Pirates: "Let's get down to brass tacks..."

[TomChick]

"...how much for the parrot?"

The other thread is too long, so we need a dedicated Pirates Q&A thread without a bunch of sissified yammering about how good the game is and how late you stayed up last night and how much you suck at dancing. So I'm starting a he-man pirate strategy thread for people who only play on Swashbuckler difficulty! No Rogue ninnies allowed, y'hear? And I'll begin by taking aboard some soggy bits from the other thread.

The hardest part is proving to be the duels. Moreso now that I lost my Finely Balanced Swords and Metal Cuirass in my last run-in with Baron Raymundo.

Yeah, the duels are brutal and the dueling goodies are crucial. I think you only lose your goodies when you're marooned (you keep them when you're jailed), which leads me to wonder what use is a signal mirror if your goodies get taken away from you when you're marooned? Anyone know?

Is there any reason NOT to "loot all" when overtaking a ship, assuming I have room on board?

On Swashbuckler level, the more damaged a ship, the more crew you need to sail it. Sometimes if you're far from a friendly port or if you need your crew to keep your guns firing quickly, you won't want to take a damaged ship, so you'll have to pick and choose among the cargo. In fact, crew distribution is a significant bit of strategery.

I generally sell any of my extra ships prior to divvying up.

The game *doesn't* sell off your extra ships and cargo when you divide plunder! If you don't do it manually, you lose their value.

I tend to have the bulk of my men die accidentally in town seiges before divvying up the treasure.

Uhh, you might want to bone up on your math. Your share of the loot is a fixed percentage based on the difficulty level, so it's the same whether you're splitting it with two men or two hundred men.

Is there any way to storm a town that doesn't open fire at the sight of you?

I'm guessing there isn't, in order to keep your from storming helpless settlements. Anyone know?

Speaking of which, has anyone been able to sneak anywhere other than the Governor's mansion and the Tavern? For example, has anyone found the Merchant or the Shipwright via sneaking?

Another good question. The manual implies that you can do it. Otherwise, what good are the disguise goodies? Do they only come into play when you're on that razor thin diplomatic line between being fired on by a town and being allowed to trade with its merchants?

I'd have liked to see a bit wider range of viable ship types.

Play around with the starting powers and campaign eras, since ships are distributed by nationality and time period. For instance, playing as a Frenchman in the 1620 campaign, I was stuck with a frickin' barque for the longest time. You'll never appreciate a simple sloop as much as you do after a decade in a barque.

BTW, how does my shrunken head impress the Indians?

This is the kind of stuff I want to know, too. What good do the Jesuit relics do? What about the spyglass and barometer?

On another note, does anyone have any success sneaking into towns on Swashbuckler? There are so many guards I've only succeeded when the random mapper gave me a series of fences leading straight to the governor's mansion. Also, how do you figure out where the Tavern is?

Man, I wish I knew the answer to that! I've spent many a month in jail trying to sneak into a tavern to bag one of those criminals. It's insane. It's like slo-mo Pac Man, but without the fruit! And if I'm not mistaken, Swashbuckler doesn't give you any of those white arrows.

From time to time, you'll run across items like "medicinal herbs" and whatnot, from the usual sources--that dude sitting in the back of every bar, and I assume as occasional gifts from smitten governors' daughters. I've only received them from the former, though. They'll generally boost your health from poor to fair when you get them, but usually just for a year.

So is there any reason to take them when you're younger? How does it work then?

Additional questions:

* Do cotton sails improve your speed at the strategic level, during battles, or both?

* Can anyone verify that your sailing characteristics in the strategic screen are affected by the slowest ship in your fleet? If I take a sloop and a trade galleon, and use my sloop as my flag ship, am I still poking along at the speed of the trade galleon? Does it find some middle ground? Or do I just boogie along like a lone sloop?

* Some ships are labeled smugglers. Can I attack them without raising the ire of their host powers? For instance, will sinking a French smuggler make the French like me? After all, the little bugger is breaking someone's law if he's a smuggler.

* Exactly what good or ill does it do to encourage pirate and native raids against a city? Does knocking its economics down benefit me at all? It seems if it's a hostile city, I'd want lots of treasure ships sailing in and out for me to plunder, and if it's a friendly city, I'd want to sell my loot at a high price. So I'm not clear on why I want to encourage raids.

-Tom

[Kunikos]

Uhh, you might want to bone up on your math. Your share of the loot is a fixed percentage based on the difficulty level, so it's the same whether you're splitting it with two men or two hundred men.

Consider if the fixed percentage take is 20% of the total. If you have two men, then you receive 20% and the other two divide 80% in two and take away 40% of the loot each. Why would the captain receive a share that is less than his two crew members? Honestly, if that's the way the game does it then it is no Pirate game I want to be involved in...

[Sapper Gopher]

* Exactly what good or ill does it do to encourage pirate and native raids against a city? Does knocking its economics down benefit me at all? It seems if it's a hostile city, I'd want lots of treasure ships sailing in and out for me to plunder, and if it's a friendly city, I'd want to sell my loot at a high price. So I'm not clear on why I want to encourage raids.

-Tom

Manual says it might reduce the defenses, making it easier to take.

[Ch. Hasslbauer]

I tend to have the bulk of my men die accidentally in town seiges before divvying up the treasure.

Uhh, you might want to bone up on your math. Your share of the loot is a fixed percentage based on the difficulty level, so it's the same whether you're splitting it with two men or two hundred men.
It already was this way in the old C64 Pirates. Making your men have deplorable accidents didn't bring you more money, but the ultra high shares your crewmen got made them extremely happy, which in turn gave you more men and stuff for your next expedition. Problem is, I can't remember what stuff exactly you had more of. It's been too long.

I really want to play the new Pirates!, but I'm in the middle of Geneforge2 right now.

[Anders Hallin]

Another good question. The manual implies that you can do it. Otherwise, what good are the disguise goodies? Do they only come into play when you're on that razor thin diplomatic line between being fired on by a town and being allowed to trade with its merchants?
Behold the vile Spaniards: I got a "I don't trade with English heretics"-message when trying to trade in Spanish cities/settlements. Of course, since you're usually at war with the Spanish, maybe that doesn't really matter.

[Jasper]

"...how much for the parrot?"

I tend to have the bulk of my men die accidentally in town seiges before divvying up the treasure.
Uhh, you might want to bone up on your math. Your share of the loot is a fixed percentage based on the difficulty level, so it's the same whether you're splitting it with two men or two hundred men.
I wonder if how much your crew each got on your last haul affects your initial recruiting for the next one? If so, it doesn't have much effect.

Is there any way to storm a town that doesn't open fire at the sight of you?
I'm guessing there isn't, in order to keep your from storming helpless settlements. Anyone know?
Dock your ship nearby, and enter the city overland.

BTW, how does my shrunken head impress the Indians?
This is the kind of stuff I want to know, too. What good do the Jesuit relics do? What about the spyglass and barometer?
The Spy Glass lets you see ships further away on the strategic map, and the Barometer means you take less damage when sailling through storms (which can greatly speed your travel, especially against the wind).

On another note, does anyone have any success sneaking into towns on Swashbuckler? There are so many guards I've only succeeded when the random mapper gave me a series of fences leading straight to the governor's mansion. Also, how do you figure out where the Tavern is?
Man, I wish I knew the answer to that! I've spent many a month in jail trying to sneak into a tavern to bag one of those criminals. It's insane. It's like slo-mo Pac Man, but without the fruit! And if I'm not mistaken, Swashbuckler doesn't give you any of those white arrows.
I sat down for a bit and save/reloaded a bunch just to see how likely it was. Plenty of the maps seemed flatly impossible, while most of the rest seemed to require luck or mood killing patience, and I never could get to the Tavern. I now sneak into town only after installing a new governor. :-/

There are easily missed "lawn sign" arrows that point towards the governors house, but that's pretty easy to find without them. I have no clue how to find the Tavern.

Also, at first I found this mini-game intolerably slow, but fixed that by temporarily turning down video options all the way.

Perhaps some of the gadgets help out when sneaking into town?

From time to time, you'll run across items like "medicinal herbs" and whatnot, from the usual sources--that dude sitting in the back of every bar, and I assume as occasional gifts from smitten governors' daughters. I've only received them from the former, though. They'll generally boost your health from poor to fair when you get them, but usually just for a year.
So is there any reason to take them when you're younger? How does it work then?

I read somewhere they each delay aging by 5 years. I always get them, so have no clue.

* Do cotton sails improve your speed at the strategic level, during battles, or both?
I believe both. When switching from my primary ship to a backup of the same class without Cotton Sails I seemed to travel more slowly.

* Can anyone verify that your sailing characteristics in the strategic screen are affected by the slowest ship in your fleet? If I take a sloop and a trade galleon, and use my sloop as my flag ship, am I still poking along at the speed of the trade galleon? Does it find some middle ground? Or do I just boogie along like a lone sloop?
Definitely. This either doesn't happen below Swashbuckler, or happens less, but on Swashbuckler it really kicks in. Blast the guns off a Galleon, then chain-shot it's mast off to highlight the effect. Your fast main ship will sail away quickly, then pull up slowly while the damaged ship says "Wait for me!" I think simply having a slower ship in your fleet has some effect, but it's hard to tell how much. At the very least definitely get ships your going to haul very far repaired.

* Some ships are labeled smugglers. Can I attack them without raising the ire of their host powers? For instance, will sinking a French smuggler make the French like me? After all, the little bugger is breaking someone's law if he's a smuggler.
I've attacked a Spanish smuggler and then immediately had Spanish pirate hunters bee-line after me.

* Exactly what good or ill does it do to encourage pirate and native raids against a city? Does knocking its economics down benefit me at all? It seems if it's a hostile city, I'd want lots of treasure ships sailing in and out for me to plunder, and if it's a friendly city, I'd want to sell my loot at a high price. So I'm not clear on why I want to encourage raids.
I'll encourage raids against a tough city I tend to invade. Havanna for example is pretty rough, but there are a bunch of suckers willing to strip off defenders in sailling distance...

[Sapper Gopher]

Another good question. The manual implies that you can do it. Otherwise, what good are the disguise goodies? Do they only come into play when you're on that razor thin diplomatic line between being fired on by a town and being allowed to trade with its merchants?

The manual says the disguises can be used to trade with merchants in some enemy cities. But it also says that when you reach a building in sneak mode, you may conduct business as usual, "except when in extremely hostile Spanish ports where the merchants will not trade with you." Implying that other merchants are happy to betray their country for profit.


BTW, how does my shrunken head impress the Indians?

This is the kind of stuff I want to know, too. What good do the Jesuit relics do? What about the spyglass and barometer?

There is a brief explanation of the effects of each item in the "Special Items" section of the manual.


* Can anyone verify that your sailing characteristics in the strategic screen are affected by the slowest ship in your fleet? If I take a sloop and a trade galleon, and use my sloop as my flag ship, am I still poking along at the speed of the trade galleon? Does it find some middle ground? Or do I just boogie along like a lone sloop?

From the "How to Sail" section:
"In general, your fleet sails approximately as fast as your flagship in the present wind conditions. However, undermanned vessels reduce your fleet's overall speed."
I think that's a change from the original, where a galleon would slow you to a crawl. They must have changed it so galleons would be viable.

[Bub, Andrew]

I tend to have the bulk of my men die accidentally in town seiges before divvying up the treasure.

Uhh, you might want to bone up on your math. Your share of the loot is a fixed percentage based on the difficulty level, so it's the same whether you're splitting it with two men or two hundred men.

Pfft. I'm ROLE-playing.

[G-Man]

Re: Attacking towns that don't fire on you
You can press spacebar to fire cannons at nearby towns. Do this enough and eventually they will start to fire back at you (they sometimes build a fort just for this purpose btw). Sailing into the enemy fort instead of the town itself also seems to increase the chances of getting the option to attack.

Re: Sneaking into town
The tavern is always up and to the right behind the governor's mansion (i.e. assuming you are facing entrance to mansion, it should be almost directly northeast of it by a few houses). There is nowhere else to go besides the mansion and the tavern.

[SolomonGrundy]

Attacking towns that don't fire on you

Dock nearby, leave ship, enter town from land. One of the options is attack the town, even if it is friendly. Only way to attack Panama and the couple of inland towns (one in Mexico one in Cuba).

Sneak? SNEAK? Screw that. Just sack the town.

Weeding out the crew before divvying the loot is a good idea. Not more money for you , but the happier they are, the happier your next crew will be.

Why use pirate raids and Indian war parties. It knocks down the number of guards in town. Just don't try to do both at the same time, the last one triggered is the one that attacks. So trigger one, wait for the message, trigger the second, wait for the message then attack the town.

Swordfighting - two things I do. Fight defensively, you can almost always get a good swing after a dodged high or low. I also do the quick thrust/low. Gets most opponents to commit on the middle block and you can land the low swing for at least one knock backward.

Seems with the disguise (the theatre one anyway) I can dock almost anywhere without being noticed. Only the biggest enemy towns seem to give me a hard time. This could be coincidence for other actions though, becasue right when I got that special I was hunting pirates.

[Mike O'Malley]

I can't figure out a way to have multiple wives. Why didn't they include this feature? How the hell would they find out about each other? They only leave town when they're kidnapped. I want an English wife, a French wife, etc.
That way I'd have four times the goodies.

I mean the special items, you sick bastards.

[Shiroko]

Trading with Spanish is also based on your rank with them, since I tend to attack them a lot but ever since I got colonel with them I have very little trouble.

Also watch out, if pirates you send for a raid succeed, they take the money you want. Though I guess you can simply take their ship instead, I haven't checked it when ti happened to me.
I also send them just to attack thier ships, they sometimes got some gold right when they leave and taking some pirate brigs is a good way to get back into spanish ports once you pissed them.

But heres my prob, I'm playing already 20 years, and now I attack Montalban, anyway actually defeating him? Got through the land fight but the duel is too hard.

-Shiroko

[TomChick]

So I guess what's going on here is that some of the items simply aren't worth the money. If the spyglass is just going to reduce that 7% sail damage I might take when going through a storm, which I'll likely be able to get repaired for free by the time I can afford the 3000gp being charged for the spyglass, then the mysterious stranger in the tavern can just bugger off with it and offer me a puffy shirt instead.

I suppose you can think of items as a way to invest your money if you're not terribly interested in increasing your Wealth achievement points. (!)

Sapper Gopher, thanks for quoting that part of the manual on sailing. Good catch. So apparently there's no penalty to having a pokey ship like a galleon or merchantman in your fleet as long as you have the crew to man it! Interesting.

As for the brief item descriptions, I know about those, but they're not much help. What I want to know is why I care about improving relations with the natives and Jesuits enough to spend beaucoup gold on shrunken heads and golden crosses.

G-Man, thanks for the tips on city layouts and using the spacebar to fire. I'd forgotten about that. Have any of you experimented with softening a ship up with spacebar firing before entering battle? I've certainly jumped ships coming out of a fight or a storm to good effect.

Solomon, great call on the landing down shore and walking up to attack! Doh, why didn't I think of that. Thanks for the tip.

Sneak? SNEAK? Screw that. Just sack the town.

Hmm, maybe you didn't notice that this is a thread for he-man tough-guy pirates playing at Swashbuckler level. I'll sack the town as soon as I can keep more than 100 men happy!

Swordfighting - two things I do. Fight defensively, you can almost always get a good swing after a dodged high or low. I also do the quick thrust/low. Gets most opponents to commit on the middle block and you can land the low swing for at least one knock backward.

Again, you're apparently one of those Rogue-or-lower ninny boys. :) I'm convinced some of the swordfights on Swashbuckler are impossible without goodies or the skill advantage, and even then are stacked against you. I suspect this discourages fighting military ships or encourages you to have overwhelming numbers when boarding certain ships. Which is fine by me, because it seems to be saying that your untrained rabble simply aren't going to hold up against military personnel. It certainly adds a new level of tension to the game.

Unfortunately, it makes the quest duels pretty goddamn frustrating. As Shiroko has duly noted.

Weeding out the crew before divvying the loot is a good idea. Not more money for you , but the happier they are, the happier your next crew will be.

I don't think this is right, Solomon. I've never had a new crew that isn't VERY HAPPY, even when the last crew was angry at its paltry share. What makes you say this?

-Tom

[SolomonGrundy]

I had a crew of 350 when I did the split and only had 25k when I did it. My next crew was content when I started, and that crew seemed impossible to keep happy.

[TomChick]

Solomon, I just found this in the manual, on page 80: "The crew's opinion of their share determines your next crew's starting morale". A-ha! So killing off crew members is a good idea.

This is pretty gamey and I hope they fix it somehow. By these rules, it would make sense to keep sailing in and out of port and letting your crew mutiny to trim their numbers down. Ugh.

-Tom

[G-Man]

You want the Jesuits to like you so that they will offer to intercede on your behalf with the nations that hate you. Also trading their ports will be cheaper (like that matters). Ditto for the Indians on the trade aspect, but I don't know if there is any other advantage. Although it might influence how often they will ask you where they should attack. So basically they are worthless items for the most part, just like spyglass, disguise etc.

As for shooting cannonballs on the strategic map, here is what I have learned. First, you can hit your own ships with them if you aren't careful, and you can hit enemy ships, but as with any damage you receive while on the map, it will NEVER sink a ship, just raise hull and sail damage higher, ever so slightly. Like I said above, you can hit enemy ships (i.e. you can see the explosions and stuff), but I'm pretty sure it won't do ANY damage at all. I'm not 100% on this, but I recall doing the experiment of blasting away forever at a ship before attacking it, and just dueling so I wouldn't damage the ship further. This is the same thing with the towns, btw. You can't hurt their soldiers or destroy their fort by firing on them, unlike the original Pirates!.

Another little secret you might not know about is that you can change cannonball types mid-firing in order to mix up your blast between different cannon types, i.e. start on round balls, hit fire, then halfway between firing, switch to chain shot, and you will fire half round and half chain. You have probably seen the enemy ships do this a lot, and now you know that you can too.

[TomChick]

Another little secret you might not know about is that you can change cannonball types mid-firing in order to mix up your blast between different cannon types

Sweet! Thanks for the tip. I knew I'd seen mixed shots coming in at me.

Okay, more dueling questions:

* Anyone experimented with taunting? It seems like a viable tactic for those difficult galleon battles to just take a cutlass and taunt. But I don't think I've ever once bothered with pressing the taunt button.

* What does it mean when the white circle spins around someone's head? I know the idea is that they're dizzy, but what does this do?

-Tom

[Alan Au]

* Anyone experimented with taunting? It seems like a viable tactic for those difficult galleon battles to just take a cutlass and taunt. But I don't think I've ever once bothered with pressing the taunt button.

* What does it mean when the white circle spins around someone's head? I know the idea is that they're dizzy, but what does this do?
Taunting moves the "advantage" meter in your favor, but at swashbuckler level, who has time to taunt? The time is better spent setting up a feint so that you can actually hit your opponent and push him back.

As for the dizziness, I think it has something to do with having a full/empty advantage meter. I suspect that being dizzy affects a character's reaction speed, but things are so fast that it's hard to tell.

Hmm, maybe you didn't notice that this is a thread for he-man tough-guy pirates playing at Swashbuckler level. I'll sack the town as soon as I can keep more than 100 men happy!
Ah, but sacking towns helps you keep your men happy.

As for pirate raids vs. indian raids, pirate raids downgrade the city economically, while indian raids downgrade the city population (sometimes upgrading the economy per capita).

- Alan

[Mattc0m]

How often is normal to divide the plunder? I find myself doing it about every year or two. And its quite frustrating when your trying to get good prices on all your merchandise.

Also, any tips on keeping their moral up, other than just constantly raiding high-end targets?

[Alan Au]

Also, any tips on keeping their moral up, other than just constantly raiding high-end targets?
Having a smaller crew seems to help, but that limits your attack options. Gaining fame points seems to help too, and that's in addition to whatever treasure you get as a result. It's amazing what a difference finding a lost city (or four) can make.

- Alan

[Jasper]

Sapper Gopher, thanks for quoting that part of the manual on sailing. Good catch. So apparently there's no penalty to having a pokey ship like a galleon or merchantman in your fleet as long as you have the crew to man it! Interesting.
My experience doesn't match what the manual says at all. On Swashbuckler the slower ships definitely seem to slow you down, obviously so when they are damaged.

Sneak? SNEAK? Screw that. Just sack the town.
Hmm, maybe you didn't notice that this is a thread for he-man tough-guy pirates playing at Swashbuckler level. I'll sack the town as soon as I can keep more than 100 men happy!
Keep them happy by sacking towns. ;-)

[Jasper]

Okay, more dueling questions:

* Anyone experimented with taunting? It seems like a viable tactic for those difficult galleon battles to just take a cutlass and taunt. But I don't think I've ever once bothered with pressing the taunt button.

* What does it mean when the white circle spins around someone's head? I know the idea is that they're dizzy, but what does this do?
Against an opponent who is faster than you it's hard to win without taunting. You can always get in a taunt after a duck/jump, and getting the bar all the way in your favor helps alot, and frequently is better than counter attacking.

The dizzy halo just seems to happen when one side has the advantage.

I found the following things helped me most with sword fighting
- Turning my hand sideways, resting a finger on each of the defense buttons. I had started using my middle finger to select a defense, but this is just too slow.
- Realizing that I didn't need to finish a move before starting another one. It helps alot to start an attack right after a ducked blade misses you, rather than waiting to return to a neutral position. Switching to a parry after you see your opponent is going to beat you to the thrust also is possible.
- A good time to start an attack is when an opponent is still reeling, which strangely sometimes happens even after an opponent succesfully defends.
- Feinting one move then doing another sometimes seems to through your opponent off.
- The Longsword and Cutlass are usefull against a faster opponent if you find you don't quite have enough time to pick the proper defense.
- Practice fencing when someone harasses the serving wench in a Tavern. Some of these guys are really good, you don't seem to suffer any ill effects if you lose (perhaps you can recruit less crew?), and can keep refighting until you win.

[Shiroko]

Tom I'm on Swashbuckler and I sack towns everytime I want to, unless I'm trying to gather more crew.
Land battle are rather easy and you can beat superior numbers (Got 215 vs 280 very easily).

I believe that better relations with indians will also let their units be on your side in land battles.

Anyway, get tons of gold for your men, I had a voyage of 3 years I think with 198,000 gold and each pirate got 500 for it. Makes a good starting point. I however find it impossible to have 300 crew without problems.

-Shiroko

[Walter Yarbrough]

I believe that better relations with indians will also let their units be on your side in land battles.

I've never seen this. Or pirates on your side. The manual indicates that you can get them, somehow, though.

-Walt

[dfs]

- Feinting one move then doing another sometimes seems to through your opponent off.

How?

[Alan Au]

You can feint by starting one attack, and then switching to another after your opponent has committed to a defensive posture. This works best when your opponent tries to use one of the advanced defensive postures with a lengthy animation, which happens if they react early enough to your attack (e.g. doing a flip in the air).

- Alan

[dfs]

You can feint by starting one attack, and then switching to another after your opponent has committed to a defensive posture. This works best when your opponent tries to use one of the advanced defensive postures with a lengthy animation, which happens if they react early enough to your attack (e.g. doing a flip in the air).

Well, I'll be....
Really? It seems to me that once I've started a command that command carries through....Now that I think of it, I've given defensive commands and queued my next attack too quickly and gotten hit for it, so I've had this work against me, but not in my favor. I'll have to investigate. Thanks.

[Shiroko]

The computer does the same trick, I've seen enemy captain start an attack then switch before starting it. I also do the same thing a lot of defense when I press the wrong button and correct myself.

-Shiroko

[TomChick]

* While at sea, right-clicking brings up the telescope and slows the game speed to a crawl. This is perfect for fine tuning the relative positions of your ship and your enemy before beginning a battle.

* The signal mirror doesn't save your special items or anything. Apparently, you just shave some time off being marrooned, but you still lose everything. Including the signal mirror! :)

"Hey I'm rescued! Guess I won't need this anymore..."

* A Sailmaker repairs one quarter of the sail damage on the all the ship in your fleet on the first of the month. I presume a Carpenter works the same way for your hull damage.

* A cutlass and the judicious use of taunts works absolute wonders in a ship battle. Apparently, taunting an opponent slows him down. I've had quite a bit of luck taking a cutlass, taunting when I can, and then just waiting out the battle.

Turning my hand sideways, resting a finger on each of the defense buttons. I had started using my middle finger to select a defense, but this is just too slow.

This is huge a huge help in duels! Thanks Jasper. I still can't beat those annoying rivals with their rapiers, but this helps quite a bit.

* Alan Au just posted something in the other thread I didn't know:

Retirement is linked to "health," not age. Getting hit during fencing degrades your health, while the healing salve and medicine skill slow the effects of aging.

Holy crap, really? Can anyone confirm this? I couldn't find it in the manual, but no wonder my pirates' health fails so quickly! Maybe I won't spend quite so much time practicing with the captains of the guard.

-Tom

[Shiroko]

Seems odd to me, I dueled quite a lot and I'm 24 years into the game with failing health but still not forced retirement.

-Shiroko

[DrCrypt]

The "getting hit by fencing degrades your health" is bullshit, widely disproven on the Pirates! forums. I think the designers did mention that was the way it works, but it's a placebo - it doesn't. I remember this same exact rumor going around for the original Pirates!, come to think of it. Getting hit in fencing has no impact on your health.

My feeling on this game is that it's wonderful, but getting down to the brass tacks makes you realize exactly how far the atmosphere carries the game. Objectively speaking, half of the game's features are either placebos or flat-out broken.

[TomChick]

So does anyone know what does determine your health? My pirate now is 35 and in poor health. Could this have been avoided with a better diet? Regular exercise? An occasional glass of red wine with meals?

FWIW, I don't mind the smoke and mirrors, but I'd like to know a bit about what's going on and why I should make certain choices. If those shrunken heads don't do a damn thing in the game, I'd like to know so I don't waste my 2500 gold. If, however, health is just a die roll, hey, cool by me. I just want to make sure I'm not dooming myself to an early retirement by -- say-- hitting the tavern every time I sail into port.

-Tom

[Alan Au]

* Alan Au just posted something in the other thread I didn't know:

Retirement is linked to "health," not age. Getting hit during fencing degrades your health, while the healing salve and medicine skill slow the effects of aging.
Sorry, no, I forgot to remove this part when I edited the post. I don't know if fencing hits have any effect on your health.

- Alan

[Jakub]

Holy crap, really? Can anyone confirm this? I couldn't find it in the manual, but no wonder my pirates' health fails so quickly! Maybe I won't spend quite so much time practicing with the captains of the guard.

-Tom
Yes.

It was true in the first Pirates as well.

Jail, being marooned and being hit in duels all take a toll.

[Nick Walter]

Holy crap, really? Can anyone confirm this? I couldn't find it in the manual, but no wonder my pirates' health fails so quickly! Maybe I won't spend quite so much time practicing with the captains of the guard.

-Tom
Yes.

It was true in the first Pirates as well.

Jail, being marooned and being hit in duels all take a toll.

Oooo, direct contradiction of a DrCrypt post. This ought to be a fun debate to watch.

Allow me to start it off:

I've seen an awful lot of posts (including some with fairly methodical looking tests) that all said dueling had no impact on long term health.

[TomChick]

Where do people get this idea, other than the popular conception that it was in the first Pirates? Is it in the manual somewhere?

Crypt said he thought the developers might have suggested it. Anyone know where? Some Firaxis interview on Avault or IGN or something?

-Tom

[G-Man]

Is it a sign of a game being good or bad when urban legends like these get started? I mean I can see the argument for both propositions. Ideally, a game's mechanisms should be transparent enough so that the player isn't ever confused or misled about what the consequences of his actions will be (that would be poor UI design), but hiding the ball to a limited degree does sort of extend the mystique of a game - that fun bit of exploration of the gamespace that we all relish so much.

[Sparky2003]

Holy crap, really? Can anyone confirm this? I couldn't find it in the manual, but no wonder my pirates' health fails so quickly! Maybe I won't spend quite so much time practicing with the captains of the guard.

-Tom
Yes.

It was true in the first Pirates as well.

Jail, being marooned and being hit in duels all take a toll.

Oooo, direct contradiction of a DrCrypt post. This ought to be a fun debate to watch.

Allow me to start it off:

I've seen an awful lot of posts (including some with fairly methodical looking tests) that all said dueling had no impact on long term health.

I think getting beaten in fights does reduce your health. In the original getting beat would increase your injury counter and I've noticed health degrading after losing a match with the current game. Might have been a co-incidence though. I don't think getting hit has any impact on your health.

[TomChick]

Is it a sign of a game being good or bad when urban legends like these get started?

Actually, I don't think it's a sign of anything other than a game's popularity. :) The more popular a game, the more people will confuse correlation and causation, posting stuff like the supposed connection between fencing hits and health.

I've talked to plenty of developers who are surprised at how many things players attribute to their games that simply aren't there: AI behaviors, rules, and so forth. I remember someone saying he was surprised to read in a review that the AI was so smart it would flank you, when in fact, it could do no such thing. People believe -- and invent -- all kinds of things. Then they repeat them on the internet, where it all becomes true.

But it is an interesting issue of where along the scale a game should fall between transparency and sleight of hand. As I've said before, all games are ultimately variations on Dragon's Lair: press the right button at the right time for the right outcome. Developers add various layers of informaton, misdirection, and graphics and...voila!...you have a game. It's just that some games do a better job distracting us from the fact we're really just playing more elaborate versions of Dragon's Lair.

-Tom

[G-Man]

And some games have monster closets.

[Silverlight]

But it is an interesting issue of where along the scale a game should fall between transparency and sleight of hand. As I've said before, all games are ultimately variations on Dragon's Lair: press the right button at the right time for the right outcome. Developers add various layers of informaton, misdirection, and graphics and...voila!...you have a game. It's just that some games do a better job distracting us from the fact we're really just playing more elaborate versions of Dragon's Lair.

Just to throw things a little more off course....

You should really find something a tiny bit more sophisticated than Dragon's Lair to use as an example, since Dragon's Lair basically gave you no information at all about what the correct action was. On a pure theoretical basis there is a line to be drawn between games that tell you nothing at all and games that tell you something - the latter cross the line to providing a feedback loop.

[AlexxKay]

I've talked to plenty of developers who are surprised at how many things players attribute to their games that simply aren't there: AI behaviors, rules, and so forth.

You can add me to the list. Fans swore up and down that the first two Thief games had locational damage, and that it was worthwhile shooting people in the head. Nope.

[Jakub]

Oooo, direct contradiction of a DrCrypt post. This ought to be a fun debate to watch.

Allow me to start it off:

I've seen an awful lot of posts (including some with fairly methodical looking tests) that all said dueling had no impact on long term health.
*shrug*

I'm working off an old FAQ for Pirates and my own experiences in the new game. Old FAQ claimed that jail, marooning or hits in a duel would result in loss of health.

But of course, Crypt is ALWAYS right.

[G-Man]

Fans swore up and down that the first two Thief games had locational damage, and that it was worthwhile shooting people in the head. Nope.Wow. Really? Was I the only one who would routinely blackjack people in the foot? The problem with trying to replay the Thief games nowadays is that they are just too easy once you know all the little quirks of the engine and the maps.

[TomChick]

You should really find something a tiny bit more sophisticated than Dragon's Lair to use as an example

It's just an analogy, Silverlight, and not an exacting correlation. I'm allowed to be as broad as I want. :)

Besides, I think Dragon's Lair makes the point nicely. Personally, I can't imagine playing that old thing. It represents to me the bare minimum amount of actual gameplay required to call something a game.

And Alexx, you're totally wrong about Thief. A headshot does way more damage. I ran tests. I read it online. Plus, someone told me that. You're wrong!

-Tom

[Jasper]

Screw Dragon's Lair. Brass Tacks, Damn it!

[TomChick]

Here's a brass tack:

* I'm so ready for a goddamn Pirates patch. I adore this game, but man are some of the little quirks annoying. I get marrooned by a pirate and six months later, I'm magically respawned next to the same pirate with a fresh sloop and VERY HAPPY crew, while he's still as damaged as he was before. Lame, lame, lame.

Also, I really do wish not only that you could save in ports, but that you could only save in ports. That would make for a great iron man mode, even if they just limited it to Swashbuckler. I know me and Jason Lutes love when a game gives us that kind of stuff, so there's at least two people who want that.

Have there been any Firaxis statements about patching Pirates?

-Tom

[JeffL]

Here's a brass tack:

* I'm so ready for a goddamn Pirates patch. I adore this game, but man are some of the little quirks annoying. I get marrooned by a pirate and six months later, I'm magically respawned next to the same pirate with a fresh sloop and VERY HAPPY crew, while he's still as damaged as he was before. Lame, lame, lame.

Also, I really do wish not only that you could save in ports, but that you could only save in ports. That would make for a great iron man mode, even if they just limited it to Swashbuckler. I know me and Jason Lutes love when a game gives us that kind of stuff, so there's at least two people who want that.

Have there been any Firaxis statements about patching Pirates?

-Tom

I picked up Pirates to while away some time while traveling (gonna be a long month...) and I'm hooked. I was a huge fan of the original, and this one is only better. But I agree - it would be nice to have a few of the rough spots smoothed out by a patch. Mind you, rough spots in Pirates are like a couple of inclusions in the Hope diamond.

Tom, I play in the mode you're talking about (only saving in ports) as it seems the "right" way. ;) But since you can't save IN a port, I just save immediately after leaving the port.

The one thing I'd really like is to have a way to have more "personalities" that I have to track down to find relatives, etc. rather than having to find Evil Raymondo, have him at my sword point, then have him give me just a piece of how to find my sister, then have to track him down again. How about simply adding Raymondo and his crew (say, a half dozen characters to choose from?) And here's a minor niggle - how about having the daughters have different faces (in addition to different size bosoms?) Hopefully there wlll be some resourceful mods out there, although I suppose with the animations, etc. modding the govs' daughters would be a challenge.

By the way, this should be obvious, but for anyone who's new to Pirates and new to the art of sailing ships warfare, "crossing the T" can make all the difference in winning a battle against a superior ship. Make sure you use a manueverable and fast ship, and always maneuver to put your broadside on the enemy ship's bow or stern (thus the term "crossing the T".) This allows you to blast your foe while keeping his guns off of you. Again, simple and obvious but there may be some folks who are new to Pirates out there.

[Alan Au]

Tom, I play in the mode you're talking about (only saving in ports) as it seems the "right" way. ;) But since you can't save IN a port, I just save immediately after leaving the port.
Actually, the game autosaves into the "Arrival" slot every time you enter port. In theory, you could play an entire game without manually saving if you only quit immediately after entering a port.

As for ship battles, having the weather gauge (staying to windward) is also very important because it's much easier to maneuver downwind.

- Alan

[Xaroc]

Tom, I play in the mode you're talking about (only saving in ports) as it seems the "right" way. ;) But since you can't save IN a port, I just save immediately after leaving the port.
Actually, the game autosaves into the "Arrival" slot every time you enter port. In theory, you could play an entire game without manually saving if you only quit immediately after entering a port.

As for ship battles, having the weather gauge (staying to windward) is also very important because it's much easier to maneuver downwind.

- Alan

There is a quit save that will let you save in town. Just quit and then hit load and load up the save labeled Quit.

-- Xaroc

[Jasper]

As for ship battles, having the weather gauge (staying to windward) is also very important because it's much easier to maneuver downwind.
I find different wind angles for different purposes. When facing a military opponent, or one I don't want to board, I like to have the wind going from me towards my enemy. However, against merchants I prefer the opposite; sometimes merchants seem inordinately fast, even in supposedly slow ships, and this keeps them from fleeing. I like this setup against multiple ships too, as it makes it easier to dodge cannonades, or cut and run.

[Lizard_King]

Some comments from someone who's given it a lot of thought (http://www.caltrops.com/pointy.php?action=viewPost&pid=9770).
Can someone add this to that pirates thread? There's no official forums for the game so I figure the developer community there has the best chance of getting back to Firaxis.

The red 'X' glitching out of maps (most often lost family and incan cities ones) needs to be fixed ASAP. The family member is glitched out of the game and will never appear no matter how hard you look for them which makes it impossible to complete that whole quest series.

There needs to be a happy medium between the hardest difficulty level (swashbuckler) and the next hardest (rogue). Once you get the hand of things, rogue and everything below it offers no challenge, yet swashbuckler is a ridiculous surge foward in difficulty. All I want is more challenging duels and the like, yet swashbuckler outright cheats. Suddenly giant cargo-laden indiamen are faster and manuver rings around my sloop. The wind seems to conspire against you and change direction to blow against you every time you make a turn. All I want is a step up from rogue so duels aren't an automatic win, plus the other aspects made more challenging. With swashbuckler you get the more challenging duels, and combat is more realistic where number matter more (you can take on 5 to 1 odds on rogue), but the fucking wind plots against you and turns both strategic travel and combat into a crawl where you spend half your time standing still (if not being pushed back outright) and simply moving fowardt becomes a struggle. Actually, the other ship seems to have less problems with the wind and will always be faster and more manueverable than you no matter what the size difference between your two ships. Even with the navigation skill, pilotting a sloop with cotton sails, it's a struggle just to move on swashbuckler.

Has anyone ever thought that the wind really added to the fun of pirates? It makes travelling east a total agonizing crawl, and since this game has no way to accelerate time, that's a lot of time spent staring at your little boat crawling across the screen. You can't even point it in a direction and go do something else, or you'll crash into reefs, land on a shore, or get sunk by pirate hunters or forts, so you're stuck staring at nothing. The only people I can imagine this appealing to are the diehard sim types that have custom rudder pedals built into their desks for flight sims, and if you're into those types of games, why on earth are you playing pirates? The only way to not be hampered by this is to go with an easier difficulty level, where all the challenge of the FUN aspects is removed. Trying to "tack" the wind and consulting point of sailing charts then comparing them to a table on ship sail configurations isn't my idea of fun and seems to totally fly against Pirates' whole casual play concept. It's one thing for wind to affect speeds and make you travel a little faster or slower, but on harder difficulty you can't even MOVE half the time, even with the fastest boat with the fastest sails with the navigation skill. I find myself wishing for a seperate "gimp wind" option independant of the overall difficulty level. All I want from harder difficulty level is more challenging battles, not for the game to turn into a slow and boring simulation in the name of REELISM.

[Shiroko]

Is it that hard getting a forum account here?

Anyway, I found Swashbuckler excellent, The wind was harder and ship battles were harder but there were still rather easy if you came from the right wind direction and knew what you were doing.

-Shiroko

[DrCrypt]

Has anyone ever thought that the wind really added to the fun of pirates? It makes travelling east a total agonizing crawl, and since this game has no way to accelerate time, that's a lot of time spent staring at your little boat crawling across the screen. You can't even point it in a direction and go do something else, or you'll crash into reefs, land on a shore, or get sunk by pirate hunters or forts, so you're stuck staring at nothing. The only people I can imagine this appealing to are the diehard sim types that have custom rudder pedals built into their desks for flight sims, and if you're into those types of games, why on earth are you playing pirates? The only way to not be hampered by this is to go with an easier difficulty level, where all the challenge of the FUN aspects is removed. Trying to "tack" the wind and consulting point of sailing charts then comparing them to a table on ship sail configurations isn't my idea of fun and seems to totally fly against Pirates' whole casual play concept. It's one thing for wind to affect speeds and make you travel a little faster or slower, but on harder difficulty you can't even MOVE half the time, even with the fastest boat with the fastest sails with the navigation skill. I find myself wishing for a seperate "gimp wind" option independant of the overall difficulty level. All I want from harder difficulty level is more challenging battles, not for the game to turn into a slow and boring simulation in the name of REELISM.
Yeah, take that, Chick. That's really why I use the wind trainer - between long bouts of tedium that could have easily been remedied with a time compression system and cheating to sail from west to east without making my way through a chapter of a philosophy textbook during the downtime, I'd rather be a cheater actually having some fun. This isn't an MMOG - I don't want "downtime" to catch up on the homework I ought to be doing instead. If I sit down and play a game, I want to actually play it.

Time compression when sailing against the wind would have been an excellent compromise - the strategic importance of plotting your voyages carefully would have remained intact without slogging the player down for long, boring swathes of their playing time.

[Graeme Dice]

Time compression when sailing against the wind would have been an excellent compromise - the strategic importance of plotting your voyages carefully would have remained intact without slogging the player down for long, boring swathes of their playing time.

I haven't noticed anything that resembles slow sailing, even on swashbuckler while tacking from Rio de la Hacha to Maracaibo or from Vera Cruz back to the main. Both of which are just about the worst places for wind around. As long as you don't point your ship directly into the wind, you shouldn't really notice it being that slow. Tacking into the wind is part of sailing a ship, and removing it doesn't make much sense to me.

[DrCrypt]

Come on. There's no arguing that sailing in any direction into the wind is not significantly, tediously slower than sailing with it. Tacking does indeed make it faster than sailing directly into the wind, but no duh, of course it is. That doesn't make it much less tedious. Tell you what: time yourself going all the way from east to west, then time yourself going all the way from west to east. If it doesn't take you at least three times as long to make the return trip, supernatural tacking skills included, I'll eat my fez.

[Ben]

Even at lower difficulty levels, in ship-to-ship you'll occaisionally get absolutely stalled. I don't care if that really happened, it's boring to watch me sit just out of range while I and a merchantship sail at 1 knot. I generally end up just giving up on those battles and sailing away.

[TomChick]

BTW, what I hate in Pirates is when my ship gets damaged or I don't have enough crew to sail at full speed. So does anyone know where I can get a trainer so that my ship always sails at full speed, whether it's hull is at 0% damage or 99% damage, whether I'm fully crewed or whether I have to use my men to tend to a damaged galleon, whether I'm in a sloop with cotton sails or a coastal barque.

It's just not fun to wait around to get somewhere. After all, I'm playing to have fun, not manage my ship's speed. So, preferably, if anyone knows of a trainer where I can just teleport around among the different ports, I think that would be the most fun!

-Tom

P.S. I have no beef with anyone using a trainer to turn off wind, but don't pretend you aren't undermining the game mechanics (i.e. cheating). Pirates is ultimately a time management game in which you're doing as much as you can with your character's life span. I significant part of the time management involves which way you sail, particularly on the hard levels, where some people would do well to refer to the "best point of sailing" column on p.107 and cross reference it to the chart on p.20.

[Bub, Andrew]

The slow sailing doesn't bother me much (though I have noticed that the game sadistically likes to spawn Raymondo as far away from your current location as possible which results in frequent "contrived feeling" trips back and forth across the map). But, as has been mentioned, it's an important part of the way the game works. Since death is impossible, time is the greatest penalty the game punishes you with. Imprisonment, marooned, and sailing from Vera Cruz to Barbados all impact your pirate's career. Maybe they could have included a toggle or something where you move just as quickly if you sail full bore into the wind but time moves correspondingly fast.

Less frustration for those frustrated by this, but the game mechanics remain the same. (Of course something telling you that time is moving faster would be helpful.)

EDIT: Just noticed Crypt already suggested Time Compression so, um, er, Pirates is a really good game.

[DrCrypt]

Tom, stop being a dork, sissily weeping about cheating and address the main point - there's better ways to handle the wind issue than just making the player slow to a crawl in real time. We get your point - the game's strategy is all about managing your time in a limited career. No duh. But that's game time, not real time. Give me a single reason why time compression when sailing into the wind wouldn't have worked just as well? It still penalizes a player, it is still a strategic liability, it just isn't a monotonous drag. I mean, come on - you notice in your other examples, when you're ship wrecked or locked in jail or divvy up your plunder, the game doesn't make you wait out the six months in real time. Why? Because it's fucking tedious and game's aren't supposed to be tedious.

[Ben]

Tom- You know the game has a teleportation mechanic? You can just hop back to your ship from walking around. Imagine all that time management fun we are missing!

Also, not having to cross reference charts was allegedly one of the high points of Pirates. It doesn't have Port Royale's economy, and that's a good thing. Or so I thought. Now I'm upset that there aren't 15 types of goods, and that you can't develop the land you receive, and etc.

[Graeme Dice]

We get your point - the game's strategy is all about managing your time in a limited career. No duh. But that's game time, not real time. Give me a single reason why time compression when sailing into the wind wouldn't have worked just as well?

Because that would give the player no real feel for just how carefully you should plan your voyages beforehand.

Because it's fucking tedious and game's aren't supposed to be tedious.

You forgot to include IMNSHO there.

[TomChick]

Tom- You know the game has a teleportation mechanic? You can just hop back to your ship from walking around. Imagine all that time management fun we are missing!

Heh, good point! Note, however, that Pirates does make you walk around to find your target, so someone at Firaxis must have thought walking overland was fun. Which I completely understand, just like I completely understand the sailing model.

What I don't understand is who in his right mind doesn't hate the sneaking around town stuff. :)

Also, not having to cross reference charts was allegedly one of the high points of Pirates.

All I mean by that, Ben, is that if you're so bothered by the fact that you go slower when you're travelling in certain directions, before someone takes the drastic step of using a cheat that turns off wind, he might consider that different ships have different sailing characteristics. I use this to my advantage all the time. I'm never sitting there stalled because I don't know, for instance, that a sloop hauls ass travelling perpendicular to the wind (beam reach).

-Tom

[TomChick]

there's better ways to handle the wind issue than just making the player slow to a crawl in real time.

Yes, there is. It's called tacking. Your ship should never slow to a crawl, but instead should travel at an angle to the wind.

I would have no problem with a time compression feature for the sailing, although personally, I hardly think it's necessary. There are probably about a half dozen other things I'd rather see Firaxis work on (e.g. changing flagships in port, indicating a town's nationality when asking pirates and natives to attack towns, a better way to check goods prices on the map, not having to fight the same villains over and over in one career, etc.).

-Tom

[Dirt]

How is Pirates! selling? I hope it's doing well and it's success will show Stardock that they won't need to reinvent the well with Masters of Magic. Good gameplay is good gameplay.

[Raife]

... not having to fight the same villains over and over in one career, etc.).

Gah, no kidding. "Ah, so I must fight the evil Baron Raymundo for the 4,562nd time."

I love the game, but some random bad-guy names would have been appreciated.

[Alan Au]

a better way to check goods prices on the map
If you click on a city on the world map, it will tell you the last known prices there.

- Alan

[TomChick]

Right, but I'd rather see a better way. As in a list of the last known prices for spice arranged by proximity.

Okay, maybe not that elaborate, but I'd settle for all the known prices being displayed on one screen. It's also pretty frickin' annoying to have to click on all the towns to find out where a brother can get a set of bronze cannons or some of that sweet copper plating.

-Tom

[Alan Au]

Right, but I'd rather see a better way. As in a list of the last known prices for spice arranged by proximity.
Yeah, the friendly neighborhood bartender sometimes seems to know these things, but you're right that the game isn't really set up to be merchant-friendly. That reminds me, I still need to have a go at doing the "Merchants of the Caribbean" thing. It's a shame you can't purchase ships in port, say maybe a nice Galaxy with a couple of mass-driver turrets, er, wait, no, nevermind.

- Alan

[Drastic]

I'm all for some mild time compression. I don't mind tacking against the wind at all when the wind's, say, a nice 8+ knots. But trying to tack against a 2-3 knot sargasso wind up around Cuba is pretty tedious regardless of what ship you're in.

[DrCrypt]

It isn't exactly like I don't understand the concept of tacking. But, sorry guys, it isn't some major strategic draw - there's nothing to it except spinning your ship around a 90 degree arc bisected by the direction the wind until you think you "feel" faster. It's still much slower than sailing with the wind and it still sucks. I've been playing Pirates! in various incarnations for about 15 years now. It's basically my favorite game. It's my pick of Game of the Year. Before the new PC version came out, the Genesis version was a staple on my laptop and I played a game every few months or so. But to put all this in perspective, that's 15 years of sailing against the wind, and I'm sick of the device. Optional time compression would have been extremely welcome and, really, refinement on the device is long overdue..

I mean, Chick can blah about how Pirates! represents the dichotomy of the average man, whose every action causes his soul to burn brighter, but thus erode away his mortal wick all the faster. I get it. I've gotten it for a decade and a half. But here's the way an average game of Pirates! on higher levels goes: you know the clock is ticking, so you have to focus on filling your quests. So you sail all the way to Vera Cruz to fight the Captain, kill him, go into port to sell your riches, and are then told that the next Captain is sailing off of Trinidad. This sort of thing happens all the time. So now you have a choice - either spend the next hour fighting against the wind trying to get to him, or dick around somewhere in the middle of the map hoping he gets closer.

But this isn't a strategic decision. This is not an example of muffed career management. This is just the way the randomness of the game plays out - you simply can not manage your career in such a way that you can foresee something like this. And don't get me wrong - I like it that way. But the number of times I've groaned over the years because Sid Meier's Fate! had just served me up a helping of hour long tedium would fill up Koontz's nth-dimensional abacus.

I think it's mind boggling that people don't think sailing against the wind is a total drag, and how I'm overreacting about it, and how it really isn't that bad to sail against the wind (or, sorry, tack) for an hour. Then they turn around and talk about how the biggest problem with the game is that they can't change their flagship in port... requiring them to sail out of the town for like five seconds, then right back in. So whatever - these people are clearly crazy.

Or maybe they don't care about managing "the perfect career", where they complete all their life goals on a high difficulty setting before they are forced to retire. Maybe when they are told to sell from Campeche to Barbados, they're happy to do a lot of dicking around on the way, which mitigates the annoyance factor. That's great - I have games like that too, and Pirates! is an excellent game on that level. But the reason I keep playing this game is hoping someday I'll manage the perfect career on Swashbuckler. To me, it's like bowling the perfect game, except bowling a 300 doesn't require spending an hour between strikes laboriously setting the pins back up with your arrow keys. Considering the solution to my complaint is so obvious (decide upon a median wind speed and the number of knots a ship can travel in that wind per day, then multiply any speed below or divide any speed above that to "compress" time proportionately - this isn't hard to do) it's hard to believe how many incarnations Pirates! has gone through without refining the process.

[G-Man]

Sailing out of town and back into town five seconds later causes you to lose a week or so of in-game time. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that either one of these is a major problem, but I just wanted to point out that there is a greater downside to the flagship thing than just having to waste five seconds pulling a 180.

[DrCrypt]

Yeah, in retrospect, that is pretty brutal. I mean, that's 0.064102564102564102564102564102564% of one's available career time. You might have to change your flagship in port like, what, three times maybe during a whole career? That adds up. But I would think people like Chick would love it anyway - I mean, it isn't a lapse in the interface; in fact, doesn't it give the player 0.064102564102564102564102564102564% more ultra-strategic time management per yooey? And really, the game isn't meant to be played as an Erroll Flynn boyhood fantasies adventure, but rather as a min-maxers time management sim. Every 0.064102564102564102564102564102564% is integral to success!

[Sapper Gopher]

The red 'X' glitching out of maps (most often lost family and incan cities ones) needs to be fixed ASAP. The family member is glitched out of the game and will never appear no matter how hard you look for them which makes it impossible to complete that whole quest series.


Just encountered this when getting the first piece of the Olmec map from my aunt. When I got the second piece I said: "Wasn't there a red X here before?". Didn't bother going to Vera Cruz to see if the city had disappeared from its location, but I assumed it had. Nasty. Does anyone know how well this bug is documented?

Because I've been religiously backing up through incremental saves, I was able to recover and do some research. I have saves both immediately before and after entering the cabin. I was reloading until I got a lower right map piece with the X and some coastline on it.... Anyways right after entering the cabin the X is still there on my lower right piece of the map. It disappears the instant I return to the ship though, without fail, no matter how many times I reload. So I loaded the save before entering the cabin, and got a new map piece with an X on it. This time the X stays put when I return to my ship. I have no idea how this works when getting a piece through other means, or if this can happen if the first piece doesn't have the X. But it seems the bug occurs when you get the first piece and the city/relative's-cabin is "created". The only insurance is to have a save right before getting the first piece of a new map, so you can "create" a new location if the bug occurs.

[Supertanker]

The thought of sailing east makes me groan. The game's really good at giving me treats when I push the lever, but suddenly quits doing that when headed east. I like the concept of a prevailing wind, but the execution strikes me as a little severe.

[SolomonGrundy]

Hrm. Going against the wind did bother me, but now I go all the way west, turn around and go Brazil, cuba, brazil, whatever the next island over from cuba is, rinse and repeat. The middle of the map , as long as you don't sack Santiago, always have enough ships to plunder to keep the ship happy.

How to aviod travelling long distances- but is cheap.
Family Quest- Enter town, get the 1000 for info thing, if the port is far away, or to the east, sail out of town, reload the arrival save and repeat until you get the bastard close by. Cheap but far quicker than chasing his arse all over the place.
Same goes for other random characters, but villians you have to dance again so it isn't worth it,

[wildpokerman]

The thought of sailing east makes me groan. The game's really good at giving me treats when I push the lever, but suddenly quits doing that when headed east. I like the concept of a prevailing wind, but the execution strikes me as a little severe.

This flaw is probably the only thing that takes you out of total immersion with this game, if I have to or want to sail east it makes me just want to close the game down and play something else.

[Jasper]

I don't get people's complaints with the wind. Even on swashbuckler it's not that slow, unless you're sailling directly against the wind. I certainly haven't found it to be 3 times as slow, although this may be because I adjust my plans to the prevailing winds. Then again, optional Time Compression seems like an obivious improvement.

If I'm going eastward I just make sure I'm doing it when the wind is blowing more to the north or south; if it's blowing south-west, you can sail at a good clip south-eastward. It's not uncommon for the wind to blow due south or north either, letting you go straight east quickly. It also helps to keep an eye out for alternate plans if the wind is troublesome, but fortunately Pirates gives you lots of different options.

What pisses me off is when some vanilla Galleon outruns my decked out Frigate or Sloop. Pirate Hunters coming out of port are also bad in this regard.

Also, the wind at the end of battles really pisses me off, to the point that I wonder if it's buggy. While the battle is on I can make good speed, even tacking 45-60 degrees from the wind, but as soon as I blow their mast off my ship slows to a crawl and it takes 5 minutes or more to get close enough for them to surrender. Why the sudden change in sailling dynamics? Why can't the game just figure out they're going to surrender and I'm sailling faster, then just cut to the chase? Bleh.

But these are only small flaws in what to me is clearly Game of the Year. In a lesser game I wouldn't complain about them, I'd just move on to something else.

[Mattc0m]

At first, it was very annoying. Over time, I got more and more used to it. However, having to compress the "annoyment" factor is somewhat an odd tactic.

However, this one point is so easily ignored when looking at the game as a whole.

[Bitterman]

Speaking of math majors here, the way plunder is divided seems to be a share, not a fixed percentage. Say, for instance you have 100 gold. As an officer, you get two shares. Now perhaps you have a crew of 3. So the total shares are 5 (2 for you, 3 crew). Thus each share is 20 gold. You get 40 gold for being captain. Now if you kill 2 crew, there are 3 shares of 33 gold. You get 66 and your crewman gets 33. Obviously, it is better to kill off your crew.

[Mike O'Malley]

Speaking of math majors here, the way plunder is divided seems to be a share, not a fixed percentage. Say, for instance you have 100 gold. As an officer, you get two shares. Now perhaps you have a crew of 3. So the total shares are 5 (2 for you, 3 crew). Thus each share is 20 gold. You get 40 gold for being captain. Now if you kill 2 crew, there are 3 shares of 33 gold. You get 66 and your crewman gets 33. Obviously, it is better to kill off your crew.

This is why I will never work for Bitterman in a group bonus situation.

When I'm about to split a crew in Pirates!, I have them pointlessly attack a town whilst heavily outnumbered and outgunned. At the appropriate time, I run back to the ship, sail to a friendly port and split the loot.
I rationalize it as survival of the fittest.

[TomChick]

You guys need to check your math. The amount of loot you get is a fixed percentage based on the difficulty level.

Unless you guys are using some kind of Dr. Crypt style cheat that breaks the game, it doesn't matter if you have 5 men or 500 men in your crew. You'll get the same amount of money.

-Tom

[Bitterman]

I disagree with this statement, unless they made changes to the new version. Even if you are correct, it is worthwhile to kill off the crew, because the remaining memebers will get a much larger share, and they will be happier, which leads to a quicker turnaround time, and better starting morale.

[Graeme Dice]

You guys need to check your math. The amount of loot you get is a fixed percentage based on the difficulty level.

5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 50% if I remember the manual correctly.

[Alan Au]

5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 50% if I remember the manual correctly.
The manual says it's 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%. In the game itself, a Swashbuckler captain actually gets 50%.

- Alan

[TomChick]

I disagree with this statement, unless they made changes to the new version.

You can disagree all you want, but you're still wrong about how the money is divided. It's in the manual and it's easy to tell within the game. Feel free to check it if you don't believe me.

-Tom

[Jasper]

Getting your crew killed off is very gamey, but it makes a pretty big difference. Obviously it doesn't affect your share of the loot, but your next voyage will be much easier if your previous one ended with a happy crew. You'll get more leeway to spend time getting a sizeable crew before you need to be making money, and happier crews fight better.

[Mike O'Malley]

Plus it's just so...piratey!. I love the fact that my new crew has great morale and is eager to sail with me even though I SET UP AND KILLED THEIR PREDECESSORS! Machiavelli was right.

[Kalle]

The crew knows that whoever survives is going to get rich. What's to complain about?

[wildpokerman]

Well I've been trying pirates on the highest difficulty level and it's not as hard as I imagined. When I first played the game it was too hard at rogue level and now I think I can hold my own.

I went a little pirate crazy though, thanks to the fun I'm having I bought the pirates of the carribean PC game, Port Royale 2. pirate hunter, and I bought my daughter a pirate ship toy because she loves watching me play the game.