Feedback and Opinions on GOF ERAS2 2.6.0

[modernknight1]

So I decided to launch a new topic because I am a little frustrated in the lack of feedback we are getting. We have been getting RECORD days on the Reef with 400 plus visitors a day and between social media and the website my Historical Articles are getting literally thousands of LIKES. This is a first. We have never had this level of traffic before – its AMAZING! The mod has been being downloaded consistently between 54 to 65 times a day for the last four days and has been up for over a week now. So with hundreds of people playing we get virtually no feedback. I hear negative reports which are not even on our own site: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/gentlemen-of-fortune-eras2-2-6-0.28319/

Jeffrey responded over there as well as someone else who is favorable to us and I don’t know who they are. I suspect I know who it might be and I just want to say thanks to that person for posting over there.

Frankly after looking that thread over I don’t think its even legit. I don’t think it is crashing as this guy reports. That guy A.H has never been interested in COAS at all. I think this was planned in order to divert and Google Yoink traffic over there from people who do web searches for our mod. It’s quite amusing to me actually that they would resort to this low form of desperation because they aren’t producing anything these days and their own traffic has been at a trickle for sometime. People will find and play the better offering regardless of their cheap tricks. LOL Also its rather suspicious and surprising to me that this topic is even being allowed when in the past any such topic related to us would be met with immediate hostility and then closed or deleted.

My response to this tactic was to post a promotional plug on their Facebook page. We will see if it stays. If it is deleted then I know I am right about this suspicion.

Anyway, I would really like to hear from you folks about this. Jeffrey is working on a 64bit version and he has also truncated the colony files like the ships. Because of this I am developing entirely new looks for the towns. Dutch towns will look distinctively Dutch, Spanish – Spanish, etc… We are almost ready to test it out! I have also included a bunch of new Hull4 skins in the latest dump to Jeffrey because we have been planning a new Version release in just a couple more months with a few additional colonies included and new crypts and cemetery scenes as I covered in the latest announcements.

My thoughts are that if we don’t receive any feedback or comments from you folks, then I won’t bother breaking my back to get this new version out to you in the next month or two. We will just keep it between the modding team members for testing and release it in six or eight months from now to the general public — or whenever we get all of the new stuff finished.

Comments please. I don’t care if they are negative even – although complements are always appreciated. Thanks! MK

• This topic was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by modernknight1.
• This topic was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by modernknight1.
• This topic was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by modernknight1.

[sch92]

Well, I’m a very introverted person, so in forums I almost never leave a comment, but because I love this mod, this time I’ll try.

I’m having a blast playing with the new character Emmanuel Wynn, attacking ships for goods and treasures and selling them in pirate ports. Now I have more than 175000 pieces of eight and a heavy hooker named Devil’s Bride which I think is a pretty good ship. I met Henry Morgan and I’m doing missions for him for the first time.

In regards to the crashes, I have to say that first I chose Amaro Pargo to play, because I’m from Tenerife and he is an interesting character to me, but the first two times I started the game crashed when I was in the ship/tutorial. The third time I started as Amaro Pargo was flawless and I could play normally.

Another problem I had is that I left Boddon’s Landing to explore Cayman, but in some locations of the island the game only showed a black screen, and I had to load a prior game because I couldn’t do anything.

Greetings and thanks for this awesome mod.

[modernknight1]

Thanks for the feedback sch92! Really appreciate it. To show my appreciation as the first guy to provide feedback I guarantee that I will personally send you any links to new updated content that has been bug tested that we are developing privately.

MK

[sch92]

Wow! Thanks! I don’t have many time to play games this days because exams but I’ll have plenty of free time during the holy week, so if I see bugs in the game I’ll tell you.

[Devoidbrah]

Your welcome, MK 😉

I have not had any problems until now, no crashes whatsoever, but I have not been in too many sea battles and I generally dont do quests on “Impossible” difficulty.

The main reason they are not closing / flaming or editing the topic, is because first, as Jeffrey has mentioned, he has what they want. And it wouldnt be beneficial in their effort to loose that link to the graphically improved version of Jeffrey. Its kind of a hostage situation for them. THey HAVE to play nice to get somehting out of it or they might aswell not bother at all. But Pieter seems interested and so he doesnt delve into the matter and represses himself from taking any major action that could be viewed in a bad light.

What they ARE doing though, is:

1) Divert: They are diverting traffic as you mentioned towards their site since they cant completely black this mod out, see how theres no front page topic about it, even though they review all things related to pirate genre regardless of quality or background.
This shows they still are not “on our side” but rather play the “status quo”. I say we should just hang in there and see where this will lead to, its entertaining to analyse it for sure.

2) Distract: They are actively derailing the topic to make it a mush of information in a sense that the main topic is becoming irrelevant and lost in it like in a “chatroom”.

3) Divide: They are trying to produce a mindset towards this “product” in a way that it looks unfavourably and maybe a waste of time if you would go that far. But just putting it into an unfavourably light is seemingly enough for them.

A big HEADS UP and a TOAST to our magnificent mod team who managed to bring forth this what one could only describe as unparralleled art. Anyone who enjoys this genre can be glad that we are actually able to enjoy this together and that it was not scrapped. A true gem among the existing game modifications and I think I say this in the name of all that that that this mod brought many a fun gaming night and still continues to entertain us even though the concept stayed more or less the same. I toast to the mod team with a mug filled with protein shake.

[Devoidbrah]

Im currently also in the progress of setting everything up to make some proper Videos to maybe get some traction for attention or help out people who play this.

I will let you know when I am able to do this, but right now I have lots of work + study + profitable business ventures that require my utmost attention.

[modernknight1]

Thanks for the sentiments Dennis. It appears we were correct about that topic over there. It was just a BS trolling tactic. I think its funny how they can troll us – but do it from the safety of their own website. I didn’t realize such a thing could exist LOL! It just went downhill fast and when people tried to bring it back on topic (in a civil manner I might add) they were accused of “Ganging up” on the guy who started the topic and very obviously had no real interest in the subject/object of his own topic, comments and questions in the first place. This is about as creepy, slimey and backhanded as one could get, but the tactics of PA! and the continually snake-like Boelen – who always tries to play dumb and magnanimous at the same time (which doesn’t work for him) – don’t surprise me at all anymore. BTW – Hollywood called Boelen – they say keep your day job – they do have B movie part for you if you want it as a creepy Hotel manager in a really bad porno.

They deleted the Facebook post I put up like three times in a row. I also went on a little rampage through their MODDB pages posting the same plug for the new mod on a bunch of topics/products. They think they are so smart and cute but all they did was kick an ant hill, and at the same time showed the entire community how they roll. People aren’t as dumb as Boelen thinks and this tactic was not good for them. If they thought they were coming from a position of moral superiority at all, they lost what little shreds of dignity they may have had remaining in that place to those few who may have still thought they possessed it. I would pose that even the more reasonable long time members in their ranks are questioning their behavior at this point.

So back to the topic. My friends two of you E-mailed me last night. I promise I will answer back. Also people always apologize for contacting me via e-mail. PLEASE DON”T APOLOGIZE! I don’t mind at all if you contact me direct. In fact I noticed it wasn’t on the ABOUT US topic and will put it there. Also here it is for others: [email protected]

So I have been told the membership signup page is not working at all now. I am sooo pissed at Go Daddy! I promise I will call them AGAIN about this. In the mean time please go to Word Press and sign up for a free account there. Then use those credentials to sign up here. That WILL work for you until I can get this problem fixed.

So here’s a couple of things to try. Make certain you look at my Tweaks and Tips topic HERE

Make certain that you have Jeffrey’s latest UPDATE file applied and then make certain that you Open your game folder, RIGHT CLICK on your START (ini) file (the start icon), then press Properties. Press the compatibility tab. Then check the box “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and select Windows XP (Service Pack 3). If this won’t work for you try selecting another option from the same menu and see how that works for you.

Sometimes Anti Virus software interferes on some peoples computers. Also some of the windows background programs sometimes interfere. I shut down all AVG and Iolo programs running when I play the game. I also push Run and type in services.msc then scroll down the menu and make certain that Windows Update is turned off/disabled. I HATE Windows Update – it borders on malicious software IMHO. It runs whenever it wants to. It has ruined things for me in the past. The reason MAYA stopped running last year on my PC was because of update. I turn off all of the superfluous windows programs that I don’t need. I only use them when they are useful to me. My game runs great when all of this stuff is off. Make certain that when you do these things I describe above that you are OFF LINE. Disable your router for safety. I use Win7 premium with the Developers toolkit. If you’re running Win10 then I am sorry you are SOL (Shit out of Luck) as we used to say in the Army because you can’t turn off many of these things.

It’s always helpful when you provide bug feedback if you tell us a little about your specs and OS. Thanks folks and I will get back to your e-mails personally.

MK

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by modernknight1.

[Jeffrey]

Everyone, get the newest update.zip for this important fix. Details here, if you want to know the why/wherefore: https://buccaneersreef.com/forums/topic/bugs-and-fixes/#post-3865

https://mega.nz/#F!jl1zjSaC!CdBYterMnYkhdEbQy9rQKg

Update.zip

[modernknight1]

Thanks for the feedback. Very disappointed there isn’t more especially with the pesky naysayers trying to discredit our work.

So for you guys who provided feedback and who have fully supported us and contributed – as my way of saying thanks be looking for a PM in your inbox with a special link in the next day or so – I have a new bundle of Hull 4 ship skins and edits, some better flags, and a few other things almost bundled up ready to go. For everyone else – you’ll just have to wait for the first patch to the game in another couple of months or more – that is unless you comment here LOL. Just sayin…

THANKS fellas!

MK

[Gustavo]

Hi all.

This is my first time posting here and first of all i’d like to thank you all for the great work and the effort that you put in this mod. I’d even call it a game, it deserves that recognition. I feel that the reason that you don’t get the exposure that you deserve is because the vanilla game is old, messy and not really known in the gaming community, also because today people seem more interested in graphics other than content or quality.
Onto the mod itself, i’m quite astonished by the amount of content it currently has and i can only praise it! The ships are amazing, the characters are well designed and those descriptions really help to get immersed into this period and also in the game. I also think that the items placed around in the game are well thought and give it a nice feeling in a otherwise empty game. However it also comes with a downside that is too many items in the inventory and at the stores, maybe some sort of filter would help out? (Dunno if it has been already mencioned or not).
I’d make this post too long talking about all the positives this mod has 😀
Thank you MK and the rest of the team!

p.s: i’d love to see this as a game for sale(if you ever desire to do so), maybe in steam? 😀

[modernknight1]

Gustavo,

Thanks for the great comments! If I could ask, what technique/steps did you use to Sign Up/Join the website? The reason I ask is that I get about a dozen emails from people every week asking me why they can’t sign up. I get ahold of tech support and its a mystery to them all of the time.

Jeffrey and I figured out that if people sign up for a free WordPress account first that they never have a problem signing up.

This is one of the main reasons we are going to rebuild the REEF on another domain with a new and different forum than this one. I think its weird that your avatar isn’t showing up on the avatar bar on the right side of the screen. First time I’ve seen that, but nothing surprises me on this clunky site anymore.

Indeed we would love to make this a new game and we have been discussing it seriously. We are indeed licensing our new engine with some big future plans. Notice it is now called the Maelstrom Engine. There will be a lot about this coming in the future if we can get a few more breakthroughs complete. Currently we could never sell ERAS2 because of all the third party content and resource content from the original franchise. However, with a Kickstarter/Go fund me campaign along with some other backers who have already expressed interest, and we could hire the right modelers to build us the necessary resource content.

My vision is a new geographically and historically correct Caribbean map with four times the current colonies and authentic cities you could get lost in like in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag.

Imagine even more and better historically correct faction ships and better AI opponents. We would of course pay current/other modelers from anywhere for their previous or current work (on a model by model basis) and they would still be allowed to retain and freely give those same models to whomever else they wanted – same as the Flying Lab agreement with their mod modelers for POTBS. Of course Modelers who have already been on the team (Orazio) and contributing content regularly will be on the development team and receiving game proceeds/profits/revenue once the final product is being sold.

Don’t get your hopes up too high just yet. We are still in the conceptual discussion phase of this possible effort at this stage. However with my past real world experience as a major simulation program manager and developing real world video games in the past for the military, I wouldn’t be talking about this right now if I didn’t think there are some decent possibilities that this could go somewhere in the future.

MK

[Icon]

Hello sir, I contacted you on your personal e-mail about this issue (I apologize but there was no other way).
I tried clicking that link (in activation e-mail) about 100 times 😀 today when I tried logging in it just worked, didn’t require any activation.

[Gustavo]

I tried joining the website through the “join us” feature but after i got the email for the confirmation it would link to a non existent page. I then scavenged a bit around the forum and met one of your posts that mentioned that new comers whould sign up on wordpress and then log in, which worked for me. 😀
I hope that it works out and you can push foward with your vision! Sounds really nice! Indeed a game with AC:BF’s dimention plus the historical accuracy and content of this mod and the RPG aspect that this game has, would really set the bar high and be a masterpiece!

[Icon]

I think this is best mod for AOP2 so far (played gof 2.0 before). So much new content, love the historical aspect to it (hate to see constitution in 1600’s in other mods for example). I’m playing this for past 7 days and I didn’t experience any crashes except when I try to load some saves in cities, funny if I load first the ones that I took inside some buildings everything works fine.I’m still pretty new to this so I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong but it’s hard to me to get governor’s missions done, it gives you 2-3 days to finish the smuggler quest but everytime when I try to arrange the meeting with a smuggler in the tawern he says they are busy and that I should come back in few days which fails the quest because I can’t do it before the deadline. But all in all this is great mod and I wish to thank you all who put time and effort in creating this 🙂

[Jeffrey]

Odd you get load game crashes. I’ve never had that happen and it’s one of the more solid improvements made to this game. If you are willing, we may need to get some crash dumps and explore.

In the meantime, it is a bit of a ‘cheat’ but you may want to save before talking to the mayor about missions. You have much more ‘competition’ when in town, with all the other NPC heroes taking mayor quests, shopping store, using smugglers; those services might not be available for you at any given moment. When a mayor mentions a smuggler quest, first go see if a smuggler is available, as they may be taken up by someone else. Also, even if a smuggler is available, you may not have contraband, and the store might be unavailable too. If both are OK, then you can proceed. If either one of the smuggler or store is unavailable, just revert back to the save you made before talking to the mayor and then just don’t ask for a mission as you move on.

[Icon]

Just let me know what I can do to help 🙂
Thanks for the reply, I think I will just buy the letter of marque and start the french national quest to get soleil royal 😉

[Jeffrey]

Ha ha! That ship is a nice one. Sometimes a trick to get them to try and board you so you can take it. Save before the battle as sometimes it takes a few tries to get them to make the attempt because I think your ability to board them is disabled for that battle.

[J]

Im new to this community probably a week old or so. My only experience was Pirates of the Caribbean on Xbox so never had this immersive experience. Bought SDTEHO on steam and realized ppl made mods lol. Well dived into the rabbit hole found Pirates Ahoy website right away (Google) looking for more mods. On Pirates Ahoy website I saw Moderators on there forums knit picking questions and not talking about the actual question. The one that comes to mind the guy said to the moderator “we are talking past each other”. Got strange Vibes by the guy with the picture of him on a sailboat the way he talks to ppl there something off about that guy. Found another forum on the Pirates Ahoy Website and someone plugged this website and it turned into a troll forum real fast with the sailboat guy again hes the moderator. Anyways acknowledging There was some sort of bad blood on there website and then finding out more once I came here. I downloaded this mod realized I didn’t have to buy anything. Quickly realizing first impression about this version of the game is the one to be playing and I would give you my money the same I gave steam my money for SDTEHO. Plus all you talk about your background mixed with the quality of work in your mod/game with the transparency and genuine honesty you have a new loyal fan here and put a donate button on the site and I and im sure others would help out in that way also.

BTW when I signed up I had problems but I quickly figured it out.

Oh yeah, most importantly Thank you Sir for this work of art.

[modernknight1]

Thanks for the kind comments J and welcome,

Everything here has always been free and anything can be used by us as long as its not for profit and credit is given. Rules of the OSP basically.

However, we are licensing the new engine and as we get even more advanced capability built in – planning a possible foray into development for a different version of the game that will have no existing third party or original franchise resource content. So it would be a completely new game with all completely new stuff. That new theoretical version would possibly be on STEAM and would be a “for profit” effort.

MK

• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by modernknight1.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by modernknight1.

[fruitn]

So far I have enjoyed sailing around. It has been missed ever since I laid the old Seadogs to rest several years back. The 2nd installment, Pirates of the Caribbean never felt fun, too locked into a specific story. Think I never really played beyond the part where the ghosts show themselves.
So THANK YOU for this great mod. To my luck the 2.6.0 came around just weeks before I found Seadogs: City of abandoned ships on GoG.com so I gave it a try. It’s not without it hiccups, but they strangely don’t bother me as much as they have in so many other modded games. I’m anxious to try the new stuff when it’s ready. Guess I’ll have to start a new game for it, but whatever. I can take my experience with me and that counts for something as well.

A tip: If you start in Antigua there is a quest doable in town that should net you 10k pieces and a nice walloon sword.

[Jeffrey]

You will not have to start a new game with the next update to see the new stuff; I’ve got a technique that will automatically add the new characters/ships without a restart.

Oh, and I figured out how to fix that Deserted Beach mooring point and where you wind up on the worldmap in both Esmerelda and Deserted Beach on Cayman. It is fixable. I want MK to test a bit to be sure, but I got it working.

[Mot]

Really enjoying the mod, I like the focus on realism, the added ports and the variety in ship designs. The biggest issue I have is with the UI, but there’s little to nothing that can be done about that (just stuff like; it’s hard to trade with your crew, the inventory menu is messy, the interface is very clunky). I’d love to see a full independent game made with the attention to detail and community engagement of this mod. Ideally one with a much easier to use inventory interface.

I do miss some of the the features that I remember from New Horizons, such as the weapons locker, and the crew hanging around in the hold so I could check their equipment. Would it be possible to work these features in or is there an engine limitation?

The good;
-good variety of ships, characters
-updated map
-no immediate bugs or glitches
-number of characters means someone always has a proposition for me at the tavern

the bad;
-poor UI for inventory and trading (difficult to check crew inventory and equip them with decent weapons/armour, very slow going through the lsit at the trader to see what he has and what I have) which I assume is a limitation of the original game
-the amount of characters can make it difficult to trade or hire crew in towns

that is my full and honest feedback (excuse the Australian English, I know you guys spell it armor)

[Jeffrey]

Thanks for the feedback.

I agree that the ship/character variety is the spice that draws me to the game, keeps things interesting.

I tend to focus on bugs/glitches; those are the things that tend to aggravate me the most, so I also tend to spend most of my effort repairing them. MK has mentioned UI changes to me, and while I don’t believe there is much to limit improvement, I have not spent any time looking into them because it’s a bit tedious to make changes. From the looks of the source, I believe that the original developers had built in editor tools to make UI modifications quicker/easier, but they were stripped out of the source we were given. They also had a mod script debugger built in, but that source is also missing and just a shell of an interface to break, watch/view variables, etc., but none of the actual code implementation is in place to do anything useful. Tragic, as having a UI tool and that script debugger would prove very helpful.

But, UI changes can certainly be made and in fact I think that one small area of inventory improvement carried over from Gentlemen of Fortune in that one can filter items display by type, such as weapons. Not sure if that holds true for trading with officers, but I believe it does with store/traders. We can perhaps expand that feature and idea to make things easier since I agree that as the list gets large, it becomes a hassle to find/move items back/forth among people.

Also, in case you are unaware, you can find your ship officers for trading items by going to your cabin, going through the hold, and enter their ‘office.’

As I mentioned in your other topic, I intend to work on the ‘unavailable’ problem in the store/mayor/smuggler options.

[Mot]

Ah, perhaps my ship isn’t big enough yet then, only my fighters follow me around the ship and I seem to remember from NH that you could find all your officers in the hold (at the moment I have just a few recalcitrant dutch waiting to be ransomed). A filter would be nice, though better yet would be a new UI altogether. In the f2 menu it’s not so bad to look through your gear, but when looting, trading with your officers and in the stores it’s awful, though that was always true of Sea Dogs/POTC.

Still a great game despite the UI and an even better mod. Just took a 1st rate from the Spanish (they followed me into an English port) but I have no money to maintain it, nor the skill the sail it, nor the renown/money to hire a big enough crew.

[Jeffrey]

LOL, I know the feeling…you somehow pull off an epic win, get this great ship while still a relatively low rank character, and afterward thinking, “Great, now what am I going to do with this ship? I can’t afford it and my sailing skills suck and now have a bunch of reduced skills across the board.”

Anyway, although it’s still a bit of a task, there is a trick to trade with your other ship officers if you don’t want to hunt them down in their quarters. If you go to the tavern, F2 and unassign their current position and put them as a fighter (we now have up to 6 slots for those), they will immediately spawn right there in the tavern. Trade the items, reassign them back.

[Stéphane]

I really enjoy the new update (songs, new boarding scene big vs big ) .. and i was thinking about something that could be more immersive …

Is it possible to make the reputation of all pirates competitors to be always a negative one (shark, swindler) , this is really strange to recruit one of them know to be a butcher and being an “honest or hero captain” . Samuel Bellamy could be an exception in reference to his particular background…

Another thing.. is it normal that some officers have random p.i.r.a.t.e.s attributes not matching same total points ? i mean for example, an officer can have a 35 total score and another one 60

And a last thing, really personal 🙂 , i would really enjoy to play Teach , but i really don’t like how he looks like in game, is it possible to make it more similar to his portrait ?

[modernknight1]

Thanks so much to J, Fruitn and others for the kind words of praise. So sorry I haven’t been around much but between family crisis and getting the next version of the mod out and site updated, I have been very busy.

Stephane and Mot, Thanks for the input.

I have been planning a rework of Blackbeard, but not major. I was just going to color his white wig black. That’s how I got him from Corsairs Harbor. I think he was one of Alexus’ models. I did credit the builder. We don’t really know what blackbeard actually looked like because the couple of woodcuts made of him were written for different versions of Captain Johnson’s (Aka Defoe) book from 1724 (six years after his death). So there is no accurate portrait. I rather like that model though.

As far as reputations are concerned, there were actually quite a number of pirate captains who were known to be decent fellows. DeGraaf, Dampier, Hornigold, Roberts, Bellamy, England, Tew, etc… Pirates weren’t all blood thirsty bad guys. At least – not all the time anyway.

Be sure to check Jeffrey’s latest update as we now have shanties that I have included for the other nationalities as well.

MK

[Stéphane]

I understand what you mean, and may be it is not possible to fix a reputation for each character … but it could be great, this way each “historical figure” could have a background similar to his behaviour and not a random one, as for the p.i.r.a.t.e.s random stat , it s a bit frustrating when you manage to recruit a character you really want to make your dream team to see he or she have a reputation opposite to your and bad stats.. do this particular characters could have pre-determined stats and reputation , in opposition to all others recruitable officers in random mode …

I don’t know if there is a way in this to make the game more immersive

[Jeffrey]

It is random for each new started game, for each NPC hero. I understand your idea and maybe for a few of the historical characters that have well-established personas, we can keep their ‘random’ reputation within a certain range. I would want MK to agree and confirm that sort of change.

[Jeffrey]

I forgot to mention this about the recent update. But, my last update included this reputation change. Using the information MK and you supplied, I made a range for each RPG hero that they must fall within.

For a new game, all of them will be adjusted accordingly. If you load an existing game, all the RPG heroes that are NOT in your officer/companion list are reset (just that one time…first load and saved) to fit within those ranges. I didn’t change your existing crew/squadron, because you might be set playing things a certain way with those characters and I didn’t want to upset that.

Now be aware, even in the same game profile, if you load one save game and meet an RPG with a certain reputation, but then load a different previous (from before this new update) save of that same profile, that same RPG might be different in that game and won’t match because some of the characters are not restricted and have a wide random range that can be used. Since those are random, I can’t ever know what reputation number got picked fbetween two different saves.

[Stéphane]

Nation songs are great !! really like it

[Jeffrey]

I like them too. Hopefully, we will find a few more for each of them as we go. Also, I thought of a better way to deal with my attempt to deal with the Cayman fix, and that Island reinit problem that caused your Lost Ships City problems. I think my new approach will be safer for any future, similar problems that might happen. Please download the latest. It shouldn’t affect anything new, but hopefully prevent any unforeseen side-effects like Lost City was for you.

https://mega.nz/#F!jl1zjSaC!CdBYterMnYkhdEbQy9rQKg

[chris gardner]

Hello guys,
First off let me say thank you for your continued dedication to this mod; it’s the only playable AOP2 game I’ve been able to run without crashes. The game runs pretty straightforward and I like most of the mods features you can toggle on and off. That being said, two things are bothering me; I started 3 new games with different characters, but each one started off with nice things, from the spyglass, to the ship, to their pistol, and it made me feel like I missed out on starting off with less and working up. I chose Nathaniel Hawk since i remembered him from the vanilla game, and thought I’d get a crappy ship to start off, but I started off with a class 4 38 gun ship, good gun, good spyglass, and quickly found a navigator with 40 navigation so it made sense to keep the ship.
It would be nice if there was an easy way to see what characters start off with rather then go through trial and error.

My second pet-peeve is that there are so many characters in the game, it is very difficult to get into the store and sell goods, hire crew, etc without the NPC being busy with other customers. Its especially hard in the beginning when you are doing government tasks that are time limited; finding the smugglers in 2 days, wait 4-5 days till smugglers can see you and I’ve failed the mission to no fault of my own each time its been offered, 3 times in a row. I thought I read somewhere that some people just start killing the other captain NPC’s off to cull their numbers as dark as that sounds, but I’m not quite sure how to make them mad and initiate a dual or just straight up kill them, other then finding their boat and starting a naval battle.

Finally, I’ve noticed some of the ship descriptions in the shipyard UI is cut off. The English 38 gun one that my character starts off with has a description that ends with, “NOTICE: This ship”, then ends abruptly making me wonder what the warning is.
Other then that, great mod guys and keep up the good work!

[Jeffrey]

…there are so many characters in the game, it is very difficult to get into the store and sell goods, hire crew, etc without the NPC being busy with other customers. Its especially hard in the beginning when you are doing government tasks that are time limited; finding the smugglers in 2 days, wait 4-5 days till smugglers can see you and I’ve failed the mission to no fault of my own each time its been offered, 3 times in a row. I thought I read somewhere that some people just start killing the other captain NPC’s off to cull their numbers as dark as that sounds, but I’m not quite sure how to make them mad and initiate a dual or just straight up kill them, other then finding their boat and starting a naval battle.

I will start with this one. This is a common complaint, and MK and I had a discussion. I did reduce it, but not to zero. Right now, it should theoretically be lessened by 75% of what it used to be. We thought it would be more realistic if there were still periods you did have to wait or lose out on some services for a short time. If you wait in town enough, they typically become open after a time. However, if you want the service conficts gone entirely, I did create an easier way to change it.

in the Program/scripts/PSHero.c file, near the top, change

#define PGG_TASK_MITIGATE 83

to

#define PGG_TASK_MITIGATE 100

At 100, the store and missions should never be taken by another. Let me know if that works.

I know there are some characters that start out skimpy on ships/items, but I don’t know offhand which ones. However, there are some historical figures that are already wealthy and successful, so they start off accordingly.

I would have to research the startup and get back to you. I know MK wants a playing guide for the game, and may be working on such already.

[modernknight1]

Thanks for the feedback Chris. I really appreciate it.

So to address a couple of things…

As to the merchant availability, as Jeffrey said we discussed it and tweaked it down, but I like it like that. Why? REALISM!!! People do not consider that trading was a difficult thing back in the day. Sometimes captains had to wait for weeks to get the harbor master and authorities to come aboard to inspect the cargo and approve it to come ashore. The Spaniards were some of the worst offenders and corruption was rampant. I have read accounts of captains waiting for months to sell a single cargo. I write about this in my book.

The English passed laws called the Navigation Acts which caused some major problems for some captains. Imagine having to stop in London for a special stamp and inspection even if London were completely out of your way! It was crazy. So this is to try to cause you to go other places to sell or even take prizes to displace the cargo to while you find a buyer.

An interesting thing I was just thinking about to add to our list of features is corruption dialogue where if you go to the port controller and pay him a fee, the merchant will see you immediately. I think that might be doable – will have to talk to Jeffrey about it.

I am aware that more characters have good items than not and I will prepare a list of the have nots and the HAVE LOTS for the guide book and even as a topic here maybe. I would suggest if you don’t want the advantage, simply go into a house or place with a chest – stay the night in the tavern – and deposit those things you don’t want in the chest – losing them forever. Perhaps I need to add this to my article I wrote on Gamesmanship in the Features of the Day (Page 2 now I think).

Thanks again for the input.

MK

[Matt]

I understand why you felt the need to add this feature for realism, but in my opinion it makes it hard to play the game and complete quests. This could potentially ruin some quest-lines if you get unlucky. Realism is all well and good, but I don’t think it should come at the expense of gameplay.

I tried the fix mentioned above but it didn’t seem to do anything. Does this not work on current saves and require a new game start?

[Jeffrey]

It won’t be immediate. You have to wait for the effect, because any currently ‘locked’ services you will have to wait until they reopen (usually a few days to a week…’game time’) as it only affects when the ‘task’ for the NPC is decided upon at the beginning of the decisions; once they are ‘locked into service’ the time has to be waited out as the decision was already made in the game background.

In the meantime, I will double-check to make sure I did that correctly.

[Jeffrey]

OK, looks like that still give a 10% chance. This will make the chance for them to lock a service zero:

#define PGG_TASK_MITIGATE 110

[chris gardner]

An interesting thing I was just thinking about to add to our list of features is corruption dialogue where if you go to the port controller and pay him a fee, the merchant will see you immediately. I think that might be doable – will have to talk to Jeffrey about it.

I did not know that sometimes you’d have to wait months to sell a single good back then! I can appreciate that realism.. but I’d as least prefer a way to skip multiple days more quickly then a few min of “fast travel to Tavern”, “room till next morning”, “Fast travel to Store/govs/wherever”, still closed, back to tavern, rinse and repeat. It has made me rage multiple times lol. That being said I really like your idea of bribing the port controller! It think that would be a good compromise.

[modernknight1]

I don’t see how this would ever ruin any questlines. The merchant dialogue is different for receiving cargo so he will always accept your cargo. If you are short because of rats that’s part of the challenge – I try to buy extra when I can if its perishable goods. In the questlines where you have to deliver goods, the merchants will not refuse you because they are waiting for you.

In addition when you level up higher and more of the other NPC captains are out and engaged – and you have higher skills and a good treasurer/quartermaster I find that I usually am able to trade immediately rather than be refused – it doesn’t happen nearly so much.

MK

[Matt]

Ha ha. I disabled rats too. I found a setting in the _mod file. I don’t think rats eat gunpowder! I also reverted to the default translucent compass so I could see the ranges of my cannons. I get what you’re going for but I get annoyed by little things like that. I interpret the compass/map as the captain being aware of his surroundings and the ranges of his cannons. Thank you for keeping this great game alive with your mod though! So many great things in it, and such an improvement over GOF.

The one feature I would like to see (which I believe was in one version of GOF) would be the ability to climb the rigging and sit in the crows nest. When sailing in first person mode it can be hard to see where you’re going behind all the sails.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Matt.

[modernknight1]

Rats don’t eat gunpowder. We fixed that ages ago. They only eat perishable goods. Also if you find a cat your rat issues are over. So there is more than one way to prevent rats now. That compass I made from original 17th century compasses. That’s why there’s all of the unique symbology on the face. When you’ve become an old salt in this game you don’t need those kinds of unrealistic crutches/aides. I can tell by just looking off my deck with what sized guns I have if I can range or not with different projectile types. I love the realistic raw awareness of just being on the deck.

There is only one ship that has ever had the ability to climb into the rigging in any of the GOF mods ever. It is still there if you want to find it. That is the Dutch Light Pinnace and variants with that same hull. You can only climb the mizzen mast and that is because Pgargon modeled it like that in the walk file. Perhaps Orazio may do that for us for a few ships or new ships. Perhaps his Galleon maybe? Won’t hurt to ask. It has to be done separately for each model so will only ever be on a few select ships perhaps. I do indeed like that feature as well.

Thanks for the complements!

MK

[Matt]

Is the cat an item in stores or street vendors, or is it found some other way? Is there a level you have to be to see it?

[Jeffrey]

Cats seem pretty rare to find. I only remember one time finding one on a looted body after a boarding fight. There is also a rat god idol item. I think taking the mission for the Pearl Diver colony will get you one of those. There are some rat god idols in the Lost Ships City.

For a cat, you could always start as one of the female characters, or team up with them in the tavern, convince them to join you. Almost all the female characters start with a cat.

[Matt]

One more question: in the ReadMe is says there is a new French colony added. I found the new pirate settlement on Grand Cayman but I can’t seem to locate the new French settlement. Where can I find it?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Matt.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Matt.

[Jeffrey]

Slight misnomer. Caymen is a new/add, Fort-de-France in Martinique is new as in completely changed. That is the French colony that is new in the sense it is bigger and totally changed from the original.

[Stéphane]

I need some lights concerning canon lost during naval fights , how does it work ?

sometimes i can fight with no loss and sometimes, i can lose 5-6 or 10 canons in a single fight

[Jeffrey]

Several things.

Each cannon can be damaged upon loading the gun. If your cannon skill is low (or your gunner officer), the more likely it will be damaged on load and that is why they sometimes explode on the next firing.

Also, they can be hit by opponent fire and damaged. That damage depends on how far away the shot was fired, and the type of ammo used.

Each cannon has a set ‘hit points’ property. When that is exceeded, they explode. Generally, smaller calibers have less hit points, larger have more and can take more damage before failing.

Also, I don’t think that the cannons get repaired during ship maintenance and their hit points will degrade over time due to damage, so that might also explain why several fail seemingly right at the beginning…you have had them for awhile and they have taken damage over time and finally reached the end.

[chris gardner]

This actually reminded me of something; It would be great if we could fix cannons during battle. Once I bought extra cannons for the hold so if some got destroyed I could quickly replace, but it would not sucessfully attach them while in battle. I feel like it would be more realistic if you could fix new ones on the spot rather then wait for the battle to end and then attach them on the main sailing screen

[modernknight1]

Jeffrey and I discussed your idea this morning Chris,

So it is possible, but I am putting strict limitations on it. So I am still working on a long term mod that changes all gun sizes, performance and type. Hopefully this one will be done in a couple of more months. I keep putting it on the back burner. You guys are about to get a new skins pack in the next day that adds over 20 new Hull skins to the already existing ones for more variety and my priority is on getting all of the new colonies and locations done and in the game before anything else.

So we think it is possible to bring Bronze guns back into the game like they were in AOP1-CT. When you open the cannon menu the shipwright will ask you if you want bronze or iron. Bronze will have way more hit points and blow up way less often, but will cost ten times more and will weigh over a third more than the iron. The gun sizes by pounder will be 3,4,6,9,12,16,18,24,32,36 and 50. culverins will be no bigger than 24 pounders. Only the English ports will have 32 pounders. Only Dutch and French ports will have 36 pounders. Only Spanish ports and large ships will have 50 pounders. 32,36 and 50s will all be fairly rare with 50 pounders quite difficult to collect. The small sizes will be more plentiful and get rarer after the 12 pounder. Only navy and military ships will have guns 16 pounder and larger guns aboard.

With regards to repair, I will only allow it for 3,4, and 6 pounders – and we are stretching it for 6 pounders actually. So keep in mind that a 12 or 16 pounder gun weighs in at over 5000 pounds (2300kg). The barrel alone required a boom and tackle be rigged up just to lift guns on their carriages. So if you have extra guns, you would need like 30 men to go down and pull the gun below an open hatch that the boom can then pull up by winch/capstan. The old carriages didn’t have quick release trunnion shackles either which meant a time intensive disassembly of the carriage so that it could receive the new gun after you winched the old one off and threw it overboard. So from a point of authenticity I think that if you pushed a repair toggle for guns, your ship will slow and your rate of fire as well dramatically while you spend at least ten minutes of game time replacing a couple of guns. Historically the only anecdotes I remember of crews replacing guns at sea were during lulls in the long battles like the Four Days Fight of 1666 when the fleets disengaged close to night-fall.

Could be an interesting and fun capability to try out though. Thanks for the suggestion.

MK

[megaprime]

Hi does anybody know how can i change the font sizes not for the dialog,skill table but for everything else like the item list pricelist etc and also for the crew number on the top left corner

Also if i understand correctly when my cannons start blowing up when firing i would be better to change the whole set than simlpy buy additional guns amiright and i also think it would be better to allow us to set cannons in the fight but for example when we change the
location of guns we need to reload but 2times slower and also have to muzzle the sails or something like that similar to the firedrill skill in new horizons just a suggestion

[megaprime]

Also can anybody tell me why there are banned goods on pirate colonies feels a little odd

[megaprime]

Is there any way to revert the encounter sound on worldmap to vanilla the current one from master and commander is far too long for that i usually get 3-4 more encounter and the first sound still plays

[modernknight1]

That master and commander sound clip IS indeed being replaced in a sound mod I am still working on which will have crews talking through gun drills in their native languages including the words “FIRE” “FUEGO”, etc. I’ve spent a lot of time recording movie clips in foreign or translated movies over the last couple years with this mod in mind.

The pirate banned goods are set that way so that you can still sell to smugglers on that island. Don’t know if there is another way to accomplish that because I’ve thought that myself in the past.

MK

[megaprime]

Is it possible to break masts in this game?
Im level 30 now always on full bounty getting epic battles left and right but i have not encountered a single broken mast in this game is it a work in progress feature or bug?

[Jeffrey]

Yes, that is still a work in progress. I fixed the back-end code to no longer crash during those infamous GOF mast break problems, but one of the tactics to avoid those was to virtually eliminate mast damage in the game so they can’t break, thus rendering the crash problem moot.

Now that my tests using GOF indicate the game is stable during all mast breaks (my tests used very high damage and within one volley, everyone’s mast would break, so I could debug), we now need to readjust the ERAS mast damage to more appropriate levels. MK and I have had discussions (because the COAS/GOF mast damage values are way too high), but have not yet reworked the mast damage code to something more realistic. So at the moment, the damage to a mast is still near zero in the existing scripts.

[megaprime]

So I have a suggestion dunno if its possible to mod it in
Now we all know how big of an Einstein is the ai in this game like for exapmle i would like to save one of my heavily damaged ships she is already in wind direction telling her to sail away and she turns right in to the enemy fleet against the wind (just for maximum effectiveness)

what if we could somehow give direction orders like go east northeast follow that ship keep in line etc that would make managing a fleet from complete clusterfuuck to playable

I know it isnt exactly a rare idea (im fairly certain you guys already thought about this) im just curious if it is somehow possible or too timeconsuming to make

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by megaprime.

[Jeffrey]

LOL, yes this has been a frequent discussion. The ‘sail away’ logic can be very poor at times.

I have researched several ‘pathfinding’ and flee/evasive ai techniques and there are some common suggestions: A* (A star) and Recast, ‘policy based’, creating an influence map, etc. The task to rewrite the AI code, using the existing input data is not trivial, mostly because the existing steering mechanism is short-term/shortsighted, but their objective is very long-term/longdistance, putting their ultimate aim point far away, then they travel straight to it. But as a result of the shortsighted actual navigation, it does not recognize islands well due to a reliance of checking water depth very near the AI ship; this is why often the ships head straight toward nearby island masses and don’t realize it until way too close. It didn’t even ‘know’ there was an island in front of them, but their target they are heading toward is somewhere far in the distance, on the opposite side of that island…or the mass of enemy ships.

Also, as you’ve seen, it doesn’t make the best decision regarding enemy ship threats when deciding a path (I think wind directions is too heavily weighted, rather than enemy threats) and will often head straight through the thick of battle.

We need to build in a better set of obstacles/’wall’ information for AI ships that better inform about island masses at a distance, better factor/weight enemy threats and wind dir, create an ‘influence map’ with these factors, then seek the best path. It’s a project that is on the table, but unfortunately a complex and significant one that may take considerable time to work something out.

[Jeffrey]

To add, one of the reasons the ships often turn into enemy trouble is that the ai always seems to favor an upwind path, which can be great for triangle sail ships to get away, against square sails, but it never takes into account the ‘point of sail’ number for the actual ship (it may be a square sail itself, that sails horribly into the wind) and like I mentioned before, does not adequately measure enemy threats opposing the decision to try escaping upwind like it should.

[chris gardner]

Megaprime

I have similar thoughts with regards to AI, I would love to see some tweeks to how the ships can be commanded and how they react to the enviroment

[chris gardner]

Hi guys;

So I have a late game level character @29, i have 3 ships and about 2000 crew in total to feed. The problem is, I can only get a reliable (barely brake even) flow of food coming in from boarding other ships; the stores are out of food and other general essential items most of the time, and occasionally one will have say 150 units of food, but its not near enough to be sustainable. Is it because all the other captains are buying the food from the store?

IMO it does not seem realistic to have stores constantly be all out of food to sell. I don’t remember it being like this earlier in the game. Is this issue of running out of food to buy common?

Thank you for your time,
Chris

[megaprime]

yep food shortage is a big problem there are some islands though which has lots of food for example Nevis has like 15000 units of food if I remember correctly while other like Tortuga has 50 units so your crew die of hunger in the port I guess all nations has 1 colony where you can buy food what i usually do is stacking all the food from raided ships from the beginning this way there is no problem most of the time if you have too much food in the cargo hold you could save it for later with parking some shitty boat full of food on some port just a suggestion

but yeah this is a big problem ofc i get it that a corsair could not get enough supplies from one colony for his fleet but that only 150 units of food is available on most of the colonies it really makes bad gameplay like the waiting for storekeepers I just disable that feature

[modernknight1]

Call me a glutton for punishment but I actually enjoy the food shortage problem and it gets worse the higher the difficulty you play. If you have a small fleet no problems, but if you’re commanding large capital ships with huge crews, you would have had immense issues with military logistics in the 17th century Caribbean. I was just reading about Hendrickszoon’s 1626 expedition and that he put his fleet in at Porto Cabanas and sacked the little town there specifically in order to take its supplies (food and water) for his ships before blockading Havana Cuba.

For my book research I have been taking many notes for sometime of the passing ships stopping in Hispaniola and Tortuga to trade with the local bucaniers (meat smokers) to resupply their ships.

You know I think I will ask Jeffrey if it is possible to trade with some of the guys you see wandering on the paths in island interiors who sometimes have items for you to buy. Perhaps we could expand that so that he could sometimes sell you food and rum – simulating the natives and boucaniers that would often resupply ships in those times. I think that is very doable and it would require effort on your part to go find those guys.

Occasionally I have been successful in getting food from ships in convoys by simply trading with them – usually they wont sell their food however.

We will definitely be changing some things about food rum and in the future water and grog in further game development still to come. Food should still be scarce in many places – there are still places where you can often find it in fairly large amounts. I try to keep my food on small ships at about 300 to 400 and on large ships at 600 to 700.

A technique I use when I have fleets is to keep what I call a “COW SHIP”. This is a ship with a large hold and durable enough that it can withstand a little bit of battle. At the beginning I often use a fluyt for this but later on maybe a Flota Galleon or other larger ship with an even larger hold – sometimes an Old English great bark or Indiaman. The purpose of that ship is extra supplies and excess cargoes taken from ships that I can’t sell off if the merchants are too busy and I need to move on about my business. I NEVER sell food unless I only have one ship. I offload excess food onto the cow-ship in case I need it later. Cumulatively over time this can amount to a lot of stored food. I have even filled ships up with this excess food when I put other favored ships into storage that I wish to keep for some later adventure or purpose.

Using these techniques I have never run out of food – ever – and I love playing with fleets in my gameplay style.

Holy crap I love this game so much!

MK

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by modernknight1.

[megaprime]

lol yes thats exactly the ship i use for fleets the english great bark it usually has 6000 or so cargo hold i upgraded it and got 8800 great for sacking towns too. Btw the trading with the natives is a nice idea it would give a chance to save the crew from starvation when there is no food or the shopkeeper is too busy.

another thing is it possible to make smuggling in this game as in TEHO? Like it open an interface where you can buy and sell like in stores would be nice and you could also buy provisions then from smugglers would make sense for example a corrupt fort quartermaster selling the surplus supplies to the smugglers

[Schiavonna]

Well finally took the plunge and installed latest ERAS version 2.6.7 (Farewell 1.5.7 compiled source – you were a worthy predecessor). I have to say I’m very impressed. In fact, I’ve been having an absolute blast!

Things of note:

The npc captains, if you “press” them into your service are somewhat ‘overkill’ with the equipment the have already spawned. In the space of 2 hours from a fresh start, I had made nearly 3 million from taking Crosses of Coronado, Jewel caches, Nocturnal octants, Order of the Golden fleece medals, etc…stripping them from the NPCs in my troupe. Eh?….Kind of takes the grind away, but also loses the magic of genuinely finding something rare and valuable – ?

The traders refusing to trade/ barmen with no crew issue: Its intensely frustrating! The “PGG_TASK_MITIGATE 110” doesn’t seem to mitigate it at all – with (in-game) months of playing. I’ve always been encouraged by MK to speak my mind on this site, so I’ll do just that:

I THINK ITS A REALLY BOLLOCKS MECHANIC TO ADD TO THE MOD!

But thats just my own humble opinion 😉 Reading through some of the posts above though, others seem to share my frustration as well. I have found it particularly anger-inducing. BUT…I can see what you are trying to simulate, realism -wise and I appreciate that. Just gameplay-wise, it feels a right kick in the stones.

Suggestion: would it be possible to make it a toggle-able mechanic in OPTIONS? I’m sure that would appease everybody. Or how about a “threaten” dialogue option for the traders? If successful, they open up their wares again, but you take a reputation hit – ?

Boddins Landing is fantastic. That opens up so much more to the game as a pirate base in the area. Noticed there was no Port Controller there – intentional? Orazio’s new cabins are spellbinding – particularly like the dark-lit ones, but there are all excellent. The “Early Spanish galeon” is a fine treat too.

Will keep you posted here with any further bugs and positive delights & finds as I discover them 🙂

Well done MK, Jeffrey and Orazio – you’ve worked away and built a wonderful mod for all your efforts!

[megaprime]

Yep the mitigate thingy doesnt seem to work, so download this make a backup of your original Pshero file just in case, overwrite the Pshero in Program/scripts
https://mega.nz/#!qMEiARJD!PBDQMJPiIfbAD_-e1uoSkfG9c5n77P6dm9hftyAnpaI
Its an older Pshero file which I modified I simply deleted those lines which made the traders and the smugglers busy
Also you might need to wait few weeks for this to take effect

[Jeffrey]

To be fair, the always busy was a side-effect of so many NPC characters and not really an intentional add; by putting so many characters in, the original feature to lock services became much more noticeable because COAS only had a handful of characters.

At first, the discussion became, “well, it’s kind of realistic,” so nothing was done. After several complaints, I did try to reduce/mitigate it, but I guess that attempt was not effective. I will have to take another look and see what I missed, because when that number is set to 110, then the random chance for them to lock tasks was supposed to be skipped, because the rand number is never greater than that, so the lock should have failed. But there may be some other code I that I missed.

I will check on it.

[Schiavonna]

Feature request for the above “always busy” merchants and barmen/crew conundrum: Would it be possible to actually put the majority of these NPCs “At sea”? I know if i bring up the F10 menu, some of them are listed “at sea”…but they dont seem to be – ? Always in the pub, landlubbing scurvy naves! I wonder if it would be possible to code any extra “venue” – unobtainable to the player – where these guys could go and stop hogging up the bar seats…and resources? It’s immersive to an extent, but with 130+ NPC captains it feels over-saturated.

Or maybe there’s a possible way to “write out” 2/3’s or 3/4’s of these captains on each game start after character selection – ?

Other thing, I’m sure DevoidBrah riffed on it – I would love to actually have a small percentage chance of bumping into one of these other captains in a sea encounter. Entirely dependant on what flag/allegiance the player was using at time of encounter. Where, if it was a rare thing (1% at levels 1-10, maybe 3% over level 20+ or something similar) that came as an unexpected surprise – now that would be an amazing feature!

For then I could sink and kill them! Bye Bye Christoher Myngs, Cornelius Evertsens, Duguay-Trouins, Woodes Rogers, Hornigolds, van de Veldes, etc of this world. Dont let the poop deck hit you on the arse on the way down 🙂

[Jeffrey]

Might be worth a rewrite, though I will say that I’ve avoided going too far with any of that to keep gameplay consistent with what people expect since everything was already coded a particular way, so I kept with what existed, hoping some minor tweaks would help some of those other side-effects.

But you present some good ideas and perhaps it’s worth tackling more significant changes.

Also, sinking their ships doesn’t always work in the current environment; upon sinking, they will often just respawn somewhere else and you will see them again. Right now, if you accept an invitation, decline, and their reputation is low, their crew will fight you on deck and as soon as you board your own ship, fight you in port. Same thing there…if you sink them, they often respawn. I did enable boarding (it was originally impossible), so you can board them, fight them in the cabin and when you kill them there, they stay dead. So you can get rid of them now.

However, I like the additional ideas you have about running into them during encounters. That will require some work, but an intriguing idea and I’m thinking if we go that route, keeping some things the same, where the only way to be surely rid of them, requires a boarding. Sinking might remain the same, where sometimes it works, but sometimes doesn’t and they respawn (because they had the skills 🙂 ) due to escaping and managing to survive.

[Schiavonna]

Thanks for listening Jeffrey, and apologies if it adds to your already hard-pressed work load.

The newly introduced “equipment” for the NPC captains is also a big issue for me. It means, without even spam saving/reloading its easy to go from 5,000 money to 1-3 million. Just having a bit of luck (and its really not that hard) convincing a powerful NPC to join forces. Instant class 3 or 4 ship.

Thats not the issue though. Why would say, that orange haired freak Cornelius Van de Velde, upon deciding he was going to join up with a previously unknown Captain (the player) suddenly give him access to all his personal belongings? “Oh, here’s that Order of the Golden Fleece medal – worth quarter of a million – for you my new friend. Oh and you can have this Order of Saint Louis Medal too. Chest of jewels anyone? Cool 100 grand…all yours mate!” – ??!

If a player knows how to access Officers equipment…you go from nought to sixty in seconds gameplay-wise. That, in itself, ruins the sense of gradual progression. Its like instant ANTI-GRIND! The new product from Buccaneers Reef! Just wipe it on your save and WHAMO!! – No more grind! You can take his class 3 and upgrade it several times and still have money to boot. “Now, where’s that next NPC sucker who’s going to give me some loot? Oh look, there’s four of them in the bar….” And another 4 have appeared since you last left port…

It’s just not cool, baby 😉 WOULD GETTING RID OF THE MEGA-BUCKS ITEMS ON NPCS EQUIPMENT LISTS BE A POSSIBILITY TOO? Does the Modern Knight NPC need an entire collecton of all the high level swords ready and available for the player to potentially access from the off? Or the high ranking medals on a lot of the commanders? Anything worth more than 10 grand really.

Please dont take any of this the wrong way, I pure respect you guys and absolutely appreciate the sh*tload of work you have put into ERAS. Just stating my honest experiences from playing and the little niggles that I find.

I also found this boarding issue previously with refusing the NPC’s quest, fighting his cronies and finding his ship impossible to board. You fixed this? Haven’t tried it lately, but I’ll have to give it a go now. Nice one, mate 🙂

{NB: notice multiple edits – do I write coherently when in “rant mode”? – Nope! :)}

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Schiavonna.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Schiavonna.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Schiavonna.

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