Nelson's First Command & Lucky Jack in the War of 1812

[Levis]

Will this be included as a hidden storyline or will it be freely avaible in the final release?

 

[FlyingGhost]

I'm not sure quite what you mean, but I think it is the intention to put the Jack Aubrey and Nelson starts into a standard naval Free Play section at some point. Probably Beta 3.5.

Another thing I realised now is that it might not be a good idea to start of with personal relation values like those of the default British ones, since the personal relations don't seem to change when Britain signs a peace with another nation for example... I'm not sure if there could be any way to continually force the personal relations to correlate with the character's chosen nation in a theoretical naval Free Play start...?

The other solution would be to have the personal relation be neutral from the start and then use that flag as a 'false neutrality' flag (even though the Portuguese flag usually serves that purpose). That would only require me to remove a few lines from the startup text file...

 

[Levis]

The relation should change when peace treaties are made. They dont't? If not please make a topic in the bug tracker

 

[FlyingGhost]

Oh they do for the nations, but not for the player. So for example, now Britain made peace with Spain, but my personal relation with spain is still -60 (war) since that was the starting value.

 

[Levis]

hmmm....if your nation is also spain then it should change right .... please make a bug report about this.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That is not a bug. The player is not equal to their own nation as far as the game is concerned.
In fact, player nationality has basically no meaning in the game and isn't really even stored anywhere.
Everything hangs on the player starting relations and everything after that depends only on player actions.

I realise this is not ideal for professional navy characters. We should make this a part of the Larger Privateer vs. Naval Officer Difference.

For now, I intend to have this storyline regularly included in Beta 3.4.
For the next release, I want to clean things out substantially though.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Request to everyone playing "pretend commisioned naval officer" using this storyline and especially @FlyingGhost:

This evening I'll see about adding an extra player type for "Commissioned Naval Officer" into the game.
With this chosen, in the code you will get a "professionalnavy" attribute which we can then check to adjust various gameplay elements.

For now I intend to keep this simple with on/off toggles depending on whether you are a commissioned navy officer.
But in order to do that, I need to know where to place these if-statements.
So I need feedback from players to let me know which features are generally available in regular play, but should be disabled for comissioned naval officers!

Refer to this post of mine for more details, along with my initial intentions for this:
http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/...avy-and-privateer-gameplay.24511/#post-499423

Please keep in mind that for now this idea is to remain SIMPLE!
So amazing ideas that change the game systems substantially cannot be used at the moment.

 

[Grey Roger]

Possibly disable changing of flag. I have mixed feelings on this.

Flying a false flag was perfectly acceptable so long as you didn't open fire, but penalising you for firing while flying the wrong flag is not currently practical. Forcing you to stay under your nation's flag gets round this problem, though it does get in the way of some role-playing possibilities.

Still, if you want to play sneaky agent going into enemy territory under a false flag, you should play as a privateer. This is pretty much Silehard's reason in the original storyline for allowing you to remain a free agent rather than conscripting you into the navy! As a commissioned officer, you're supposed to be a gentleman, so no sneaking.

I'm not so sure about food/rum consumption either. Provisioning was an important consideration for naval captains. Food and rum, as well as ammunition, would be supplied by the navy at a friendly port. Perhaps do an automatic auto-trade whenever you enter a port of your own nation? Otherwise leave it alone, if the player has to supply his own ammunition then he can supply his own food and rum too. Your job will be to hunt and attack ships of the enemies of your nation, which you can thoroughly loot in the usual manner and then use the proceeds to keep your ship supplied, as opposed to turning the whole lot over to the admiralty.

Morale loss due to different reputation between you and your officer should not happen on a navy ship. Just because an officer doesn't like you doesn't mean he's going to try to take over a companion ship. Mutiny in the navy was a serious business, usually settled by means of a piece of rope. Other causes of mutiny, e.g. failing to keep the ship provisioned, still apply though.

I won't get much chance to do any playing this evening anyway, so I'll download your updated version when available and then spend the weekend with Commander Nelson.

 

[FlyingGhost]

I'll see if I can churn out a reply in the other thread. I didn't expect this to stir the pot quite so much.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Possibly disable changing of flag. I have mixed feelings on this.

Flying a false flag was perfectly acceptable so long as you didn't open fire, but penalising you for firing while flying the wrong flag is not currently practical. Forcing you to stay under your nation's flag gets round this problem, though it does get in the way of some role-playing possibilities.
Still, if you want to play sneaky agent going into enemy territory under a false flag, you should play as a privateer. This is pretty much Silehard's reason in the original storyline for allowing you to remain a free agent rather than conscripting you into the navy! As a commissioned officer, you're supposed to be a gentleman, so no sneaking.

We can put that in there and then we'll see what happens.
We'll probably have to experiment a bit until we get it the way we want.

I'm not so sure about food/rum consumption either. Provisioning was an important consideration for naval captains. Food and rum, as well as ammunition, would be supplied by the navy at a friendly port. Perhaps do an automatic auto-trade whenever you enter a port of your own nation? Otherwise leave it alone, if the player has to supply his own ammunition then he can supply his own food and rum too. Your job will be to hunt and attack ships of the enemies of your nation, which you can thoroughly loot in the usual manner and then use the proceeds to keep your ship supplied, as opposed to turning the whole lot over to the admiralty.

Indeed I'd like to maintain food and rum rations too.
That was something Short Jack Gold used in the Hornblower storyline, but I'll see about not applying it here.

Morale loss due to different reputation between you and your officer should not happen on a navy ship. Just because an officer doesn't like you doesn't mean he's going to try to take over a companion ship. Mutiny in the navy was a serious business, usually settled by means of a piece of rope. Other causes of mutiny, e.g. failing to keep the ship provisioned, still apply though.

Indeed that should be possible.

What about getting officers in the first place? Should you still be hire them from the taverns or disable that altogether?
If disabled, what easy way to get them instead? Possibly give the player a fixed bunch of officers per promotion?

It would also be possible to automatically give the player new replacement ships upon promotion. So then getting new ships is no longer fully up to the player.
This as opposed to the current situation where you get only ever ONE reward ship and it is a companion so that the player keeps his/her own.

^ If we do want those pre-programmed ships and officers per promotion level, I will need a list to work with.
Ideally a near-complete period-dependent list of ships for each nation. I won't have time to do that myself tonight, but perhaps one of you guys can pitch in?
We could also set things up only for Nelson in this storyline for starters, experiment with that and only expand it to the other nations once we're happy with the Napoleonic English version.

So @FlyingGhost: Which ships should Nelson get throughout his carreer and at which current in-game ranks? At what promotion levels should different officers join his crew?
And what do you think about NOT giving all your pre-made officers at game start, but provide them gradually throughout the game?

I won't get much chance to do any playing this evening anyway, so I'll download your updated version when available and then spend the weekend with Commander Nelson.

Since I won't be near my computer Friday-Sunday evening, I'll only have this evening to set anything up.
That is rather short time if we want to make a final Beta 3.4 release on Sunday/Monday evening.

I'll see what I can do tonight. And if necessary make adjustments at the end of the weekend.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'll see if I can churn out a reply in the other thread. I didn't expect this to stir the pot quite so much.

Something here needs doing some time. The least we can do is to make a start.
If I can set up some things as per your requests this evening, perhaps you are able to expand on this further over the weekend?

 

[FlyingGhost]

Uh oh, I won't have much time this weekend. To be honest I think we better hold of the more advanced features 'til after the 3.4 release.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The more advanced ones for sure.

Well, I'll just see how far I'll get this evening. Probably won't be all that far.
Main thing I want to do is to re-privateer the regular gameplay. Everything else that results from that would be a bonus.

 

[FlyingGhost]

So here are the main changes.

Nelson:
- Changed the quest entry.
- Adjusted the nation relations to fit the year.

Aubrey:
- Moved the starting date to late 1813 and the starting port to Bridgetown.
- Added four officers that are known to have been with Jack on the Surprise when they arrived in Bridgetown (Reverse of the Medal).
- Adjusted the nation relations to fit the year.
- Base with side-quests taken from the Nelson start.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Cool!

Have you had any luck with those modified portrait files, by any chance?

 

[FlyingGhost]

Nice, I saw you added the "hoist false flag" to enable people to choose another nation without getting sunk by the fort batteries ^^

I haven't looked at replacing the portrait, I think it's good as is to be honest. Even if the second picture you gave me had some nicer colours, I like the bigger scale of the old one, with the small fort and nice background. I don't see a reason to change it.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Please remind me on Sunday afternoon/evening to include the final versions of your storyline and check the code to ensure it is as flexible as can be.

Also have to check your dialog files and make sure they're up-to-date as per the other storylines.
And the Bartolomeu sidequest should have its main character renamed just like in Standard/Brave Black Flag.
@Bartolomeu o Portugues or @Grey Roger should be able to help with that.

 

[Grey Roger]

I've yet to try out the latest update, so this may be obsolete:

In "Nelson's First Command", Britain is at war with everyone, including Portugal. In reality Britain has been allied with Portugal almost continuously since the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373. The treaty was void for a period between 1580 and 1640 as Portugal was allied with Spain, then remade after Portuguese independence from Spain. Which means Portugal should perhaps be at war with England during the "Early Explorers" and "Spanish Main" time periods. But by the time Nelson was alive, Portugal was Britain's ally again.

Of course, as this is a free play scenario, relations are liable to change. But it would be nice to have them start correct...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

FlyingGhost did change some of the starting nation relations quite recently for the Nelson storyline, so this may indeed be different now.

Default relations for each period are different as well.

 

[FlyingGhost]

Quite right! Here are the changes I made to the default values of the period to match with the date (15th of January 1779) :

SetNationRelationBoth(ENGLAND, SPAIN, RELATION_NEUTRAL);
SetNationRelationBoth(ENGLAND, HOLLAND, RELATION_NEUTRAL);
SetNationRelationBoth(ENGLAND, PORTUGAL, RELATION_FRIEND);

Spain and The Netherlands didn't enter the American Revolutionary War until after the start date.