COAS Gameplay Questions

[modernknight1]

So until I get the forums finished and open to the public, this will serve as a place to get help with gameplay problems in COAS.

The reason I am posting this topic is because PA! has become a horrible place to try to gain answers for COAS gameplay problems and questions. No one left over there knows the answers most of the time because none of them are experienced with playing the game. Usually the things they say or the advice they give is misguided, bad assumptions, or just plain wrong. I still take a look around over there several times a week and its sad. In addition, they did away with a whole bunch of the useful mini-mod topics because they didn’t see them as valuable any longer. How sad.

Since I am banned over there I could be of no help. I made it very clear to them before leaving PA! that I was still willing to help and answer questions on the COAS forum, I just was not going to contribute any longer because of differences of opinion on how they were conducting business. That was of no value to them.

So since I left I’ve noticed question answered completely wrong or not answered at all.

So if its a quest problem you have remember Skodaraps’ awesome COAS site here: https://sites.google.com/site/skodacoas/home

If its a problem with something else lets talk about it here.

When I get the main forum open you will have access to all my tutorials there.

Here’s the first helpful hint I will give you since one of their main admins over at PA! was floppin around with this NEWB question just this last week:

If you’re in a dungeon or a land fight (heck even on a ship for that matter) and you want your officers to attack, or to follow you, or to stay put. Use the following commands:

Charge is: C

Follow you is: G

Stay put in this position “HOLD” is: H

With these simple commands you can control the battle much better and gain control of most situations. It also allows your officers to be more survivable.

MK

[Devoidbrah]

Maybe i gonna check out the code of the PANQL mod and compare it to this build. Would be crazy awesome if we could get like a somehow dynamic diplomacy to work.

Heres some of the changes im looking for to implement into my game:

Diplomat options (maybe adding costs to it like 1million gold or 5 million since its a big effect on the whole game environment):
->Diplomat options
# “Lets have a drink and talk about the game of thrones, friend.”

–>Diplomatic Environment
# “Could you shift some public nations relations to work for in the favour of my mutual gains?”

—->Choose what faction relation you want to manipulate
# “Lets talk about …”

—–>Spain

——>Set Spain-Holland to enemy/neutral/ally state.(WARNING: only click if you have finished the nation quest lines or everything will mess up)
——>Set Spain-England to enemy/neutral/ally state.(WARNING: only click if you have finished the nation quest line or everything will mess up)
——>Set Spain-France to enemy/neutral/ally state.(WARNING: only click if you have finished the nation quest line or everything will mess up)

• This reply was modified 9 years, 11 months ago by Devoidbrah.

[modernknight1]

I like it.

Lets put it on the list. I will add a topic to the open forums on our “One to End” list of priorities, ongoing work and changes, future work that is ongoing or will be ongoing and proposed work and ideas to consider.

This way people can see what we are working on and add to the discussion.

Obviously I’m not going to work on anything diplomacy related until I finish the other things I’m working on.
However, if you want to work on it – go with it brother.

My top priorities right now are:

1- the new nationality based promotions and titles code
2- Character index scrub and matching portraits complete
3- Finish and implement New islands and locations
4- Increase in fighters from 3 to 5 or 6

Also I am working on a new quest. The code examples from a couple of the SOFS/GIC patches have really helped me figure out how quests are properly done in COAS. So I have been trying to write my own by simply using the GIC code as a guide and changing one of the existing quests. If I am successful, more quests will follow.

There’s a lot of other stuff too and I’ve got it all written down on a yellow legal pad. I just need to transfer it to a forum page so everyone can see it. Once we build a new mod team, I can assign some work to folks that would like to help out.

If we knew if an English version of POTEHO is ever going to come out, then we could decide if we wanted to start modding that as well or transfer our modding over to POTEHO as the new flagship game mod.

MK

• This reply was modified 9 years, 11 months ago by modernknight1.

[Devoidbrah]

could you tell me where the diplomat/diplomacy script is located in the files?

[modernknight1]

I am in Oklahoma right now and only have a little notebook with me. So I don’t have access to the game. I will in a couple more days though and then I will dig around a little and find it for you. You might find it yourself before then.

MK

[modernknight1]

Oh there was one more thing I’m working on that’s on the very top of that list I forgot. It almost made it into this mod and only has another hour or two of work required to finish.

That’s the cannon mod I’m doing that changes sizes to historical standards: 3,4,6,9,12,18,24,32 and 36 pounders. In addition, I’m changing the 48 pounders which are really a 19th century(last decades of the 18th century) British cannon size for their largest ships of the line on the lower deck and bow and stern.

They are being changed to 50 pounders which was a Spanish Bronze cannon size reserved for fortifications and the lower decks of the largest war galleons in the 17th century. Most of these guns were made in the foundries of Flanders. The largest culverine available will be the 24 pounder.

Large English warships will mount the 32 pounders, large Dutch and French ships will mount 36 pounders (the French bought 36s from the Dutch), and large Spanish Warships will mount 50 pounders. I have made the Spanish ships very slow. However they have the advantages of being able to carry more men and carry larger ordinance. Trade offs that are historically based.

MK

[Devoidbrah]

Check this out MK, took me some time to do, pretty amateur but check 5:04 theres some intense 1 vs 1 battle going on. I had a blast doing it 😉

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWDQLHjmB24

• This reply was modified 9 years, 11 months ago by Devoidbrah.

[modernknight1]

Awesome DT!!! Enjoyed it. I think you need to set damage in mod options to “Inbetween” then your ships will last longer so that you can get right up on them close. Perhaps you would see the boarding icon more often then because I just have no problems in my game at all with boarding. It works perfectly.

I sure wish some others would report on their experiences.

MK

[Devoidbrah]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/240480/?cc=ru

look what i found!!!!
Theres a dlc to the Odyssey mod, Theres some interesting ship content there, remember how ugly the flying dutchman looks in COAS? Its refurbished with new textures in this dlc. And theres some ghost ships too+ more locations. I think you could use that material in your work pretty well.

Cheers 😀

[Devoidbrah]

heres something i found walking in the russian side

• This reply was modified 9 years, 11 months ago by Devoidbrah.

[modernknight1]

I will have to take a look at that DLC. Thanks for sharing. Looks like they imported the Temple from POTC in there. In my efforts to bring new locations into COAS I didn’t only look at the GIC work on Corsairs Harbor I also looked at SOFS which uses POTC locations added to the AOP world. AOP and COAS are different from POTC in that there is no one map model of the world. The mainland is its own separate model and each island is its own separate model.

So by using coordinates I can place new islands wherever I want. In my test game I have the GIC/SOFS islands turned backwards and imported. It almost doubles the islands in the game and by turning them backwards they appear in places that mirror closely places in the actual Caribbean. The largest work was renaming the islands to match real locations and then modifying the worldmap texture to reflect the new islands names and ocean color(shallows) around islands. It has been a lot of work but I think it will be done this year.

All this to say that that DLC may give me some more location content. I already loaded a crypt and cemetery from POTEHO into one of the town locations and they work perfectly.

On the character above, I’ve already seen those and most of them are already in the game. I am not going to import any new characters besides the 15 new ones that are almost finished. A big problem of mine which I learned from all this character importation is that the character documentation classifies all characters and NPCs in several places and some types are listed separately so they can appear in specific types of encounters. I moved too fast without indexing each character properly at the time in all the places where it needed edited. So I made a lot of work for myself and its still ongoing work that takes a lot of time….especially matching portraits to each NPC.

I am at a location where I can work on stuff today so I will be adding a lot of content to the site and opening up another of the forums I’ve been working on.

Thanks for the enthusiasm!

MK

• This reply was modified 9 years, 11 months ago by modernknight1.

[Devoidbrah]

Ontopic on the cannon damage: I have it in realistic, but I skilled myself to 100 in the canon skills+the canon perks.
I will try to put it in “inbetween” will report to you about the changes it would have on the boarding issue.

In the video at around 15:35 in the gameplay video you will see the boarding problem I was speaking of, but i gonna test it out with the new cannon damage approach and give you some feedback on it 😉

[Devoidbrah]

Ok this is weird, now boarding works as intended… how cannon damage and boarding are linked to each other are a thing i will not grasp XD

[modernknight1]

Glad its working for you now Dennis. Did you look at Latest Developments thread at the top of the page? I posted my commentary and answers on how you were treated over on PA! today. You did good.

MK

[Devoidbrah]

I gave a last reply there.
I am almost maxed out ingame, do you know whats the max of bounty that can be put on a somebody?
Since Ive put cannon damage “inbetween” ive been sinking alot more ships lately, sometimes ending them with a mere broadside ^^

[modernknight1]

You should change it to “realistic” now then in mod options. That will apply Luke159’s RTBL settings which makes ships WAY harder to sink and makes you much harder to sink as well. I advise in the Read Me that when you are high level you should adjust that setting.

I’m glad you’re having so much fun with the mod though. I don’t know what the max bounty is??? There may not be a cap…

I’ve never played as a “bloody assassin” character before. I always try to be the “hero”. I may have to try it sometime just for fun. I’ve never fully played through the Pirate questline either which I still want to do. Hammerman777 played the whole questline through with this version though so I know it works.

MK

[Devoidbrah]

Well the bording bugg is back again… it seemed gone for a while but its the same as ever now…
Ive stopped buying officers now aswell, they all die in the encounters against the bounty hunter on land anyway.
And i got the royal fortune from a bonty hunter party, I think they soon gonna be 100s of man of wars going after me, since right now its only 2nd-3rd rates… maybe i can hit the 100k gold bounty on my head sometime soon. Its a true pirates achievement. Im playing this game on commodore difficulty btw, so enemies tend to be harder, they use potions just like me and behave more “human” like in general. But i think i gonna keep it at that “inbetween”. Otherwise i will have problems ingame sooner or later cuz bounty hunters are swarming me, and i aint paying 1 million gold to reunite with em.^^

[modernknight1]

Did you move your bosun or drop an item/book that had boarding modifiers. Have you given your bosun any boarding items that increase his grappling abilities like the Bullhorn?

There are several things that go into this which is why I was asking the questions above.

– Position of ship and level of ship. If they have a high level you will need to scrape right up to them.
– Your boarding abilities and any items that modify these abilities
– Your Bosuns boarding abilities – because if you have someone in that position, his stats are going to be used for the engagements.

My bet is that the right number combinations will be generated in a future engagement and you will see boarding become easy again. It is different for every encounter. Like I said I will tweak the distance to experience numbers again to see if that helps, but I am not having that problem in my game which is why it is a mystery to me. I would like to isolate exactly what thing is preventing your boarding.

Remember what I said about the crash if it happens after you defeat the captain. The next play through of that same battle, DO NOT exchange any cargo with the other ship so that your weights are the same after the battle. I would bet that stops the crashing in that instance. I would like to know what ships are doing that specifically because I want to change their range of Z motion from weight – which is what I think is causing that specific crash. Its rare at least so the game is still very playable.

FYI I have had bounties on my head that high when playing as the Dutch. I sunk, captured or defeated so many English ships and squadrons/fleets that my bounty was well over a million and they would send whole war squadrons after me. The way I look at it is – excellent experience and potential for leveling up. Also you have the potential to get some really good ships in the process.

One thing you can try with your fighters is that before you go into a port, take them out of their positions so that you are alone. I can often deal with a whole group by myself when I am a high level character. Just so you know the next version of Eras will allow you to have 4 or 5 fighters instead of just 3 which will help in these types of situations.

I do enjoy the commodore difficulty. Definitely a difficulty only a very experienced player should use though.

MK

[Devoidbrah]

Having a hard time playing the game now, hunted by so many buccaneers i cannot even focus on finishing the dutch quest line, The ship luck is a great ship though, even with only 42 guns, its a damn great ship, only the war squadrons are annoying now and then. Maybe i manage to get a good ship to whitstand solo these 4-5 ships coming my way now… Im mostly hiding behind the forts now, but it really is hard to win those matches nonetheless

[modernknight1]

I’ve been in that situation. If it gets too bad remember that you can control a fleet of 8 ships. Also, you could always go find some more treasures and pay off the bounty.

I’ve never been able to fix the exploit in the Church missions, so it is still possible to get the Church quest to clear a cave of evil denizens, and then go back to get the credit. When you talk to the priest to get the credit for the mission and end it in the log, you can keep speaking to him over and over again that you’ve completed the quest during that single visit – and you will be a hero when you leave the Church with the best possible relations with the nation that particular Church is in.

Once you get through a complete nation questline you can take over cities. Then become a bloody assassin again and start taking over the Caribbean for yourself with a massive fleet of DOOM.

I’ve never actually taken over the whole Caribbean. This is something I am going to do one of these days. The closest I ever came was taking over half of the Caribbean cities for the Dutch.

MK

[Devoidbrah]

Ive been wondering if you finish the pirate questline, will it be possible to have pirate towns everywhere? Theres some places i would like to put pirate heavens, especially in tortuga XD

[modernknight1]

I think it is possible? We should get Hammerman777 to tell us. I will email him and ask him to comment.

In the next version of Eras there will be several new Islands that are Pirate havens.

MK

[Devoidbrah]

My personal question:
What is the best ship ingame. speaking of best sea handling properties coupled with the fact that it has many guns and can hold itself pretty well against 8 medium foes on its own.

[modernknight1]

I actually don’t think there is a so called “Best Ship” Dennis.

The way the random stats generator works in COAS is that it will generate ships with a wide variance of different stats from the baseline that is set in the Ships_init file. So even if I have made Spanish galleons as a rule very slow, you might find a fast one rarely or every now and then. I think this is very cool and somewhat realistic.

So the way I tried to work on the ships stats set down in the ships_init file was to classify and give them abilities in a very historical fashion in keeping with their noted historical advantages and disadvantages we know of.

Certain ships have certain advantages.

Spanish warships are generally pretty sturdy and can carry a lot of cargo. Also they can carry lots more men than any other faction. That is just a historical fact. They crammed them in like sardines on Spanish warships of the time.

Their disadvantages are that they are really bad in terms of maneuverability and speed. The Zabra is the exception to this. She is very fast. But she sacrifices this in sturdiness/hit points. She is a weak ship in a fight.

The French ships are maneuverable but don’t have tons of men aboard. Also the French have a lot of imported ships from other nations as it was historically at this time. The exception is a lot of the small trading ships were totally French in every way and reflect those maneuverability and speed advantages.

The Dutch ships were not only very sturdy but also very maneuverable and fast as well with shallow drafts the standard design even on larger ships. The Dutch can mount larger guns in general because they were at the top of their game in arms development in the 17th century. However you will notice they generally cannot hold as many men as ships of other nations of the same size can. They also usually have less hit points than the other nations when it comes to the smaller warships and trading ships.

England has good balanced ships all around. They are often not as fast as the Dutch or French equivalents and have a little smaller guns but they carry more men and usually have quite a but more hit points than other nations. Their ships aren’t quite as maneuverable in general than Dutch or French ships.

On other thing to consider is that warships in general are NEVER going to be able to carry as much cargo as merchant ships. There are two reasons for this.

1) They have very heavy framing. So not only are their ribs much heavier and thicker but they also are much closer together. In addition they come back into the hull much more constricting the space below. This is why they have less cargo space than their merchant equivalents.

2) Because they carry more soldiers or marines and an armory and more ordinance then that means they have much less space for cargo. If you get a warship with a large cargo hold its because the COAS randomizer happened to bless that ship with good cargo space.

I would say your assessment of the LUCK/Royal Fortune as the best Pirate ship is a good assumption. It probably is.

A couple of the larger Dutch warships are the most balanced. They may not be able to carry as many troops as some of the English or Spanish ships, but they have better firepower, more hitpoints and are much faster and maneuverable.

The English Trinity is also an excellent manowar as well because she enjoys more speed than most of her peers because of a better more modern design.

These are the kinds of things I took into consideration as I was building ERAS2. I am still fine tuning the ships however and am ALWAYS open to suggestions.

Good Question Dennis!

MK

[Kuroi]

There’s one thing I’m quite curious about. When trading with a merchant in the store or repairing ships in the wharft time passes. Do you know how that time is calculated?

[modernknight1]

I do not know where that calculation occurs in the files. In the source code which I have and have been making myself more and more acquainted with I have noticed some files concerning time. It may be in there.

I can tell you though from personal experience of playing the game thousands of hours in the last seven+ years that its never more than a day that passes. So we are talking about hours here in the calculation.

We had a discussion on PA! about this years ago concerning ship repairs. Our thoughts were that if your ships were badly damaged it should take several weeks or a month or more to get it/them repaired if the damage were severe enough.

But we have magic shipwrights in the game that can perform any repair inside of a day.

That is something that we should try to get in mod options: REALISTIC REPAIRS. So not only the amount of damage that your fix and the amount of money are taken into consideration, but now the amount of time as well.

If its bad enough I think many players would just sell certain ships or trade for new ones rather than repair the damaged ones. This adds a whole new dynamic to gameplay and I have always liked the idea. WE just need to find the pertinent files.

MK

[Kuroi]

I hope you’ll be able to add that feature some day. If you’d somehow make it possible to leave the wharft and come back later to get your ship back it would make it even more interesting. A similar feature for shops would be nice as well. That way you could do something else while waiting for your crew to load your ships. From what I noticed it seems like passing time for shops depends on how much crew you have in your fleet but it would be quite nice to be able to use slaves for loading goods in or out of your ships as well. It would make slaves a bit more useful and also add some flavour. I don’t know how complicated it would be to implement such a system and if it would be worth the effort to change the shop mechanics since the ammount of time passing is to low. I would certainly like to see the realistic repairs though.

[belzeburg]

You have improved the game much, but I am still getting fail in the logbook in Bluebird quest

[modernknight1]

That is indeed something to shoot for. I think it might be possible if we adapt the same code in the Port Controller into the shipyard. However, the same issues would apply. So your crew would have to come off of the ship when its left for repairs. I would also have to figure out some simple code to add to give the game instructions on how much time would elapse per amount of damage repaired. It will have to be a simple boolean because I’m not capable of doing anything fancy here.

However, maybe we will get some more adept coders on board who are interested in working on our little game. Some of the guys I knew professionally were some of the best in the business and preferred old games.

@Belzburg, Welcome! Yeah you are right. However, let me assure you that all of the quests were played through by my beta testers with the exception of one. AUSTIN has NOT been tested by anyone for GOF ERAS2.

So its true in the Bluebird and Pirate Quest where you get the Seawolf that the quest will update as failed in the logbook. However, these quests can be completed by talking to the person that initiated the quests.

So the merchant you got the Bluebird quest from will end it when you tell him you couldn’t catch the ship – however, at least you can take the Bluebird itself and keep it or sell it.

On the Pirate quest, you can take the Seawolf, but when you talk to Jackman he believes its lost, so it updates as failed.

However, you can keep the ship. These two are the only ones I am aware of that have a defect. I have hunted a little and I think I have isolated the problem in Quests_Reactions. But I haven’t completely figured it out yet.

Anyway at least you can play the quests. You can find whiteboy and collect the 666 pearls and render the FD able to take damage and seize the ship for yourself.

You can achieve the COAS main quest now and the game won’t crash in the storm scene.

I have fixed most quests with issues from the first release of the mod. It is a very playable mod that will just get better as I continue to squash the little bugs left over. We are almost there.

MK

[belzeburg]

Officers
I think you have a lot of “pussy” officers in the game, Because every time I imprison a person, after a Battle. My officers layality is dropping, every time
Seems very unfair to me, when being attacked

Belzeburg

[belzeburg]

It`s me again
I am on rank 33 and need some big ship to fight With It`s kind of boring to see they all just sail away

Belzeburg

[belzeburg]

Ascold quest
I have poblem With quest. When switch bodies in the toombs the New caracter are not able to fight at all. He is a tall white man, and not the small Indian, With feather As original

[Devoidbrah]

MK and I have yet to play through ascold questline.
I found a mismatched character in the pearl fishing village earlier this month. As soon as im out of russia I will message MK to have a look into that character.

If youre up for some challenges fighting on sea master mode is highly fun and entertaining

[belzeburg]

Ok
But I found out my Wireless mouse had lost its batterypower. So I will try to finish the Ascold quest, With fully batteries

[belzeburg]

Hallo
Ascold quest again I can`t make Leif the Happy to fight With his sword. Just lifted up and shooting With the pistol

[belzeburg]

Hello
I am playing the New 7.5 Gb Mod and the game simply stopped

[modernknight1]

Well the new version will be out soon anyway. What you are talking about happens to most people from time to time. I recommend that you simply delete your options file in the game folder. Its just a couple files above the START icon in your game folder. You will have to set your options how you like all over again once you start you game back up. Hope that helps.

MK

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