Need Help Salary & mutiny problem + couple of general questions

[Lukovsky_]

Hello there!

First of all, the mod is - of course - AWESOME. Although I haven't gone too far into any storyline yet, it seems HUGE with a lot more content than AOP2 CM mod that I've been playing a few years back. Hence, it would be nice if someone could explain me a few things about it as I will definitely spend many hours on it. I'm using the latest Build 14 Beta 3.3, Assassin storyline.

How does signing the articles actually work? I do understand the general idea but let me give you my example. I've become a millionaire quite fast and was informed that my crew is jealous and they want to sign articles - fine, whatever. Then I spent couple of months sailing around, smuggling and killing without paying anything (never got any request). And one day, the crew on my other ships started mutining (after ~150 days at sea), I tried raising their morale but it would fall from excellent to poor and below in just 1-2 days at sea; after that I was getting a message that the mutiny was suppressed (I hired officers with high leadership so that they wouldn't turn against me - I think it works), but each time I was left with no crew at all on my other ships. I tried dividing the plunder (but first I put most of my money into ship's chest in order not to lose everything) and hiring new crew on salary, but they requested articles as well and after some time the same thing started happening. Is there any solution? Do I have to give away all my money? I've read somewhere in the forum that putting your money in the ship's chest works, as the crew kind of "do not see it", but it doesn't work in my case.

Another problem I've encountered - I can't buy too much food. If there is, let's say, 500 food in the store, I can only buy ~100-150, and then the button just doesn't work, like if there wasn't any food left (but there is of course). Everything is fine - I have money, space in the cargo, there is still a lot of food in the store left, but I just can't buy it. I can buy everything else, but not food. It became so frustrating that I turned it off in the options, as I could only have supplies for~15 days and had to go to the pirate settlement all the time because of my low reputation. Also, it was at that time the mutinies I've mentioned above started - can it be that if you turn off the food option, the crew does not need it anymore, but they are still angry for not getting rum? Any thoughts?

One last thing - any ideas why the game's performance may drop over time? It's been working flawlessly until level 7-10 without any CTD. But now not only the game crashes much more often, there was a drop in FPS as well. I have a laptop with Intel i-5 2x 2,5Ghz, GT 740M and 4 GB ram. The only other games I play, the Total War series mods, are working flawlessly, I can have a battle with ~10,000 units on high graphic settings; and I think these games need a lot more to work properly than POTC. Also, I remember playing AOP2 CM mod couple of years ago without any FPS problems, and it was on my old pc (well, maybe except when fighting a golden fleet, with like 20+ 1st class ships in the battle.. it was't too smooth then).

I apologize for such a long post, just wanted to precisely describe my problems. I know you guys put a lot of effort into this mod - I remember playing vanilla POTC long ago when it came out.. it's unbelievable what you were able to make out of it :O AND, I know how buggy the Storm Engine is, so I just wanted to make sure it's not a faulty download/installation/etc..

I have more question but I guess I'll leave them for the future.. I'm still going through the forums so maybe I'll find the answers somewhere

Thank you!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

"Divide the Plunder" mode is basically proper pirate mode. Instead of paying salary, you divide all the loot you gathered with your crew.
Advantages are that you don't pay salary and if you do your looting well, the crew morale and therefore strength in battle will be higher than it can ever be on salary mode.
But you do need to share the loot at some point. On average, after about 90 days of plundering, the crew will start becoming grumpy no matter what you do.
After all, they want to see some money at last!

Of course you can theoretically hide your money before dividing the plunder, but then your crew gets only a very small share.
They won't be too happy about that! The idea is that you actually share ALL the plunder.
You won't be left penniless, though. You get to keep a certain percentage to prepare for your next expedition.
And you get to keep your own share of the loot as personal wealth. You'll become a more famous pirate this way too!

Check page 281 of the Documentation\New Horizons Tutorials & History.pdf file for some more details.

The "hiding" of money is more to prevent the crew from complaining on salary mode.
That is not intentional, though. It is just too complicated to keep track of every single place you could possibly hide your money.


As for your food issue, towns will not sell everything they have in store, because they need some for themselves too.
Larger towns should have more available for sale.


I personally don't know too much about the performance issues you mention. Perhaps de-fragmenting your hard drive might help?
Or remove the file named "options" from your main game folder, since that one sometimes gets messed up for some reason.
This will reset your settings to default, though, so you'd have to put your tweaks back.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

The performance hit is normal with this game. If you play it long enough to get to the higher levels you will be getting 10frames per second like I do.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

What might help performance:
- Uninstall ENB (if you have it)
- Disable error logging (though if you do run into any issues, you won't have log files that we can look at)

 

[Lukovsky_]

Thank you for the answers guys!

"Divide the Plunder" mode is basically proper pirate mode. Instead of paying salary, you divide all the loot you gathered with your crew.
Advantages are that you don't pay salary and if you do your looting well, the crew morale and therefore strength in battle will be higher than it can ever be on salary mode.
But you do need to share the loot at some point. On average, after about 90 days of plundering, the crew will start becoming grumpy no matter what you do.
After all, they want to see some money at last!
Of course you can theoretically hide your money before dividing the plunder, but then your crew gets only a very small share.
They won't be too happy about that! The idea is that you actually share ALL the plunder.
You won't be left penniless, though. You get to keep a certain percentage to prepare for your next expedition.
And you get to keep your own share of the loot as personal wealth. You'll become a more famous pirate this way too!
Check page 281 of the Documentation\New Horizons Tutorials & History.pdf file for some more details.
The "hiding" of money is more to prevent the crew from complaining on salary mode.
That is not intentional, though. It is just too complicated to keep track of every single place you could possibly hide your money.

Thank you for that. I checked the tutorial, though didn't go through it thoroughly as I thought it's only about modding. I do get the system now, though having to divide the plunder after around 90 days seems a bit harsh, as sometimes repaires in shipyards take ~20 days + (un)loading of cargo takes some time as well. And I'm not really fond of having only ~500.000 after earning around 5.000.000. But on the other hand, it is some challenge, I guess I will have to come up with some kind of a system of how to do it properly. Thanks for clearing that up

As for your food issue, towns will not sell everything they have in store, because they need some for themselves too.
Larger towns should have more available for sale.

Ha, that's a nice feature! I haven't thought about it in that way!

I personally don't know too much about the performance issues you mention. Perhaps de-fragmenting your hard drive might help?
Or remove the file named "options" from your main game folder, since that one sometimes gets messed up for some reason.
This will reset your settings to default, though, so you'd have to put your tweaks back.

The performance hit is normal with this game. If you play it long enough to get to the higher levels you will be getting 10frames per second like I do.

What might help performance:
- Uninstall ENB (if you have it)
- Disable error logging (though if you do run into any issues, you won't have log files that we can look at)

That doesn't sound too good Except for naval battles, I also experience a huge FPS drop when there are some bodies (starts with 4-5) laying in one place WITH items in them. When I loot them it goes back to normal. I tried different looting options and the problem only occurs with the last one which allows you to loot bodies manually and they do not obstruct your way. I don't have FPS drops with other options, though this one is the most sensible one, because auto-looting doesn't really work and it's even more frustrating when the bodies obstruct your pathway. And I don't really want to give up looting bodies, it's a great feature :-( Also, with the third option, when I use pistol my character targets the closest body instead of the closest LIVING enemy.
I uninstalled ENB and disabled error logging (I put tracefilesoff to 1 and everything else in the first script to 0, is that correct?). It did help a little bit with the bodies lag so I guess it will do for now. If I experience a crash, will I be able to post error logs after putting that settings back?

I also have a couple of questions concerning the gameplay if you don't mind..

Is Chicho Cois supposed to be immortal? In the early game he served as a perfect officer, drawing attention to himself, allowing me to win unwinnable fights. A few times I saw that he did actually receive some minor damage, though never more than what a single blow does. And right now he's still immortal but he doesn't fight at all.. he just stands there like a ghost. And my other bodyguard-officers tend to sheath their swords in the middle of the battle just to draw them again after two seconds.

Concerning smuggling - right now my luck is 8 (with items) and I've never yet managed to do it unnoticed. The guards are always showing up. And they are always Spanish. No matter to what town I smuggle - be it English, French or Dutch - the patrol is always Spanish. And the fleet is always so lousy, mostly with Brigantines or the Spanish 6th class gunships, that I started using Arcade mode for these battles. One time they've sent a GUNBOAT on me.. Lol. I'm playing on Adventurer difficulty.

After having done smuggling multiple times on Marigot, one time some french ships became hostile to me in the port, though I still had Neutral in the Relations page, besides, the coast guards were Spanish anyway. And the Marigot fort didn't fire at me, for some reason it had 0 crew in it. The French became hostile to me after a month or so since that incident..

Any idea were exactly is the monk in St Pierre to whom I can return the skill-enhancing cross? I spent like half an hour searching for him in the town, looking into every house but he's nowhere to be seen.. and right now I met another monk in the Pirate Settlement who gave me another cross, lol.

Is there any way I can adjust the settings of Realistic Mode? I like most of it's features, though I would like to make the naval battles to be somewhere half between Realistic and Arcade, because the first one is too slow and boring for me and the latter is ridiculous.. My Xebec behaves like a motorboat sometimes.

Uhh.. I still have some other questions but don't want to bother you too much guys. Sorry for another lenghty post. And thank you for your help

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The morale drop after 90 days never worked right until I finally fixed it a few weeks back.
That means the numbers may not be balanced all that well yet. Feel free to tweak these numbers in PROGRAM\InternalSettings.h:

#define NORMAL_EXP_LENGTH         180     // INT - nominal length of an expedition
#define EXP_LENGTH_START_FRAC       0.5     // FLOAT - portion of above when morale is _increased_ above nominal by exp length
#define REFIT_TIME             60     // INT - number of days to refit for next expedition

Drop in FPS when walking over corpses is something I experienced too. Not sure why.

If you have a consistent problem, you can always make a save before it occurs, then switch error logging back on and get the log files after all.
You can't get them after the fact though; you have to trigger it again from an earlier save.

In the early time periods, many islands are Spanish. And even some that are not still have a Spanish coast guard.
This changes in the later time periods. The right-clicking on islands in the Map Interface will show you the island (=coast guard) nation.

For changes to the realism mode, I again recommend you to check InternalSettings.h .
There are various appropriate toggles near the top of that file.

 

[Levis]

If you have any consistend things where you notice fps drop please make an topic in the bug tracker, after the 3.3 release I want to try to look into optimizing stuff a bit, might be somethings are called way to often in those cases.

Are you using the revamped smuggling already or just the normal smuggling?

 

[Lukovsky_]

@Pieter Boelen
Thanks for taking time to answer my questions and for clearing up those things

If you have any consistend things where you notice fps drop please make an topic in the bug tracker, after the 3.3 release I want to try to look into optimizing stuff a bit, might be somethings are called way to often in those cases.

Are you using the revamped smuggling already or just the normal smuggling?

I'm still using the normal smuggling; wanted to try your mod but I started experiencing crashes much more often. After disabling error logs I couldn't even finish a simple boarding. Right now I put it back and it's better, but I still experience crashes every ~3rd boarding.
I will test it a bit more to see if it maybe gets better and will make a topic in the bug tracker.

Cheers guys!

 

[Levis]

could you do something for me?
After each boarding check your resourceses use.
go to windows and press ctrl+shift+esc to open the task manager (windows 7 and lower at least) go to processes and search for engine.exe and see how much memory its using. please let me know how this increases (if it does) over time.

 

[Lukovsky_]

As for the memory usage:
after loading the game - 350k
during a battle with ~9 ships - 425 - 435k
boarding screen and during the boarding - 350k
back to battle - ~430k
second boarding - ~350k
and then the game crashed, so I've played for like 15 minutes. After launching the game once again I've played for like an hour so far without a crash, did couple of battles & boardings and got myself 3rd rate battleship. So I guess it's totally random, one time the game is unplayable, another is working flawlessly.

Are the officers working fine? Because I think only my crewmembers are doing what they are supposed to do. Right now Chico Cois is like a ghost, running to my enemies and doing nothing. If I accidentally hit him I get -1 reputation. My bodyguards most of the time are behaving in the same way. Only my crewmembers are fighting for me..
Maybe I should re-install the whole game and mod?

@Edit
The memory usage stays more or less the same with ~350k almost all the time except for naval battles when it reaches ~430-450k

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Chico Cois is a quest officer and may work differently from regular ones.
Do you have him in the F2>Passengers menu at all?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

You should only get minus rep for striking an unarmed man. What weapons does he have?

 

[Lukovsky_]

OMG. Forget all my questions about Chico.. I suppose if you do not repair the weapon at the blacksmith it can broke completely and disappear?
Yeah, I didn't know that.
Some days I can still surprise myself with my lack of logical thinking. Lol.

Though I did experience something weird with Chico, check it on the screen attached. After I saw the "Body of Chico Cois'" square and tried to talk to him, the game crashed. But it was some time ago and it's working well now.

Sorry guys :-|

 

[Pieter Boelen]

OMG. Forget all my questions about Chico.. I suppose if you do not repair the weapon at the blacksmith it can broke completely and disappear?
Yeah, I didn't know that.
Some days I can still surprise myself with my lack of logical thinking. Lol.

It can, yes. Though he should still carry the "broken" item around so that you can repair it again.

 

[Lukovsky_]

It can, yes. Though he should still carry the "broken" item around so that you can repair it again.

Hmm, nope. He didn't have any sword with him, it just disappeared, and I'm sure I didn't take it from him.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That's odd; based on this code in LAi_events.c, anyone in the player group should keep a broken blade if their blade breaks:

        case 1:
           if(enemy.chr_ai.group ==  LAI_GROUP_PLAYER)
           {LAi_CharacterPlaySound(enemy, "OBJECTS\duel\sword_broken.wav");}//MAXIMUS
           // To only play the sound for player-related characters

           // To give broken blades
           if(enemy.chr_ai.group ==  LAI_GROUP_PLAYER || BLADEDAMAGE_KEEPBROKENBLADE)
           {
             GiveItem2Character(enemy, BladeBaseID + "-2");
             EquipCharacterByItem(enemy, BladeBaseID + "-2");
           }
           BladeBreak = true;
         break;

 

[Lukovsky_]

That's odd; based on this code in LAi_events.c, anyone in the player group should keep a broken blade if their blade breaks:

        case 1:
           if(enemy.chr_ai.group ==  LAI_GROUP_PLAYER)
           {LAi_CharacterPlaySound(enemy, "OBJECTS\duel\sword_broken.wav");}//MAXIMUS
           // To only play the sound for player-related characters

           // To give broken blades
           if(enemy.chr_ai.group ==  LAI_GROUP_PLAYER || BLADEDAMAGE_KEEPBROKENBLADE)
           {
             GiveItem2Character(enemy, BladeBaseID + "-2");
             EquipCharacterByItem(enemy, BladeBaseID + "-2");
           }
           BladeBreak = true;
         break;

I've also realised that any blade I gave to Chico would just disappear at the next battle. Let's say I give him a sword during the first stage of boarding (on deck), he would use it normally until the end, but during the next boarding/fighting it would no longer be there..
Right now I'm re-installing everything, I copied my saved games and will check on it when it's finished

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Odd. If weird stuff still happen on the latest 3.3 WIP, can you upload a savegame, please?
Might have to see what is going on there.

 

[Grey Roger]

That's odd. I've recently been playing the "Assassin" storyline as well, though under an earlier version of Beta 3.3. Chico Cois did not cause me any trouble. In fact, he seemed to be invulnerable most of the time, which was useful as he's important at various parts of the story so you really don't want him to die! He kept all the equipment I gave him, which proved very annoying at one point much later in the story...

Has anything been done in the newest version of Beta 3.3 which affects officers' behaviour?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

In fact, he seemed to be invulnerable most of the time, which was useful as he's important at various parts of the story so you really don't want him to die!

Very true. That is exactly why a fair few quest characters have Godmode enabled. Don't want the quests to break!

He kept all the equipment I gave him, which proved very annoying at one point much later in the story...

Now you've got me curious!

Has anything been done in the newest version of Beta 3.3 which affects officers' behaviour?

Don't think so.