Aetrion Posted February 15, 2016 Share Posted February 15, 2016 One of the things I'm currently really missing in the combat system is the psychological aspect. A lot of the fighting in the age of sail came down to morale and intimidation. If you could convince an enemy that the best way for them to get out of a certain situation alive was to surrender then you could take prizes without firing a single shot. Currently surrendering is basically just losing in every way, so there is no reason to ever do it. With a system that makes surrender a viable option in a fight it'd create a much more interesting dynamic where talking to your opponent might actually under some circumstances be just as good as shooting at them, if not better. So I think it would be great if there was a system in place that did two things: 1. Allow you to offer someone a surrender with specific terms. 2. Let people see your reputation for honoring terms if someone surrenders to you. Basically when you are trying to surrender to someone you could make various offers to them what you will give them if they let you leave. Being allowed to loot your cargo obviously. A sum of gold you specify as tribute. The powder in your magazine so you are disarmed until you get to a friendly port again. Unconditional Surrender (an option they can't reject that simply makes them win the fight as though they had captured your ship) The other party would be able to see your demands and then decide if they want to Honor your terms, Betray you, or Reject the terms. If they honor the terms the fight ends, they get everything you offered them, and both ships leave. If they betray your terms the fight ends as though they had captured your ship in a boarding action. If they reject your terms the fight continues. The second part of the system deals with the reputation you gain depending on how you react to an offer of surrender. Basically it would keep track of every time you Honored, Betrayed and Rejected offers for about a month, so that people can see what they can expect from you. (Only the last result goes on your record, if you reject three offers and then honor one the record for that battle shows 1 Honor. The fight needs to end by other means than a surrender after an offer has been rejected to get a reject on your record) If you're known as being honorable and sticking to the terms of a surrender you can use that to get people to give up their cargo or disarm their ship or pay you a tribute by merely threatening to fight them. However, if you have too high of an honor score with no rejects people might try to lowball you with their offers, thinking you just accept any surrender. If you have a few betrays on your reputation people are unlikely to offer surrenders to you. Likewise if you have a lot of rejects people will think you only accept unreasonable terms and it's better to fight you. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Nukem Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 Awesome idea^ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hexxus674 Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 I agree that there needs to be a system for surrender that will encourage it. Right now, (with ai) you can out run a merchant destroy it sails to 40% kill half the crew, and when you board it they will still fight to the death. During the time period this game is set in, it was common for a merchant to surrender without firing a shot if they were slower than a warship. My suggestion (just as an alternative) would be to implement this mechanic to the game through the officer system. Maybe something along the lines of giving officers experience and if you lose a fight outright then the officers are killed. If you surrender they will be taken prisoner for a certain amount of time (24 real time hours? 12?) And then "exchanged" (simply returned?) Witt most if not all experience intact. This system would have a downside to losing a fight either by surrender or fight to the death. Of course, pirates were shown no mercy and gave no mercy in return, so a pirate fight would always be to the death. Like I said, just an idea to try and add some depth and realism to losing a fight. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aetrion Posted February 16, 2016 Author Share Posted February 16, 2016 (edited) Pirates were shown no mercy, but to pirates in particular having people surrender to them was an important part of their trade, because at the end of the day nobody was paying pirates to kill people and sink ships, and every lost man, every cannonball fired, every hole in the ship to fix would just hurt their bottom line. Having a reputation for being merciless wouldn't have payed off at all for pirates, it would have just made their job more difficult. What they wanted was a reputation for being merciless to those who didn't surrender. Edited February 16, 2016 by Aetrion 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hexxus674 Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 Good point aetrion. I guess I was thinking as a naval captain not a trade captain. If a pirate was caught by a warship then the pirates would tend to fight to the last man because they knew they would be hung if captured. On the flip side, the phrase "dead men tell no tales" was started because if a trade ship was captured by pirates at sea, then killing every man woman and child of the crew/ passengers would leave no one to finger them as pirates. The ship would just disappear as far as anyone on shore was concerned. It could have been a storm, or rotten planking, or toredo worms, or? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aetrion Posted February 16, 2016 Author Share Posted February 16, 2016 (edited) I guess it depends on who they raided. If it was someone who was likely to launch some kind of punitive expedition to hunt down the pirates they might have preferred to leave no witnesses. Of course that would never work in this game since the player can always tell someone. Edited February 16, 2016 by Aetrion Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanugane Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 Idea is great. But how to make it, should be a little different I think. Let's take a look: Pirate Morgan attacks a Spanish Huan de Pedro. (Both players obviously). When a battle starts, Pirate Morgan can say in chat for a hostile player to stop. There should be a distance between ships ~500m-1km for Negotiations option to be available, which can be accessed from Escape-->Negotiations. There, Pirate can select a ship and type (Trade, Information share, Demands). First two are self-explaining. Demands is where, as Aetrion suggested, is an option where Pirate can make up demands from his victim. Demands such as: Gold. Not higher than 10-15% from the player total gold. 20-40% from total amount of goods that player currently carries. There should be a timeout for demand, like 5 minutes to avoid trolling and afkers. Victim has options such as: Accept. Reject. Counter-options. Accept - Demands are successful. Battle ends and closes and Pirate has a usual reward menu with goods and gold he has just taken from his victim. Reject - Window closes, next negotiations are available in 5 minutes. (Again, to avoid spam trolling), battle goes on. Counter-Options - Victim suggests his terms of surrender if Victim wants to take a chance and argue with his predator. (Counter-Options cant be done more than 1 time per "Negotiations" to avoid non-stop counter-options on every Pirate demand.) Negotiations option should not be available if a battle counts more than four ships.. If it is a group that has attacked a victim, only a group leader can launch negotiations. To avoid trolling, during negotiations, both ships can't be damaged. (To avoid trollers again >_<). Who can launch negotiations first in a 1vs1 fight? Attacker only. For trade option, we should get option "Sea" next to Attack, so we can suggest/offer another player join instance for negotiations/trade without starting a battle. Something like this. Because it would be stupid if someone "attacks" you only to trade with you and others that go past you, will see crossed swords and could jump in and start blazing lazors all sides. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robaroo Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 Love the idea.....always figured it would be great as a pirate to let a merchant player offer me gold to let him go. Currently i have to destroy him or take all his shit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghroznak Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 Surrendering system really needs to be added. Sure, there is a surrender option now, but you lose your cargo and your ship (durability hit) if you surrender. So why bother surrendering? You lose nothing more if you fight to the bitter end, but at least that way you can inflict some repair cost and whatnot on your enemy in the process. If there is a proper negotiation "minigame" of sorts where you can agree on terms then there might not even be a need to fire a single shot. A fast ship like the Renommee might catch a Trader Snow and open negotiations... the Snow will have no chance to escape, nor a chance to fight, so once caught in a battle then a negotiation and agreement can be struck within minutes, thus leaving Trader to carry on with at least some of his gold and resources, and an intact ship... while pirate (or privateer, you know...) gets a slice of loot as well. Of course, in no way am I saying negotiations would always happen, or that pirates and privateers will get things for free. There'll be plenty of cases where a fight will happen, or an attempt to flee will happen.. but in those cases, the negotiation can happen again once the ship has been overtaken, or sufficiently damaged as to offer no escape... or they simply escape and that is the end of it. Either way, a surrender option and negotiation would be a great addition to the game as it would give the game more content and options, thus making the game better. It's things like this feature that really help flesh out the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tipsypo Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 Pirates were shown no mercy, but to pirates in particular having people surrender to them was an important part of their trade, because at the end of the day nobody was paying pirates to kill people and sink ships, and every lost man, every cannonball fired, every hole in the ship to fix would just hurt their bottom line. Having a reputation for being merciless wouldn't have payed off at all for pirates, it would have just made their job more difficult. What they wanted was a reputation for being merciless to those who didn't surrender. Was at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard not too long ago, there was an pirates ensign in the museum, though rather than black was red, and stated it meant that those using the ensign showed no mercy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomas MacMoragh Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 Also at least with AI track damage to there moral when there moral is broken the ship surinders that often happened before the ship was sunk in history Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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