Newbie needs help desperately

[hangar18]

I really want to like this game but am encumbered by a numbers of its facets, the most pressing of which is the lack of a manual. Yes thats right, my game did not come with a manual (and no its not a pirate copy) and so I am struggling to do even the most simple things. The problems I have are as follows:

1. When on the map, I press W and my ship takes off, fine. However I cannot seem to steer it - it simply goes straight. I can turn (v.slowly) if I zoom into the sailing mode but what a pain to have to do this every time I want to steer to an island. Also I wanted to travel to redmond but couldn't see where it was on the map. My questions are thus, how do you manipulate the map so you can see more of it and secondly how do you turn the ship while on map mode.

2. SOme of my crew died due to starvation while I was fiddling around with the blasted map. What do I need to stock up on so they dont die - e.g. grapes, wheat??? I noticed moral went up quickly - I suspect this was due to me carrying rum. Or was it?

3. On land I have difficulty manoeuvring. I have set up the controls so I use the up and down cursors to move forward and back, but I am stuck with using the stupid mouse to rotate left or right. Please tell me I can somehow assign left and right rotational control to the cursors? If not then the designer of the control system for this game should be shot. No tortured. And slowly.

4. When in sea combat, I have to press the A button for a very long time for my stupid crew to realise I want them to fire the cannons. And when they do, they seem to have an accuracy of about 10%. Any tips and / or am I doing something obviously wrong? Also I have to tell them to reload which takes an eternity - any suggestions?

5. I found it was much easier to board a ship and kill the crew, but had 3 problems once I won. The first was I couldn't assign a captain to take over the ship. What do I need to do to do this? Second, When I left the ship, it sank mysteriously. Third, I didn't know if I wanted to keep the ship I'd boarded (jn place of the one I was given at the start), because I had no idea if it was worth more. Is there an easy way to tell?

I really think I would love this game if I could only get over the problems mentioned above. If anyone can help me I will express my immense gratitude and send you a barrel of my finest rum. Har har! <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="rolleyes.gif" />

 

[CatalinaThePirate]

<img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/hi.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":gday" border="0" alt="hi.gif" /> <b>hangar18, </b>and welcome aboard! Pull up a keg, have a seat, and have a couple on us! <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/par-ty.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="par-ty.gif" />

<img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/keith.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="keith.gif" /> We're glad you found your way into these fair waters, and hope you visit often! <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/onya.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="onya.gif" />

First and foremost, the game manual was NEVER very helpful, so don't feel like you're missing something by not having it. <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="rolleyes.gif" /> The game was bought `mid-development` by Disney to tie in with the movie of the same name, and development was thereafter rushed - and things changed and lost and convoluted and... Well... Sad to say, the finished product was a buggy, frustrating game that made you crazy instead of being much fun.

Now I found this site much like you - I got the game and was confused because the game manual was just NOT helping me. There were too many bugs, too many crashes - so I was looking for a patch - and found this wonderful community of pirate game enthusiasts.

So... You're in the right place. And I (and others!) can help!

1.) When on the map, you use <b>W</b> to go forward, <b>S</b> to stop, and <b>A</b> and <b>D</b> for left and right (respectively). If you want to see MORE of the overhead map, hit the <b>TAB </b>key.

2.) Wheat and rum are the staples of crew life. You need to stock those to keep your crew happy and fed.

3.) I'm not sure about whether you can get rotational control from your cursors, but I am sure someone will be along who can tell you if or how it is or can be done. <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />

4.) Ummm, on my game, firing cannons is mapped to my spacebar. Did you change something?

Regarding accuracy, there are a couple of things you can do. If you want more accuracy, it is good to hire an officer who has a lot of experience in cannons and accuracy. If you are weak there, his skills will combine with yours if you keep him as one of your officers in your boarding contingent. Otherwise, you need to build up your skills in cannon and accuracy yourself. If it is important for you, then assign whatever points you earn towards those attributes, and your crew will load faster and their shots will be more accurate.

ABILITIES are also important here - Master Cannoneer is a good ability which will make your accuracy and loading times better.

AND another thing that will help is if you go into first person while onboard ship. You can walk around your deck and look into the spyglass at other ships &tc - and AIM the cannons with the aiming reticle.

When you are within range, it will glow red. Thiink also that you may need to loft your cannonballs to get them to a ship that is farther away. Sometimes you'll not even have the reticle on the ship, but much higher when it is red.

5.) When you board a ship with the intention of keeping her as a prize, you need to have a hired officer ready to take her as the prize captain. You will assign him via the "Assign Captain" button on the plunder screen. There, you can also transfer cargo, men, and even change ships so that the prize is now your flagship.

Extra ships will sink if you do not assign a captain.

If you get a mysterious knocking sound when you are on the plunder screen, it means you need to put more men on your ships. Fighting kills some of your crew and theirs. Usually you can transfer over crew and balance things out - but if you can't make it because there's just too few crew for two ships, just pick one and take as much of the cargo and crew as you can, and sink the other by leaving it without a captain.

<img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/par-ty.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="par-ty.gif" /> There, I think that merely touches the surface, but I KNOW that'll make ya happy because it answered most of your questions... <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />

NOW. Big suggestion... Get the BUILD. It's a collection of modifications to PotC that makes it a much more satisfying gaming experience.

Read about it here - <a href="http://forum.piratesahoy.net/ftopic2378.php" target="_blank">http://forum.piratesahoy.net/ftopic2378.php</a>

And download it here - <a href="http://mods.piratesahoy.net/index.php?action=view&view=entry&entryid=73" target="_blank">http://mods.piratesahoy.net/index.php?acti...ntry&entryid=73</a>

Having the Build will also take care of some frustrating bugs you might encounter in the `un-modded` version. Bethesda never released any kind of patch for the game, so we fixed it ourselves (from a patch released in Russia by Akella, plus many sharpeyed modders playing around in the code)

There ya go!

<img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" /> Have an ale! <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/beer2.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":beer" border="0" alt="beer2.gif" /> and again, welcome aboard! <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/hi.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":gday" border="0" alt="hi.gif" />

 

[NathanKell]

Howdy!

I don't see any way (from reading the init_pc.c file) of getting character turning done by keys (it's mapped as a single axis, not LEFT and RIGHT as turn ship etc. are). If you're desperate you could get a cheap USB keypad thing and program keys to register mouse motion. Or a gamepad, actually; a cheap programmable USB one would probably be, um, $15? (I got a gravis tiltpad free after rebate ages ago...)

Cannon accuracy and, um, tightness of the volley, is much increased with higher cannon skill and the cannon perks as Cat says; if you get _really_ desperate you can edit the files so it scales differently (i.e. skill level 1 isn't as bad).

Also, note that the officer you assign to captain a ship must have IIRC at least 1s in leadership and sailing. So some of the quest officers can't captain ships (though all `random-gen` tavern officers can).

 

[hangar18]

Thanks guys for all your help. I take it then that you too have to play the game with one hand on the mouse and one hand on the cursors (when on land).

 

[NathanKell]

Yeah, it's the FPS style.
(except normally you'd also have sidestep controls set to A and D...)

I used to be a `keyboard-only` player too; Daggerfall converted me... (and left me always setting _right_ mouse as primary trigger and _left_ as alternate...)

I've never looked back; keys are essentially binary, but a mouse allows _controlled_ movement at (nearly) any speed desired from slight correction to `whip-around`.