Included in Build Merchant Gameplay

[Pieter Boelen]

As per today, Cutler Beckett is available as a pre-defined starting character.
So you can get the Endeavour right there at the start of the game without using cheatmode.
That should reduce the number of people asking for that, because it is really quite easy now.

However, this should also have some implications on the game.
Since we won't be able to implement separate nations' trading companies without a lot of work,
this might be a simple solution to test out some concepts without making it into a full-blown feature.

My thinking is to create an "EITC License" item, just like is used in the Jack Sparrow storyline.
But what effect should carrying one of these have?

The main things that spring to mind is to disable the dialog that allows you to become friendly with the pirates
plus the options to get a Letter of Marque. Possibly completely disable smuggling as well.
Locking the player out of various parts of the game might make being a professional merchant quite a unique experience.

 

[*Swordar*]

As per today, Cutler Beckett is available as a pre-defined starting character.
So you can get the Endeavour right there at the start of the game without using cheatmode.
That should reduce the number of people asking for that, because it is really quite easy now.

However, this should also have some implications on the game.
Since we won't be able to implement separate nations' trading companies without a lot of work,
this might be a simple solution to test out some concepts without making it into a full-blown feature.

My thinking is to create an "EITC License" item, just like is used in the Jack Sparrow storyline.
But what effect should carrying one of these have?

The main things that spring to mind is to disable the dialog that allows you to become friendly with the pirates
plus the options to get a Letter of Marque. Possibly completely disable smuggling as well.
Locking the player out of various parts of the game might make being a professional merchant quite a unique experience.

Nice. But for me game is not interesting when we have on start huge ship.I suggest any one who play game do not use cheats because it makes game boring, just use your own skills to become good captain, and enjoy in game

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You aren't forced to start with a huge ship. But there are people out there who do want to do that.
Actually, that is another challenge by itself, because the player character doesn't have the required level.
So it'll be tough to handle your large ship. I'm not even sure if it will be possible to play like that without cheats at all.
But people can try...

There's is also a Young Beckett model. I should link a smaller ship to that one so players can choose that too.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

When trying to sail a ship above your pay grade it is slow and will not turn. Even getting out of harbor is no fun and battles are no fun as the other ships just sail out of the way of your guns and blast away at you with impunity. Small escort ships are needed until you build up your skills.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Yup. So probably the most sensible thing to do when you start with the Endeavour is to sell her straight away.

 

[Grey Roger]

So, despite all the complaints about too many British playable characters, here's another one. And although he's pretending to be a merchant character, he starts off with one of the most powerful warships available in the game.

For a proper merchant career, I'd suggest starting Dutch. Partly because that's what they were best at; partly so as to give a career which isn't so dependent on Britain; and partly because the Dutch merchant company already has a building right in the middle of Willemstad, Curacao, so that part of the preliminary work is already dealt with. (You may need to arrange for a replacement character to inhabit that building after Gherarde de Jongh is killed in the "Bartolomeu" storyline; then again, maybe not, Bartolomeu isn't exactly a merchant character. )

Possible effects of a trade licence:
Immediate increase of "Commerce" skill and/or gain "Basic Commerce" perk.
LoM disabled for governor, but available from Merchant HQ at a suitable level.
UNLIMITEDLOOT enabled so you never need to switch to payment by dividing plunder, regardless of ship type and the LoM from promotion.
Free ship upon promotion to a high enough level, e.g. an Indiaman when such ships are available, otherwise some nice fat merchant ship optimised for profit rather than combat.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So, despite all the complaints about too many British playable characters, here's another one. And although he's pretending to be a merchant character, he starts off with one of the most powerful warships available in the game.

The reason behind Cutler Beckett being there with the Endeavour is decidedly not for proper variety.
Basically it is because there are plenty of people "out there" with the question "how to play as this or that character" and it is my hope to make it as easy as possible for them.
But as far as I'm concerned, we have comparatively far too many PotC film characters for that reason so I'm hoping for some alternate characters to be added to compensate.

For a proper merchant career, I'd suggest starting Dutch. Partly because that's what they were best at; partly so as to give a career which isn't so dependent on Britain; and partly because the Dutch merchant company already has a building right in the middle of Willemstad, Curacao, so that part of the preliminary work is already dealt with. (You may need to arrange for a replacement character to inhabit that building after Gherarde de Jongh is killed in the "Bartolomeu" storyline; then again, maybe not, Bartolomeu isn't exactly a merchant character. )

That would certainly be possible. Good excuse to give the player my dear "Amsterdam" too!
When I start doing some work on this whole "merchant" play, indeed we could have both a Dutch and a British one as there is both a WIC and an EITC office somewhere "out there" to use.

Possible effects of a trade licence:
Immediate increase of "Commerce" skill and/or gain "Basic Commerce" perk.
LoM disabled for governor, but available from Merchant HQ at a suitable level.
UNLIMITEDLOOT enabled so you never need to switch to payment by dividing plunder, regardless of ship type and the LoM from promotion.
Free ship upon promotion to a high enough level, e.g. an Indiaman when such ships are available, otherwise some nice fat merchant ship optimised for profit rather than combat.

Sounds like we would indeed need some sort of rank progression for the merchants too.
Plus a character in an office to deal with. That would make this a brand new feature and will require a fair bit of extra work.

For now I was thinking of putting something extremely simple in place that consists purely of disabling various parts of the gameplay, just like is done for professional navy characters.
With the main reason being to offset the advantage of the huge Beckett starting ship because I don't think that makes for very valid gameplay....

 

[Red Back Dude]

This should be fun to play

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Continuing from here: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/...nal-wip-for-testing.24817/page-24#post-507337

Crew morale drops if you have too much money to encourage players to switch to "Divide the Plunder" mode.
Some people, most notably Hylie, don't want that and for merchant that actually doesn't make sense either.

As an experiment I had linked it to ship type so that a merchant-only ship would not trigger the crew being grumpy based on the amount of money carried.
But that clearly didn't work well enough.

So here's a new idea: Implement an "EITC_License" item which we can use for this instead.
You get automatically get this if you select player type "Merchant", which would directly work into the Beckett thoughts of the opening post.

Of course Hylie doesn't want to use the Merchant player type, which suggests we need an ingame method to get that item too.
We don't have enough trading offices in the game to make an actual office for each nation.
So how about we just put a character in the WIC office only for now who offers you a license for a fee?
That would make it somewhat similar to getting an LoM.

Additionally, having the behaviour linked to an item rather than a ship or player type would hopefully make this a bit more flexible in use.
And it sort-of matches with how most of the "Cursed" effects are also item-related, so that would maintain the same sort of logic.

 

[Grey Roger]

That would certainly be possible. Good excuse to give the player my dear "Amsterdam" too!

You don't need to do anything about merchant characters to do that. Take another look at "NK.c" and see what you get for joining the Dutch navy and attaining the rank of "Kapitein-Luitenant" in the "Colonial Powers" and "Revolutions" periods.

So here's a new idea: Implement an "EITC_License" item which we can use for this instead.
You get automatically get this if you select player type "Merchant", which would directly work into the Beckett thoughts of the opening post.

Of course Hylie doesn't want to use the Merchant player type, which suggests we need an ingame method to get that item too.
We don't have enough trading offices in the game to make an actual office for each nation.
So how about we just put a character in the WIC office only for now who offers you a license for a fee?
That would make it somewhat similar to getting an LoM.

Additionally, having the behaviour linked to an item rather than a ship or player type would hopefully make this a bit more flexible in use.
And it sort-of matches with how most of the "Cursed" effects are also item-related, so that would maintain the same sort of logic.

If you just remove the ship detection code from that part of "NK.c" then you're only forced to switch to dividing plunder if you're a pirate or if you own a LoM. This doesn't tie into any proposed merchant character or EITC, but does have the advantage that it's easy to code; even I could probably do it. (In fact, since I'm working on "NK.c" anyway for the naval promotion rewards, I may as well do it if you want it done.)

The EITC licence could override the LoM so that if you have both then you don't need to switch payment method. This would be significant if one of the rewards of promotion by the EITC is a LoM, which historically they did issue to their Indiamen so that those ships could legally take prizes if they got the chance.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Ya it's too bad my square peg doesn't fit into your round hole. I don't care what you call the types as I look for certain skills, primarily Luck. Then Commerce or Melee or whatever.

Dividing the plunder does not work for me because:

In the early game I have no skills and a small ship and there are lots of things to buy. So whenever I get a little money I buy something. This means there is no plunder to divide and the crew mutinies.

Later when I have bought what I need I am trying to save money to acquire and equip battleships for the Battle for Bridgetown and Cozumel. The crews get envious and mutiny. This leaves no money for ships and the game is over.

After Cozumel when I downsize for normal game play and have bought all I need, then and only then is divide the plunder possible. In other words it only works in free play late in the game.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If you just remove the ship detection code from that part of "NK.c" then you're only forced to switch to dividing plunder if you're a pirate or if you own a LoM. This doesn't tie into any proposed merchant character or EITC, but does have the advantage that it's easy to code; even I could probably do it. (In fact, since I'm working on "NK.c" anyway for the naval promotion rewards, I may as well do it if you want it done.)

That is pretty much what I was intending to do. Feel free to make the changes yourself.
(And, since that would make things worse for Hylie, remove that // from the UNLIMITED_LOOT check again as well.)

The EITC licence could override the LoM so that if you have both then you don't need to switch payment method. This would be significant if one of the rewards of promotion by the EITC is a LoM, which historically they did issue to their Indiamen so that those ships could legally take prizes if they got the chance.

Yep, that is pretty much what I had in mind as well.
So if we manage to set that up, then we should have the flexibility to allow for your historical point which happens to also be what I think @Hylie Pistof wants for his gameplay.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I don't care what you call the types as I look for certain skills, primarily Luck. Then Commerce or Melee or whatever.

Understandable, which is why hopefully we can have it linked to item soon.
Then you'll be able to get the item in some sensible way and then it'll make sense from a gameplay and historical point of view as well.

Dividing the plunder does not work for me because:

In the early game I have no skills and a small ship and there are lots of things to buy. So whenever I get a little money I buy something. This means there is no plunder to divide and the crew mutinies.

Fair enough; it is intended more for the later game anyway.

Later when I have bought what I need I am trying to save money to acquire and equip battleships for the Battle for Bridgetown and Cozumel. The crews get envious and mutiny. This leaves no money for ships and the game is over.

Hadn't thought of the storyline issue presented there. Indeed that doesn't help.

We could put some exceptions in place so the crew won't complain between the point where you have to prepare for the battle until the end of it.
Though of course that is rather arbitrary. Is there any actual logic we can think of that could be applied here?

After Cozumel when I downsize for normal game play and have bought all I need, then and only then is divide the plunder possible. In other words it only works in free play late in the game.

It is a feature pretty much intended for free play anyway. How much free play do you actually do?
You seem to always play the Standard storyline sort-of in a loop. How about the other ones?
Just being curious here; I'd like to know how you actually play.

 

[Grey Roger]

Dividing the plunder does not work for me because:

In the early game I have no skills and a small ship and there are lots of things to buy. So whenever I get a little money I buy something. This means there is no plunder to divide and the crew mutinies.

You should not need to divide plunder at this point because you don't have enough money to make the crew envious. Even a pirate or privateer can continue to pay by salary.

Later when I have bought what I need I am trying to save money to acquire and equip battleships for the Battle for Bridgetown and Cozumel. The crews get envious and mutiny. This leaves no money for ships and the game is over.

That's when you're going to get caught out by the code which looks at ship type. You now have a warship so the crew want to share the wealth.
Do you ever buy a LoM? If I do what I'm planning to do to "NK.c", that's the only thing which would trigger the demand to divide plunder. Unless you've joined the pirates, that is.

What would be more complicated to code, therefore beyond me, is to arrange that the check for crew jealousy only happens when you are at sea. You should be able to sell all your cargo, temporarily have a few million, then spend the lot on ship upgrades. Only if you go aboard ship with excessive gold should the crew decide that it would be better sitting in their pockets than in yours. And then only if you're a privateer, i.e. have a LoM.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Do you ever buy a LoM? If I do what I'm planning to do to "NK.c", that's the only thing which would trigger the demand to divide plunder. Unless you've joined the pirates, that is.

I know Hylie gets a LoM for sure.

What would be more complicated to code, therefore beyond me, is to arrange that the check for crew jealousy only happens when you are at sea. You should be able to sell all your cargo, temporarily have a few million, then spend the lot on ship upgrades. Only if you go aboard ship with excessive gold should the crew decide that it would be better sitting in their pockets than in yours. And then only if you're a privateer, i.e. have a LoM.

if(!bSeaActive || bAbordageStarted) or something like that? Might need to be a worldmap check too.
Have a look through seadogs.c for "worldmap". There should be some sort of IsEntity line for that.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

How do I play? The sailing around part is the main attraction, hence my constant complaining about poor performance in 3.4-5. That ruins 80% of the game. After that it is nice to have some adventures here and there. Side quests are fun and getting involved in an occasional sea battle is a way to get better ships.

Maybe I am superstitious but methinks getting LoM and then rank is the only way to get better ships as the shipyards have pretty much nothing but luggers and brigs. Plus it's a way to "keep score".

I play the standard storyline for testing purposes and I do a lot of free play in it. For instance I am still a ways from the Battle of Bridgetown at level 23. I am not close to visiting the slave mines yet.

I prefer to play the early periods as they have the most interesting ships in them. The late periods are boring as all the ships are different versions of frigates. I can hardly tell them apart.

I have played all of the storylines and either find them too restrictive and/or too violent involving nothing but fighting. So I either free play the early periods or play test the standard storyline.

 

[Grey Roger]

Here's the stripped down version which will be going out with my next version of "NK.c", along with the new promotion rewards:

bool AllowUnlimitedLoot()
{
   ref PChar = GetMainCharacter();
   if (UNLIMITEDLOOT)             return true;     // Global override
   if (CheckAttribute(PChar, "professionalnavy"))       return true;     // LDH add test for navy character if available - 16Apr09
   if (CheckAttribute(PChar, "isnotcaptain"))       return true;     // Crew doesn't mind, because you're not the captain anyway
   if (GetServedNation() == PIRATE)         return false;     // Pirates will always be envious of captains with a lot of money

   return !HaveAnyLetterOfMarque();               // Crew is OK with your money as long as you're not a privateer
}

So basically, the first thing it does is check the "UNLIMITEDLOOT" toggle which you can set to suit yourself in "InternalSettings.h"; if that's set then the function stops right there and allows you to have as much money as you like without needing to divide plunder. That was previously commented out. (I like toggles! They mean that you can tailor the game to suit yourself.)

Otherwise, if you're a naval officer then you're automatically allowed to keep paying salary; the crew are under naval discipline. If you're a pirate then the crew definitely will demand division of plunder because they're pirates! If you're not actually the captain (probably due to a storyline) then you don't need to divide plunder.

And if none of those automatic exceptions have triggered then it's down to whether you have a LoM; if you have, you're a privateer and the crew want their share, otherwise you're a trader and can keep paying salaries.

What's gone is the check for ship type because the crew don't care what sort of ship you're on, they're only interested in what you're doing with it. A battleship which has no LoM and isn't under command of a naval officer is basically a very well armed merchant.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If you're not actually the captain (probably due to a storyline) then you don't need to divide plunder.

That one indeed applies to Hornblower only.
The only reason it is there is just in case someone might use that functionality in another storyline, since Hornblower is already covered by the professionalnavy as well.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I have now got this finished to the point that Merchant players get a merchant license at the beginning of the game.
When carrying that, your crew will not complain about dividing the plunder (except when you're a pirate merchant).
On the Standard Storyline, you will lose that license when prior to the Bridgetown assault as you're clearly no honest merchant by that point anymore.

Still to do is to set up some way for you to get this item during the game so you aren't required to start as a Merchant.
My intention is to add a character in the Curacao WIC and Jamaica EITC officers who will sell a license to you (for a large sum of money, of course).

 

[Levis]

Sounds good to me for now. But it does need some more I think.
I'm focussing a bit on the smugglers gamestyle first. after that's done I will see if I can take a look at the trader .