• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


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WIP Now included in latest patch: Trade Winds, AI armor, weapons variety, captain rebalancing, etc

Skyworm said:
@Pieter: Will write something about the storms in direct sail in the other thread you linked to.
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If you want to tag me, you have to type "Pieter Boelen" because "Pieter" is another user altogether. ;)

Anyway, doesn't exactly matter, because I tend to visit all threads anyway, regardless of whether I'm tagged or not. :cheeky
 
This "Pieter" guy is going to get SUCH a shock when he logs in again.
He keeps being tagged by people. :rofl
 
Here are some comments on the changes in the initofficertypes:
OFFIC_TYPE_RANDCHAR
- Not contributing things is okay
- I sugest keeping ImprovePotions because these characters will be used for enemies also and this could help them.

OFFIC_TYPE_SAILOR
- Sailors are used on board of ships as boarding crew. You want them to give some importance for fencing
- Same goes for accuracy
- The idea is they are a little bit better then having RandChars on your deck, so giving them a rankbonus sounds not usefull to me

OFFIC_TYPE_SHOPKEEPER
- The level of shopkeepers will determine how well you can trade with them and they will get XP for this too. This is why they got a rankbonus. All of them are define already and this is just a way to tone them down a bit so they can still grown trough the game without being completely OP.
- They got the HPbonus so players can't kill them that easy and rob them.
- I sugest keeping Trustworthy because I think I'm going to need that when overhauling the trade system

OFFIC_TYPE_GUARD
- I suggest removing the cannons importance to guards altough I can see why you'd do that... might look nice indeed for fort fighters
- The HP bonus like this looks good, I agree with it
- I would remove the basicbattlestate. the fastreload could work. Personally I'd also at least include the improvepotions because they are enemies you can encounter during boarding etc so it would be nice if they can use potions well.

OFFIC_TYPE_CAPMERCHANT
- Personally I'd tone down the sailing a little bit. merchant captains seem to be pretty alround now which sounds good to me. Personally I'd tone down the repair also a little bit so the Commerce will be a bit more dominating
- Removing the hpbonus I can see but I'd sugest keeping a little bonus because they are the captain afterall and are suppost to be the "boss" of the ship so they can be a bit harder.
- Like I said before I'd prefer if some of the perks are removed from the captain. remember you can capture this captain and keep him like this so he could contribute all these things then. Captains will have officers very soon so no need for all these perks for the captains.

OFFIC_TYPE_REGCAP
- The regular captain should be an allround captain. I would almost sugest to just remove all importance things from them so they will level every skill about the same. We will have officers to make sure he has the right skills.
- Maybe have the regcap have a bit more fencing skills (so a bit of importance for him) because you will fight him
- adding a hp bonus is fine for them.
- How strong do we want regcaptains to be? I sugest changing theire boarding crew to either sailors or ranchars (randschars are weaker)
- Same goes for the perks as above

OFFIC_TYPE_CAPNAVY
- Personally I'd say a navy captain should be one of the best in sailing etc. He is educated for this and should be very good in it.
- He will have officers so I'd say mostly have him focus on leadership and sailing and fencing. the cannons etc will be handles by officers.
- Same goes for the perks as said before

OFFIC_TYPE_CAPPIRATE
- Pirate captains wil often sail smaller ships and they should have a strong crew. So you don't want to board them preferbly. You just want to sink them. This should be reflected in theire importances. The pirate would like to board you and just capture your ship.

OFFIC_TYPE_CAPPRIVATEER
- At the moment I'm not sure if capprivateer is used. but I think by now you get the picture.

OFFIC_TYPE_PIRATE
- Pirates should be a formidable enemy because they want to fight. but imo they should be a bit of a tag tag bunch so I sugest upping theire noncontribchance a lot so you get a more diverse group. Accuracy is important during boarding so I sugest they keep that.

OFFIC_TYPE_TRADER
- Traders are only used for quests so they don't have to be that special. they just need to make sure they can handle them self incase yoou are going to betray them.
- I do suggest giving them the disguiser perk at least because you can command them to sail under a false flag.

OFFIC_TYPE_BOATSWAIN
- Why not the smuggling perks? now the boatswain has almost no perks left.

OFFIC_TYPE_QMASTER
- The quartermaster would not do the cooking. he will just get the supplies, so I don't sugest giving him this perk. Maybe move it to the boatswain instaed?

OFFIC_TYPE_FIRSTMATE
- I can't see why a firstmate should contribute defence skills. He can be trained in it because that could be usefull during fighting. but if you do want him to contribute I sugest only setting it to "1".
- If you want the first mate to be usefull during fighting I sugest you also give him some accuracy importance so he can use guns better.
- I don't see why the firstmate should have the defence perks. Troopers I can see. I don't see why you would remove sharedXP from him. I mean he would be perfect for it right?

OFFIC_TYPE_CARPENTER
- Carpenters go the HullDamageUp because they might know where to hit the ship best. Also the ShipSpeedUp was because they probably know how to maintain the ship best etc to improve it's speed.

OFFIC_TYPE_DOCTOR
- Personally I think doctors should have some of the defence perks at least. Else they become even less usefull.

OFFIC_TYPE_ABORDAGE
- At least make sure some officer has the smugglingperk

----

Overall some changes I like but I think it needs to be tweaked a bit more. Especially on the perks side for officers. You want officers to be usefull for a bit longer so you want them to have at least some perks, even if they might not suit their post best it would make them a bit more usefull. I'm working on ways to still spend perkpoints after that but I think each officer should AT LEAST have 5 perks he can choose from etc.
 
About the change to the seawolf perk. This is from the stock game still and it should be one of the best perks you can get. Thats why it has these requirements. I sugest keeping that ..
besides that most of it looks okay
 
@Levis

I agree with almost EVERYTHING you say. :)

(and I agree it does make sense for regcaptains to get sailors)

Since I agree with almost everything, I'll just mention any additional small thoughts I have.

- Firstmate getting defense perks and skill is probably my FAVORITE change. Currently, the Firstmate is useless. This gives him a role, while the doctor is still useful for healing.

Besides, the old system didn't make ANY sense. The doctor reduces damage to ship from cannonfire? How? The Firstmate certainly could--he is organizing the deck crews, making sure they are in the right places, managing getting people in and out, training them to handle the fire in the first place.

Basically, I think it improves both realism and gameplay.

- I removed some of the smugging perks from boatswains to strengthen them. A Boatswain as a fighter needs ALOT of combat perks (especially since they need the personal gun perks to buy musket volley), and the smuggling perks will usually be handled by quatermaster anyway. Basically, on a boatswain, less perks is better for their role. Same thing for man at arms. Basically, any combat officer already has a TON of perks he needs to get, actually having only the low level versions of other perk lines hurts them.

- I agree with cooking moved to boatswain. :)

- Firstmate lost shared XP in anticipation of new shared xp dialogue system, I didn't want bugs occuring if firstmate officers died and so the player lost access to the perk, so I wanted it player only. But either way works.


On boarding crews, I think they need to be balanced against each other, rather than considered in isolation. Here's how I balanced them:

officer/hp base bonus/hp per level/fencing importance/accuracy importance

master at arms (crew for privateers and regular captains): +10/+0/5/6
pirates +0/+2/6/5 (pirate crews are the most dramatic from ship to ship--they can be desperate and weak, or they can be fearsome under great captains)
sailor (merchant guards) +0/+0/4/3 (weakest of course)
guards +150/+0/5/10 level bonus of 10(+ some bonus from the captain rank bonus)

(the guards +150 hp may look high, but their old +5 per level and near 20 boost from the captain and their personal rank to level meant that anything tier 7 or better basically had this HP or more. I think the more moderate and steady HP change better reflects standardized training across ship sizes, and were consistently very good)
 
@Levis Addition to just posted post:

Sea wolf had its prior perk requirements removed for only 1 reason--to make it feasible for AI captains to get it. Requiring storm professional and the reef perk, both of which don't help the AI, was blocking them from it or making it too costly.

But with AI officers, that could be reverted, so no problem going with original version on that. :)
 
Tingyun said:
- Firstmate getting defense perks and skill is probably my FAVORITE change. Currently, the Firstmate is useless. This gives him a role, while the doctor is still useful for healing.

Besides, the old system didn't make ANY sense. The doctor reduces damage to ship from cannonfire? How? The Firstmate certainly could--he is organizing the deck crews, making sure they are in the right places, managing getting people in and out, training them to handle the fire in the first place.

Basically, I think it improves both realism and gameplay.
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Sound logical too.
Please give the firstmate the disguiser ability at least again then. He would be the one who will take care of the flags probably.

Tingyun said:
- I removed some of the smugging perks from boatswains to strengthen them. A Boatswain as a fighter needs ALOT of combat perks (especially since they need the personal gun perks to buy musket volley), and the smuggling perks will usually be handled by quatermaster anyway. Basically, on a boatswain, less perks is better for their role. Same thing for man at arms. Basically, any combat officer already has a TON of perks he needs to get, actually having only the low level versions of other perk lines hurts them.

- I agree with cooking moved to boatswain. :)
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At least for some flavor I sugest also adding HighStakes to the boatswain as he will probably be gambling a lot on deck ;).

Tingyun said:
- Firstmate lost shared XP in anticipation of new shared xp dialogue system, I didn't want bugs occuring if firstmate officers died and so the player lost access to the perk, so I wanted it player only. But either way works.
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Its a fair point... Didn't think about that. Let's for now indeed keep the sharedXP for the player only.


Tingyun said:
On boarding crews, I think they need to be balanced against each other, rather than considered in isolation. Here's how I balanced them:

officer/hp base bonus/hp per level/fencing importance/accuracy importance

master at arms (crew for privateers and regular captains): +10/+0/5/6
pirates +0/+2/6/5 (pirate crews are the most dramatic from ship to ship--they can be desperate and weak, or they can be fearsome under great captains)
sailor (merchant guards) +0/+0/4/3 (weakest of course)
guards +150/+0/5/10 level bonus of 10(+ some bonus from the captain rank bonus)

(the guards +150 hp may look high, but their old +5 per level and near 20 boost from the captain and their personal rank to level meant that anything tier 7 or better basically had this HP or more. I think the more moderate and steady HP change better reflects standardized training across ship sizes, and were consistently very good)
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I think the +150 for guards is good, i was actually suprised I didn't do it myself.
I sugest changing the master at arms so we don't use him as boarding crew anymore.
So we have:
4. randchar (used by merchant)
3. sailor (used by regcaptain and privateer captain)
2. pirate (used by pirate captains)
1. guard (used by navy captains)
In that order. Pirates should have better fighting skills imo while guards should have more HP and better accuracy skills. This way pirates will feel more aggresive but a bit easier to kill while guards feel a bit more defensive but harder to kill.
If you can balance them again to this order I think we are getting there.
 
@Levis I love your proposal on the new crews. Something like this then (I also did your suggestion of increasing pirate fighting and weakening hp)

officer/hp base bonus/hp per level/fencing importance/accuracy importance
Sailors : +10/+0/5/6
pirates +0/+1/9/5
Randchar +0/+0/4/3
guards +150/+0/5/10 level bonus of 10


@Levis Do you want me to make a new version incorperating your changes and deletions, or are you already doing it? Either way works fine, happy to help if needed. :)

EDIT: I agree with high stakes for doctors, luck being their thing
 
Please make the changes and make a new zip so I can add it easiers. I still have a lot of testing to do and need to fix some more stuff.

Could you maybe also remove teh double running speed (for now) and only make sure the running speed is equal for all models?
 
@Levis No problem Levis, will do! It might take me about an hour, as I need to be very careful going over the discussion above and adding all the changes and deletions, but it will be uploaded soon. Very excited to get these things tried on a wider basis! :)

To confirm, I will work from the present version, step by step include all the changes discussed above, and also revert most of the captain strengthening according to the notes above. Captains will be balanced around the expectation they will have officers, and adopting Levis's directions above.
 
@Levis Will be ready in 1 hour from now, was taking me just a little longer than expected.

I am removing any files if the only changes have already been posted to the "New Content" thread, to make less files for merging.
 
@Levis As instructed I restored this line to shopkeeper:

OfficerTypes.(type).rankbonus = -15;

However, just wanted to check: in storeowners.c, almost all the store owners are defined as starting rank 1, with only a couple having the top starting rank of 8. Wouldn't this penalty reduce them all to level 1 and eliminate differences? Or does this only operate on stalls and such?

Either way, it is back in like the original version right now. :)
 
Ok so for the crew balance in incorperating above instructions I made it so the total of non fighting (ie everything except fencing or accuracy) importances of all the boarding crew types are equal to 10. That way the importances in the table below for the fighting skills are meaningful. Levis you seems uncertain on cannons for guards, so I gave them a somewhat reduced importance in it, so their not-helpful importances now add up to the new value of 10.

officer/hp base bonus/hp per level/fencing importance/accuracy importance
Sailors : +10/+0/6/6
pirates +0/+1/9/5
Randchar +0/+0/5/5 rank bonus of -5
guards +150/+0/6/10 level bonus of 10

(all have total of 10 non combat importances, so that the above numbers reflect actual combat orientations)

Since this weakens randchar a good deal to be the new merchant crew, I increased the level of bandits in the consistent bandits part of the mod to help compensate by a couple of levels

Let me know if anything looks wrong. :)
 
This wasn't discussed, but I'm assuming I should tone down the price increase for captains from the current version, since some people might like hiring them. I'll make them be there, but much smaller.

EDIT Now most captains 2.0 price (good other options for employment and savings), pirate captains 1.0 (desperate, lack of other options), Navy 5.0 (bribe sufficient to convince them to betray their country).

These are about half what I had, so should work better for most people.
 
Almost done now, report on captain changes:

All Captains now focussed on leadership and sailing, as in directions above. Perklists designed expecting officers, which means (except for merchant captain), the perklists are generally sailing and leadership perks.

Exceptions are each gets one additional category:
pirate captains, who also get grappling perks + disguiser,
merchant captains who also get commerce perks + sails damage up
navy captains, who get defense perks
regular captains, who get smuggling + basic commerce
Privateer captains, grappling perks + diguiser

Sea wolf is back to old perk requirements, and requisite perks given to AI captains even if not itself useful

Trade Captain is clone of merchant (per note above about not being special), except they get the disguiser perk (for reasons Levis mentioned above)

Levis, if any of this doesn't match what you have in mind, please change to whatever looks right.

File be up in a few minutes, doing a final checkover
 
@Levis Here they are!

"Parts for merging with Levis" should have all the changes from the results of our discussion above-I went over the comments twice to be sure.
Of course, change anything that doesn't look right. I've included notes above on everything, including the new captains.

(in particular, if you don't like the system of giving captains one additional kind of thematic perks each after the sailing/leadership ones, please delete, I left those additional ones at the end to make it easy)

"Double running speed" is that optional install to try out the new speeds.

I removed the 'young girls no longer sound like 80 year old grandmothers' sound changes for now, as it seemed easily seperable, and can be discussed later.
 

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