Goods prices

[FlayedOne]

Hi guys,

Did something recently change in the way goods are priced?
Besides being more expansive per unit than I remember, it also seems export/import has little to no meaning. Is it normal, or did I screw my install?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Hey, long time no see.

Yes the whole economy has been changed, making it harder to get filthy rich. Too many players were talking about how easy it was to make money. The changes were made just before Christmas for beta 2.1.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Export/import having little meaning is not intentional though...

 

[FlayedOne]

Maybe I overreacted a little bit since I'm not really accustomed to it yet. After some 3 months (ingame ) of playing I managed to double my initial 10 000 gold pieces(I sold my cannons. Feels like cheating BTW) on Swashbuckler (not sure if difficulty setting influences prices). My main source of income has been floating pieces of cargo however, so trading is not that profitible.

The real problem is that since the monthly costs are around 3000 gold and cargo unloading takes a lot of time, some 15 000 gold is needed just to not lose money.

Loaning from sharks is not really an option since they get high cuts and only will lend you a small amount of money in the beginning anyway.

Moreover, since the differences in prices between exporting and importing cities are much smaller, the effect of devaluation of goods (if you sell a big amount of them) is much more pronounced. For example - I bought a full cargo bay of my heavy lugger of Sailcloth for an average price of 25 gold per unit. I went to sell it to barbados to a town where indicated price for the good was 50 pieces of gold per unit. Thanks to devaluation I made only 3 pieces of gold per unit.

Not to mention it's more profitible and safer right now to buy a good weapon in the beginning and go hunt bandits in the jungle. Looting bodies seems to be far to good a source of money to be a default option IMO. It ruins the economy.

Proposed solutions:
- The money from selling cannons should be cut to 10% of their cost (like selling upgrades) - it's to profitible in the beginning right now and feels like cheating.
- Make looting impossible by default, or at least in Ironman mode.
- Make floating pieces of cargo/native rafts/other things much more rare.
- I like the fact that I need to carefully think what to buy and in what amount in order to make any profit, but the "Colonies" interface is limited to exported/imported/contraband goods. If the difference between normal - exported - imported goods got smaller, it would be good to try and alter the interface to show all the prices - this way it would be possible to buy smaller amounts of different types of goods to sell in the next colony. Would that even be possible?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

In the beginning it is really hard to make much profit. This has as much to do with ones commerce skills and abilities as anything else. The size of the ship is another factor. The larger the ship, the larger the profit. But that is no help early on. Experience is another thing that helps a lot. I have been tempted to keep notes on what are high profit items on different islands because some things that are listed as imports on two islands might actually be a good money maker when traded between them.
Something else to consider is the bulk of the cargo. Sailcloth is pretty bulky and is also low cost, meaning one can not carry much and margins are tight anyway. Look more to luxury items like sugar or chocolate early on. Even rum can be a good moneymaker.

About combat, the people who worked on the economy decided that merchant runs are low risk so should have low profit, and combat is high risk so should have high profit. So don't feel bad about going out and harvesting weapons and such. This is actually very necessary and I do it too.
You will find out soon enough that your melee skills will stop improving so work on them as much as possible now. Another thing is to look closely at the Dutch and Portagee town guards.........

An interface showing all goods would be a good idea. It probably is possible for a coder to do it.

 

[FlayedOne]

Wait, combat is high risk and merchant runs are low risk? :O

In my experience combat becomes pretty safe on swashbuckler after you get a piece of armor, Toughness perk and a set of decent weapons - investment of at most 15 000 gold (battle cuirass + weapons), while merchant runs only become safe after you get either a very fast ship (like schooners - around 100 000 gold), or a very strong fleet.

Moreover, if you meet pirates while on a weak ship you're outright dead, since they will catch and kill you, while a properly equipped fighter character has a better chance to react by fleeing the location.

Aaaaaand now it hit me, that all those ramblings of mine are the effect of:
- Playing open seas mod - it's much more difficult to run unlucky encounters
- Playing without the "level limits items in shops" option, which makes armors buyable from the start
- Playing hardcore meaning my characters only die once. No reloading after bad decisions either.

Still, if the colonies interface had some indication about price and amount (since it apparently affects devaluation, so is pretty important when making decisions what to sell where. Probably the amount could be descriptive, instead of a number) of all the goods instead of only the imported / exported/ contraband it would save me a lot of headaches. I'll try and see whether I can code it, or if it surpasses my abilities .

Two more things: what do you think about the amount of goods floating around the seas and what are your thoughts on reducing the amount of money the player gets when selling cannons?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

You can fight ok with the battle cuirass? It adds minus 1 to melee skill. I found that it slowed me down so much I could not defend myself properly. I feel better with no armor at all until level 16 when the golden cuirass becomes available. Only then will I search for combat.

The starting Lugger is a good ship except for its small hold. I always lust for the Caravel because it is fast, can sail deep into the wind, and is actually well armed. All of its quick firing 4 pounders make short work of pursuing ships sails.

The open sea mod spawns ships so far away that there is usually plenty of time to escape unless one is trapped by the wind and/or an island. Then Fred Bob earns his pay.

You only die once? I sometimes die a dozen times a day.

The goods floating at sea were originally put there to relieve boredom. They do happen more than they should in the open sea mod, but no one did anything about it. I often sail past them, except for the dismasted vessel and the Indian raft.
Cannons were expensive. I have no problem with their price, but I don't sell them either. I tried selling them, but every time I did I soon found I got my silly self into a situation where I wanted them.

 

[FlayedOne]

You can fight ok with the battle cuirass? It adds minus 1 to melee skill. I found that it slowed me down so much I could not defend myself properly. I feel better with no armor at all until level 16 when the golden cuirass becomes available. Only then will I search for combat.

Wait, "slowed" as in "slowed down your movement", or "slowed" as in "because of -1 melee skill I killed enemies much slower"?

I never noticed any effect of the -1 at all...:O

The starting Lugger is a good ship except for its small hold. I always lust for the Caravel because it is fast, can sail deep into the wind, and is actually well armed. All of its quick firing 4 pounders make short work of pursuing ships sails.

Caravels are really good, and are actually underpriced IMO, but the starting Lugger could as well come unarmed in my experience. I never had an encounter in which the cannons actually did anything usefull. It could be an effect of playing with the option "encountered ships class depends on the players level" off though.

The open sea mod spawns ships so far away that there is usually plenty of time to escape unless one is trapped by the wind and/or an island. Then Fred Bob earns his pay.

That's definitely true. Perhaps a little adjustment to the AI's perception range is in order?

You only die once? I sometimes die a dozen times a day.

By that I meant I stop playing the character that died (and don't reload unless the game crashes). This way of playing forces me into some strange situations I would've never encountered if I played "normally". For example, a little story about how my current game went:

I started as usuall, struggling to make some money by trading. After a few trips I noticed, that if I bought silver in Bridgetown I could double the money invested by selling it on La Grenade, so I bought some cargo and set sail for Bridgetown.

When I got the it was a pretty foggy day. I noticed french ships blockading the port too late - two grand schooners were already going after me. I decided that my only option was to run past them and into the port. I almost managed, but behind the big rock at the entrance to the bay was a hidden frigate. It's fire sunk my ship inside the bay.

I lucked out. I managed to escape on a lifeboat, and then I managed to dock in the port. I was stranded there with no ship to speak of (only a tartane), no money and no stuff to sell. I borrowed 3000 from a loan shark and bought some silver with it. I tried to leave the port for La Grenade, but once again I met some french ships blockading it. They chased me inside the bay, and thus were sunk by the fort. I greedily gathered all scraps of cargo floating around. And this way my new profession was born - a scavenger . For the next month or so I was baiting french ships inside forts range and then I gathered the floatsome. I made around 2000 - 3000 a trip. After I got enough money I bought a load of cargo and went to Sao Jorge. Finally I was able to buy a decent ship. I bought a brand new Xebec.

I did a few merchant missions (cargo delivery), bought a set of 18' carronades, a letter of marque and prepared myself to hunt for Pirate and French ships. I decided to do one more cargo delivery before I started my privateer career. It was a big error.

It was november. I agreed to deliver some cargo from Curacao to La Grenade in a months time, but the weather was awfull. I spent two weeks waiting for it to get better, but it didn't. I decided to set sail anyway. I didn't really get of the island yet when a storm hit me. The waves pinned me to the island making me choose between either crashing into the rocks or sinking due to rolling. I tried to turn around, but the ship sunk anyway...

I lucked out again. I made it out in one piece in a lifeboat, but this time I barely made it to the port - 14% hull. Fortunately I had 55 000 gold, so this time I could afford a decent ship right away - I bought a ketch. The problem is though, that the cargo I was supposed to deliver sunk with my Xebec. Oh well... I bought some medicine, and set sail for Sao Jorge. Barely made it, due to another storm that was around for the whole night, but somehow managed.

If I reloaded as I normally do in computer games I would have never had a game like that.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

LOL! That is quite the adventure! I have to do debugging so need to keep going quickly instead of just playing the game.

With the cuirass it slowed down my movements so that I could not block and could not strike. I have not tried it again in some months.

The ineffective cannons are as much due to low skills as anything else. With the Lugger about all I can hit are fish and the occasional sail.

The AI knows you are there immediately. Quick action on your part is an advantage.

 

[FlayedOne]

If the cheaper armors are supposed to slow down movements they don't work as intended. Even the cheapest one doesn't seem to slow me down. A bug perhaps?

Wait, so if some pirate ships are spawned 4 km away from me, they immediately start pursuing me? It always seemed to me like they only start once in around 1 500 meters, though I could be wrong.

On a sidenote, is the bug that makes the player unable to take a new cargo delivery quest after one is failed still not fixed? Or is that a feature?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

A failed cargo run upsets all merchants and is a feature. I have a vague memory that after a while and if one has a high reputation and rank one can beg for a trade mission at the smaller out of the way colonies and can get back to running those quests again.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Failed quests upsetting the merchants has been there since the original game; maybe we should rewrite it so eventually they'll be OK again for high reputation characters.

I've never heard of that last part, Hylie?

 

[FlayedOne]

Damn. Does it work like that with all kinds of missions? (escort, ship hunting)

First of all I belive that we should change the dialog with the shopkeepers, so that is clear why they won't give the player jobs anymore.

Could you please point me in the direction of a code responsible for the "roll angle" stuff during the storm? I can't seem to find it.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

My memory could be wrong because the reasons I fail a trade mission is either I am boarded and killed or the ship capsizes in a storm. In those cases I start over from the last save. It has been a long time since I failed a trade mission and kept on playing.
It would take some time playing to find out what does happen.

I have failed many escort missions with nothing worse than a loss of reputation. Ship hunting? Not sure, but probably.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Which part of the "roll angle" code are you looking for? What do you want to do with it?
Anyway, I think you'll find what you need in PROGRAM\NK.c under the comment on "Capsizing".

 

[FlayedOne]

First of all, 2 bugs:
- When I'm sailing at 'time x 10', enter F2 screens and then exit them, the interface thinks I'm playing at 'time x 10', but in reality the game plays at 'time x 30'. When I press R nothing changes (but I do get 'time x 30' message), and when I press G the game slows down to 'time x 3' correctly. A minor bug, but a bug nonetheless. I'll try and fix it.
- I had a crew of a 100 men. I owed them ~30 000 gold. All but 3 died tragically in a storm. I own the 3 that survived ~30 000 gold. Something's not right here . A bug or a feature?

I'm making a little mod, that makes sailing a bit more dangerous. Right now I implemented and am calibrating the part in which strong winds deal some small damage to sails to unskilled captains even without storms and made storm survival ability dependant on the sailing skill. I wanted to implement something similar for hulls based on the size of waves as well, and possibly some constant capsize mod.

I don't really get some things in the storm code in AiShips:
Whats is the rationale behind using fWindAttack in sails damage:

fWindAttack = 1.0 - abs(fWindDotShip);
fDamageMultiply = fStormProfessional * Bring2Range(0.25, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0, fWindAttack);
MakeSailDmg(iCharacterIndex, fDamageMultiply * (fBaseSailHP / 100.0) * 0.25);

and in awarding experience:

fExp = (rand((GetSummonSkillFromName(rCharacter,SKILL_SAILING)-1))+1) * (5.0 - fWindAttack) * fDamageHP;

If I understand correctly fWindAttack equals 1 when the ship is perpendicular to the wind, and can go down to 0, but since fWindDotShip = GetDotProduct(Whr_GetWindAngle(), stf(arCharShip.Ang.y)); is a dot product of two angles and not vectors ( ) I'm not really sure. Why would the damage to sails and experience be higher when going perpendicular to the wind?

Another thing:

switch (MakeInt(fSailState * 2.0))
{
case 0: MakeSailDmg(iCharacterIndex, fDamageMultiply * (fBaseSailHP / 100.0) * 0.05); break;
case 1: MakeSailDmg(iCharacterIndex, fDamageMultiply * (fBaseSailHP / 100.0) * 0.15); break;
case 2: MakeSailDmg(iCharacterIndex, fDamageMultiply * (fBaseSailHP / 100.0) * 0.25); break;
}

Why are the scalars so high for the battle sails and no sails? Wasn't the realistic way of surviving storms with as little damage as possible to strike all sails but the ones least likely to get damaged, and keeping only enough of them to have some speed so that it was possible to correctly position the bow against the waves? I know it is now.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

About the bugs: 30x is messed up. Always has been. The crew pay sounds like a bug, or is it? What would stop a Captain from killing his crew monthly to avoid paying them?

About damage, if the ship is sideways to the wind it should be sideways to the waves and rolling badly. This causes damage.

Pieter will have to answer the other questions.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I don't know about that storm damage code; most of that has been in the game since the unmodified version.

- When I'm sailing at 'time x 10', enter F2 screens and then exit them, the interface thinks I'm playing at 'time x 10', but in reality the game plays at 'time x 30'. When I press R nothing changes (but I do get 'time x 30' message), and when I press G the game slows down to 'time x 3' correctly. A minor bug, but a bug nonetheless. I'll try and fix it.

I rewrote that code a while ago, but it seems to not always work 100% right. However, it's easy enough to speed up/slow things down properly again with some button-pressing.

 

[FlayedOne]

The crew pay sounds like a bug, or is it? What would stop a Captain from killing his crew monthly to avoid paying them?

How about we make some steep morale loss associated with crew loss? Something like "10% loss == 10 morale points down" and possibly a reputation drop as well?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

A morale drop after losses is already in battles. If losses are too bad the ship surrenders. If there is crew loss outside of battle, such as starving to death, morale drops too. Mutiny can happen then.