Pirates!

JT Wrote:

Have you guys played Sid Meier's Pirates! (the 2004 remake)? That game has an excellent faction allegiance system not unlike the one you're describing here.

I picked up a copy and really enjoyed it. It has many of the ideas I wanted to see end up in Torn Stars. I am delighted that there is a game with a free form model we can all have in common (Space Rangers is another, but many did not like the 2D interface in a space game).

Has anyone else played it? What are your impressions?

There are some really interesting concepts in there.
The trade system is limited in the cargo it will sell you (like Torn Stars) but also limited in the cash each town has to purchase. You can get around that with an exploit, but the idea is cool.

I like how towns grow larger and more prosperous, unless attacked, then they get plundered and get poorer. You have good reason to fend off invasions, pirates, and indian attacks from the wealthy towns.

I also like how every ship in the game has a purpose. Each one implements part of a very simple meta game. They might be spawned at random, but they are still important. I played a "conquer the Spanish" strategy for fun. It was cool to race up and down the spanish main, intercepting troop supply ships and escorting pirate and indian raiders to soften up the town defenses.

The game seems to track town population, wealth, and troop strength. There are also "new warships" that travel to ports and I don't know, but guess that those become escorts or pirate hunters.

The sailing simulation is excellent. I was in a Barque hunting a treasure ship, and not watching the wind closely enough. I put my ship into irons (pointed nose directly into the wind, dead stop) directly off the treasure ships broadside. I sat there, backing slowly, no helm, for two broadsides then exploded. Wonderful!

The crew moral was a brilliant invention to prevent "buy everything and become super powerful" which happens in all these free form games. It is like a mini-restart that keeps the game challenging.

And I like the fact that you cannot die. You just lose most everything. There I sit on my desert isle, thinking "dammit, you know better than to attack a well armed ship from leeward (downwind). You deserve to sit here and rot!"

Not to turn this into a Pirates! strategy board, but:

"New warships" increase the number of troops in town, just like the "reinforcements" do. The difference is simply with regards to what happens when you attempt to intercept the vessel: a "new warship" is usually a highly-upgraded ship with a lot of gold and cannons when you engage it in battle, while a "reinforcements" ship carries a lot of men when you engage it in battle, but isn't otherwise packing a lot of cash, weapons, or upgrades.

"Military payroll" also increases the number of troops, and these ships have neither a lot of men nor a lot of upgrades, although they have a goodly amount of cannons and gold aboard and are usually fairly effective ships (brigs, sloops of war, frigates, etc.).


I remember one encounter I had with a pirate hunter: he was piloting a big-assed war galleon and I was in a heavily-damaged sloop of war, having just intercepted an English privateer in order to protect the Spanish governor I was escorting. We traded broadsides for, quite literally, two days -- we were close enough that we didn't lose sight of the other ship when darkness encroached -- before I finally suffered enough damage for my mast and rigging to become destroyed. Not to be outdone, I swapped my guns for chain shot and destroyed his rigging as he prepared to close for the kill. So here we were, both of our ships carrying about ten men each, shooting our two or three guns each at one another on a periodic basis and hoping that we would score a lucky hit and destroy the enemy. Thankfully, a sloop can sail decently well enough even when it has no sails, simply because it is so light. I gave up the struggle and sailed off far enough that the next nightfall let me give him the slip.

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Man has dreamed of flying for ages, but was kept from doing so by nature of lacking wings. But then again, imagine how hard it would be to have sex if you had wings getting in the way.

I don't mind a discussion of Pirates. It is nice to have some kind of example of the freeform style we are looking for that is newer than Elite.

Combat balance that matches play style is really important, as your example highlights. And I think USpace is pretty close. Ships take time to get wounded, and they have time to struggle to escape. System damage is more prounouced. You can notice you have lost your guns before your ship goes up in a fireball. Adding the damage mod will also help, as damage will be permanant without a station willing to do repair on your ship.

The reputation system is much like Torn Stars. As your reputation improves, goods become cheaper and ports are willing to sell you more stuff. I like how they continue that by allowing free repairs and lower cost upgrades. It is well worth the trouble to keep good reputation with at least one faction. And I try to capture a port for that faction near my favorite raiding grounds for the free repairs. I like how you never know who will oppose the ship you are escorting, and sometimes you have a really tough choice if you are going to attack a friendly faction or not. The game also rewards being careful in your damage, you can drive away an attacker and not have the penalty of killing one. USpace does the same thing.

The largest issue I have is that the upside of attacking a ship seems to be as large as the downside. Meaning that you please a factions opponents as much as you anger a faction. So spreading your attacks around tends not to do your reputation much damage. I would have liked to see a bit more negative than positive to force the selection of a side. It would also be interesting if the governors could have demanded you picked a side once a war broke out. And lowered your reputation if you refused. The Civil War in the US had that effect on the federal military officers. It would have made the wars more personal, and less background.

From a game design viewpoint, one thing I found facinating about Pirates! was how they used the ships as missions. When you went to the bar, you could pick up hints on where ships were, trade ships, treasure ships, or ships you were tracking.

I had been thinking about using fleet operations as targets for missions, but had never seen a game do anything like that. Pirates handled it elegantly.

Which brings up an extension of the same idea. What if the station had a bulletin board where Fleet Operations posted "missions". So Fleet of trade ships would post requests for escort ships. And you would fly over to where the fleet was located and you could pick up an "escort mission". Essentially, get the fleet of ships to its target location.

Each operation could support a "mission" or two depending on what it was doing. So a mining operation might start with a "prospector" mission where it wanted to be led to a good mining site. Later it might give a "defense" mission to chase off some pirates that had been pestering it.

And missions would not need to be single sided. It could also be that the bulletin board would have "rumors" of valuable targets moving around. Which would give you a hint that a mining operation was moving into the area and you could raid them for cargo.

We could set it up so stations would offer missions if they were neutral or friendly with the operations. Or they would offer intercept data if they were dislike or hostile.

Kinda like the Navy and Imperial missions in FFE, or the station missions in X2?

Well in FFE the missions were not using ships already in game. As far as I could tell, taking the missions created the target (or opposing) ships. (don't actually know about X2).

What made Pirates unique is that you were finding out about ships already in game. I once escorted a ship to a city, got ahead of it and landed first. The bar maid gave me advice that the ship was carrying a fortune and I should take it. Heh. It was pretty cool that the rumors were about true events already taking place in the game.