Carribean mod

[Goatfoam]

Because I get distracted very easily, and also due to the lack of Predator resources out there, I'm placing my AvP mod on hold until I get interested in it again.

Okay, so it's mostly because I want to make a pirates mod. As in 15th Century "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum", and "Avast, ye filthy land-lubbers!" pirates.

I already have a fair number of ideas, thanks to Fyron and Hugh, but what would people like to see in this kind of mod?

You all want ninja pirates, right?

[Kana]

I had thought about a 'Sailing Ships/Ships of the Line/Cannons and Such' MOD myself. Mostly just alot of space in my brain from when I first started playing SE3.

1. Different size cannons of course.

2. Boarding Parties...lots of boarding parties.

3. Buried Treasure...(like ruins?)

4. Sails for movement...(instead of engines)

5. NO SHIELDS! Armor is god. Wooden Armor !!

6. Maybe different kinds of Cannon rounds...
Solid shot, Exploding Shot, Heated Shot,
Grape Shot, Chain Shot.

Ok...I'm sure I can go on...but I don't want to jump on your parade...If you can pick up a copy of GURPS 'Swashbucklers' it might even give you some more ideas...

Good Luck,

Kana

[Goatfoam]

If you're still in the market, Kana, two heads are always better than one. It could be the start of a beautiful relationship.

I haven't done a whole lot of work on it yet - I intended to start tomorrow after a good sleep and a few pints, but it just kept buzzing around my head so I'm still awake. Here's what I have so far in my notepad:

Component Ideas. Lots of these will be in the form of crew.

Bridge - Captain.
Aux. Control - First Mate
Life Support - Food Storage.
Crew Quarters - Crew.

Food storage will remain basically the same, but later on, once certain tech areas have been researched, the crew, First Mate and Captain will be upgradeable. For instance, Captain could become Captain - Swashbuckler (Great boarding defense) or Captain - Tactician (Bonus to attack/defense). Similarly, upgraded crew would provide greater boarding defense, bonus movement, added attack or defense, special combat actions, etc.

Engines -
Standard Movement - Sails.
Bonus Movement - Navigator.
Combat Movement - Oars.

Sails would obviously be the main form of propulsion, with Navigators adding to this movement and Oars being used for combat. All three will be upgradeable.

Weapons -
Direct Fire - Standard Ship Cannon
- Chainshot (Destroy Masts/Sails)
- Grapeshot (Higher damage, much shorter range)
- Rifled Cannon (Long range, lower damage?)
- Mortar (Inaccurate, ignores armor, good damage)
- Muskets (Takes out boarding parties/Security)
- Archers (As muskets, slightly longer range, less damage)
Warheads - Ship Ram

Battles should be quite long, drawn out affairs, with plenty of chance for the time limit to run out before the end in larger fights. The majority of "kills" will come from boarding actions, with cannon-fire damaging ships to be boarded later.

Cargo/Supply-
Cargo - Hold
Supply - Supply Storage

Cargo will be mainly used for troops in this mod. Supply will be required to travel long distances. I intend to mainly use Organics as maintenance, if there is a way to make that work.

That's all I've come up with so far, but I'll probably carry on thinking about it after I post this.

The stuff Fyron and I were discussing earlier included:

Planets - Islands. Three types, colonisable from the start dependent on race (Desert Island, Cave Complex, Volcanic Island). All Planets would be Oxygen, but small in size.

Resources - Minerals == Wood, Organics == Food, Radioactives == Gunpowder.

Black Holes - Whirlpools
Nebula - Fog Banks
Ion Storms - Reefs, Rocks, and small fog banks

Leaky Armor. Stars would be non-existant.

There was probably more but I've managed to lose it. I'm sure I'll remember it at some point.

Oh, and Ninja Pirates.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Originally posted by Goatfoam:

Oh, and Ninja Pirates.

Ninja Pirate Mice?

[Paul1980au]

Interesting mod and good for diversification of the game SE4 mod efforts - hope you put it in for SE5 to

[Beck]

Just FYI, grapeshot was used to kill crew. The weight of the shot just bounced off wooden decks. Fired down the length of a ship they were deadly since the shot bounced around till it expended its energy or hit something soft, ie. crew. If you want something to match your description, it would be doubleshot which was the short range, high damage shot of choice. Also, for the Age of Sail period, archers would have been ancient technology and not in use. If your looking for a long range, less damage option against crew/security, I would use the muskets and use either the grapeshot (above) or deck guns (basically a hand held cannon used by marines to fire grapeshot)for a greater damage, shorter range option. A caveat about oars, during the period only the smallest of the ships would have been so equipped (typically 20 guns or less having a class rating of 5 or 6, though most would have been 6). No Ships of the Line were so equipped, they simply were too large and weighted too much for oars to be useful. Of course you can always let any ship use them for the fun or gameplay factor or its a way of making small ships more useful over larger ships. A more common approach used by ships of all sizes to improve their speed was the lining of the hull below the waterline with copper. Wood in contact with the sea has problems with barnacle growth which in turn adds to the friction of moving through the water slowing it down. Copper lining eliminated this since barnacles could not attach themselves to hulls so lined. Mortars of the period were useless against any moving target, they were too slow to load, target and fire (ie. reload 5 or 6). They were only used against fixed targets like forts, in the parlance of SE4, they are planet only weapons. They also take up a lot of room. Mortars on ships were used as singles or pairs (the ships were called bomb ketches). Heated shot should be restricted to weapons platforms (forts?) as it was never used by ships on the high seas, too dangerous. Exploding shot of the period were the bombs fired by mortars. No other weapons had any exploding shot. By this time period, ramming was not really not used. If you could get close enough to ram an enemy ship, why not simply board and capture it? Instead,how about fireships for warheads? They were not used often, but every fleet had them.

[Goatfoam]

Yeah, my initial intent for the grapeshot was for crew killing purposes, I just didn't type it in. Doubleshot has been noted, definitely, and will be added.

Archers... these would only be used by certain 'races'. Colonial types wouldn't really bother because they'd have plenty of supplies from their countries, but pirates may be slightly more inclined, especially if muskets were in short supply. No matter how much gunpowder changed warfare, I can still picture some nefarious types using fire arrows, especially pirate/savage types.

As for mortars... I do agree with you, but for the sake of variety I'd like to see them in ship-to-ship combat, too. They'd have a very low accuracy, for the reasons you mentioned (which would be made up for somewhat when targetting planets), but the fact that they'd ignore armor (since they'd be coming straight down on the deck) could make them slightly useful. But yes, their main purpose would be for bombarding islands.

The copper lining of the hulls is a good idea, and will definitely be going into the mod. Perhaps even serving as a form of leaky armor in conjunction with the movement bonus - but yeah, I'd still like to include oars, though, mainly due to the scene from the film Pirates of the Caribbean. They'd give higher movement bonuses to smaller ships (though not a whole lot, since they would have less oars than larger ships equipped with them).

Also, the overall idea was to leave the caribbean contested until somebody won. That is to say, technology will continue to increase steadily beyond the 15th century (not too far, though), the main theme of the game is wooden ships.

Here's some other things for you guys to chew over:

Fighters - Row boats? Is it possible to allow fighters to use the boarding attack? These would be high KT fighters, obviously, with a very large ship being able to carry around 4, total.

Mines - Did they use mines? Or anything that could be used as mines?

[Goatfoam]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Goatfoam:

Oh, and Ninja Pirates.

Ninja Pirate Mice?

---

I can see it now.

"Cap'n, all our cheese is gone!" said One-Eyed Bastard.

"Yarr, ye great oaf! I told ye to put the traps down, ye one-eyed son of a barnacle!" The Captain didn't look happy.

"I did Cap'n, I did! No mouse could've got past 'em all, I says!"

A single mouse, dressed all in black and wearing a triangular hat, was watching them from the shadows of the rigging. He took another bite from his pawful of cheese and then black-flipped into the air - disappearing in a puff of smoke.

[Beck]

Mines - Did they use mines? Or anything that could be used as mines?

For the time period, they do not use anything close to resembling mines. I can not think of anything period they could represent off the top of my head.

Fighters - Row boats? Is it possible to allow fighters to use the boarding attack? These would be high KT fighters, obviously, with a very large ship being able to carry around 4, total.

Unfortunately they can not use the boarding attack. Fighters could however represent gunboats. These were what amounted to large rowboats with a single gun mounted in the bow. Used mostly on large lakes they really weren't launched from large ships, but for game purposes I wouldn't see a problem given the small number that could be launched this way. You could also have fireships launched in this fashion or as drones. Its looks like you're towards having period flavor and not necessarily historical accuracy and given the tools you have in SE4 for making such a mod it is probably the only way to go. It broadens the choices you have to offer and the strategic issues a player should face.

[JLS]

I also like this Idea for a MOD theme:

Redo the Planet pics to look like the Islands and the American Coasts along with the West African Coast (perhaps even western Europe ports) and the nearby strategic Islands to include Azores, Canarys, Verdi etc.
Warp Points to represent SEA LANES.

Stay true to form!!! and go for it

(Wooden Ships and Iron Men) and all that rah

Hmm, possible pics there and other games

= = = = = = =
I always wanted to do a se4 Pacific War type MOD with a coast lines, Islands, Sea Lanes and much-much more. This could be made a spectacular se4 MOD - and all the tools are there

But no time and plenty of ideas.

[ July 06, 2004, 00:45: Message edited by: JLS ]