Promotion Ships?

[Kevin the Seasick]

Hi all,

Has the promotion ship feature been disabled? All I get is a message saying "You seem to have a pretty impressive squadron of your own. Looks like you won't be needing the promotion ship."

I restarted, reloaded, sold off my only two ships (class-4 frigates), and still received the message. Reloaded and did the same but bought a lugger just to try something else. Same. Tried different governors of the same nation. Same. Tried different nations. Same.

I hope it's just turned off and not my game bugging out again. If I AM supposed to receive the promo ship, then I'll post the logs and savegame as needed. But if it's been turned off, can you tell me how to turn it on, or will that wreak havoc?

I suppose I should also ask if I should even concern myself with these reward ships at this point. Are they obsolete by the time you have class-4 ships? By the files I was looking at - which, given my very limited knowledge could easily have been the wrong ones - the Dutch reward ship is a NL_Lineship named Vergulde Draek IIRC, and that class appears to be a comparative beast.

Thanks!

 

[DavyJack]

Yeah, I noticed that too. Even back then. I think I have a class 4 ship when I got promoted to Lord and it also just mentioned the "you seem to have a pretty impressive squadron.." thing. What? Can't I get at least a class 3 ship? or in this honor and rank I prefer a class 2 ship with all the work and service you've done for that nation to get to the top.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That message should show up if you already have 4 ships in your fleet, regardless of class.
Reason being that you can't have 5 ships. If you have one empty slot, it should work.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Uh ohh. That is broken too. I also got that message and had three ships. I thought the reward ships were turned off anyway.

 

[Kevin the Seasick]

Ok. Well as long as it's not just me, that's fine. For the record, I only have two ships, and I even tried it with zero ships. Same message. It's cool... I'll just go capture a better ship and all this will be moot. Hah... it's just ironic cuz I was purposely avoiding capturing a bigger ship so my promotion ship would still be a welcome reward.

I remember reading a post between Pieter and another fellow wherein you first formulated that message. But it should've worked just as you said in that post and just as you said in your post above, according to what I read.

That'd be awesome to get a sweeter reward for being a Lord, like DavyJack said, but none of this is high priority, of course. I just like rewards! But now that I know my game's not uniquely bugged, I'm just gonna move on and hope for a little fix included in a build down the road. Thanks y'all!

 

[Kevin the Seasick]

Just in case you wanted to check this out, Pieter, here is a .zip of the NK.c file that you were talking about in your other post http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/promotion-reward-ships.19585/, and where this "you don't need the promotion ship" message exists, as well as the reward ships by period. I don't know if it's the right file considering the ranks have some different names, but here you go anyway, and it's from my comp just in case you're showing all the code correctly on your version. If you see something in there that doesn't look right, maybe you can let us in on it so we can flip that reward switch back on?

P.S. I have no idea what I'm talking about. But I accept that.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Must be these lines in that file that somehow don't do what I want:

if (GetCompanionIndex(pchar,1) != -1 && GetCompanionIndex(pchar,2) != -1 && GetCompanionIndex(pchar,3) != -1)

Strange, because those exact lines are used for similar purpose in the Standard storyline.

 

[Kevin the Seasick]

What do they do in the Standard storyline? That's the one I'm playing. I'm assuming it's for the rank 6 promotion with Britain to get the HMS Surprise? I'm only at rank 5 at the moment. I was at least hoping to get that ship.

I stared at that line of code for a good half hour last night, trying to understand it, but I couldn't. Now that I look at it again, is it saying that as long as you only have 1, 2, or 3 ships, there should be 1 spot available for the reward ship? Just taking a stab at it.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That line is just there so that if you already have three companions, the promotion reward ship doesn't get added and overwrite any of your existing ships.

 

[Kevin the Seasick]

Understood. Shame it's not cooperating with us. I wouldn't mind the risk of overwriting any of my existing ships considering I'd only be risking replacing some currently run-of-the-mill ships with some unique rewards instead. Can I remove that line so that I may receive the promotion ships? And are there other lines I should adjust? I am probably oversimplifying it.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Replace that line with:

if(true)

To remove the check.
Note that there are several identical lines, one for each nation. Replace them all.
That should do the trick.

 

[Kevin the Seasick]

Sweet! Thanks, Pieter! That seems easy enough.

 

[TommyM]

I can't find the file
Can someone help me out with finding its direct folder and the file's name?

 

[ANSEL]

@TommyM : PROGRAM/NK C-fil.

 

[DavyJack]

Must be these lines in that file that somehow don't do what I want:

if (GetCompanionIndex(pchar,1) != -1 && GetCompanionIndex(pchar,2) != -1 && GetCompanionIndex(pchar,3) != -1)

Strange, because those exact lines are used for similar purpose in the Standard storyline.

Replace that line with:

if(true)

To remove the check.
Note that there are several identical lines, one for each nation. Replace them all.
That should do the trick.

Okay is the promotion ship a "one-time" thing? I have tried the suggested modification 'bout the NK.c file and the message never spawned again and because I really intended that I have a lower ship class before I receive the reward but I never received or my personal ship was never replaced with a better and higher class of ship.
Until I reached the rank "Almirante" or Admiral as I am serving Spain, the only promotional rewards that I received besides the land
is a well-trained "First Mate" and his own ship and boy! his ship was the best Spain has ever had back in the days and damn! am jealous.

*Anyway, I attached my modified NK.c file for anyone else who wants to try this.

 

[Kevin the Seasick]

Hi DavyJack,

You do indeed only receive one promotion ship per nation. And from the coding, it is indeed that monstrosity of a ship you just got. I was indeed surprised myself when I made the changes and received from Holland a class-2 ship with 60 24-pounders (that's the biggest ship I've had so far, so I was wide-eyed). Portugal gave me a class-4 Fragata Latina (I'm in the Colonial Powers period), which seemed more reasonable. As for other Spanish rewards, you should've received a Moorish Saber at rank 2 and a Spanish Nobility Longsword at rank 6. The promo ship is received at rank 5. You're rank 9, obviously. I know that for me, I missed one of the messages (out of distraction on my part) and didn't even know I had the swords I did, so maybe double-check your inventory and ship locker for these swords?

As for not replacing your ship, that happened to me as well. I had slot one and two full, so it simply filled in slot three with the promo ship (and level-70 officer). I'm happy with that since it didn't replace my ship and I could sell it. The problem someone was having in a post with Pieter (see my link a few posts above) was that he didn't like his ships being replaced (or "overwritten" as Pieter says above), so Pieter put in a check to make sure your ships would not be replaced, and then included that "impressive squadron, you don't need this promo ship" message to tell the player why they didn't get it. But that was supposed to only be for the case of a full fleet, which you and I don't have. As Pieter says above, the code didn't do what he intended it to do. I defer to his knowledge on this aspect. Try buying a few cheap ships to fill your fleet, and then go to the governor. With the "if (true)" in your NK file there, one of your ships should then be replaced. My NK file appears no different than yours in this aspect, btw.

EDIT: I went ahead and filled up my fleet and none of my ships were replaced, though I did receive the officer. A bit confusing, but I actually don't mind that since I don't want my ships replaced (though for a promo ship, I was willing to risk it as mentioned several posts above). I didn't get the squadron message, but I wouldn't with the changed code, methinks. And that's ok with me. I always keep an open slot anyway, so no replacement needed even if it wanted to (which it apparently doesn't).
Oh yeah, and part of the reason the promo ship code was changed was also because of buggy officers it adds. I haven't encountered these bugs yet, but I haven't played much since the change either. Just beware! I only made the change because I wanted to play around with the promo ships a bit, and I didn't fear any "overwriting" of my ships. But the officer thing... I hope that isn't an issue still, though considering my Dutch promo officer and Portuguese promo officer have the exact same picture is a bit worrisome already.

Sorry for the long message. I'm just wordy! I'm also a newbie compared to y'all, so take my words with a grain of sea salt!

 

[DavyJack]

Ah yes! Sorry I forgot to mention 'bout the swords. Yes, indeed I have received them together with the uniforms.
And well, for now it doesn't bother me to do the exchange ship process, if I really want my first mate's ship, every time I want to have it. So I'm good.