Post Battle Weapons Recovery

[pandakraut]

In the intro battle of the campaign the player is provided with units that will not be part of their navy going forward. However, the player does recover a percentage of weapons from any losses these units take. This results in a situation where the player is encouraged to get as many of their units killed as possible so that they receive the maximum amount of weapons going into the campaign.

Possible solutions:

1) Remove weapon recovery from units not assigned to the player's forces and increase battle rewards to compensate. This would mean the player has no reason to spend time taking extra casualties, but there is also no particular reason to keep them safe either.

2) All remaining units in the intro battle stay under the players command. This gives the player plenty of incentive to take as few casualties as possible, but it also makes success in the first mission more mandatory for a successful campaign. It would also currently give the player access to far more units and men than they would under the current system which would probably require other aspects of the campaign or the intro battle to be changed to compensate.

3) Add weapon recovery rates for surviving units that will not be part of the player's forces. This recovery rate would be higher than the recovery rate for taking casualties. This would encourage the player to keep their units as intact as possible, while not noticeably impacting the resources available in the campaign. An additional step could also be lowering the recovery rate for any dead men from these units would add further incentives to treat them well.

A separate but related issue, is that there does not appear to be any weapons recovery from ship crew casualties on ships that have not surrendered or been sunk. There is also no crew weapons recovery from enemy ships that have been captured. Both of these would be nice to have added.

[WilliamTheIII]

20 hours ago, pandakraut said:

All remaining units in the intro battle stay under the players command.

This essentially happens but later down the line. Spoiler warning: After completing the battle Crossfire, you are given 3 troop transports that are fully loaded with soldiers. 

[ColonelHenry]

No and yes. It would be realistic. I mean, after an operation, you should recover as much weapon as possible since weapons are not cheap (at least not cheap enough to be thrown away like nothing). So your "given" troops weapons should be recovered. And yes, the capture mechanic seems very weak and unbalanced atm. You capture an enemy vessel, and you can only sell them for shit. We need to be rewarded in gold for those ships when we sell them back. We gain no cannons/weapons/crew (defectors?)/anything from those captured ships and this should be addressed.

[pandakraut]

1 hour ago, ColonelHenry said:

No and yes. It would be realistic. I mean, after an operation, you should recover as much weapon as possible since weapons are not cheap (at least not cheap enough to be thrown away like nothing). So your "given" troops weapons should be recovered. And yes, the capture mechanic seems very weak and unbalanced atm. You capture an enemy vessel, and you can only sell them for shit. We need to be rewarded in gold for those ships when we sell them back. We gain no cannons/weapons/crew (defectors?)/anything from those captured ships and this should be addressed.

My main point was focused on units that you control in battles but you do not get to carry over into the campaign. For units that carry over into the campaign you want to take as few casualties as possible because while you do recover weapons, for land units at least, it's such a low percentage that it's only a minor compensation. There is currently no incentive for the player to keep units that don't carry over alive.

Regarding capturing ships, being able to sell them for reputation seems fairly strong given that otherwise rep can only be acquired from winning battles. It also allows you to almost entirely skip spending money on buying ships since you can buy trophy ships with rep and then sell the rest to keep that chain going.

[ColonelHenry]

Again, yes and no. Yes I agree there should be some penalty for having high casualty (maybe you get less gold or your landing forces have lowered morale/easier to be captured for 1-2 turns or something along that line since you get your troops unnecessarily killed) but weapons should be recovered as much as possible.

And no, selling a friggin 5th rate for 1 reputation (you can't even take the 5th rate you capture) is unbalanced and ridiculous, you lose more money and men to get it. Again, you should be able to sell it for gold and more reputation. 1 reputation is meaningless.

Edited December 4, 2019 by ColonelHenry

[pandakraut]

10 minutes ago, ColonelHenry said:

And no, selling a friggin 5th rate for 1 reputation (you can't even take the 5th rate you capture) is unbalanced and ridiculous, you lose more money and men to get it. Again, you should be able to sell it for gold and more reputation. 1 reputation is meaningless.

5th rates currently sell for 5 rep points. Which would be useful since they require a lot of rep points to buy and depending on random chance you may or may not have any available for purchase.

Have you experienced being short of money with the way the campaign currently plays? I've generally found I have more than I need but am relatively short of rep points. Given that recruits and trade muskets are cheap and infinite I've been happy to be able to trade money for another resource. The economy in general seems like it'll need more adjustment before more analysis makes to much sense.

[ColonelHenry]

I feel like the economy needs a little more balance for the player since the enemy gets 2-3 ships in any mission while you can barely get 1 5th rate and a troop transport unless you get the correct skill and sell most of your stuffs. Also... really, 5 reputation? Was I blind then? I saw it as 1 reputation!

[pandakraut]

3 hours ago, ColonelHenry said:

I feel like the economy needs a little more balance for the player since the enemy gets 2-3 ships in any mission while you can barely get 1 5th rate and a troop transport unless you get the correct skill and sell most of your stuffs. Also... really, 5 reputation? Was I blind then? I saw it as 1 reputation!

I need to go back through on hard, but currently my impression is that the economy is pretty generous on normal. You can get through chapter 2 without bothering with a 5th rate. I only used 6th and 7th rates.

[sterner]

We are fixing issues with captured and recovered weapons. It will be released soon.

[doublebuck]

On 12/6/2019 at 6:39 AM, ColonelHenry said:

I feel like the economy needs a little more balance for the player since the enemy gets 2-3 ships in any mission while you can barely get 1 5th rate and a troop transport unless you get the correct skill and sell most of your stuffs. Also... really, 5 reputation? Was I blind then? I saw it as 1 reputation!

I posted in a other area however in Priority on medium difficulty I captured the frigate Libra that had 280 sailors on it.  I used the Mercedes with a boarding kit and a support ship that had 2 marine units to back it up but my question is I can't unlock that Libra frigate with 23 rep at this time and all the game wants me to do is sell it for 5 rep that darn ship is worth over 13K and has a weight limit of 790 or so pounds so I want that ship and not sell it for a lousy 5 rep.  So how much rep do I need to unlock it?  I think we should get some rep along with some money to give up all the ships we may capture.  I find it hard to sink ships so I prefer to board them though I take huge losses doing so and my point is give us something like a percentage of rep and money for each ship we sell but not full price maybe half or something like that.  Think of the guns too,  I hate that 100 pound limit of that sloop ship we are given at the start so I unmount the guns and then sell that ship for the same price it was before I dismounted the guns.  So why should we not get money for all that we sell or capture anyway?  

Also, when you start the Britain campaign one of the questions for perks you answer say's you get +100 rep per battle and that is (click bait) after you finish the battle and at your officer page you see 1 hash mark in the rep field that shows you have a +1 rep point per battle not +100 yet the reward is 25 rep after that 1st battle and not 26 rep for me for I choose that ? perk to start with.  So that ? perk at the start should not show +100  it should show +1 rep when you answer that ?,  plus it should honor it so when I finish that battle I should have 26 rep instead of a regular 25 rep seeing I picked that perk at the start of the game.  Just pointing it out.