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Question about cannons...
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rupertlittlebear
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 2:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very serious history of bad decisions on this game.
Design, management, support.

No mechanism to add cannons to a ship is beyond comprehension.

The company has abandoned its customers.
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Wolfwood
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 2:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I agree that Pirates! has suffered a great deal of pains ever since it was released.

But I blame Atari for nearly all of them and I'm willing to give time to the new T2K / Firaxis alliance.

We must also remember that the PC and X-Box versions were designed by different teams. The X-Box team was apparently given more leeway in the design and they were not as loyal to the original as the PC version's programmers were.
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SlipperyJim
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 2:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gee, I'm actually enjoying Pirates, even with the v1.01 patch. Whether or not we ever see a v1.02 patch, don't they deserve some credit for making a good game?

To each his own, I guess....
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rupertlittlebear
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 3:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

SlipperyJim wrote:
Gee, I'm actually enjoying Pirates, even with the v1.01 patch. Whether or not we ever see a v1.02 patch, don't they deserve some credit for making a good game?

To each his own, I guess....
And the Titanic was a Great Ship.
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Erisian Paladin
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 9:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wolfwood wrote:
@Erisian Paladin: Can you try this out? Shoot at a ship until most of its cannons are gone, then capture it and have if fixed to see if the cannons come back?


Well, Mr. Wolfwood, that is a brilliant idea Smile

I sailed out onto the shimmering seas with my trusty Brig of War to collect a little data on the subject.

Here is a list of Ships Captured, listing Cannon at the start of the fight/at the end of the fight, Hull/Sail damage I inflicted capturing them, if they were captured by Sword or be Surrender, and how many cannon they had on my Fleet Status Screen.

SHIP TYPE--------Start/End-------Hull%/Sail%------SW or SU------#CFSS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brig of War---------26/8------------79%/100%----------SW-------------8
Merchantman-------14/8------------92%/55%-----------SU-------------14
Sloop of War--------14/8------------82%/65%-----------SW-------------8
East Indiaman------20/8------------92%/100%----------SU-------------20
Frigate---------------32/8------------80%/72%-----------SU-------------32
Frigate---------------32/8------------67%/100%----------SU-------------32
Sloop of War--------14/8------------62%/22%-----------SW-------------8
Merchantman-------14/8-------------82%/70%-----------SU------------14
War Galleon--------30/16------------89%/100%----------SU------------30
Royal Galleon-------14/8-------------97%/88%-----------SU------------14
War Galleon---------30/18-----------21%/21%-----------SW-----------30*
Trade Galleon-------12/8-------------48%/70%-----------SU------------12
Fast Galleon---------24/10------------34%/43%----------SU------------24
Sloop of War--------14/8-------------84%/12%-----------SW------------8
Coastal Barque------10/8------------75%/56%-----------SU------------10
Sloop of War---------14/8------------23%/99%-----------SW------------8
Trade Galleon--------10/8------------59%/34%-----------SU------------10
Royal Sloop----------20/8-------------48%/22%----------SW------------8
War Galleon----------28/8------------87%/80%-----------SU------------28
East Indiaman--------20/8-----------52%/100%----------SU------------20

This list excludes the ones I inadvertently sank trying to get rid of as many cannon as possible Wink

Now, off we go to analyze the data... Smile

Except for the single anomaly, marked with the asterisk, all the ships that surrendered were restored to their pre-battle cannon load and all the ones that were taken by the Sword remained at their post-battle, damaged cannon load.

I'm guessing that the anomaly has something to do with the fact that that particular ship was one of the "Evil" Guys with a piece of the map to my lost sister...

Also, repairing the ships when I got to port did nothing to change the number of cannon they carried...

By the way, thanks for the idea Mr. Wolfwood... In the process of collecting this data, I so thouroughly ticked off the French that they decided to send a Ship of the Line after me...

She makes SUCH a pretty Flagship now... Sailor
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Erisian Paladin
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 10:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oops... Forgot a couple things...

No matter how much damage I did, no ship ever lost any of those last 8 cannon.

Even with all the damage I took while I was counting the number of cannon dots my opponents had at the beginning of each battle, I didn't lose a single cannon on my Flagship.

The Ship of the Line the French generously "donated" to me has 40 Cannon. If it's possible to have more than 40 then there is a design error as the row of circles representing your cannon reaches the end of the Hull Bar at that point... More than 40 cannons and they'd appear under the Ship's Flag at the end of the Hull Bar.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you... 40 cannon are plenty Wink

One broadside of Chain Shot and the non-combat vessels lose their masts and surrender... Sailor
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Wolfwood
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 1:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very interesting data there, Erisian Paladin! Very interesting, indeed.

I don't think anyone can explain this away by saying that it was a smart choice from the programmers. It could not be more illogical than this...

Basically, you will want your enemies to surrender, if you want to capture and keep the ship and have lots of cannon aboard. If you enter the sword fight, you will commandeer a crippled ship. The only exception being the named evil guys, whose ships seem to maintain their original load of cannons after capture.

Good work, Erisian Paladin! Sailor
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rupertlittlebear
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 3:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wolfwood wrote:
Very interesting data there, Erisian Paladin! Very interesting, indeed.

I don't think anyone can explain this away by saying that it was a smart choice from the programmers. It could not be more illogical than this...

Basically, you will want your enemies to surrender, if you want to capture and keep the ship and have lots of cannon aboard. If you enter the sword fight, you will commandeer a crippled ship. The only exception being the named evil guys, whose ships seem to maintain their original load of cannons after capture.

Good work, Erisian Paladin! Sailor
Do I hear "Game Killing Bug"
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Wolfwood
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 6:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, it doesn't kill it (the game doesn't crash and you can still work around the problem), but it sounds like a bug that will cause a lot of annoyance amongst players. Perhaps we can call it a "crippling bug"... Happy Smurf Pirate

I wonder how such bugs can crop up after all this extra time the programmers had to work on the X-Box version...
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Last edited by Wolfwood on Sun Jul 17, 2005 6:10 am; edited 1 time in total
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Wolfwood
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 6:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

BTW: I have no idea how console games work when it comes to patching games... Is it even possible?
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Erisian Paladin
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 1:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd be willing to bet it's more than possible to patch this, as this version is already set to accomidate Content Download via Xbox Live... I have several other games that were patched that way. I'd bet they could patch it that way, but it'd likely take a while.

And, you know, I don't really mind... Sailor

Is it an annoying problem if you don't understand how it works? You betcha... Mad

Is it a hinderance if you are aware of it? Not really... Smile

It just means that, if you come across a ship you might want to be using, don't use Round Shot on her... Sailor

That way, if they don't surrender and you end up crossing swords with her Captain, it doesn't matter anyway since I've never seen Chain or Grape Shot knock out a single cannon.

I'd have no problem at all with this new way of handling the cannon if you could repair cannon damage at the shipwright. It comes much closer to capturing the feel of the grand old vessels used in the 17th century... It wasn't like now, where every class of naval ship is a clone of the first ship of the new class. Individual ships had individual personalities and deckplans, even within the same general class of ship, leading to vastly differing cannon load and caliber/bore.

My disagreement is with the permanent cannon loss... What determines the number of cannon on a wooden ship isn't the size or class of the ship, but rather the number of gun emplacements the shipwright built into her during construction. Cannon of the era require special fittings to anchor them in place and gun ports to fire through, and that was the purpose of the gun emplacement.

While it would be possible to fire a cannon from the deck, sans emplacement, it would most likely lead to some unpleasant results. The fittings of the gun emplacement anchor the gun carriage to restrict how far the recoil can knock the gun back. On a battlefield there is room for the recoil, on a ship not so much Wink

No matter how severe the battle damage, the repairs of a ship would include repairing the damaged gun emplacements. So unless every vessel you board has a team of Amazing Ninja Carpenters on board, working furiously to redesign and rebuild the ship to include fewer gun emplacements as swords ring all around them, battle should not PERMANENTLY damage the gun capacity of a ship. Sailor

It would just be a matter of going to a shipwright, restoring the gun emplacements to working order and hauling aboard new cannon of the proper caliber/bore to be installed in the newly repaired gun emplacements.

Even with this "crippling bug", I still LOVE this game... Takes me back to the late eighties when I was spending many an hour playing the Original version on my Tandy PC... Mmmmmmm... Nostalgia... Wink
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rupertlittlebear
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 2:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wolfwood wrote:
BTW: I have no idea how console games work when it comes to patching games... Is it even possible?
Then send a new disk to all the dis-satisfied coustomers.
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dshirk
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 7:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the time you've taken to explore this Erisian. I will forward this on.
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