The High Seas (Naval MP Scenario)

[name]

If anyone wants to take over the High Seas, get in touch.

Got it working again:

The_High_Seas for BfW-1.16 (alpha).zip

(51.47 KiB) Downloaded 41 times

I fixed all the bugs I could find just testing by myself. May need additional testers.

Change Log:
New directory structure
Update calls to modern BfW macros api
Update terrain code: Ggf -> Gg^Efm
Refactor out variable changes to live units
Various fixes using wmllint and wmlindent
Fix error when less than six players
Cut redundant village_gold assignments
Fix same name prisoner unit overwrite
Fix enemy leader death ending the scenario

Regarding this last fix... did you intend for the killing of the Grand Marshal inside the gaol to be a scenario end event? If you did intend such, then I should revert this last change.

[Atreides]

Thanks for doing this. I've tried the other one but it is too hard to be any fun. Older stuff tends not to be tuned as much to the hard level so this may just be what I'm looking for.

Guess you got a tester. : )

p.s.
First run
Played vs 5 AI and used a custom era which has swimming/flying leaders. I'll try skip over the oddities my 2 choices caused :).
I chose a fast 20 point game. At first I had no clue what to do. I did not realize the game manual was post 1 in this thread, heh. So being an old Pirate ;) I figured out the rules like I did in the old days....
I did buy stuff for the AI that chanced to move to the tavern as it prompts the player so one side did have troops. The whole match ended up being fought out in the gaol since I only learned how to board ships towards the end... I also learned to man the cannons by chance. Hmmm come to think of it that first game was a mess and I guess I should just report that it seemed to run smoothly in terms of technical stuff. The log did show some missing images very likely due to changed core paths/names. Didn't notice while playing though.

Second run
default + 0 ai
Heh. Got a Drake leader. Forgot default had flying ldrs too. Doesn't actually matter... well I guess a drake has no use for the swimming skill. Aside from submerge.
Bought a crew ignored the gaol guard and manned the ship and sailed off. Found there are lots of enemies out there and they're tougher than the gaol guards.
Disembarking was not covered in the manual so again had to figure it out. As an old Pirate not much trouble but annoying nonetheless. Made a mistake in landing near a temple I saw and trekking overland to the distillery. Ship got boarded with only the L0 Ruffians left behind, didn't know I needed to man it better. Beat them off anyways as crew rushed back.
This time tried to sail to port but got intercepted by a nasty ship which had as much firepower as mine did. Got sunk. Crew drowned. Captain survived. Maybe because he could fly. Wasn't he supposed to go down with his ship? -2 gold. Shipyard right there but 300 g so rather than wait 150 turns @ 2 income I quit.
Again no problems. Although I started game on the MP server and only while there was getting constant error spam about "command removed" attack/move. So something may be amiss.
Also could not board enemy ship from mine (or didn't find command although I tried everything (Ye Olde Pirate knows many tricks) so perhaps that's broken?

[name]

Thanks for testing!

I definitely agree it needs more obvious info on how to play, maybe as notes on the objectives screen. And I think many of the actions can be made context sensitive. Like if you move a crewman to a cannon or sail, he automatically mans it; you don't have to use a right click menu. And if you move a unit next to your flagship, a prompt asks if you want to board. If you move a unit to the plank, it asks if you want to disembark.

The log did show some missing images very likely due to changed core paths/names. Didn't notice while playing though.

Again no problems. Although I started game on the MP server and only while there was getting constant error spam about "command removed" attack/move. So something may be amiss.

Hmm, I can't seem to find either of these errors in my own play test logs. Do you still have your logs on hand? Maybe your saves and replays too?

Heh. Got a Drake leader. Forgot default had flying ldrs too. Doesn't actually matter... well I guess a drake has no use for the swimming skill. Aside from submerge.
Bought a crew ignored the gaol guard and manned the ship and sailed off. Found there are lots of enemies out there and they're tougher than the gaol guards.
Disembarking was not covered in the manual so again had to figure it out. As an old Pirate not much trouble but annoying nonetheless. Made a mistake in landing near a temple I saw and trekking overland to the distillery. Ship got boarded with only the L0 Ruffians left behind, didn't know I needed to man it better. Beat them off anyways as crew rushed back.
This time tried to sail to port but got intercepted by a nasty ship which had as much firepower as mine did. Got sunk. Crew drowned. Captain survived. Maybe because he could fly. Wasn't he supposed to go down with his ship?

This brings back many memories of playing this thing 12+ years ago.

Shipyard right there but 300 g so rather than wait 150 turns @ 2 income I quit.

Never tried this myself, but I think what the scenario expects us to do when we get marooned is sack the nearest settlement. If you capture some villages, you also get +4 income, since apparently villages still provide upkeep (food?) to offset the cost of your pirate band.

May or may not be more fun to simply reload, though.

Also could not board enemy ship from mine (or didn't find command although I tried everything (Ye Olde Pirate knows many tricks) so perhaps that's broken?

Going by the wml code, boarding can only be done to other player ships (including any "human" players set to default AI in the scenario set up) whereas those powerful ships of the Estaban Navy that chase you around, cannot be boarded (since there is no code or map space allocated to handle this). This might be a feature worth adding at some point in the future though.

[Atreides]

Thanks for testing!

I definitely agree it needs more obvious info on how to play, maybe as notes on the objectives screen. And I think many of the actions can be made context sensitive. Like if you move a crewman to a cannon or sail, he automatically mans it; you don't have to use a right click menu. And if you move a unit next to your flagship, a prompt asks if you want to board. If you move a unit to the plank, it asks if you want to disembark.

Yeah that's usually how it is set up. But I can't blame anyone but myself for not reading the thread first. : )

The log did show some missing images very likely due to changed core paths/names. Didn't notice while playing though.

Again no problems. Although I started game on the MP server and only while there was getting constant error spam about "command removed" attack/move. So something may be amiss.

Hmm, I can't seem to find either of these errors in my own play test logs. Do you still have your logs on hand? Maybe your saves and replays too?

I can retry it and see if anything gets logged. I overwrite logs on each restart. I don't have a replay from the one where the odd MP errors showed since I, uh, ragequit after being sunk. : )

Heh. Got a Drake leader. Forgot default had flying ldrs too. Doesn't actually matter... well I guess a drake has no use for the swimming skill. Aside from submerge.
Bought a crew ignored the gaol guard and manned the ship and sailed off. Found there are lots of enemies out there and they're tougher than the gaol guards.
Disembarking was not covered in the manual so again had to figure it out. As an old Pirate not much trouble but annoying nonetheless. Made a mistake in landing near a temple I saw and trekking overland to the distillery. Ship got boarded with only the L0 Ruffians left behind, didn't know I needed to man it better. Beat them off anyways as crew rushed back.
This time tried to sail to port but got intercepted by a nasty ship which had as much firepower as mine did. Got sunk. Crew drowned. Captain survived. Maybe because he could fly. Wasn't he supposed to go down with his ship?

This brings back many memories of playing this thing 12+ years ago. :D

Shipyard right there but 300 g so rather than wait 150 turns @ 2 income I quit.

Never tried this myself, but I think what the scenario expects us to do when we get marooned is sack the nearest settlement. If you capture some villages, you also get +4 income, since apparently villages still provide upkeep (food?) to offset the cost of your pirate band.

May or may not be more fun to simply reload, though.

Yeah I considered taking more villages (not hard with a flying leader!) all over but decided I'd rather start over. Reloading alas is against my "religion". ; )

Also could not board enemy ship from mine (or didn't find command although I tried everything (Ye Olde Pirate knows many tricks) so perhaps that's broken?

Going by the wml code, boarding can only be done to other player ships (including any "human" players set to default AI in the scenario set up) whereas those powerful ships of the Estaban Navy that chase you around, cannot be boarded (since there is no code or map space allocated to handle this). This might be a feature worth adding at some point in the future though.

Ahhh thanks for clearing that up. I guess I'm still getting all the various sides straightened out. Estibanians are the sort of NPC/monsters in the scenario. Hmmm this thing should be a RIOT to play vs other humans.

p.s. OK ran it again while on the MP server and while it doesn't seem to cause any problems at all it is quite annoying to have the errors popping up with a little beep constantly. I can foresee this being a major problem if people want to play it vs other humans.

The log does not seem to be recording the errors though! Likely because they aren't errors. : )

Please find attached the save and the log (FWIW).

OK instant update: I tried to get a screenshot of the errors but when I went onto the online server and reloaded the game there were no more errors... so the save I include will also likely be useless.
Insta insta update, started a new one and got a screenshot. The errors pop up for example when manning a cannon. Also when attacking. And buying recruits at the tavern.

Screenshot

Oh also I suspect that there may be a balance problem when playing with less than 6. I think I recall that it was originally setup for 6 only? Could it be that the numbers of Estibanians isn't being scaled down when there are less than 6? I was being pursued by 3-4 ships at once and of course got annihilated when playing solo. Each time I tried.

p.s. A solution is to increase gold by the amount the missing players would have had. Solo 600 gp works. 2p would be 300 each, etc.

[name]

OK ran it again while on the MP server and while it doesn't seem to cause any problems at all it is quite annoying to have the errors popping up with a little beep constantly. I can foresee this being a major problem if people want to play it vs other humans.

Insta insta update, started a new one and got a screenshot. The errors pop up for example when manning a cannon. Also when attacking. And buying recruits at the tavern.

So far I am having trouble reproducing the errors in the screenshot. I opened two wesnoth clients, then with one started a THS game and joined with the other client as a different player. Tried manning cannons, attacking and recruiting... but unfortunately no error messages. Could the errors be due to the other mods you have installed?

For some good news, looking at your log, I was able to find and fix the broken image paths you reported earlier.

Oh also I suspect that there may be a balance problem when playing with less than 6. I think I recall that it was originally setup for 6 only? Could it be that the numbers of Estibanians isn't being scaled down when there are less than 6? I was being pursued by 3-4 ships at once and of course got annihilated when playing solo. Each time I tried.

Looking at the code, the scenario does reduce the size of the first wave of enemy ships when there are fewer players... but there is no reduction for the later waves. Also, it looks there are only four waves and then nothing more spawns past that point. So I should improve the enemy spawning code it looks like.

Currently one pirate galleon and one Man Of War is spawns every 10 turns.

A solution is to increase gold by the amount the missing players would have had. Solo 600 gp works. 2p would be 300 each, etc.

That should be a good player-side solution for the interim.

[Lord-Knightmare]

I tried this for a bit. Seems to have a lot of UX (User Experience) issues. Not surprised though, since it was made when UX didn't exist yet. I will compile a list of changes to be done once I have played through it. Escaped from the Gaol just now.

[Atreides]

So far I am having trouble reproducing the errors in the screenshot. I opened two wesnoth clients, then with one started a THS game and joined with the other client as a different player. Tried manning cannons, attacking and recruiting... but unfortunately no error messages. Could the errors be due to the other mods you have installed?

Alas I anticipated that and ran it without any mods enabled.


Well let's wait and see if anyone else is getting these.

[Atreides]

I tried this for a bit. Seems to have a lot of UX (User Experience) issues. Not surprised though, since it was made when UX didn't exist yet. I will compile a list of changes to be done once I have played through it. Escaped from the Gaol just now.

We've been paroled on good behaviour actually. Promised not to be Piratey. Recidivists all of us! : )

[name]

Alas I anticipated that and ran it without any mods enabled.

I just noticed you played on BfW 1.16.2... when you get the chance could you try again on the latest 1.16.5? This may be the culprit, since I have been working off of 1.16.5 (with Windows 10). If possible, also try testing THS before reinstalling your other mods.

I will compile a list of changes to be done once I have played through it.

Feels like the most pressing of these is replacing player dependency on the right click menu with moveto events for (dis)embarking crew and (un)manning crew stations.

[Atreides]

Alas I anticipated that and ran it without any mods enabled.

I just noticed you played on BfW 1.16.2... when you get the chance could you try again on the latest 1.16.5? This may be the culprit, since I have been working off of 1.16.5 (with Windows 10). If possible, also try testing THS before reinstalling your other mods.

Alas I can't upgrade at the current moment. Flatpak and Debian 9 (which I need to upgrade first) are currently incompatible. I've kept a careful eye on the new releases though and there's nothing in them that would have any effect.

The culprit could also be a case difference since Windows and Linux handle them with different degrees of latitude. If someone else running Linux gets the same displays we'll know!

[Atreides]

Looking at the code, the scenario does reduce the size of the first wave of enemy ships when there are fewer players... but there is no reduction for the later waves. Also, it looks there are only four waves and then nothing more spawns past that point. So I should improve the enemy spawning code it looks like.

Currently one pirate galleon and one Man Of War is spawns every 10 turns.

I've had a look too and it looks like it was intended to only place 2/4 new ships on turns 10/20/30 IF there were no ships of that type left. That's actually not so bad solo since you start vs 1 pirate galleon (weak) on turn 3 and on turn 10 2 MoW arrive (plus 2 PG if the 1st was sunk).

I say intended because I had 3 MoW chasing me solo at one point. Something is fishy. : )

Fishy too was another solo try where I used a ram attack vs the MoW and it simply vanished.

Oh and also the bank interest rates are too high at 7-9%. 1-3% would be best. Apparently it's a known exploit to simply bank your starting cash and wait a little until you have 1000's gold. Also the bank can be used by any unit, not just the Captain which allows you to station a banker and deposit/withdraw cash every turn. Another terrible exploit. Only the Captain should be allowed to use the bank (in line with the other special buildings).

p.s.
I figured out the problem. The players variable assumed that there was no shuffle (since this is a very old addon that makes perfect sense) so in order to fix several bugs (when shuffle is on as I always have it) simply insert disallow_shuffle=yes into all 6 player sides (there's no real need to shuffle players I guess since the start is symmetrical... uh sort of... well close enough) and everything works fine.

So fish caught, fried and eaten with a slice of lemon.

p.p.s.
Found out why the reinforcement MoW arrive no matter what. It was checking for type Man Of War which is the name not the type so the conditional not never activated. Changed to Galleon, should work now.

I clubbed that fish like a Hvy Infman would and I really hope that was the last of the fish... : )

p.p.p.s.
DAMN FISH die! : )
Yeah I found out a nasty bug with the MoW... kill one and they ALL sink. Old addons often use identical id's for units (maybe older wesnoth's didn't matter) and they're all the same. As usual it is safest not to assign a custom id to a unit unless you'll actually use it (and the flagships do! but fortunately all 6 have unique id's). So I just commented out the id's (it'll assign a random one).

p.p.p.p.s.
Woops. I was a bit overzealous in commenting out id=. One was in a kill tag (to kill some scout bat which are not used anymore) which now kills everything... New scenario file uploaded (or just uncomment the scout bat id).

Oh tiny fix: bola proj had old path but are now in core so I corrected that in ships.cfg - new file uploaded.

So... I offer up my modded version with all these things fixed (also the older bugs I reported about broken images plus some errors I found in the log about out of range was just a misplaced ") and the bank rates set down to a realistic 1-3%.

[name]

Thanks for all the fixes!

I combined them with some of my local fixes and set up a repository for the project on Github.

Here is the new alpha build:

The_High_Seas Alpha-1.zip

(50.09 KiB) Downloaded 39 times

Only the Captain should be allowed to use the bank (in line with the other special buildings).

I agree, but unfortunately I could not apply this particular fix as it broke bank raiding by blocking regular crew from entering the raid.

Oh and also the bank interest rates are too high at 7-9%. 1-3% would be best.

Can you still access your funds after someone has raided that particular bank (or all the banks) though? I am wondering if the rate may be that high to compensate for the risk of losing everything you deposited to criminal behavior from other players (those bastards!)

[Atreides]

Thanks for all the fixes!

I combined them with some of my local fixes and set up a repository for the project on Github.

Here is the new alpha build: The_High_Seas Alpha-1.zip

Only the Captain should be allowed to use the bank (in line with the other special buildings).

I agree, but unfortunately I could not apply this particular fix as it broke bank raiding by blocking regular crew from entering the raid.

Oh! I didn't realize that. Yeah it would suck not being able to rob the banks. : ) Bank robbery is still on my Wesnoth todo list... guess that's why I didn't notice it.

Oh and also the bank interest rates are too high at 7-9%. 1-3% would be best.

Can you still access your funds after someone has raided that particular bank (or all the banks) though? I am wondering if the rate may be that high to compensate for the risk of losing everything you deposited to criminal behavior from other players (those bastards!)

I saw some code for when the bank had been raided, it says it is closed so I'd say any deposits must be inaccessible then. Each bank is separate too.
I was inspired by an actual online match I took part in though. My team mate decided to put money in the bank and exploit the great rate (his words). In a few turns he had loads of gold. I guess though in the end it didn't matter because we, errr, lost anyways...
In another solo game I tried his trick and ended up with 16000 gold. More than I really could use and I won vs the AI not because of it...
So I guess it probably doesn't really matter what the rate is, banks seem to have little effect on the game other than being good raiding targets!

[name]

It looks like we are running out of bugs to fix, which means our little restoration project has almost completed its first phase. The High Seas is restored to its former functionality.

Now it is time to start thinking about where to take it next, which raises some interesting questions:

• How should existing features be changed?
• What new features should be implemented?
• Which feature improvements are top priority?
• At what point should THS return to the addons server?
• Should we preserve a restored but unmodified version of THS for its historical value?

So I guess it probably doesn't really matter what the rate is, banks seem to have little effect on the game other than being good raiding targets!

Actually, I think you are correct that the rate should be lowered, I am just not sure by how much. If the rate is too high, it rewards a player for camping at a bank they have heavily invested in, to protect it while milking the interest. And perhaps then unleashing a hundreds-strong army of petty criminals and soldiers of fortune. Which would be very unpiratelike.

[Atreides]

It looks like we are running out of bugs to fix, which means our little restoration project has almost completed its first phase. The High Seas is restored to its former functionality.

Now it is time to start thinking about where to take it next, which raises some interesting questions:

• How should existing features be changed?
• What new features should be implemented?
• Which feature improvements are top priority?
• At what point should THS return to the addons server?
• Should we preserve a restored but unmodified version of THS for its historical value?

So I guess it probably doesn't really matter what the rate is, banks seem to have little effect on the game other than being good raiding targets!

Actually, I think you are correct that the rate should be lowered, I am just not sure by how much. If the rate is too high, it rewards a player for camping at a bank they have heavily invested in, to protect it while milking the interest. And perhaps then unleashing a hundreds-strong army of petty criminals and soldiers of fortune. Which would be very unpiratelike.

Yep, that's a possible strategy although I'm not sure it would pay off quickly enough. It might if the game goes long. Which it can. And yeah it's supposed to be about Pirates not Bankers, hahaha. The rate I tried was just something I thought sounded "realistic". I think it is probably too low. If you buy a cheap crew and invest 40 gp in the nearest bank (7 or 1%) you get either 2.8 gp or 0.4 gp per turn. After say 30 turns that's either about 90 or 15 gp interest. Not counting extra investments (the banker unit can deposit surplus cash from trading runs any time). You start the game with 6 goods too, so if you turn them into gp right away and buy none you can invest even more. About 100-200 gp depending on the prices you get. 140 @ 7% is 10 gp/turn which comes to more than 300 in 30 turns. Hmmm it's not too outrageous I suppose. You can also make great profits by trading although the risk is much higher. Of course there is also the effect of compound interest which I believe is exponentially higher as the rate climbs? Not sure.

Heh, I hope someone who knows business reads this and corrects all my nonsense.

I've also been musing about the bank access for non leaders. I'm sure there's a way to put in a condition on the deposit/withdraw options to only display them to leaders as there is already a condition to hide them based on gold balance. Bob used a macro (THS_CONDITION) and it works with variables that are set. Possibly it can access the unit's can_recruit variable. Something like {THS_CONDITION unit.canrecruit equals yes}. Tried it. Works just fine.

Come to think of it the non leader banking is probably more important than the rate. A high rate is not a big deal if it means the leader has to make his way to the bank everytime he wants to deposit/withdraw. In fact a high rate would probably be needed if only leaders can bank.

p.s.
I ran a game with my little mod and I tried to use the banking strat. It worked, I guess... I won but it was a close call early on when I went to the Ganton Bank I was attacked by a MoW + Pirate Galeon (are these traitors hired by the Estibanians or what? : ) while only having a crew of 4 because I deposit all my cash + trade profits in the bank. 140 gp from 100 start + 40 trade goods (lousy prices in Ganton). By turn 10 I had 206. Took out 100 and invested in extra cannon plus a crew. By turn 20 I'd sunk the MoW & Pir Gal and had 285 in bank. Decided to sail to Ramar where the 9% bank is and deposited 40 gp I had spare. Decided to leave and buy some trade goods. Went back to Ganton Bank and by turn 30 had 450ish gp. Took out 400 to buy goods. Sailing north to buy jewels (because a MoW was lurking in south where rum is) I ran across a sea serpent, killed it and won. Was playing only to 20 VP.
I'd say that restricting banking to leaders causes very little trouble for the player and that the current rates seem OK. Maybe a tich generous... I dunno maybe 4,5,6% might be better? One plus of lower rates is that it makes the harder to reach banks more appealing. Ramar would be 1.5 times better than Ganton. Ramar is deep inland in the southern desert and you have pass through drakes and then scorpions to reach it.
Oh and I may have found another bug. I was boarded twice by PirGals so had 2 fencers on board at one point. Killed one and the 2nd fencer vanished. Might be a id= thing again although I thought all were fixed. Just looked and I missed one for id=Pirate in the boarding section. (I blame Kate! ; )

I tried going to the github link but it is 404. I guess in the meanwhile I'll upload the fix/mod here.