Solved Salary, Divide the Plunder and Leadership Skill

[Nightblade]

Hi, is someone here?

I realized that in the Hornblower and Master&Commander Storylines you dont have to pay your crew. Is this intentional? If yes, is there a simple way to switch on payment again?
I also realized, that you cant change the uniform of your crew. If i give a crewmember a new uniform via the dialogue, it changes back to the redcoat when i reenter the deck.

Help pls

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I realized that in the Hornblower and Master&Commander Storylines you dont have to pay your crew. Is this intentional?

Indeed it is intentional, because you are a professional navy character. To disable this in your current game, open PROGRAM\console.c and find:

void ExecuteConsole()
{
    ref pchar = GetMainCharacter();
    if (!bSeaActive) ref lcn = &Locations[FindLocation(pchar.location)];
    ref ch;
    int i;
    int limit;

Below this, add:

DeleteAttribute(pchar, "professionalnavy");

Load your savegame, press F12 and that should be the end of it.

I also realized, that you cant change the uniform of your crew. If i give a crewmember a new uniform via the dialogue, it changes back to the redcoat when i reenter the deck.

The characters on your ship's deck are always different characters, so there is no point in doing this.

How exactly do you want to have your game set up? Perhaps we can help you in a different way?
Are you following the Hornblower storyline or do you want to do free play? If free play, it is possible to change the "Start Storyline" code to whatever you want.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Not paying the crew lowers their morale, but not much and it quickly recovers. This does need tweaking.

You are on a naval vessel and all crew wear their appropriate uniforms. It is possible to advance a crewman to officer and then you can give him a new uniform.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Not paying the crew lowers their morale, but not much and it quickly recovers. This does need tweaking.

It shouldn't on professional navy ships.
If you repeatedly not pay them, does the morale not keep plummeting?
And once you DO pay them, do you not have to pay them ALL the outstanding money?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

It shouldn't on professional navy ships.
If you repeatedly not pay them, does the morale not keep plummeting?

And once you DO pay them, do you not have to pay them ALL the outstanding money?

On merchant ships their morale drops and then rises again so there is no lasting effect, and yes, when you do finally pay them you have to pay it all. Sometimes the only way to get that much money is to complete a treasure quest successfully.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So basically, the morale is not as much of an issue here as it should be? I wonder if somehow we can add some code to continuously decrease the morale until the debt is paid?
Might be possible. But how to set that up? You can't even pay the salary in mid-month, can you?
So what if the morale keeps decreasing during that month, you DO have the money, but you can't give it to them?
Of course when you get to a mutiny, you have the option of buying it off with money and rum, but of course that is unrelated to the payment issue.

Any specific thoughts on how we should make this work?

 

[Nightblade]

Indeed it is intentional, because you are a professional navy character. To disable this in your current game, open PROGRAM\console.c and find:

void ExecuteConsole()
{
    ref pchar = GetMainCharacter();
    if (!bSeaActive) ref lcn = &Locations[FindLocation(pchar.location)];
    ref ch;
    int i;
    int limit;

Below this, add:

DeleteAttribute(pchar, "professionalnavy");

Load your savegame, press F12 and that should be the end of it.
The characters on your ship's deck are always different characters, so there is no point in doing this.

How exactly do you want to have your game set up? Perhaps we can help you in a different way?
Are you following the Hornblower storyline or do you want to do free play? If free play, it is possible to change the "Start Storyline" code to whatever you want.

Wow, that was quick. I didnt expect such a fast answer
Your code worked and payment got reactivated. I thank you, because without it i amassed a lot of Gold at an insane rate.

And yes, i wanted to have a freeplay game in one of the late periods. Worked so far with the exception of the crew annoyances. Its a pity, that you cant buy new clothes for your crew this way

What about this "Start Storyline" Code? Does it have the power to circumvent this?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

How about just making the drop in morale bigger so that it doesn't rise back up to the previous level so that there is a steady decline to the mutiny level? If you still can't pay them after 6 months you should get mutinied.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

What about this "Start Storyline" Code? Does it have the power to circumvent this?

There are two files related to your storyline start:
PROGRAM\Storyline\JackAubrey.c and PROGRAM\Storyline\JackAubrey\StartStoryline.c .
Editing both with Notepad would allow you to set up pretty much whatever starting condition you want.
In StartStoryline.c, you should probably delete all lines marked with SJG as those are for the navy-style gameplay.
Also remove the SetRank line at the bottom of that file. See how far you can get by editing those files and let us know what else you might want to do.

How about just making the drop in morale bigger so that it doesn't rise back up to the previous level so that there is a steady decline to the mutiny level? If you still can't pay them after 6 months you should get mutinied.

Found the code for that. It is in PROGRAM\INTERFACE\salary.c:

    nMoraleDecreaseQ = 30-nLeaderShip;
    if( CheckCharacterPerk(mchref,"IronWill") ) nMoraleDecreaseQ /= 2;

Changing that "30" to something higher would have that effects. Any clue what would be a reasonable value?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

No ideer. 60? The only way to find out is to play test it.

EDIT: Done. Now to see...........

 

[Pieter Boelen]

No ideer. 60? The only way to find out is to play test it.

Very true. Let me know how it goes.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So here is my suggestion on sorting out the crew payment and morale thing:
1. Add in a "counter" that sees how many times you paid or did not pay the salary in a row.
2. First time not paying salary, decrease morale by 30. Second time, decrease by 60. Third time, decrease by 90. Etc.
3. First time paying salary in a row, add 1000 Leadership XP. Second time, add 2000 Leadership XP. Continue until it maxes out at 10000 per month.
4. Every time you don't pay salary, your "paying in a row" counter is reset. So not only does the morale drop, it also hurts your Leadership skill increase.

That would make it more difficult to keep not paying salary, while also making it worthwhile to do keep paying salary.
It would also help with your Leadership not improving quickly enough if you don't play any quests.

Also, how about you, as captain, ALSO getting paid salary? Into your wealth, that is.
Then at least you can get some personal money if without having land or using Divide the Plunder.
If you don't care about that, you can always donate it back to the crew fund.

After all, it looks like that was always the intention:

You can only gain wealth from your salary (if in salary mode) or by dividing the plunder (if in share mode), but you also get a bit of wealth each day from income from
your lands (if you’ve been given any land). Wealth is one way to “keep score” in POTC, but it also helps determine your fame--and famous captains can recruit more sailors.

I don't think that has ever been the case though. Did anyone ever see their wealth increasing on salary mode without having land?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I like it! Number three sounds like an excessive reward at first, but I just looked and at level 40 it takes 4,838,000 xp to advance, so maybe it isn't too much.

The Captain is already paid a salary into his wealth right along with everyone else. I have no title or land and have never divided the plunder and have more than twice the wealth of my best officer.

 

[Armada]

Sounds good to me. I like the idea of having an extra incentive to pay the crew on time.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Please try attached. Extract to PROGRAM\INTERFACE . This should implement my suggestion as per above.
I need comments on if it works and if it needs rebalancing.

A very quick test of mine suggests that after 12 times of paying salary properly in a row, you have your Leadership at Level 10.
That does seem a bit excessively quick, does it not? Any suggestions on how much slower it should be?
Or does the fact that you do OTHER things during the game than JUST pay salary and increase Leadership turn out to slow things down during actual play?

Edit: File replaced. Error found with morale decrease.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

That is way too fast. It would only take one year to eighteen months to get to level 10 leadership then. Maybe you should knock off a zero or two because it takes me that long to get leveled up to get serious about doing any quests.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Be sure to check my post above! I replaced the file because a coding error prevented it from doing what I wanted. Fixed now.

That is way too fast. It would only take one year to eighteen months to get to level 10 leadership then. Maybe you should knock off a zero or two because it takes me that long to get leveled up to get serious about doing any quests.

That is what I was thinking. Please test and if indeed you do find it too fast, open that file and replace this:

AddPartyExpChar(PChar, "Leadership", sti(PChar.repeat_salary_payment)*1000);

With this:

AddPartyExpChar(PChar, "Leadership", sti(PChar.repeat_salary_payment)*100);

Easily changed.
Strange though. Some quests go as far as giving 20000 Leadership XP! Also strange: Although the code says 1000, in the game this results in 750 XP points. Uh?
Anyway, we'll have to see how this goes.

As far as the morale decrease is concerned, these should be the results:
Start of the game with Leadership at 1 and Morale at 50. First time not paying will make the morale drop by (30-1)*1=29, which will then recover during the month.
Second time not paying in a row will make the morale plummet by (30-1)*2=58. That would be your mutiny right there!
But assuming you manage to get through that, morale will recover as per your earlier test when you replaced that 30 with 60 in the code.
And so on and so on. Sounds fair enough?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

My crystal ball sees a new game coming in the very near future. That's the only way to test this properly.

That morale drop sounds kinda severe when first starting out, which is when one is most likely to miss a pay period. But I will test it anyway. Do mutinies work now? They didn't work not too long ago.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

My crystal ball sees a new game coming in the very near future. That's the only way to test this properly.

You could just start a new game on the side, just to have a look; no need to lose all your progress though.

That morale drop sounds kinda severe when first starting out, which is when one is most likely to miss a pay period.

True. Basically, you can't afford to miss two in a row in the early game. But since they stack now, we could make the initial morale drop less severe. Eg. replace that 30 with a 20, for example.

Do mutinies work now? They didn't work not too long ago.

I've had two successful ones during my quick tests today. If you find that they don't work, it must be ship-dependent.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Ok, been playing a new game for a bit and can see a trend with the leadership thing. Always before my leadership and luck were very close with leadership running slightly behind luck. With the number in salary.c set to 100 that is how it stayed. With it at 1000 the leadership is pulling ahead of luck. I have set to 500 now and will see how that works.