The High Seas (Naval MP Scenario)

[Atreides]

70 odd turns into it and just wow. Lost my ship but boarded the killer and took it.

That is a wanton act of piracy! And naught even a score of days since your release from the gaol!

Hehehe, well more like police brutality, it was the Estabanian Navy, I suppose they have a right to board and search any ships by former pirates suspected of recidvism.
I did notice one of the AI players was even more brazen and assaulted the gaol immediately upon release... ; )

What a blast. I won, even though I had a horrid start where I was confused and trying to figure out the changes.

Yeah, one of the real challenges with this scenario is communicating how its fairly unique interface and numerous mechanics work. Which things did you find most confusing at first?

Unfortunately I think the confusion mainly stemmed from me expecting things to work like in earlier versions. I was taken by surprise by the tunnels to the bank and such places. Also the deactivation of the banking threw me off, I actually sent my cap'n to try and deposit cash. : ) That also reminds me of something that was actually a bit off. The mobile defenders will actually come out and attack you from them. Plus one gets a lot of enemies spotted messages which leave one wondering, "where?" until you cotton on to it being inside those areas.

Occasionally a unit passing over a bank or such would tele in and out which was slow (so I turned on accel speed, it plays much better with it on) due to scrolling.

The next version will have only the ship teleportation tunnels; all the unnecessary static location tunnels will be removed. That should reduce much of this pathfinding/scrolling nonsense.

Whew, glad to hear that. The tunnels while cool do add a lot of work to the player in having to scroll to the target area. It works best for the ships where you want to be able to choose where to board but for the bank, say, it would be easier to just be able to click on the bank with each raider and have him appear inside.

I had one awful moment when I captured a third ship but the AI nastily sent a crew member out to club their former ship to death and my whole boarding crew perished. AI is too darn smart in Wesnoth...

A feature I am especially looking forward to adding in the next version is a grapeshot attack for your ship's cannons. It will do minimal structural damage to the enemy ship (compared with your regular solid shot attack) while hitting enemy crew over an even wider area of the deck. Which should make your boarding crew's job a lot safer.

Oh nice, and maybe chain shot too? Heated shot? The first would of course destroy the rigging while the latter would start fires. (Yes I may be a bit of a wooden ships geek ; ) These are of course just suggestions, they may not be worth having.

It does occur to me now that boarding a submarine really should be limited to units with submerge ability (which the original crew naturally should all have).

I have not yet read the book, but my understanding was the Nautilus must surface from time to time to acquire fresh air for both the crew and the coal turbines which recharge the batteries? So my thinking went that this makes it vulnerable to boarding (in a highly abstracted wesnothy game mechanics sort of way where, for example, a swordsman can somehow attack a high flying gryphon).

Heh, I have not read that one by Verne either. Still on my list of "to reads". I have watched a whole TV series based on it though.
I'm sure that like all early subs it was in fact more a submersible ship. The first true subs actually came out post WW2 when nuclear engines permitted them to operate underwater all the time. So you are right that it would likely be vulnerable to boarding. Some WW2 subs were boarded in fact.
As for the gryphon well we know how that works... the swordsman merely calls out a challenge and the gryphon is honour bound to descend and give battle! ; )

Also more variety in recruits would be fantastic (I think that was discussed a while back). Right now the easy choice is mages/adepts.

Interesting choice. I tend to gravitate towards footpads, thieves and fencers since they are such fast boarders that they can take advantageous positions on the enemy deck during the first turn of an engagement. But yeah, adding a lot more crew options is on the To Do list.

Yeah I think too that having a coffer with 1000's of gold made the costly mages more attractive...

[name]

I did notice one of the AI players was even more brazen and assaulted the gaol immediately upon release... ; )

Yeah, the regular AI players have no idea how to play this particular scenario all that well (in your replay it looks like killing them off was how Estabon reached 90 points so quickly).

If you set the other player slots to none (or once their ships are sunk) then they will respawn later as the "Purple Privateers" who pose a more competent threat.

but for the bank, say, it would be easier to just be able to click on the bank with each raider and have him appear inside.

I plan to take it a step further than that. The whole bank "interior" space will sit directly on the world map in place of the little building icon which teleports your crew to a separated map. All raiding spots will be this way, even the gaol. So you will not have to tediously teleport each crewman in or out of the space one by one as the view scrolls back and forth between the "outside" map and the "inside" ones.

Everyplace will just be on the one big world map, except for the ship deck maps on the left side.

Oh nice, and maybe chain shot too? Heated shot? The first would of course destroy the rigging while the latter would start fires.

Thought about adding chain shot to deliver blade damage (the grapeshot will do pierce). The orcish outriggers actually already fire heated shot in this current version.

Fires on deck may be a possibility in the future, though it might need an interesting fire fighting mechanic to go along with it.

As for the gryphon well we know how that works... the swordsman merely calls out a challenge and the gryphon is honour bound to descend and give battle!

Seems delivering the One Ring would have been a lot less trouble if Middle Earth had Wesnoth's honorable gryphons rather than its snobbish eagles.

[Atreides]

I did notice one of the AI players was even more brazen and assaulted the gaol immediately upon release... ; )

Yeah, the regular AI players have no idea how to play this particular scenario all that well (in your replay it looks like killing them off was how Estabon reached 90 points so quickly).

If you set the other player slots to none (or once their ships are sunk) then they will respawn later as the "Purple Privateers" who pose a more competent threat.

I'll try and get in some more plays, see if the player sides just did badly this time or not. The Purples didn't seem to score very well actually (at least this time - I strongly suspect games are highly random which is excellent)

but for the bank, say, it would be easier to just be able to click on the bank with each raider and have him appear inside.

I plan to take it a step further than that. The whole bank "interior" space will sit directly on the world map in place of the little building icon which teleports your crew to a separated map. All raiding spots will be this way, even the gaol. So you will not have to tediously teleport each crewman in or out of the space one by one as the view scrolls back and forth between the "outside" map and the "inside" ones.

Everyplace will just be on the one big world map, except for the ship deck maps on the left side.

A major map rework? Wow.

Oh nice, and maybe chain shot too? Heated shot? The first would of course destroy the rigging while the latter would start fires.

Thought about adding chain shot to deliver blade damage (the grapeshot will do pierce). The orcish outriggers actually already fire heated shot in this current version.

Fires on deck may be a possibility in the future, though it might need an interesting fire fighting mechanic to go along with it.

Oh I failed to notice the heated shot. I did not really study the new ships closely, too caught up in the action. : )

Yeah fires would be something new I think. Not seen any in other UMC by me anyways.

As for the gryphon well we know how that works... the swordsman merely calls out a challenge and the gryphon is honour bound to descend and give battle!

Seems delivering the One Ring would have been a lot less trouble if Middle Earth had Wesnoth's honorable gryphons rather than its snobbish eagles. :hmm:

Hahaha, too funny, I just discovered the 1980 BBC radio adaptation is up on Spotify. The eagle carrying G off Orthanc in ep. 2 was indeed snobby!

[Atreides]

Couple of more ideas. First the labels on the ships would look better moved off to the bow. Secondly the points for killing a captain ought to be variable based on level. 5/level would be same as now but allow for L1/3 cap's.

[name]

I think you are right, the ship name labels need to be either moved to the bow, recolored (to bright white?) or both.

For killing captains it looks like you get awarded points for the unit level plus a special bonus of 10 points if it is a human player leader. So killing a L3 human captain would award you 13 points, for example.

[Atreides]

Oh, cool, I was just going by what it said in the scorecard. It said a flat 10.

Oh just got an idea from Lord Knyghtmare. He mentioned the crew being outlaws and I replied they gotta be pirates that's why you can't change 'em. A future enhancement could be custom pirate units? Not sure where the art would come from though, ugh. Outlaws are a great stand in though IMHO. Not a really essential improvement, Pirate Custom Units.

[gnombat]

A future enhancement could be custom pirate units? Not sure where the art would come from though, ugh.

There's some pirate and related art floating around if you want to use that.

In mainline, Secrets of the Ancients has a "Sailor" unit.

In UMC, Flight to Freedom has a "Pirate" unit.

[name]

Oh, cool, I was just going by what it said in the scorecard. It said a flat 10.

Oops, it looks like you were right, it is not awarding bonus points but a flat 10 for killing a player captain. My mistake. So then that is something which could be changed in the next version.

A future enhancement could be custom pirate units?

The planned customization option allowing players to recruit their selected faction's units will naturally enable using crew from UMC eras. So if there is a musket and cutlass wielding pirate faction somewhere in the wider add-ons ecosystem, players will be able to plug that in.

[Atreides]

Ah so Thunderers and Duellists... ;-) Yeah, I suppose there is useful stuff including those gnombat mentioned (there's also a sea captain I saw).

UMC crews? Love it. I'll just play the Black Tide faction. They have been called Pirate flavoured.

[Bob_The_Mighty]

There's a bunch of sailor sprites bundled in The Altaz Mariners, including some cool skeletal pirates. I'm looking forward to trying THS again soon.

[Atreides]

Hehe, could check for race=undead and then give them skeletal pirates instead.

[name]

There's a bunch of sailor sprites bundled in The Altaz Mariners, including some cool skeletal pirates. I'm looking forward to trying THS again soon.

Nice. I have been meaning to replay The Altaz Mariners; will check those out when I do.

Very much looking forward to hearing your impressions of the latest version of THS. It applies all your recent suggestions for streamlining the player experience, as well as making boarding and capturing ships a major feature. Though it may add some rough edges too...

[name]

The High Seas Alpha-4 is (finally) released:

The_High_Seas_Alpha-4.zip

(93.86 KiB) Downloaded 14 times

Changes:

All settlements exist entirely in the world map (for much faster and easier crew movement when doing raids)
Each cargo producing settlement has a storehouse and whoever controls it can loot all that their ship will carry from the local port
New trade empires ripe for the sacking - Pyros, Avalon and Vesperis
Many more crew types available for hire
New horrifying monsters terrorizing the sea, land and air
The crew injuring "blast radius" of a hit to a ship's deck grows with the power of the attack done to said ship (radius = damage / 10)
Only ship weapons and monster attacks on a ship can injure its crew indirectly (since all smaller units can board a ship to attack crew directly)
Rebalance of all ship classes
Keep added to Warship allowing direct recruiting (exclusive feature for this ship class)

Fix computer controlled ships not patrolling
Fix cargo price inflation using price caps
Fix various broken news messages

[Atreides]

New horrifying monsters terrorizing the sea, land and air
The crew injuring "blast radius" of a hit to a ship's deck grows with the power of the attack done to said ship (radius = damage / 10)
Only ship weapons and monster attacks on a ship can injure its crew indirectly (since all smaller units can board a ship to attack crew directly)

Maybe too horrifying. Too many Yetis! One Yeti fighting my ship killed half the crew using the blast radius. (3 from 32 hit).

This was my third try, got instakilled first 2 times til I remembered how cautious you have to be here. In all tries Estaban took an instant huge lead in points. As expected they "won" on the third one that I was able to finish. I had 40 they got 100. I put quotes because it actually claimed I won after it claimed Estaban won. Not sure what is happening...

Also I think when a ship sinks VP are given only for ship? I suppose VP for all crew would rack up score very quickly but it does seem odd.

In general it is now very hard to even trade or visit shipyards, it seems everything is guarded.

P.S. Tried it with 5 spawn rate and cap but the problem is still there with the Yetis. It's not so much that I'm anti-Yeti but that running into 2 or 3 all at once while your sacrificing your level 1's to slowly kill the first one and praying you get at least 1 L2 or even better 2 out of it, ruins the scenario.
What would be great would be a per monster cap like there is in Improved Wilderness. 1 Yeti, 1 Cave Bear, 1 Djinn, but more of level 1 and 0's.

[name]

Sorry about the out of control difficulty level. I have play tested this scenario enough times over the course of its renewed development that it appears to get easier and easier when really I am just learning more tricks for beating it. So I keep unwittingly upping the number and size of enemies, a bit at a time, until it becomes ridiculous...

One Yeti fighting my ship killed half the crew using the blast radius. (3 from 32 hit).

Probably need to reduce its radius to 2 for starters (radius = damage / 12).

Tried it with 5 spawn rate and cap but the problem is still there with the Yetis. It's not so much that I'm anti-Yeti but that running into 2 or 3 all at once while your sacrificing your level 1's to slowly kill the first one and praying you get at least 1 L2 or even better 2 out of it, ruins the scenario.
What would be great would be a per monster cap like there is in Improved Wilderness. 1 Yeti, 1 Cave Bear, 1 Djinn, but more of level 1 and 0's.

Good point; I will make the spawn rate and spawn cap take into account the gold cost of each monster unit, so the big ones will be few and far in between.

In general it is now very hard to even trade or visit shipyards, it seems everything is guarded.

I may need to move some of the storehouses further away from those facilities so the storehouse guards do not bother you under friendly circumstances. At the very least, I should reduce the strength of those guards by a good amount.

As expected they "won" on the third one that I was able to finish. I had 40 they got 100. I put quotes because it actually claimed I won after it claimed Estaban won. Not sure what is happening...

Hmm, will investigate why it gives conflicting victory messages. Hopefully turning down the spawn rates will also reduce the rate at which the stronger computer factions score points by providing them fewer targets.

Also I think when a ship sinks VP are given only for ship? I suppose VP for all crew would rack up score very quickly but it does seem odd.

I think it may have always been that way... thought about "fixing" it earlier, but then sinking ships might become the far and away best method for winning?