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Low enemy crews

Z

Zothen

Powder Monkey
Yarr!

It seems that the enemy ship crews are very low. Yesterday I got fed up when I took two missions to finish class 1 pirateships that only had maybe 150 peeps on board. Technically this fights have been finished when they took a grapes volley from me. Is there a way to increase the enemy crews? Does the difficulty level influence this?

Also that brought up the question if the enemy crews need cannon crews too when the mod is enabled? That would mean that most enemy attackers are undermanned.
 
I've noticed low enemy crews as well. Yes, it does affect their cannons and sailing. I have no idea where it's coming from or why, and I intend to check into it at some point. Actually, I think I know the part of the code, but I don't know what causes the crew to be high or low.

Hook
 
That means that most crews are useless and especially the cannon crew mod renders them useless. Most galleons I meet seem to have a crew below 100. With a sailing crew of 60-70 theres not much left to fire cannons... I hope that can be fixed somehow. Seems quite important to me.
 
Thats a good question.
From my observations those two class 1 pirateships had approx 130-160 crew (through the best spyglass). They hit my following 40gun galleon with a full broadside which was obviously a serious hit with their 32 gun broadside (even with a capt. with full def. upgrades).
After that I struck with my grape broadside and the crew dropped to maybe 70-90 and the teeth have been out, reducing the enemy ship to a pebblethrower.
After the 2nd broadside the crew dropped to around 30 (and was still able to sail faster than my class 1 ship with full crew and a slight sail damage) but still tried to fire.

After my fresh install I was quite surprised that I havent met any real resistance in encounters, that couldnt be handled with a full grape broadside. That brought up the question if the crews are way too low (especially on military/pirate ships).

Im still not sure if only manned guns fire or if the visual presentation is always the whole fired broadside - may need more testing. Im not sure how much guns are fired, yet.
 
The whole broadside will fire, however many guns are left that you haven't shot out. If the crew is below a calculated number the guns will load slower, and it depends on the number of undestroyed guns on that broadside. You probably see more effect from the captain's cannon skill. A ship with low crew won't sail slower, but *may* turn slower. I'd have to check the code again.

My personal experience is that grape isn't really very effective. I use it to reduce an enemy crew on a larger ship prior to boarding. I don't want to reduce the crew too far, because I'll need some of them to sail the ship later, so I stop firing at some point. If I don't intend to keep the ship, but to let it sink, then I may need crewmen on the other ship to replace losses to my crew. In some battles I'm getting as many crew losses from ball, in others I get reasonable losses from grape. But then I'm shooting at ships with a lot of crew to begin with.

From what you've described, and what I've seen, there may be something backwards in the calculation so that you get 3 or 4 kills from grape if the enemy crew is 400, and 20 or more if that same crew is around 200.

I'm not really a fan of reducing the sails, hull and crew of other ships as much as it's being done. The only reason I haven't messed with that code already is that there will be a lot of people who rely on enemy ships not running at full strength and they'd scream if we changed it.

I'll get into all that code and analyze it to make sure it's working properly at some point. If I remember right, that 32 gun ship should have 13 cannons on each broadside, each of which take 6 crew, and if the crew is below 78 (plus some number needed to sail the ship) the guns will load slower. If the ship is armed with carronades, it will take half that number. If you've shot out some of their cannons on that broadside, they'll require fewer crew. I don't remember if morale is a factor.

There's a similar situation with the hull. At some point you have to stop firing or you'll sink the ship.

Hook
 
have someone tried to reduce the enemy crew to virtually 0?
in my game, ships with "ghost" crew still sail, spin, and fire.....
i`d like to ask: is it possible to order at one of your officers to "board" an enemy vessel?
i really appreciate the enemy captains feature to fast re-load their cannons or, even, pre-fire with muskets if available, however, would be great if officers as captains themselves could do the same.
 
<!--quoteo(post=317649:date=May 5 2009, 05:54 PM:name=vinnipuk)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (vinnipuk @ May 5 2009, 05:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=317649"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->i`d like to ask: is it possible to order at one of your officers to "board" an enemy vessel?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Not yet, but Pirate_KK is planning on modding that in at some point.
 
I just met a Dutch 2 decker with what appeared to be minimum crew. I was testing swapping ships, and running minimum crew on that thing it sailed like a dog and reloading guns took approximately 2 days past forever. What's worse is, the ship has better speed and turning stats than my rum runner, which has schooner stats.

Looks like I'm going to have to go through the new ships and make sure the crews are reasonable and balanced for the number of guns on the ship. And it wouldn't be hard at all right now to convince me to do something about the extremely low crew and other stats on generated ships.

Hook
 
The ships probably were in other fights before, but grape shots are anti infantry weapons, (if you play Pirates! Gold!) The Cannons should do the most damage to the hull, and the Chains do the most to the sails, other than that I guess bombs just start fires...
 
Bombs actually do damage more or less equally in the stock game. In the modified game I have yet to even find bombs, let along use them.

Cap'n Drow
 
You can only steal them from forts. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/razz.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":razz" border="0" alt="razz.gif" />
 
You can find bombs occasionally on abandoned ships in directsail encounters.

Grape as used by ships is not like canister used by land troops. Grape consists of 9 balls, fairly large, and could do damage to lots more than crew.

Hook
 
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