escape with the British Governor and his wife. She obviously leaves him as he is a coward and deserts his post as you have a Spanish governor with her on board after capturing the Dauphin at Santiago lol. Also during the capture, you kill Piers in the cabin - then talk to the new Spanish Governor on board and then help the "British" soldiers stop the assault of the Port Royal fort!!!. When complete, a Spanish officer takes you to the Governor - of Port Royal who is a resurrected Piers. and he has the normal Governor dialogue. You then revert back to Santiago. If you then decide to take Port Royal from the French, the fort won't attack you. I also still have the French Letter of Mark I bought to get the signature so that I could free my crew earlier even though I just took the Dauphin Royal off the French. The French are very forgiving lol. Also, if you take the English governor to any other Island he does not show up again so you can drop him off and get back to the fight.

Still had a lot of fun with the new stuff though.

 

[Grey Roger]

What exactly did you do to get to that situation? For preference, if you played continouously from getting the mission from the Antigua admiral right through to taking the Dauphin Royale and saving the fort, and have not restarted or played another game since, I'd like to see "compile.log". The likely cause of the problem is that I didn't close down something when the French captured Port Royale, which is what happens if you've escaped from Port au Prince and then visit both Antigua and Santiago.

If you go straight from Antigua to Port Royale and don't stop at Santiago before or after, the escape with the British governor does work, and in fact is the way I usually play it.

There's also something very odd going on if you didn't lose the French LoM after taking the Dauphin Royale. There's an attribute, "SkipRM", which can be assigned to a ship captain so that sinking or capturing his ship doesn't affect relations, which is why your relations with Britain aren't affected when you take on Downing's convoy - all the convoy captains have the attribute set. The captain of the Dauphin Royale doesn't, so defeating the big French warship ought to have all the usual effects on relations.

 

[salonikasurf]

It certainly does work as intended if you go from Antigua to Port Royal.

Did it again - didn't go to Antigua - went to Port Royal first took the Dauphin Royal and lost my LoM with France but no fort fight after the capture - I gather that the French had not had a chance to land troops at this point.

 

[Grey Roger]

Yes, if you sail to Port Royale, whether or not you visit Antigua first, you encounter the Dauphin Royale while it is bombarding the fort. Only if you took the mission to rescue the governor and landed at a beach should you get the battle in the fort.

I'm still concerned about your earlier report about weirdness after rescuing the governor. When you bring him aboard your ship, you should not be able to sail to another island because the Dauphin Royale should attack you. That presumably didn't happen and I want to know why. Do you have a savegame from before going to Jamaica, preferably from before going to Antigua? If so, could you upload it so I can do some investigating?

 

[salonikasurf]

I was able to sail right past the Dauphin Royale because I was flying my own flag and had a French LoM from when I released my crew on Hispaniola.
I tried it again by going from Antigua to Santiago - this worked fine. I was told Port Royal had fallen. Played through and captured the DR and killed Piers. Piers did not show up again as governor of PR as he did in my earlier test run through. I then went and captured Port Royal for the British. French fort attacked me as expected. New British governor put in so I would assume O'Brien and his wife were not put in jail.
Would be good to be able to rescue Governor O'Brien and his wife and re-instate him after taking the town - would be a British LoM and lots of coin as a reward you would think - a bit outside my coding skill set.

Seems like the glitch is when you leave Port Royal with the governor and go elsewhere. Then go to Santiago and back to PR.

Save game attached.

 

[Grey Roger]

Yes, if you leave with the governor and go somewhere else then weirdness will happen because you're not supposed to be able to do that, so I never wrote anything to handle it. I'll add a "recognized" attribute to the French admiral so that he'll attack you regardless of what flag you're using. Piers Downing is supposed to be aboard the Dauphin Royal and can alert the admiral that you're probably there to cause trouble, or at least that you've caused Downing trouble in the past and he wants revenge. (And also add a bit so that France becomes hostile after you defeat the Dauphin Royal - this should already happen, but there's no harm in adding a couple of lines of code to make sure of it.)

As for Governor O'Brien, you can assume that he was taken prisoner and then ransomed back to Britain. You already had your chance to rescue him and his wife, and you missed it. (You get a British LoM if you defeat the Dauphin Royal at Port Royale. You should already get a big reward from the governor of Santiago if you save his town, either directly by defeating the Dauphin Royal there or indirectly by defeating it at Port Royale. You only get the big reward from Britain as well if you save Port Royale from the attack. Otherwise you can get a British LoM the usual way, then capture Port Royale for Britain, then get the usual reward for capturing a colony, which is lots of points towards your next promotion.

 

[salonikasurf]

Makes sense.

Should Lucia have special officer dialogue file after Santiago? She becomes a bit useless to have in you party if you cannot talk to her - same as two dogs etc.

 

[Grey Roger]

Lucia and Two Dogs can still function as officers, in that you can assign them roles and they can contribute perks and skills, or you can put them in command of prize ships. About the only benefit to assigning them standard officer dialogue would be that you could fire them. (Or tell them to build things, but you can get any other officer to do that.)

Some sort of special dialogue after the conclusion of the main story might make sense, though. Any suggestions?

On the other hand, the two officers who you meet right at the start during the prison escape are not important to the plot after you rescue your crew and return to Havana, so they may as well switch to standard officer dialogue at that point.

 

[Grey Roger]

@salonikasurf: Update: this should fix the two major problems you reported - thanks for that! The Dauphin Royal now gets the "recognized" attribute, and so do its companions if present, which means they will attack you regardless of which flag you're flying and what France thinks of you at the time. And when the battle is over, if France wasn't hostile to you before, it is now. I've tested it using your savegame and confirmed that, if I go to Antigua to get the governor evacuation mission and then go to Rocky Shore before collecting the governor, and fly a Personal flag when putting to sea, the Dauphin Royal doesn't attack me with the older version of "quests_reaction.c" but does attack with this new version.

Incidentally, looking at the records in that savegame, I'm impressed! You took on the Isla Mona squadron, presumably while sailing just the Raa class frigate you'd captured earlier, and you took on the Dauphin Royal also with a frigate. (Personally I usually have something a little bigger by this time - the fast war galleon is my favourite ship type in all periods up to and including "Golden Age", so I make a point of helping myself to one as soon as possible.) You also managed to take on the big ship despite not having got either yourself or your officers up to maximum "Melee" skill.

(Did you remember that you still have a ship to retrieve from Santo Domingo? This is why, in your savegame, the "Battle of Isla Mona" quest is still open in the questbook.)

 

[salonikasurf]

Thanks Grey Roger, I did have a little edge as I had bombs I stole and I let the fort have a go at the Dauphin Royal first and then took her when she had a lot less crew.

I did go back for my Fleet at Santo Domingo at varying times to see if there were any issues with having both quests running concurrently.

Thanks for the fix - I'll try it after I finish the BoP storyline testing.

 

[Grey Roger]

There shouldn't be any issues with the ship(s) at Santo Domingo, apart from possibly not having your best ship if you sent it to Santo Domingo and didn't retrieve it before taking on the Dauphin Royal.

There is one link between "Battle of Isla Mona" and "Battle Royale", though. The ships you meet at Isla Mona are the escorts for the Dauphin Royal. If you don't defeat them yourself, the Antigua admiral will do it for you if you visit him. (He always claims to have sunk the escorts. If you dealt with the Isla Mona force, maybe the French assigned some more which you don't see because the admiral's fleet sunk them, but the effect in the game is that talking to the admiral removes the ships that first appeared at Isla Mona.) If you go straight to Port Royale, and if you didn't defeat the ships at Isla Mona, you'll face the whole fleet. If you go to Santiago instead of Antigua, and if you have space in your fleet, you'll be loaned a couple of fast galleons to help you. When you get to Jamaica, they detach to fight independently so they're not occupying fleet slots and you can capture your choice of three out of the four French ships. The idea is that you either have the escorts removed, or you get some extra ships to balance them, but you don't get both (unless you dealt with the escorts at Isla Mona). If you try to get both by visiting both Antigua and Santiago, you're penalised by not being able to save Port Royale and not getting the full reward. And that's why you're not getting a second chance to rescue the governor of Port Royale and earn a lot of gold plus a free English LoM.

 

[BathtubPirate]

Seems like @Grey Roger hasn't been back yet, but I'll still bore y'all with some impressions from Ardent, as I've just finished the main storyline (there seems to be a bonus mission after a certain promotion).


- I played a heroic route as Helen.

- Helen is cute.

- Question: Helen escapes prison once by seducing a guard, what happens there when you play as Charles?

- At first, I didn't really now where the story was leading because after the opening, you basically have three different goals already. I expected it to be a more loose collection of quests, but after a while, the loose ends began to tie up when it became more and more the tale of the rivalry between the houses of Downing and La Vega, and the impending french invasion. In terms of story structure and some of the themes, it's the closest to the original main quest I think.

- Grey Roger likes indigenous history and weddings.

- As usually, I preferred the more narrative parts because that's why I play storylines instead of the free play campaign. But I "endured" the parts where I just had to invest time to prepare and build for the next sea battle, I did some side quests.

- Still, boarding and melee is so difficult in the mod... It took me several times to escape the prison alive, and that's the very first minute of the story. The four major sea battles (three main, one side quest - Payroll ship, Mefisto, Convoy, Dauphin Royale) were the major obstacles and took quite some tries and different strategic approaches to beat. Ironically, they seemed to get slightly easier with every battle, although the Dauphin was still very difficult. When I finally conquered her, I called it a day and didn't shed any tears over the two officers from the prison opening (Louwe and the other one) who heroically gave their lifes somewhere between cannon deck and cargo hold. Two Dogs has more personality than those two anyway. I know your secret, Two Dogs!

- "Coenen Barberien" is at least a bit more subtle than "Clint Eastwood"...

- I'd still be interested to hear whether the PoP fort shooting at me was intentional or not, just out of curiosity. See my other thread here.

- Easter egg 1: I found the "russian" room in the temple. The name of the tribe had already raised my suspicion before...

- Easter egg 2: The skeleton monkey who talked to me EVERYWHERE was getting on my nerves quickly, but I was still interested where it was going and did "Strange things" after the payroll ship. But the quest somehow broke the monkey. There are two scenes where animists approach you in a dialogue when you enter a location, both times I couldn't talk to the animists at all when the monkey caught me in his dialogue before them, so I had to reload and see that the animists get to me before the monkey does. I don't know if that's the reason, but somewhere around the point where the animists abduct the spanish priest, the monkey disappeared. I saw his friends later at Animist island, but I guess he was intended to leave me only there (but left before).

- Easter egg 3: The prison museum of Downing sr. doesn't work for me. He opens the door, but I still can't enter. Could this be connected to the fact that I never did the quest/chapter "Abduction"? I went back to San Juan some time after the kidnapping and married Edmundo, so this quest never happened (I also never did "Santiago threatened", but that seems to be the alternative for "Battle Royale"?). I don't really know how the eventualities of the story work or how many possible routes there are, I only used to walkthrough very superficially for basic orientation.


That's everything that comes to mind right now. It was a good storyline, and regarding my preferred playstyle, it was obviously best for me when it was more plot- and character-oriented. I also liked the humour, like when the french officer is threatened with torture by ants or the running gag with the prison pillow. if anybody read my slipslop this far: I hope my feedback is appreciated and my questions can be answered. I'll play the bonus mission next and then soon, it's probably the Assassin story for me. Anyway, I'm one stepl closer to my goal of having played all stories before @Pieter Boelen ...

 

[Grey Roger]

Thanks for the feedback, @BathtubPirate!

If you want to see how Charles escapes from Guadeloupe prison, play again as Charles.

Spoiler

He taunts the guard.

The background of the Taino on Isla Mona is part genuine history from Wikipedia, part game history (a tribute to the "Assassin" storyline which first used the island), and partly made up for this story.

The Dauphin Royale is supposed to be tough as it's the climax to the story. (Compare to the Sovereign of the Seas near the end of "Tales of a Sea Hawk" or La Couronne in the "Assassin" story.) Close in and board as quickly as possible, you don't want to face the Dauphin's broadside more than once!

The two original officers have no quest significance, they're just to give you a bit of help until you recruit some officers by the usual means. Two Dogs does have quest significance. He is also a tough fighter, so if the guards in the initial prison scene are too tough, hide behind him and let him do all the work!

"Coenen Barberien" is the result of my way of naming characters - open the file of standard character names, look at the part for correct gender and nation, close my eyes and point randomly at the screen. That got me "Barberien". So I looked through the first names to see if there was something suitable. There was.

Easter Egg 3: indeed did not work if you married Edmundo early, but should now be fixed. Make sure you have a fully updated game and also some recent "Ardent" fixes from here:
A few fixes

 

[BathtubPirate]

Close in and board as quickly as possible, you don't want to face the Dauphin's broadside more than once!

Obviously not, once again I used instant Boarding ASAP.

The two original officers have no quest significance, they're just to give you a bit of help until you recruit some officers by the usual means.

My main officer was Fred Bob, I managed to get him in the time window for the payroll ship. I mosty used him and sometimes Two Dogs. The other two I didn't really use, but I used the switch to let me distribute skill points by myself, so at the end they had still very high skills I could distribute and I only had to equip them a bit to make them very useful in the Dauphin Boarding (although they died, but until that they were a help).

Actually for the convoy ships boarding I "cheated" a little bit, I had Edmundo with me who seemed temporarily immortal by the quest, so giving him a sword and using him as the main tank for the boarding of the convoy flagship was the best or even only way to survive.

Easter Egg 3: indeed did not work if you married Edmundo early, but should now be fixed. Make sure you have a fully updated game and also some recent "Ardent" fixes from here:

Actually I never did any updated on the mod since I've installed it, 2018 I think. I've always been to lazy and not really in need of it to figure out how it works. Do I have to juggle old and new files manually or is there a way to let the game do it by itself? Does it affect my saves, do I have to start new games to benefit? I don't think I would replay the whole story right now to see the museum...