Moving Soldiers with Ships

[Captain Jack]

Greetings everyone,

We need to get a discussion going in order to define how soldiers are moved around. I had a little preliminary discussion with DezNutz earlier in the slack chat and we ended up with a starting point as following:

-Ships can carry as many soldiers as their crew count.
-They cannot carry both immigrants and crew in the same time.
-They can carry any other cargo.

Moving on, to make the transport automatic, we could use a system like Fishing. Where you select a number of fleets and they commence to carry out the task. An option to select the exact amount of soldiers should exist (or max, or continuous?).

Soldiers will be initially used to attack and defend plantations. More uses for them later.
Initially there will be only private armies. Later on we could have national armies as well.
More on their usage can be discussed on separate topics.

[Jack Teach]

I'm confused. What exactly needs to be discussed for this new part of the game?

[Stan Rogers]

Where/how would these soldiers be spawned ?

I expect regardless where they are created, to be effective they will need to be transported.

For instance, is a plantation required to make soldiers ? Can a plant make it's own defence militia? You cannot just fish for them or perhaps they will be a percentage of a ports pops without any player intervention ?

You are obviously a number of steps ahead of me which would allow me to provide ideas or recommendations how we would like to move these guys around.

[sXs]

I agree with Stan. Details are needed before any semblance of legitimate discussion can be had.

I also agree we are putting the cart before the horse here. Why not finish several unfinished mechanics first.

1. Plantation Guardhouse. Could this not be used in some way for this, or is it a dead mechanic?
2. Blockades. I thought this was going to be part of the plantation attack/defense mechanic.
3. Natural disasters. I believe this was also an approved plantation mechanic yet to be implemented.

I am sure I am forgetting a few. It has been so very long since any serious game development discussions have been had in the forums, forgive me if I am a bit confused, but these were all approved at one time or another. Shouldn't these be the priority?

How do we move soldiers????? This should be discussed after we know the things Stan asked about first. Why do we need them, How do we create them, How many will we need to do the things they are supposed to do? This is important because moving 1000 versus moving millions, creating 1000 vs creating millions would have a huge impact on the types of suggestions you will get.

[Argo]

Where do we get these soldiers?
Voodoo card to capture/kidnap crew?
I have always wondered why we don't have an armoury store at the market.


1.. Players HAVE to run ships (crew) to garner soldiers
2. Build fort -national co-op. (Fort houses arsenal and grows soldiers with tech).
Nation players contribute to the growth of tech for the nation to build their forts..
Player tech - grows crew/soldier strength and numbers?

ALSO-
3. Chain balls to take out sails
4 Cannon balls to take out hulls. (small cannon, lge cannon etc)
5. Grapeshot to capture crew. injured crew - say 24 hours to heal (or pay extra) to morph into healthy and battle ready nation soldiers .. (player tech dependent}
6. Individual Tech determines players strength of crew/soldiers


CJ.. Are there any implementations coming on from the ideas that have already been discussed? If so, what would that be and do you have any idea of the timing?

[William one eye]

I suggest the following.

Soldiers transport as cargo.
If there will ne vairiable soldier types.
Soldiers sould include their equipment, and fill cargo spaces
Accordingly.
So a infantry soldier might fill 1 cargo slot,
An light artilery officer might fill 5 cargo slots
A cavalry officer and horse might fill 10 slots
A heavy artillery officer might fill 15 slots.

If you plunder a ship carrying soldiers,
Do you take them as a prize?

If you can attack a plantation from a ship.
A plantation should be able to attack in return,
For example soliders could raid
Ships in port.

[Jack Teach]

I think you should be able to hire soldiers like you would hire crewman or officers, so as to allow more piratical players to raid plantations.

[DezNutz]

I'm confused. What exactly needs to be discussed for this new part of the game?

For features, the general idea can be laid out but the specifics of how it would function are not always done so, or suggested mechanism have conflicts or don't/can't work the way envisioned. As such, discussion topics like this are used to generate ideas in relation to something specific. All ideas, even bad ones, can help to come up with a solution, as not everyone will look at the problem in the same light.

[Argo]

Kidnapping them would be more piratey, Jack, no??

[Jack Teach]

Kidnapping them would be more piratey, Jack, no??

In a way, yes, but it would also make the task of attacking a large plantation much more difficult than it already is, and it already seems to me to be a pretty difficult task.