Thread for the discussion of ideas.
Anything you would like to see in the Pirate Isles!

How about a mission where you have to kill a giant slaughterfish to prove yourself to an NPC to get a quest.

I'm considering some fights with larger than normal slaughterfish.
They are annoying though, as they don't move very fast through the water so they are not as scary as i would like.

The ones i placed about the boats can be a pain, with your allies leaping into the water to kill them. They have also been a pain by appearing ontop of the boats, even though they are placed in the water. Depending on some more playtests, i may remove them from about the boats.

You can edit the speed in the cs but I dont know how fast you can make them I know the highest size you can go is 10. I tried to put one in anvil before but it wouldnt appear maybe because of the new texture i put on it

Yeah the biggest is 10, don't think i'll have anything that big. I'll have a look at making them faster, theres something much more scary about being out-maneouvered in the water.

Well i'm working on making more variety in the ship battles next, as well as making more flags and names for the ship for the player to choose. Also going to add some general first mates, they won't have any special abilities, for the player to hire. I need some names for pirate ships people would like to be able to choose from as well as some names for ranks for the player to achieve when they get a certain rating. Ie - for each 10 or so levels of pirate rating, you go up a rank in reputation, at level 0-5 you are a Landlubber, 6-10 Corsair, 11-20 Sea Dog, 90-100 Scourge of the Sea. Now need some more names.

I'm setting up the mod so people can easily add to it. I hope when i release the full version that people will be inspired to create their own quests and islands for the Pirate Isles!

As for the island docks, i might just modify the little island upriver from anvil, and add a stable marker (without a stable) that the player can go to. I'm removing the option to go back and forth from Anvil and the Islands without the ship.

Ok, well i have your BETA, but i havn't gotten to the hide-out, so take this into account when reading my post.

How about when you get the hide-out, at first its just a place where your crew hangs out. But then u get a quest to "improve" it. by "improve" i mean hire people to do certain jobs. Like say you go to one town and find that the bartender there isn't happy working for his employer, so you offer him a chance to work at your place. You do a small quest for him and then he goes to your hide-out and sells you ale and stuff. You could have small quests like these to get a bartender/Inn keeper/Weapons salesperson/Magic Salesperson/A trainer for sword/Alchemist/Blacksmith stuff like that.

Hehe, you should go get the hideout

Added ship repairs, the ship has 5 damage points. It costs 100 gold to repair a point, at 1 point the ship is no longer capable of looting. At less than 3 points you are limited in possible enemies, ie you won't run into prisoner ships or smugglers or the treasure ship, and more likely to be caught up to by the navy and enemy pirates.

What do you think could be possible upgrades so far i have these:
- Cargo Hold: I was going to make it so the ship can only hold 2 lots of cargo at a time (ie 2 manifests)
with the choice to either upgrade its cargo capacity to 4, or up it to 3 and increase the room for captives. (lets you capture upto 3 captives instead of just 1).
- Improve rigging: Lets you range further (ie run into prisoner ships smugglers and the chance to run into the treasure ship.)
- Reinforced hull: Gives you 7 damage points on first upgrade, 10 damage points on second upgrade.

Any other ideas?

Maybe add some kind of speed value, so that if you enter a battle that you dont think you can win, you go to the steering wheel, and get a chance to escape. It could be like 80% chance to escape from merchants, 60% pirates, and 30% navy (youd have to play around with values). Then you can upgrade sails and stuff to increase those values.

How about a mission where you have too much too drink at a pirate ale house, and then have to complete some sort of quest drunk.

It'd be a really funny, and hard, mission to do if you included the Inebraition (sp?) mod. Not quite sure what you'd have to complete in the drunken state, possibly evading the royal navy's irons.

for all the lazy people who don't feel like looting maybe you could put an Auto-loot.
this feature would take all items and sell them, you would get the gold from that and split it with your crew. the higher the pirate level the more of the loot you get.
say lvl 1-5%
lvl 10-10% and so on

And then there was a webpage! http://pirates.chorrol.com/



I'll have a look into it, at the moment i'm not too keen on letting the player flee battles. Adds that feeling of danger.



I definetly want a mission involving drinking. And i love that inebriation mod, though it was a bit painful to stare at! I'm not sure i want to change all the drinks in the game. I might use it on the Facundo Rum only (which i added in my mod), then advise people on the download page to get the inebriation mod. It definetly enhances the pirate experience.



The looting is semi automatic. When you take the cargo manifest it represents a lot of loot. You can then get extra miscelleanous loot by searching the ship.

YAY!! webpage. I'll add that to my sig.

What do people think of ship damage, should there be chance for it to occur every battle, or only when you have less than five crew after a battle (ie setting sail with less than 5 crew)?

Also i plan to make it if you try and leave a battle without killing the enemy crew then the ship suffers damage "pulling away". Against navy ships, you will need the rigging upgrade on your ship to outrun them if you try and leave a battle against the navy without killing them all, and you will still take damage like fighting merchants.

Also with surrendering, i'm making it so if you come up in a battle against merchants or fisher boats you start in the cabin with their captain and you can try and convince them to surrender. I think i'll make it a combination of pirate rating, speechcraft, luck and a random variable (just to mix things up a little) to make them surrender, and if it fails you go straight to battle.

All these ideas are good! The one that begs a comment, I think, is regarding the ship taking damage if the crew is less than 5...

For sure, the more the crew (within reason), the less likely damage to the ship. This would be because with more crew, you overwhelm the enemy more quickly, and because after the battle you have more people to repair the ship and sail her home.

Still, there's always the chance something dumb is going to happen.

So, maybe the ideal would be that there's always the chance that something could go wrong, so there's a check for one step of damage. But if you have less than 5, there's another check for more.

OR, if that's too much to do, I'm happy with there's a check only if your crew are less than 5. Either way, it's another reason for you to keep your crew up! Heck, I'm happy with everything in this mod!

Good idea. So every battle theres a chance of lightly damaging your ship (1 point) and if you lose a lot of crew your ship can suffer more. I like it. Now to fix this damn enemy crew script and the damn placeatme/deletefullactorcopy/levelledlists

you should have more than 8 hireable pirates at a time. You can hire as many as the hideout and the ship can handle, but you choose who you want to go on a voyage with, and who stays to guard the hideout.


also a quest that allows you to take care of some..competition.

Here is an idea for a quest

The search for the Black Pearl (or any other ship name)

After u got your ship and u sleep inside it u get a dream and thenu are told to go to the bar (that place were u buy the pirates-can't remember the name) then when u speak to the owner about your dream he tells u, u are the chosen one to find the black pearl and gives u a peace of paper with an image of a key on, u are then sent to the other town were all the imperial guards guy's are to talk to Black Boot Jhon a famous old pirate who once was captian of the Black Pearl. Then he talls u were the boat is hidden but that u must find the key to it. Th Black Pearl u can hide on the original island u start off at but on the other side between rocks and stuff. U can let Black boot Jhon tell u that the key is hidden at the top of the island and then u give a map marker to the the player to where it is , then u find the black pearl and its key an then take it for yuor self.

I can make 2 seperate groups of pirates you can hire for, the hideout and the ship. But due to scripting and AI package demands its rather difficult to make a combined group, so that you can take pirates from your hideout to your ship if you need them. The other thing is pirates at the hideout don't do much except add ambience Though theres a couple that offer training. Would people prefer to hire pirates individually for their hideout? Or hire them as a group (like an upgrade)? Currently they appear when you acquire the allied ships.

Competition wise, you will actually run into pirates on the sea, they're one of the possible opponents.
There will be a special quest regarding some specific enemy, the imperial navy



Given the complications of scripting the blackmoon movement wise, and the pirate flags, theres only going to be one ship you can acquire.

Have u made any more progress

I'd prefer to hire them indivdually.

You could add some depth and some character to the ones you hire then, as they wouldn't just appear as a group, but you'd have gone to them to hire them.

i got an idea one of the women at the slippery wench have been kidnapped and you have to free her from a slave barge when you do she goes to your hideout and sleeps with your pirates for 25 septims

I agree, and another thing is that all the pirates of one race look the same as others in his race.

I'll add some more specific pirates. So you want them to work like the cook/smith/shipwright, where you hire them by talking to them individually?

The pirates now look different, originally they had to look the same, as i only had 20 to work with, and the way it was originally structured made working with more than 20 rather difficult. Now there is 160 pirates, and you'll never be able to hire 2 that look the same. Though for example, a full male argonian crew of 8 will contain the same 8 even if they all got killed and you hired them again, but each member of the crew will look different to the others in the crew. Essentially there is now 8 males and 8 females of each race for hire. As opposed to the original 1 male and 1 female of each race as it exists in the beta.

Yes. Job specific NPC's would be nice.

But for the NPC's on the island, perhaps having hundreds of randomized characters isn't going to work as well as a few named and interesting individuals who can do specific things in your hideout. For instance, you could have a shipwright to fix the ship up after a long battle on the ocean. Instead of going through your first mate for everything, perhaps job specific characters would add a little more depth.

There is actually a couple of job specific NPCs you can hire for the hideout, theres a smith, a shipwright, a cook, and jimmy is the quartermaster. I might add a new NPC to manage the brewery, originally it was going to be Jimmy.

If you can think of more job specific NPCs feel free to post them, and we can discuss how to implement them.

All your first mate manages currently is looting. Soon he will also manage the refilling of your ships stores and the payment of your crew. Which leads me to morale and mutinees! I've come up with a system to control the morale of your crew. The morale will be recalculated on a fortnightly basis, you have a running tally ranging from 0-100.

Things that boost morale:
+10 Went looting! (Due to the 3days it takes to go looting, you can only really go looting four times a fortnight, and you only get the bonus once.)
+5 Filled ships grog stores (You can do this once a fortnight through your first mate for 100 gold)
+2 x Number of pirates , For paying your crew this fortnight (Per looting, You can pay your crew once for each looting through your first mate, 10 gold per pirate and 20 for the first mate).
+ Any specific bonuses provided by your first mate.

Things that detract from morale:
-15 for not filling food supply (You can fill the food supply once per fortnight through the first mate for 75 gold)
-10 for not filling grog supply (see above)
-5 per pirate for not paying your crew after looting. (per looting, so if you loot twice you will need to pay them twice)

I've made it so you can handle it manually, such as the stocking of the ship, or you can have the first mate handle it, in which case enough money to keep the crew reasonably happy will be deducted from you directly each fortnight.

Thoughts anyone?

Oh and i've decided on a way to equip your crew. There will be a chest in the mid ship for each pirate of your crew, you activate the chest, swap anything in it, and everything in the chest will go onto the pirate, though sometimes they won't be wearing the equipment straight away they should equip it relatively soon.

A deckhand maybe someone scrubbing down the deck of the ship when its in the hideout. Oh and I had an idea, with just clothes on the pirates dont last very long against some of the other armoured npc's like the imperial navy or the mercenaries so what if you keep the same pirate clothes but put them in the class of light armour so they last a bit longer

If there was an animation for it it could be done, i heard somewhere someone had made an animation for scrubbing, i'll see if i can find it. And I don't want to give them armour, as a full crew of pirates and a first mate gives you 9 pirates plus the player versus 7 enemies. The enemies mercenaries are armoured to make it a little more balanced, and they are random, you might get no mercenaries or you could get 4, making a fight hard or easy

well if you want my opinion on the moral of the crew , i say it begining to be to much complicated for nothing . It not that i dont like the realiste of your idea but i rater like to have my crew alway fully happy event if i didn pay them . Becose in some way if they want grog or food suply there the hideout . For people like me who are lazzy there should be a automatical way to give them what they need like when you give the cargo manifest they take part of it for all you named. It just for not having a craky crew who gona tell me ''yar you didn feed us with grog now die!'' it a matter of opinon and i would want to see what the other people think about it !

o yea i thought of something with my friend could there be a fourth option for looting (i direct the atk, i leed from being , NvM) something like ''STAY DOWN THERE YOU MORON'' for you can face the ennemy ship solo some time it good to have traning for yourself

o yea good news my orc crew finaly found some pans to put on!!!!!

for the hideout i dont see what els to had to it . I meen you got armory, the supply, a guy who in charge, a boat fixer ,and grog supply. The only thin the hideout need now is wench!!! and or a chapel. Yea that kinda suprise me that you didn make a church for the imperial island ,the saller were prety religiuse guy .

for my personnal idea : the tow other ship that are with you can only bring back loot ,but why not make it so you can ask the capt '' yar i need your ship!'' so you can join any of them on there looting frenezy!!! and add some confiance bethin you and the other capt so at some point you can ask them ''i want to inspect the lower quarter'' and at some point the other capt with your reputation will let you.

you should add some cool pirate armor that the captain wears thats durable and looks cool.
and dont forget the sword that has to look cool too.

well, they seem to have some cool pirate clothes. I don't use the cutlass's actually, I use my trusty club named Magraf's Vengeance, named after my character Captain Magraf. some of you might recognize that name.

We have some cool clothes, but pirates don't wear armour! It weighs too much if you fall overboard. Oh and we have cool swords, you can thank aventhorn for that

Check out the textures and models thread for more.

why do you event ask for commentary if you just ignore them...

Sorry, i get so excited working on a new part of the mod that i don't stop to do anything for a while, and forget to reply to things. I did take on board your comments however and a set up the system so that the player can choose to manually handle the morale or have it done automatically!



As i stated above, i've made it so the player can choose to manually manage the crew or let the firstmate do it. Currently it still pops up the message every 14 days, and deducts the money then. I'll have a look into making it automatic with the selling of the cargo manifest as opposed to a fortnightly cost.

The pants thing was a stuff up in the leveled list. That and they take of the armour when they sleep, so if they are wearing fur or leather greaves (which some are) they appear naked when they go to bed.

With the hideout I'm planning on adding wenches for hire, and just some more "filler" characters that might jsut offer training etc, so your hideout feels more lively! I agree upgrade wise theres not more you could want. I was originally planning on a small chapel for Yakudra, but to me its a sailing town with ruffians, not men of god, so i decided against it. I don't think pirates are the type to set up a chapel at their hideout, at the most i would expect some form of daedric worship.

As for your last idea i'm a little confused as to what you mean with the last bit? I don't want to add joining them on a raid, as then i would have to add full crews for them and that means more references and a lot more scripting just to fight battles with a different crew.

Sorry it took me so long to reply

but for the orc he was alway naked not just when he sleep it just ugly . O yea i found how to fix that just need to go to avil and return to the pirate island place it making them all change outfit

and for the crew to be ''harmless'' and giving them unbreakable item it just becose i giving them all bow so it make a big bunch of archer on my team (event my first mate daedric) but at some point they broke them to.

it ok to dont have a chapel in a pirate hideout but what about the empiral fort? there a statue there who could do the job as a altar! it just a little anoying to have to go back to avil to get cured.

and a question like that for the tresor hunting quest will it be on a other island or it will be in the fort at Yakorasomehting?

the pirates seem to die too much. Could you make a few that were extremely high leveled to be a core veteran crew. thank you.

uh... if you are testing the normal beta he alerdy said that he gona make are pirate upgradable by purasing new weapon and armor aslo decreasing the weaponery from warrior ( no more glasse or elf)

but if you got a update of the beta by official tester i got nothing to say

Now you can give them new weapons through the chests to replace their old ones. There will be a chapel at Delargo, but you won't be pulling into the docks there, its a full navy town, you have to land at a beach at the back. And the treasure is in its own worldspace,



I'll have a look at upping there health, they aren't supposed to be as good as the enemy captain or mercenaries, but they are better than the plain enemy sailors. Its meant to be up to the player to swing the battle (though the first mate helps a bit). I'll run through a few more playtests before i release it to make sure you aren't losing your entire crew every battle

I have to admit in the test battles i run, a lot of the time i either only lose one or two (or none), or I lose the whole crew, it can be a bit random.

On another note, what are peoples thought regarding surrendering? The way i was thinking of having it is you start the battle in your cabin with their captain, and you can theres a chance to get them to tell you what they are carrying, and a random chance effected by your reputation and other things as to whether they surrender. If they surrender you get the manifest without a fight. Important notes:
- Imperial Navy will never surrender.
- Whether they are likely to surrender is effected by what they are carrying, ie fishermen will surrender easy, but a merchant with an expensive loot is less likely to surrender.
- IN the cabin if you are up against enemy pirates, and neither of you have cargo you can agree to go your seperate ways, no point fighting over nothing or you could fight them anyway if you like.

are what you could do is a % of chance by the pirate reputation , the navy should be able to surrender to but with a realy high lvl of piracie .

am never to hot to leave a battle to go talk to a guy, normaly the cap is on the first line of battle it would be great if we would know right away if they surender or the ennemy cap propose to go in the cab, for the navy yep there cap will never surrender but the crew is less loyal so there could be a mutiny and kill there cap that could be funy

This sounds a cool option. I tend to start the battle at the lead so i dont lose many pirates. I always find that theres two pirates ahead of me from the off so i cap those first then i head to the most powerful ranged enemys which are usually an archer or a mage or both one at each end of ship. once they are taken care of I find the pirates can handle whatevers thrown at them be it mercenaries, plain sailors or navy.

maybe you could have it so when they surrender, they put their swords away and crouch. that would be a good sign to me.

i totaly agreed but i prefer if there cap stop me from ripping them appar by going directly in the dialog like the officer of the impirer do when i done a crime

cuz i usually dont event let them draw there sword befor i eat there gutz!!!!

As i said, you will start in your cabin with their Captain, it will force greet you and you can discuss whether they surrender, what they are carrying or if its enemy pirates, you can surrender to them.

The formula for it will be something like:
Pirate Rating / 2 (your pirate fame)
+ Speechcraft / 3 (representing you talking them into surrendering)
+ Luck / 10 (because luck doesn't get used enough )
+ Bonuses (first mate/ pirate flag + 5)
+ If you have a full crew of 8 (outnumber them, if they outnumber you you get a negative modifier)
+ A modifier depending on what they are carrying, ie if its fish its + 10, livestock + 5, expensive cargo -5

After all that is added up, i will generate a random number between 0 and 99, and if its less than all that added up the enemy surrenders. So theres always a chance they will/won't surrender, can't let you get out of every fight
If they surrender you will get given the manifest straight away, and then given the option to return to the mainland or go looting again.


Thats good, i don't want the player to lose to many, I don't want the cost of paying them and repairing the ship and hiring new pirates to be bigger than the money you get for the cargo (unless you lose the whole crew and your ship gets badly damaged etc)



It would be in the cabin, and they would be forced to start a conversation with you by script. Making them put away their weapons and not attack you would be quite difficult, as the battles are set up with enemies that hate your pirates and that your pirates hate. It would get a bit complex having the surrender discussion aboard the boats with the crew about. (though i am considering having the discussion start aboard the boats without either crew around, then if they refuse to surrender it would just teleport everyone to battle positions and the battle would commence.

Also i'll set it up so when you choose to go looting you can choose to accept surrenders or not, if you say no accept, it always goes straight to battle, otherwise it has the discussion with the enemy captain. Kind of like the being able to turn management options of or not.

good we actuly got a choce bethine lame discution and massive blood bath!!!

my choce is made

.....

say darksoul i didn kite undestand how you were gona make the crew upgradable could you give us more info on it?

becose if we equipe are crew with heavy weapon they could stop moving becose of the charge

and have you thought about when the weapon brake? how would we be able to fix them?

i remeber have read something about a chest in front of the crew member so when you put item in it the npc gona equipe them, but maybe it wasn event you who said that o well.

o yea almost forgot did you found some voice actor for the mod?

How it works: Theres 9 chests in the middle of the ship, 1 for each pirate and 1 for your first mate. When you open the chest you will see everything on that pirate. You can take things out of the chest and put them in just like any chest in the game, except when you close the chest everything in the chest will be put on the particular pirate who owns that chest. As for replacing broken weapons on the pirate you will need to swap the broken weapon with a non broken one with the chest.

I was considering adding a topic to the pirate where you say "get a new weapon" and they have their current one removed and replaced. But that is too open to exploitation by the player, where the player could take their weapon from the chest then tell the pirate to get a new one, then take it from the chest and so on, getting a free weapon each time. It would be too difficult to see if the pirate has a weapon or not, before replacing it. So basically the player will have to personally replace the weapons for their pirates each time they break.

And theres not going to be voice on the basis that it would be too huge and difficult to distribute the mod, last time i checked it would need 180mb worth of mp3s... I will include instruction on how to generate the silent mp3s for the file, which will make the text go slow enough to be readable.

but again dakrsoul did you thought about the weight? do npc ahve wieght prob when they have to many equipement?

Unlikely, it is rather hard to overweigh an NPC, even if you give them a full suit of armour and a sword. The pirates aren't really meant to wear armour, though I doubt you could overweigh them with a full set of daedric.

just in case we should try

but i remeber something that i oncuter if you leave the island to go back to land and come back to the island by the map will the crew men still lose all there item and be remplaced with new one?