• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


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Mods and Game Difficulty

I think the obvious culprit is loot from corpses. You can use money to buy off crews (jack their morale through the roof) and equip them with great weapons very quickly. Repairing and refitting ships easily, "Money is no worry, my man - and fur lined heads with gold and diamond handles while you're at it", makes taking serious damage less of a worry economically. This makes boarding the obvious "I win" button it is now. Manage that and things come back into some closer balance, maybe. Correlation is not causation.

I like the other ideas, now I've had time to think about them, but it would still remain to be seen how transperantly new tactical factors are implimented and how well the AI copes with any changes.
 
I've just increased the salary modifier from 1 to 4. Not sure how or if that effects the "Sign Articles" option. I suppose we'll discover just how happy the lads are to see me when I amble on board in a couple minutes. /whisper Boatswain "Get the dingy ready and stock it with provisions, just in case."
 
<!--quoteo(post=227119:date=Dec 22 2007, 09:07 AM:name=OddjobXL)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(OddjobXL @ Dec 22 2007, 09:07 AM) [snapback]227119[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->...Swashbuckler doesn't seem all that hard to me at this point. It does definitely do a better job of punishing a newbie character but once you get over the hump you're The Hulk again. I've been raking in a sick amount of wealth just from looted items (hit the dungeon just once to level and all the goodies from just one boarding action - and assorted random hostile encounters on land). I agree with virtual sailor - there are alot of great items worth far too much out there.
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You might have also noticed that much, if not most of the money is coming from opponents you kill as well as ships you capture, and this is before you even sell them.

On Swashbuckler, the amount of money you get in these instances is higher than on easier levels.
This should probably be changed.

I don't know where the code is for this, but I think that the amount of loot should be kept the same across difficulty levels.
That way Swashbuckler would be more difficult for combat without becoming easier than the other levels in economics.


One quick fix for the excess money (in ship capture situations) is edit "InternalSettings.h" file to change
<!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->#define SHIPMONEY_MULT<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->
from 0.01 to 0.005 or even 0.003 as I have done in my games.

Perhaps the value could be set lower by default.
 
Thanks for the heads up. I think the big capital drain I've put in place by increasing crew salaries might just do the trick though. I'm having trouble accumulating enough wealth to muster out a happy crew (playing with Signed Articles). Which is a good thing. Either I can improve my skills or I can dial that back from a 4 to a 2 or something.
 
Now the exe is crashing all over the place. When I go from map or the port to sailing mode half the time the game craps out on me. Get this error:

RUNTIME ERROR - file: seadogs.c; line: 892
invalid index 132 [size:132]

I'm starting to think I need to be working with Build 12. It was balanced to use the Article Signing, yes? No looted items? And more stable? I think I read that somewhere.
 
You can try to play Build 12.1 just to find out how that was balanced. It did have looting, but only automatic. No corpses and such.
As for that seadogs.c error: Was the salary multiplier really the only thing you changed? That shouldn't cause such an error. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/modding.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":modding" border="0" alt="modding.gif" />

<!--quoteo(post=227233:date=Dec 23 2007, 02:18 AM:name=Petros)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Petros @ Dec 23 2007, 02:18 AM) [snapback]227233[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->One quick fix for the excess money (in ship capture situations) is edit "InternalSettings.h" file to change<!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->#define SHIPMONEY_MULT<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->from 0.01 to 0.005 or even 0.003 as I have done in my games. Perhaps the value could be set lower by default.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Would you know what would be a good default?
 
I changed a few other settings too. It could be that I specified to start in sailing mode on the deck of my ship?
 
This might be going the wrong direction. Making any seagoing business, be it legit trade, piracy, or smuggling, substantially less profitable (arbitrary increase cost/decrease loot/whatever) ... well, that could backfire. If the profit margin is cut too close, it will force players into particular patterns of action (like "must capture three ships a month to break even") that will cut into the game play potential. (You can't, after all, go after treasures and such if you have to run straight out and back with prize ships every five days.) Forced repetition is generally bad for freelance-type games.

The capture of a hostile ship SHOULD be massively profitable. What it should NOT BE is EASY (which it tragically is at this time).

The primary reason it is easy would be that we have bugs in the combat sequence.

For one, ships start too close to each other when the fight begins, so it's annoyingly easy to board a ship before they can really shoot at you much. Speed and maneuverability, and the seamanship associated with them (tacking into the wind, and the like), have less impact than the random effect of the starting positions and/or the sail-to placement.

Second, there's an attribute and three perks associated with ship defense - you get them all, and your ship is like shooting at a modern destroyer. That means that odds are good you will be boarding the enemy ship with very nearly your full crew, and they will still be at high morale because they have taken few casualties/minimal damage before boarding.

If we could do something about those, the other stuff would balance out ... because no matter how happy your crew was when they got up this morning, morale is going to take a hit when you have to make a long approach in light wind while looking down the muzzle of 20 guns... not to mention depletion of crew numbers. That's IF you can get there at all ... if your target decides to crank up the elevation and put a few through your sails, getting close enough to board in the first place could be a trick.

Once again, let's find the problem rather than fixing the symptoms. Otherwise, we'll get that spiral of disasters again (increase in operating cost/cut in loot => forced course of action in order to make money/net loss from logical gameplay => must provide more alternative sources of income => back to where we started, except less logical).

Stop putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound.
 
<!--quoteo(post=227382:date=Dec 23 2007, 09:10 PM:name=Morgan Terror)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Morgan Terror @ Dec 23 2007, 09:10 PM) [snapback]227382[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->that fore-last remark is actually already in the game, in my experience.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

You mean the one about being back where we started, only less logical? Or the one about putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound?

Because I don't think there's any shortage of either one, at this point.
 
no, the one with crew morale and having to approach a ship with light airs. i sometimes actually do get in such a situation in realistic sailing mode. and morale certainly goes down because of the losses. sometimes you don't even make it to the ship itself at all.
 
<!--quoteo(post=227390:date=Dec 23 2007, 09:40 PM:name=Morgan Terror)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Morgan Terror @ Dec 23 2007, 09:40 PM) [snapback]227390[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->no, the one with crew morale and having to approach a ship with light airs. i sometimes actually do get in such a situation in realistic sailing mode. and morale certainly goes down because of the losses. sometimes you don't even make it to the ship itself at all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Exactly ... that was why it was difficult to actually take a ship. The other side shoots back.

If the opening distances were large enough that an enemy always had time to put his guns on you (not just occasionally or in still air), it would happen a lot more.

That would, in turn, eliminate a lot of what was previously mentioned ... if you board a ship when your crew morale is artificially high and your crew compliment at full, you will most certainly win. If the other side gets a lot more time to shoot back, that cuts into the effect a lot more.

Or, if you out-weighed him by enough that his guns would be ineffective, odds are he could also run and/or out-maneuver you enough to put several broadsides to your sails. That's if he had time to act ... if the engagement started well before coming into gun range.

I think the AI would do fine if given enough time to prove itself. There's just not much AI can do when the hostile ship just appears 100 yards off the port bow - it's an almost unavoidable collision course.
 
i just don't understand what you keep complaining about the starting range. i always start at a range where i can usually barely see the enemy. it all depends on when you choose to engage from the worldmap. if you press space at the first moment that the battle icon appears, you have more than enough range.
 
That does make a good deal of sense. I'm still skeptical about the value of loot-corpses. Or at least the amount of money on them and the value of what they carry. That too seems a bit overboard. I can make as much gold off a dungeon run as capturing a small convoy and in a fraction of the time, over and over again. I know, some people will say just don't do dungeon runs - but I'd like to get all the good elements of this game back in whack.
 
The other thread had something on ship values and other related economic issues ... that is apparently scheduled to be tweaked. It has been mentioned before that personal equipment is quite expensive while an entire ship including tons of cannons is relatively cheap. That is highly unrealistic ... a good sword was expensive, but ships and ship cannon were a LOT more expensive... and as a result unbalancing in a number of ways.


---------------------------------
As for the starting range, it should not be a test to see if you can hit the space bar at just the right time. The entire "sail-to" command and the "sail-ho" announcement need to be built around that starting range, and not allowing for otherwise. I mean, you CAN work around the problem, if you know how ... but it's still a general problem any time there is something like that which must be worked around.

It should work right EVERY time, not just when you hit the space bar at exactly the right time, or stand on your head, or whack the computer in that special way.

I mean, this is a mod development thread. The idea is to FIX the bugs, not just learn to live with them.
 
<!--quoteo(post=227331:date=Dec 23 2007, 07:17 AM:name=Pieter Boelen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pieter Boelen @ Dec 23 2007, 07:17 AM) [snapback]227331[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You can try to play Build 12.1 just to find out how that was balanced. It did have looting, but only automatic. No corpses and such.
As for that seadogs.c error: Was the salary multiplier really the only thing you changed? That shouldn't cause such an error. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/modding.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":modding" border="0" alt="modding.gif" />

<!--quoteo(post=227233:date=Dec 23 2007, 02:18 AM:name=Petros)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Petros @ Dec 23 2007, 02:18 AM) [snapback]227233[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->One quick fix for the excess money (in ship capture situations) is edit "InternalSettings.h" file to change<!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->#define SHIPMONEY_MULT<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->from 0.01 to 0.005 or even 0.003 as I have done in my games. Perhaps the value could be set lower by default.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Would you know what would be a good default?
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Pieter, I think that 0.005 would probably be good for most players.

I went lower in my game, in part because of the extra money you get at "higher difficulty" levels.
IMHO, that aspect is what should really be changed.
Playing at a more difficult level should make the game "more difficult" and not more profitable and easier. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/mybad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":facepalm" border="0" alt="mybad.gif" />
 
Wow! I already had it at <i>0.001</i> as the Build 14 default! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />

Any chance you people could try to work on a short but clear list of those things that are most unbalanced and need to be changed?
 
If it was that simple, sure ... but it's not.

For example, if and when the new prices for ships and equipment (mentioned in the other thread) are assembled, any previous discussion on economics will be thrown off badly. If we fix the issues with combat, that too will mess with economics ... balancing the economy around easy ship captures won't work if players actually have to fight for their prize ships. It's all interconnected, and there are still too many loose ends.
 
I think we should start with the simple things to fix. The things that only require the changing of some values in files we know to find. Examples would be item and ship prices and statistics. If some historically knowledgeable people could come up with better values, we could use those instead.
 
I agree that our main problem seems to be inflation. You get <i>waaay</i> too much money and don't have enough things to spend it on. This is caused mainly because the item prices don't really make much sense. If you board an enemy ship, the loot you get shouldn't allow you to buy a new ship. But the amount of loot you get doesn't strike me as that unrealistic as far as items is concerned.

I think we should do the following:
- Limit the amount of money random characters have (limits the money you can loot from them)
- Decrease the value of blades
- Increase the value of ships

One of the main problems with this would be the very good blades though. If blades are mostly not very expensive, getting really good ones would be too easy. Unless we make the really good blades really hard to get. Not by making them expensive, but simply by making them completely unavailable. They could be unique blades that you'd get as a reward for promotion. But then we get another problem: If enemies cannot get extremely good blades, but the player can, then the game would become too easy when you get that new blade.

Which brings us to the question: Why does the blade you're using have so much impact on the damage you do? A good swordsman should be able to do more damage with a bad blade than a bad swordsman with the best blade in the world. But right now it doesn't seem to work that way. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/modding.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":modding" border="0" alt="modding.gif" />

But if the damage done is based mostly on the player's skill with a blade, rather than on the blade itself, what's the point in having dozens of different blades? That only makes it confusing. Only a fair few blades would then suffice.

And how are we going to manage a better fighting system anyway? Where the damage depends mostly on the character's skill with a blade? We can't just use the <i>.fencing</i> attribute, because that one is increased either over time or by distributing skill points.

And again we came from something relatively simple on something really complicated. ARGH! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/modding.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":modding" border="0" alt="modding.gif" />
 
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