Included in Build Ship's Log: Add Additional Entries

[Jason]

Playing Free Play and the Spanish Admiral quest. I have French LOM and Capitanne de Frigate after talking with Arabella I went to San Juan and when went to the Port I was neutral to France and Spain and pirates but hostile to everyone else. (French Relations) So is this normal and if so... why?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

It sounds like you did something that the pirates really like somewhere along the way.

 

[Jason]

Well I can't think of anything and I haven't gotten messages about pirates so I don't think will explain this.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Playing Free Play and the Spanish Admiral quest. I have French LOM and Capitanne de Frigate after talking with Arabella I went to San Juan and when went to the Port I was neutral to France and Spain and pirates but hostile to everyone else. (French Relations) So is this normal and if so... why?

Do you have savegames before and after this happened?

Am I correct in saying that F2>Character does NOT show you as a Privateer anymore?

 

[Grey Roger]

Did you attack any ships on the way from Jamaica to San Juan? Check the relations again and see if anyone who was previously at war with France is now at peace.

Talking to Arabella shouldn't affect your relations in any way. If you've then talked to the admiral, got the ransom, and taken too long to deliver it, then Spain won't like you any more, but it shouldn't affect your relations with anyone else. On the other hand, if you've completed the whole quest and brought Lucas home then, if you were hostile to Spain, they become neutral.

The French LoM plus rank Capitaine de Fregate means you've been attacking France's enemies. Even if you've only been attacking one of them, they're probably all allied so an attack on one will turn all of them against you. That's probably why England, Portugal and Holland are hostile. Spain is neutral because you can only go higher than neutral by having a LoM, so you'll only have earned a better relationship with France. If you've then done something which upset France, you lose your LoM, France becomes at best neutral, and you may turn pirate. And in free-play, that can happen if one of France's enemies makes peace, which means attacking that nation's ships is no longer a legal act of war, it's piracy. That would probably produce the result you describe - Spain neutral (always was), France neutral and pirates neutral (because you committed piracy and France revoked your LoM), everyone else is hostile (because of your previous actions on behalf of France).

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That could indeed explain it, @Grey Roger. Thanks.

You can re-read your Ship's Log to see what the various entries have to say about your sea battles.
If this indeed happened, there should be a line in there that says: "This was not considered to be a legal attack."

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Indeed this whole nations relations thing is VERY complicated, making me avoid fighting anyone unless I'm cornered.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Indeed this whole nations relations thing is VERY complicated, making me avoid fighting anyone unless I'm cornered.

What makes it complicated? What might help to make it less complicated?

I know I've asked that question maybe 50 times already, but I still would very much like to know the answer....

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Did you understand Grey Rodger's explanation? I didn't. To me one nation could care less about another nation's issues with one person. In my experience the nation that loses a ship cares less about it than everyone else, which makes no sense at all.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Did you understand Grey Rodger's explanation? I didn't. To me one nation could care less about another nation's issues with one person. In my experience the nation that loses a ship cares less about it than everyone else, which makes no sense at all.

Allied nations now DO care. That is the difference between neutrality and alliances.
If you attack a ship of a nation, the allies of that nation also object.

What I DID already do is to add Ship's Log entries when related stuff happens, so at least you should notice.
This is also why I added the sound and on-screen effects for Ship's Log updates, in the hopes of making all this more visible.

I am curious about @Jason's specific example, but I can't tell what happened without a savegame.
So I'm waiting for that...

 

[Jason]

Do you have savegames before and after this happened?

Am I correct in saying that F2>Character does NOT show you as a Privateer anymore?

This save is after my status changed and after I took the quest.

It shows me as a pirate captain.

Consulting the logs on the way to San Juan before I took the quest I attacked three British ships and I was flying my personal flag. The log book said this was an illegal attack. I don't see how since I started the game as a rebel and Britain was hostile to me, personally. Then I got a French LOM and in addition to Britain Holland and Portugal were also hostile. So I do not get that it would be illegal for me to attack a British ship under my personal flag.

Also and perhaps related, I in the last three games I have played I haven't seen a single item in Tavern news or the ship's log suggesting that any national relations have changed at any time so I think that my not be working.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Loading your savegame now. Let's see if I can figure out what probably happened....

Consulting the logs on the way to San Juan before I took the quest I attacked three British ships and I was flying my personal flag. The log book said this was an illegal attack. I don't see how since I started the game as a rebel and Britain was hostile to me, personally.

Sinking/capturing non-pirate ships is what leads to piracy. You may force them to surrender or you can try to escape.
If you want to sink/capture, you can either play a pirate on purpose or you need a Letter of Marque to legalize those actions.
That is how it works at the moment.

Also and perhaps related, I in the last three games I have played I haven't seen a single item in Tavern news or the ship's log suggesting that any national relations have changed at any time so I think that my not be working.

On average that should happen once every 100 days or so.
But the code related to it hasn't been touched, so it still works as well as it always did.
Just has quite a low chance. You could increase that chance if you like.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You started the game as an English Rebel, right? So probably at the start of the game you had:
- Wary: All nations
- Hostile: England

Nation relations throughout the game appear to not have changed.

23 May: You got promoted because of your French Letter of Marque (I assume you got the LoM itself on 14 May when you first got to Marigot?)
This means that English, Dutch and Portuguese ships are now valid targets
28 July: You attacked Dutch ships; Portugal and Holland are allied, therefore Portugal turned Wary of you
2 Nov: You attacked an English ship; this was still a legal attack, so you must have still had your LoM at the time
11 Nov: You got marked as a PIRATE
13 Nov: Attacking an English ship wasn't a legal attack, so you must have lost your LoM before this point

So far I am not understanding this yet. What happened on 11 Nov?
Whatever it was, that probably lost you your French LoM and marked you as a pirate at the same time.

But why is it not in the Ship's Log? The only reasons I can think of are:
- You killed or stole from an item trader (probably a FRENCH one)
- You ransomed or captured a colony (unlikely....)

Any other reason would have been AT SEA and therefore should have triggered a proper Ship's Log entry.
So the item trader issue is the only valid explanation I can think of. Could that have been the case?

This does make it apparent that the Ship's Log currently doesn't tell the whole story, which certainly doesn't help matters.
There need to be entries for gaining/losing LoMs and when item traders are involved too.
I'll put it on my to-do list to add those.

 

[Jason]

Loading your savegame now. Let's see if I can figure out what probably happened....


Sinking/capturing non-pirate ships is what leads to piracy. You may force them to surrender or you can try to escape.
If you want to sink/capture, you can either play a pirate on purpose or you need a Letter of Marque to legalize those actions.
That is how it works at the moment.

Pieter,

To be clear when this happened I was carrying a French LOM and I was flying my personal flag at the time. In the 7 months of game time I have been playing I have taken many ships under these same circumstances, French LOM and flying personal flag and all I got were French promotions .


On average that should happen once every 100 days or so.
But the code related to it hasn't been touched, so it still works as well as it always did.
Just has quite a low chance. You could increase that chance if you like.

Well I just got my first notice of changed relations in 7 months of game time.

Loading your savegame now. Let's see if I can figure out what probably happened....


Sinking/capturing non-pirate ships is what leads to piracy. You may force them to surrender or you can try to escape.
If you want to sink/capture, you can either play a pirate on purpose or you need a Letter of Marque to legalize those actions.
That is how it works at the moment.


On average that should happen once every 100 days or so.
But the code related to it hasn't been touched, so it still works as well as it always did.
Just has quite a low chance. You could increase that chance if you like.

And how would I do that?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

And how would I do that?

Increase this value at the top of PROGRAM\NATIONS\nations.c:

#define RELATION_CHANGE_PROBABILITY 1 // PB: Percentage chance of relation change per day, accepts 0.1 increments

Also, see my post above for a possible explanation of what happened with your nation relations.

 

[Jason]

You started the game as an English Rebel, right? So probably at the start of the game you had:
- Wary: All nations
- Hostile: England

Nation relations throughout the game appear to not have changed.

23 May: You got promoted because of your French Letter of Marque (I assume you got the LoM itself on 14 May when you first got to Marigot?)
This means that English, Dutch and Portuguese ships are now valid targets
28 July: You attacked Dutch ships; Portugal and Holland are allied, therefore Portugal turned Wary of you
2 Nov: You attacked an English ship; this was still a legal attack, so you must have still had your LoM at the time
11 Nov: You got marked as a PIRATE
13 Nov: Attacking an English ship wasn't a legal attack, so you must have lost your LoM before this point

So far I am not understanding this yet. What happened on 11 Nov?
Whatever it was, that probably lost you your French LoM and marked you as a pirate at the same time.

But why is it not in the Ship's Log? The only reasons I can think of are:
- You killed or stole from an item trader (probably a FRENCH one)
- You ransomed or captured a colony (unlikely....)

Any other reason would have been AT SEA and therefore should have triggered a proper Ship's Log entry.
So the item trader issue is the only valid explanation I can think of. Could that have been the case?

This does make it apparent that the Ship's Log currently doesn't tell the whole story, which certainly doesn't help matters.
There need to be entries for gaining/losing LoMs and when item traders are involved too.
I'll put it on my to-do list to add those.

I did not attack a street merchant. I never attack street merchants where I have LOMs. The only thing that might have triggered this that I can think might have done this is I was recognized as a pirate on Jamica.

BTW do we actually the gold the log says we found in the ships chest added to our total?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You probably got recognised as a pirate afterwards because that is a consequence, not a cause.

If it were indeed a street, your reputation should have dropped badly as well and it didn't.
So for now, I still don't know what happened.

Since you're still neutral to France, see if you can but l buy your LoM back.
With a bit of luck, that will restore your rank too.

You should indeed be getting that ship chest money.

 

[Grey Roger]

This save is after my status changed and after I took the quest.

It shows me as a pirate captain.

Consulting the logs on the way to San Juan before I took the quest I attacked three British ships and I was flying my personal flag. The log book said this was an illegal attack. I don't see how since I started the game as a rebel and Britain was hostile to me, personally. Then I got a French LOM and in addition to Britain Holland and Portugal were also hostile. So I do not get that it would be illegal for me to attack a British ship under my personal flag.

There's the problem, then. You started as a rebel. Rebellion, and actions as part of it, are not exactly legal. Attacking the British ship under your personal flag was an act of piracy. But you had a French LoM, so if you'd raised the French flag then, since Britain is hostile to France, that would be an act of war and would be legal. In reality that was the whole idea of a letter of marque - you were authorised by the country who issued it to act on their behalf against their enemies.

@Pieter Boelen: perhaps relax the rules a little? So that self-defence is never an act of piracy? Alternatively, if you have a LoM, aren't flying the LoM nation's flag but are flying a flag hostile to an enemy of that nation, sinking an enemy ship won't count as piracy and won't cost you the LoM? It won't earn you relation points with the LoM nation, but won't harm your relations with them either. Case in point: you have a French LoM but are flying Personal flag when you encounter British ships. Britain hates you so they're hostile. France is happy for you to sink British ships as it's at war with Britain, and also gets to laugh at you because you're not claiming the attack on behalf of France, so it doesn't need to reward you. Spain couldn't care less - it's allied to France, you're helping the joint cause and haven't done anything against Spain. Portugal and Holland all hate you anyway, so you've sunk some ships belonging to an ally and they hate you a little bit more. Pirates don't care and are still hostile. The proviso is that you weren't flying a British (or allied) flag when you attacked British ships, as that's outright treachery and would indeed trigger all the consequences.

Real world: France was perfectly happy to help anti-British rebels. Specifically, the ones in America.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

There's the problem, then. You started as a rebel. Rebellion, and actions as part of it, are not exactly legal. Attacking the British ship under your personal flag was an act of piracy. But you had a French LoM, so if you'd raised the French flag then, since Britain is hostile to France, that would be an act of war and would be legal. In reality that was the whole idea of a letter of marque - you were authorised by the country who issued it to act on their behalf against their enemies.

As long as you have a French LoM and are attacking English ships that are hostile to France, doing so under a Personal flag is still legal.
That is also indicated by @Jason's Ship's Log because those attacks aren't marked as being "illegal".

Something happened on 11 Nov that lost Jason his LoM and at the moment I cannot tell what that was.

@Pieter Boelen: perhaps relax the rules a little? So that self-defence is never an act of piracy?

I've asked it before and I'll say it again: HOW???
What in very specific AND SIMPLE code terms is the difference between "self-defence" and "piracy"?
That gets extremely complicated extremely quickly. Which is exactly what happened the last ten times I asked that question.

If you can figure out a clever and simple way to distinguish between the two, I'll happily include it in the code.
Alternatively, look at PROGRAM\NATIONS\nations.c yourself; the relevant function is UpdateRMRelation .
I added plenty of comments to hopefully make it clear how it currently works.

Eventually I do want to do some further rewrites, specifically to feed the "offended party" into the function as well.
That would allow more flexibility to deal with different situations. But I have no intention to do that until AFTER Beta 4 has been released.

Alternatively, if you have a LoM, aren't flying the LoM nation's flag but are flying a flag hostile to an enemy of that nation, sinking an enemy ship won't count as piracy and won't cost you the LoM? It won't earn you relation points with the LoM nation, but won't harm your relations with them either. Case in point: you have a French LoM but are flying Personal flag when you encounter British ships. Britain hates you so they're hostile. France is happy for you to sink British ships as it's at war with Britain, and also gets to laugh at you because you're not claiming the attack on behalf of France, so it doesn't need to reward you.

I think that is already the case. Except you DO get the points.

The proviso is that you weren't flying a British (or allied) flag when you attacked British ships, as that's outright treachery and would indeed trigger all the consequences.

That should also already be the case. If I recall, the flag check determines if it is a flag FRIENDLY to the attacked party. If it is, then you're in for trouble indeed!
But that doesn't seem to have been the case here.

 

[Grey Roger]

Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought it was only legal to sink a ship if you had a LoM and were flying the appropriate flag, so it was piracy if you are flying Personal flag when you fight a ship belonging to the LoM nation's enemy. I've had a look through 'UpdateRMRelation' and have (I hope!) a better idea of how it works.

It seems to be impossible to be in service of a nation except by being professional navy or having a LoM. So would a French merchant sailor be in service of Personal? For figuring out whether a fight is self defence or piracy, I'm trying to work out how to distinguish between someone who is playing, say, a French non-military character, flies a French flag routinely, and defends himself against an attacking British ship; versus someone who is playing, say, a Dutch non-military character, encounters a British ship, wants to attack it so hoists a French flag to provoke it into attacking him. The former would be self-defence, the latter would be piracy because the British ship was peaceful to the player until he provoked it.

Whereas a French privateer who flies a Dutch flag in order to get close to a British ship, then hoists a French flag to start a fight, is already covered - he has a LoM from an enemy of Britain so it's a legal attack and recognised as such by 'UpdateRMRelation'.