Abandoned Realistic Cargo Mod Beta Version Update 2

[J Norrington]

@pedrwyth I am in complete agreement the current interface can be a bit tedious which unfortunately my mod does not improve. I believe the amounts were changed to just +1 (there was +10 and +100) because of an bug/exploit used by players to cheat. I know it can be turned back on (check the forum) but I don't think it's fixed as of yet. Might take a look at it if time/skill permits as it would be nice to be able to enter higher numbers in.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Being a newbie I am not in a position to help evaluate the modd (I'm not au fait with how many aspects of the current release interact to make a comparison over many scenarios). However in build 14 3.4 filling Sovereign of the Seas is already a less than interesting piece of the game play. It strikes me that given the 'real' time taken and the accompanying aching finger that buying large amounts of goods gives me in 3.4 (unless I am missing a quick key?) it is already at my tolerance level. If quantities are increasing so much perhaps the unit multiples or weight that goods are bought and sold in (ie therefore onboard weight) could also be adjusted during "balancing" rather than solely monetary value and availability to prevent spending all day at the shops.

Using the [Ctrl] and [Alt] keys used to increase the numbers much faster, so you can try that.
We might have disabled that particular feature though, because the price calculations due to supply and demand didn't go right and we couldn't figure out a quick fix for that.
As much as I'd like to make massive improvements, right now we don't have the resources to make it happen.
Personally I always use "Auto Buy" but of course that wouldn't apply for purchasing trade goods.

I did check that out @Pieter Boelen the problem with doing it dynamically is that again the bigger warships will use only the weight of the caliber installed so a ship such as the Victory (Sorry I keep using her as an example but she's the ship I've done the most research on) will have 104 32 pounder guns on her weighing 85 cwt each (carriage included) or 8500 pounds respectively. 85x104=8840, 42840-8840=34000 not horrible but not accurate either the real number is 36798 (44, 12 pounders 38cwt per unit 1672 total) + (28, 24 pounders 65cwt per unit 1820 total) + (30, 32 pounders 85cwt per unit 2550 total). The Victory is one of the largest ships in the game my fear is that scaling this down on some of the smaller ships might lead to problems the only way to find out is to test it. For now hardcoding the ships is the easier option as the totals will be closer to historical accuracy (the drawback being the numbers will be static) but I will also attempt to add it dynamically as well but it's probably gonna take awhile. It's kind of a rabbit hole though since if you add the weight of the cannons dynamically then you need to factor in weight for speed, and on and on you go lol.

Indeed the single calibre on a ship is an ever-lasting problem that we are never going to be able to fix in PotC. We'll have to deal with it as best we can though.
Nobody says a 32 pounder cannon is required to weigh 85 cwt in the game though. We could set it at 60 cwt per cannon for those large ones to simulate a more even distribution of weight.

That being said, the Victory in the game actually DOES have 104 32 pounder guns with the damage to match.
And you massively increased the cargo space as well, so perhaps subtracting the cannon weights would get the numbers closer again to what they are in Beta 3.4 .
It seems to me that these sort of issues would apply more to the large ships because a small ship would have mainly the same kind of cannons while a big ship would have a lot of different types.
That also means that if you want to use the Victory for trading, you would need to install smaller/less cannons to free up cargo space.
From a gameplay perspective, that would at least make sense.

If I understand correctly, a lot of the numbers you used now are "light weight" values that don't factor in the cannons and such already.
So I would strongly suggest we try the dynamic route now, since we are already pretty close to having reasonable numbers for that purpose.
If you undo those changes now, then we're basically moving backwards and would need to redo 200+ ships again when we do want to do it.
We might as well do some experiments now and at least see what happens. If it proves too much of a hassle, we can always reconsider.

It's kind of a rabbit hole though since if you add the weight of the cannons dynamically then you need to factor in weight for speed, and on and on you go lol.

Weight factoring in on ship speed? I think that already happens.
You can dump cargo while at sea and I'm pretty sure that doing that not only increases your speed accordingly, it will even have the visible effect of the ship sitting higher in the water.
So that functionality is already in place. We'd just have to see what happens if we throw this feature at it....

@pedrwyth I am in complete agreement the current interface can be a bit tedious which unfortunately my mod does not improve. I believe the amounts were changed to just +1 (there was +10 and +100) because of an bug/exploit used by players to cheat. I know it can be turned back on (check the forum) but I don't think it's fixed as of yet. Might take a look at it if time/skill permits as it would be nice to be able to enter higher numbers in.

Perfectly true. Relevant file would be PROGRAM\INTERFACE\trade.c (or was it store.c?). Anyway, I think the responsible lines of code are still in there, but with \\ in front; search for "multiplier".

 

[J Norrington]

@Pieter Boelen Ah I didn't know that cargo weight affected speed that's awesome was that implemented the whole time or recently?.
I'll work on adding the dynamic cannon weight and the static at the same time that way if dynamic doesn't work as hoped we still have an egg in our basket as it were, I'll use historical cannon weight data for the dynamic system first then tweak and tinker as needed. Unrelated but I'm running into a problem with altering the starting gold for players I searched for starting gold and found the code below in StartStoryline.c under Storyline/Standand i assume since no other story lines have a starting gold code they all use this code?

int avPrice = makeint(cargoPrice1 + cargoPrice2)*qty;
if (makeint(cargoPrice1 + cargoPrice2) < sti(hireCost+repCost)) {
int add
= makeint(sti(hireCost+repCost)-avPrice);
if (addMoney > 0)
AddMoneyToCharacter(PChar, addMoney);
else
AddMoneyToCharacter(PChar, sti(hireCost+repCost));
} else {
PChar.money = makeint(1000*qty);// TIH fixed decimal gold on start new game


I've changed the > 0 value and the makeint(1000*qty) values but it doesn't seem to change anything am I looking in the wrong area or altering the wrong values?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Pieter Boelen Ah I didn't know that cargo weight affected speed that's awesome was that implemented the whole time or recently?.

Was already there since at least Build 13.

Unrelated but I'm running into a problem with altering the starting gold for players I searched for starting gold and found the code below in StartStoryline.c under Storyline/Standand i assume since no other story lines have a starting gold code they all use this code?

int avPrice = makeint(cargoPrice1 + cargoPrice2)*qty;
if (makeint(cargoPrice1 + cargoPrice2) < sti(hireCost+repCost)) {
int add
= makeint(sti(hireCost+repCost)-avPrice);
if (addMoney > 0)
AddMoneyToCharacter(PChar, addMoney);
else
AddMoneyToCharacter(PChar, sti(hireCost+repCost));
} else {
PChar.money = makeint(1000*qty);// TIH fixed decimal gold on start new game


I've changed the > 0 value and the makeint(1000*qty) values but it doesn't seem to change anything am I looking in the wrong area or altering the wrong values?

Look in PROGRAM\Characters\character_init.c; I think the default starting gold is there.
Actually, there might be a setting for it in PROGRAM\InternalSettings.h as well. There used to be but I can't remember if I removed it or not.

I'll work on adding the dynamic cannon weight and the static at the same time that way if dynamic doesn't work as hoped we still have an egg in our basket as it were, I'll use historical cannon weight data for the dynamic system first then tweak and tinker as needed.

Cool! I think the main thing to do for the Dynamic System is to get the functionality working and check for unintended side-effects that need to be fixed.
Historical accuracy and balancing comes secondary because you can't really do that until the system actually works.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

There is an imbalance in the economic system favoring large ships, and it is actually ok but a little severe. By that I mean it is hard to get started quickly and some time is spent struggling to make ends meet, but past a certain point the game changes and becomes too easy.

For example, the CaravelR was good for trade and smuggling and was slowly building up money. Adding the Carrack made the money come in faster, but it wasn't until I acquired a Fast War Galleon that the game became easy. Too easy. And that ship is also too large as I had trouble filling its holds at Santiago, so downsized to an English War Galleon. IMO anything bigger is a complete waste.

This brings up another issue in that there are two versions of some ships, a merchant and a war version. The difference is the size of the cannon and crew. But currently both versions have the same cargo capacity making the merchant version redundant. But it sounds like that will be addressed.

One other thing needs to be brought up: The overall economy. We spent years fine tuning the economy to work pretty well for everybody. Not too hard and not too easy. Then over 2 years ago @Levis introduced a radically different system that did not work well at all at first. But it is slowly being refined until now it mostly works but still needs tuning. Now a new radically different economy is being put on top of that one. Too many changes too fast means we will be flying blind. I urge caution here.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

One other thing needs to be brought up: The overall economy. We spent years fine tuning the economy to work pretty well for everybody. Not too hard and not too easy. Then over 2 years ago @Levis introduced a radically different system that did not work well at all at first. But it is slowly being refined until now it mostly works but still needs tuning. Now a new radically different economy is being put on top of that one. Too many changes too fast means we will be flying blind. I urge caution here.

Levis' completely modified economy was in Beta 3.2 and removed for Beta 3.3 . It has not returned.
The only thing that we DO still have now are his updates to Smuggling, which do feature dynamic changes to smuggling goods but not any of the other ones.

There is an imbalance in the economic system favoring large ships, and it is actually ok but a little severe. By that I mean it is hard to get started quickly and some time is spent struggling to make ends meet, but past a certain point the game changes and becomes too easy.

Not sure how to avoid that. Money creases money, doesn't it? Even in the real world. So in a way that does sound realistic.
It does, however, make for quite lame gameplay when there is not much of a challenge left. That is the point where I would like the gameplay itself to change.
Basically we would need things in the game that are interesting and fun but RIDICULOUSLY expensive so you can't do it in the early game.
Then as you basically become "too rich", you become able to tackle those things. Taking over the archipelago and managing your colonies would be the clearest example of that.
That isn't a very well-developed feature right now, but it is at least possible to give you something challenging to do.
It would get especially interesting if other nations would try to take your towns back from you. That would give you some new challenges....

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Oh! I did not know it had not returned. I have been anxiously awaiting the big changes to come and was pleasantly surprised when they did not. Yes, smuggling still needs some fine tuning.

Then for this mod it will be about just keeping the balance close.

Yes speed and weight have been factored into the ships stats for years. An interesting comparison would be the Spanish Treasure Galleon (Apostol Felipe) and the English Galleon (Revenge). The strongly built treasure galleon is slow when empty and the more lightly built English galleon can sail circles around it. But when they are fully laden the Spanish galleon is the faster ship as the cargo weight does not affect it as much.

 

[Grey Roger]

It would get especially interesting if other nations would try to take your towns back from you. That would give you some new challenges....

That is what "Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales" did. You were trying to go round capturing all the colonies for yourself, and every so often someone would attack one of your colonies. It became a colossal game of whack-a-mole. This is precisely why I generally told sister to take her half of the treasure and do what she liked, I was having no part of it, then went for basic free-play.

Then I found the PoTC mod, which at that time was Build 13, installed it, and never touched AoP:CT again. I haven't even tried to install it on my Windows 7 PC. I really hope PoTC doesn't start to turn into AoP:CT...

Economy isn't the only way the game becomes easy once you advance too far. Get a battleship and a good frigate, then terrorise the Caribbean, using the frigate to do what you like to enemy ships and the battleship to do what you like to enemy colonies. This will necessarily be the case, unless the entire game universe coincidentally just happens to get upgraded the same as you, in which case there's no point improving your ships and equipment anyway. So the game starts off tough as you build up, becomes easier when you've got better stuff, you can go on to bigger and tougher targets, eventually they become too easy as well, and that's when I abandon this campaign and start a new one.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Oh! I did not know it had not returned. I have been anxiously awaiting the big changes to come and was pleasantly surprised when they did not. Yes, smuggling still needs some fine tuning.

Please post any specific things that should be improved on it here:
http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/revamped-smuggling-3-3-compatible.24332/

Yes speed and weight have been factored into the ships stats for years. An interesting comparison would be the Spanish Treasure Galleon (Apostol Felipe) and the English Galleon (Revenge). The strongly built treasure galleon is slow when empty and the more lightly built English galleon can sail circles around it. But when they are fully laden the Spanish galleon is the faster ship as the cargo weight does not affect it as much.

There are two things to distinguish here:
- Ship stats in ships_init.c being set to sensible values, factoring in ship size and such
- Ship speed being dynamically modified by the amount of cargo on board
They both apply, of course.

That is what "Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales" did. You were trying to go round capturing all the colonies for yourself, and every so often someone would attack one of your colonies. It became a colossal game of whack-a-mole. This is precisely why I generally told sister to take her half of the treasure and do what she liked, I was having no part of it, then went for basic free-play.

Then I found the PoTC mod, which at that time was Build 13, installed it, and never touched AoP:CT again. I haven't even tried to install it on my Windows 7 PC. I really hope PoTC doesn't start to turn into AoP:CT...

I have no intention of allowing the game to become worse than it is, if that's what you mean.
Even if there IS more Colony Management added, you wouldn't be required to make use of it.

As for enemies taking over your colonies, if it is ever added, I would want that to be not completely random, unavoidable and therefore massively annoying.
You should be able to assign ships as defending squadron and/or upgrade the fort at the very least to fend off attacks when you as player aren't there when it happens.
Additionally, it would be nice if you could find out about attacks in advance so you can prepare. And they should NOT happen crazy frequently.

But regardless of all my ideas for that, none of that is going to be happening any time soon at all. If ever.

Economy isn't the only way the game becomes easy once you advance too far. Get a battleship and a good frigate, then terrorise the Caribbean, using the frigate to do what you like to enemy ships and the battleship to do what you like to enemy colonies. This will necessarily be the case, unless the entire game universe coincidentally just happens to get upgraded the same as you, in which case there's no point improving your ships and equipment anyway. So the game starts off tough as you build up, becomes easier when you've got better stuff, you can go on to bigger and tougher targets, eventually they become too easy as well, and that's when I abandon this campaign and start a new one.

At the moment the game does become tougher as you play, which doesn't make any logical sense. But it does make gameplay sense, of course.
I'd like to see that changed, but that isn't going to be happening any time soon.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

This is now included in here for testing purposes:
http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/build-14-beta-3-5-internal-wip-for-testing.24817

 

[J Norrington]

@Pieter Boelen it seems to me that it may be a simpler way to implement cannon weight into the game by altering this than creating a code from scratch but there are more ways than one to skin a cat. The only problem I can foresee with this is making the goods themselves phantom or at least not discardable, sellable, or transferrable sort of like quest items.

 

[pedrwyth]

Using the [Ctrl] and [Alt] keys used to increase the numbers much faster, so you can try that.
We might have disabled that particular feature though

I believe the amounts were changed to just +1 (there was +10 and +100) because of an bug/exploit used by players to cheat. I know it can be turned back on (check the forum) but I don't think it's fixed as of yet. Might take a look at it if time/skill permits as it would be nice to be able to enter higher numbers in.

They are disabled

Relevant file would be PROGRAM\INTERFACE\trade.c (or was it store.c?). Anyway, I think the responsible lines of code are still in there, but with \\ in front; search for "multiplier".

The multiplier function is in PROGRAM\INTERFACE\store.c

it involves enabling quick keys via

// EnableQuickControls();

and the calls to get quick keys (in two places)

int mult = 1;
// if (GetQuickControl("alt")) mult = 10;
// if (GetQuickControl("shift")) mult = 100;
int unitSize = GetGoodsUnitSize() * mult;

However as you see one uses the "alt" key (when the // is removed) which reliably crashes the game, but I think only a 10 multiplier is really needed so I changed that value to "shift" which is stable. I suspect pressing "alt" may still crash the game though

It works on the quantities but (un)fortunately gives you all 10 at the price for one! The current price paid figure (in brackets) goes haywire too. Worse still the quickcontrol is left enabled so when you leave the purchase screen virtually no keys function correctly (or at all). So I guess a DisableQuickControl() (if there is such a thing) needs to be called before leaving the store purchase screen. I may play around a bit to see if I can fix it but I'm not holding my breath. Pretty clear why it's disabled!


I have downloaded the latest 14 3.5 so will get out of your hair until I have something positive to contribute or some other problem related to the WIP..

 

[Pieter Boelen]

They are disabled




The multiplier function is in PROGRAM\INTERFACE\store.c

it involves enabling quick keys via

// EnableQuickControls();

and the calls to get quick keys (in two places)

int mult = 1;
// if (GetQuickControl("alt")) mult = 10;
// if (GetQuickControl("shift")) mult = 100;
int unitSize = GetGoodsUnitSize() * mult;

However as you see one uses the "alt" key (when the // is removed) which reliably crashes the game, but I think only a 10 multiplier is really needed so I changed that value to "shift" which is stable. I suspect pressing "alt" may still crash the game though

It works on the quantities but (un)fortunately gives you all 10 at the price for one! The current price paid figure (in brackets) goes haywire too. Worse still the quickcontrol is left enabled so when you leave the purchase screen virtually no keys function correctly (or at all). So I guess a DisableQuickControl() (if there is such a thing) needs to be called before leaving the store purchase screen. I may play around a bit to see if I can fix it but I'm not holding my breath. Pretty clear why it's disabled!


I have downloaded the latest 14 3.5 so will get out of your hair until I have something positive to contribute or some other problem related to the WIP..

It should be a matter of removing the \\ from these lines:

//   if (GetQuickControl("alt")) mult = 10;
//   if (GetQuickControl("shift")) mult = 100;

And these ones:

//   if (GetQuickControl("alt")) mult = 10;
//   if (GetQuickControl("shift")) mult = 100;

The EnableQuickControls line aren't needed. This has worked fine for many years and the only reason we disabled it is because the calculation of prices didn't go right.
But it sure shouldn't be causing any crashes or weirdness other than the pricing issue.

 

[Grey Roger]

Talking of cargo space, here's the Justinian:

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That ship has a HUGE capacity. Holy crap! How are you ever going to fill those holds??? "ohh

 

[Grey Roger]

If you think that's bad, here's Indefatigable, the emphasis being on "fat":

It has almost as high a capacity as the Justinian despite only being a Razee frigate, and is another ship whose cargo hold is bigger than its entire hull (28290 cwt capacity, 1300 tons = 26000 cwt overall weight). Though the Fast Merchantman has a generous hold, the Indy has almost three times the capacity. So I happened to run into a convoy of five Fast Merchantmen, captured three, and took the entire contents of the other two into my own hold despite part of it being full of ammo, food, crew and cannons. Some of the cargo was high value, some of it was contraband, most of it was moderate value. Total profit after I'd sold the cargo and prize ships was about a million gold, all from one battle. Neither I nor any of my officers has "Trustworthy" and I couldn't be bothered doing a smuggling run, so the contraband does not figure into that million.

 

[J Norrington]

@Grey Roger most likely what happened is that I put in the tonnage for the Indy when she was a 64 instead of a razee thanks for bringing it to my attention. As far as most ships being "Fat" they will be, but I just put in the realistic weight for the cannons this morning so it should cut down the cargo a bit. My question is how much of that million was made selling goods and not prize ships? As I previously mentioned the prices are now cheaper so you shouldn't be making as much profit from selling goods as before even though you will be able to capture more of them. Did you like being able to capture multiple traders? Would you be able to make as much profit or close to in the base game doing the exact same thing you did?
These are some things I need to know so I can adjust the prices and difficulty. If Prizes also become too lucrative I can adjust that as well.

 

[J Norrington]

Also @Grey Roger did some checking on the Indy and it appears that razeeing her has a very small effect on the amount of cargo she could carry since your shaving off the top deck and guns not the hold. I compared a similar frigate that was razeed at the same time the HMS Magnanamie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Magnanime_(1780) And compared her Length, Depth, Breadth and compared her to a similar 44 gun frigate the HMS Endymion http://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=4106 who's stats are almost the same within 1 or two feet and the tons burthen difference in cargo is about 90 tons or 1800cwt not very much so I may leave her cargo where it is for the moment until I can find info for the Razee Indy

 

[Grey Roger]

The cargo capacity can not possibly be realistic if it's larger than the entire ship, unless the ship's name is "HMS TARDIS". Even if you add cannons to cargo and then add gun decks to cargo capacity to accomodate them, the total can't exceed the ship's weight, which is easy to find as it's on the line above capacity.

Almost all the million was from selling captured goods, most of which weren't particularly valuable.

Capturing multiple traders is nothing to do with any cargo mod, it depends on how many officers I have. Stuffing a medium size warship with the entire contents of two merchant ships' holds, on the other hand, is just silly. I could never have made a million from one battle in earlier versions of the game, unless perhaps one of the merchants was filled with gold and I put a prize officer on board; a Razee frigate shouldn't even have enough cargo space to carry the entire cargo from one Fast Merchant!

Prices don't need to be adjusted. Gold, for example, should be expensive; a low level player should not be able to fill a lugger's cargo hold with it, even if it's only the smaller hold from an earlier version of the game.

 

[Grey Roger]

Also @Grey Roger did some checking on the Indy and it appears that razeeing her has a very small effect on the amount of cargo she could carry since your shaving off the top deck and guns not the hold.

True, but if you're factoring guns into the cargo allowance then you have to figure the gun decks into the capacity, and losing an entire deck of guns will certainly have an effect on that!

I compared a similar frigate that was razeed at the same time the HMS Magnanamie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Magnanime_(1780) And compared her Length, Depth, Breadth and compared her to a similar 44 gun frigate the HMS Endymion http://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=4106 who's stats are almost the same within 1 or two feet and the tons burthen difference in cargo is about 90 tons or 1800cwt not very much so I may leave her cargo where it is for the moment until I can find info for the Razee Indy

HMS Magnanime started life as a 3rd rate ship of the line, a much larger ship than our HMS Indefatigable. HMS Endymion is also a much larger ship, being our "RN_BattleFrigate" - at 2200 tons (in game), it's almost double the size of HMS Indefatigable (1300 tons). Note that those game tonnages are probably the ship's entire hull whereas the tonnage listed in your references for Magnanime and Endymion is their cargo holds, which is likely why the reference for Endymion gives it a burthen tonnage not far off the game's weight for Indefatigable.