[Ships] Famous Ship You'd like to play

Ekarlath · February 19, 2025, 6:16am

Map design is getting closer to completing, mechanics are already ready to be set once all the design is done, and I’ve already started working on the questlines.

Right now I’m planning:

Pure Piracy questline, gathering treasure, capturing ships, nassau, tortuga.
Mythical questline, with epic things like fountain of youth, monsters, and more.
Privateer questline, with special gameplay tweaks such as newspapers if the captain learnt to read.

And all that with an overall map evolution based on prestige and investment. The more you spend money on a port, the more that port grow up. The more you plunder a port, the more it become stronger.

Basic mechanics planned:

Ship customization, speed, armor, survivability, main/secondary batterie type (projectiles)
Ship skills, dodging (small ships agility), boarding (conversion mechanics), broadsides battery (hussite wagon).
Tide managment, sometime you will be able to pass shallow water, sometime not, depending on your ship heavyness / on the tide level.
Regional reputation, if you do too much piracy in Guatemala, all Guatemala spots will hate you, while Jamaican spots won’t cause they’re not linked.
Letter of Mark, possibility to earn grace to differents factions, becoming privateer for them.
Careening, regaining structural points (armor) / speed capability, while putting your ship on a beach to do careening of the hull and refitting the rigging.
Alcohol ! Rum more Rum !
Supply managment, you’ll have to dock often to avoid having your entire crew dying at sea.
STORMS.
Deep / Shallow Water control, depending on your ship you will be forces to stay near the coast.
Bounty Hunting.
Treasure Hunting.
Black Flag raising (changing your current color to grey), other nation flag raising (changing your color to theirs).
Oh and maybe there will be a dragon somewhere ?

Once the map is ready, I’ll upload the mod directly, it will be a graphical / UI / sound / scenario mod, no datamod requiered to play it but as it convert some non-ships units into ships, it will only be usable correctly on my map using my XS scripts in the scenario.

Ekarlath · March 9, 2025, 9:07pm

Hello there.

No new ship model to show, as I’m working on the map for now, but I have something to share with you. I was searching a way to make the chained shot behavior just couple minutes ago and I found a way to do so.

Right now, we can’t “slow down” a unit, or can we ? Infact, we can, using multiplicative Aura affecting only ennemy, impacting their movement speed with under 1 value. I’m gonna use that logic for the boarding mechanics combined with Conversion ability, but for the chained shot it was, let’s say, different.

My first idea was to just give the shot a pass-through effect, but it was not reflecting the slow-down effect, so I searched a way, thinking of spawning a dead-unit after the chained shot projectile vanish that would have a slow down aura. Issue with that idea is that, I’m not sure I can determine, on death, if the shot was hitting let’s say terrain or target, plus it would affect non targeted unit moving on that spot after shot decay start.

I finally found out a pretty simple way to do a slow down effect using the Aura with an under 1 multiplicative value, combined with pass-through projectile style. I still need to test it but I’m 99.99% sure it will work as I hope.

The result wil lbe that the chained shot will have a tiny slow-down aura, that will affect target on approching it, on hitting hit, and after passing through it, so at least 3 step slowing in the process and then vanish forever. That avoid using complexe trigger to detecte stats, targets, location, what so ever, nor spawning invisible unit.

So chained shot slow down effect 99.99% confirmed for the mod release version. All those mechanics will be presented in a tutorial scenario, of course, cause there will be many of them.

ZestySage992416 · April 1, 2025, 5:28pm

There is an event mod which gives you arquebuiser

Ekarlath · April 1, 2025, 5:34pm

Of course I’ve already put them in the project.

I’m waiting for the next DLC to see how many new ships and interesting units they’ll add to the game for the project I’m working on. As they’re changing some mechanics, like conversion, I wait for the update to come before working heavily on the gameplay. But I already got interesting ideas I’ll share once I’m confident enought.

Ekarlath · April 10, 2025, 10:36pm

So with today patch, lots of cool thing poped up.

I’m already studying how I can exploit the newly introduced things, and there is a lot of waves on the horizon.
I’ve been waiting for the patch to decide how I’ll do work on my ship project, and I can finally start working on the gameplay.

With that new “hp transformation” thing…I might even be able to … Let’s say … Unmasted ship ? That’s not a promise, but an opportunity I keep in my mind probably for V3 of the project, so for now, back to work on the V1.

I’ll try to work on an “arabic” Dow model too, as Age of Empires 4 inspired me a lot recently for ships. I will also work on crusader style ships someday, so stay tuned for more ships shipping !

Ekarlath · April 12, 2025, 1:49am

So no new model for today.

I’ve been studying the game files, mechanics, tested broadside ideas, and picekd choices for unit reskin into ships.

The broadside is pretty cool, using the Charged-Projectile new addition, this feature is just crazy and will allow me to turn anything into battle ready stomper.

With the Stringers I can go for Chained shots, slowing ennemy ships, red shots to burn the ships, grapshots damage over time, piercing shots reducing armor, active transformation buff for sail deployement to gain a speed boost, conversion mechanics for the boarding fight, invulnerability treshold to prevent ship sinking while capturing them.

I’ll have to test if I can use the stinger system to increase the ennemy ship fire rate delay, and if I can’t, I already have an idea using the HP transformation to turn ships into other ships. Maybe I will even work on demasting system earlier than I thought I would. I’m not sure how I’ll approach that, cause it would restrict a lot the amount of ship models available and requiere a lot of scripting.

About the ship gameplay, here is the roadmap:

Tall Ships

Ship of the Line

(endgame ships, you won’t face them early … or ?)

bulky monsters, aimed to unleash devastating volley from multiple fire decks with long reloads
lots of sails, but moving slowly, capable of facing storms and high see, perfect for ocean crossing
huge cargo load for more rum.
not meant for shallow water, they won’t access some part of the map due to their waterline level.

Frigate

(lategame ships, you’ll use them, you’ll sink them, you’ll love them, and you’ll hate them.

sleak, agile, with standard manoeuverability, meant for high sea as well as coastal navigation
less gundecks than Ship of the Line, but still armed with high amount of guns.
Boarding possibilities, it’s not their main role, but they can sustain and engage boarding fight side to side
Cargo hold decent enought to fit either merchant and military purpose, they will be the main wship you’ll encounter

Galleon

(early-midgame ships, a pirate themed project can’t be one without Galleon, why ? Because I said it, isn’t that enought ?)

Iconical spanish treasure ships, slow, powerfull, and filled with gold
rigged for high sea navigation, merchant task, and large scale warfare, the’re the ancestor of the Ship of the Line, while beeing the ancestor of the Frigate in the same time, will fit multiple role, and will be perfect to be refitted into pirate monsters of the sea
Will have access to artillery mortars and broadsides batteries, and will be able to cross shallow water based on Tides, when the sea is not high enought, you’ll have to find other occupations until the windws become favorable once more.

Small Ships

Schooner

(early-mid-lategame ships, conqueror of the coast), with fancy sails.

decend cargo hold, meant for costal merchant trips, or ocean crossing under the right circunstance.
mono gundeck, with light caliber guns, better at close combat than long range engagment
perfect for boarding
Can susain high sea, but not hurricain season in the bermuda triangle

Brig

(early-mid-lategame ships, small and fast, multi purpose, never obsolete.)

Perfect for coastal and river navigation, and agile mouvement
Armed with artillery frontal piece, or small guns, but mainly fits for saber to saber combat
perfect pirate ships style, used to do hit & run style combat, capture ships, refit them, sell them, sink them
cargo hold pretty small, will have to resupply often, in port or at sea
won’t survive a storm in the high sea, except if luck is on your side, or maybe dragons.

River Boat

(earlygame ship, situational, you’ll hate them, or sink them)

Never leave the shoreline if you don’t want to end up shipwrecked.
Perfect for activities while the tide is not there to let your big ship go where you wwant
perfect to avoid beeing recognized with your famous ship

I got lots of idea in my mind, but here you have a basic picture of what you can expect from my first release of the mod. It will be a campaign mod, with graphics, sounds changes but no dataset.

I’ll release a tutorial first, for people to test the ship battle logic, and collect feedback before going too crazy on the main mission story design. The map design is pretty close to completion, but with the new castles…I might add Veracruz to my map…Maybe…I’m not sure yet because big map is hard to work with as the minimap is trash.

Stay tuned for another ship display asap with the new elite ships that I can use as reskin entities <3

Ekarlath · April 15, 2025, 8:26pm

So I’ve been working on re-assigning my ship models to the new units, elite unit, etc, and ended with some free slots, so two new models today:

A simple Cutter:

And a War-Flyut, equivalent of a 4th rate ship of the line, model type “Seven Provincien”:

Once more, rigging is not maching names, but it’s more for me to know what is what, rather than accuracy.
And Ship showcase coming soon.

So here is the actual showcase of all available ship models:

Every ship displayed is a different unit, some are land siege unit that will be turned into ships with scriptings, while the others are regular ships reskinned.

I may add maybe few more models, with the few empty graphic slot I have left, but inspiration isn’t there for now.