OTMatt Posted April 24, 2016 Posted April 24, 2016 Hello, I just wanted to post a list of a scaled down crew for each ship in the battles. By scaled down I mean crew that is rendered for battle(Yes another crew thread) I know the devs are hesitant to add in animated crew for performance reasons but they did say they might add in a scaled down amount per ship so I have a list of suggestions ---------------------------- First and foremost it would be great if this crew system could be completely clientside. I don't know if that is technically possible. Empire total war never had a feature where we can reduce the number of units client side but then again that was an RTS game. Having client side crew can allow players to decide how many units to render in the game and that would be great because I doubt the average player can render thousands on screen at once. Now moving on to the main topic I spent some time thinking about how we can introduce the new crew mechanics Scaling: Each ship has a scaled down crew size, this is to reduce the number of crew rendered and improve performance in the game The largest crew comes from the Ocean ship which probably amounts to 80 crew rendered on a ship with a max of 4,000 units in the game. This will rarely be achieved but it could happen. Again if the crew system was client side players would probably reduce the number that can appear on screen. Maybe 1,000 crew max for example. The crew rendered only represent a portion of the units in the game. When some units are killed others will spawn from beneath the ship and take the place of the dead. This is included during boarding fights as well Crew Mechanics: The ship will contain various seats that the units can occupy. Cannons are the highest priority seats to occupy to maintain the realism with ship reloading and firing. Marines, Sailors, and Gunners can occupy the cannons. The steering wheel is occupied by an Officer or Sailor. The Captain seat can only be occupied by the captain. Masts can be climbed by marines, sailors, and officers. Crew that do not have any seats to occupy will walk around on the ship Ships that are under repair, on fire, or sinking, will draw crew from their positions. Marines when given the chance will take shots at the crew on the enemy ships. The number of cannons visible to the player determine how many gunners will be rendered. For example the Trincomalee has 24 visible guns, therefore 48 gunners will need to be rendered for those guns. Modules: Modules will have an effect on the crew rendered in the game Extra hammocks increases the number of crew rendered on the ship. Marines mod increase the ratio of marines to the rest of the crew Increased firepower from each type of module improves the weaponry of each crewmember Captain: The captain has no animations. He can't be killed until he is the last member on the ship. He will not join boarding parties. The Captain is the only crew member that is server side and can be customized to represent the player. Officers Usually walk around the ship giving orders. Order animations occur when the player interacts with the crew management system or the sails Occasionally will man the helmsman or climb the masts. Officers will look through the telescope every now and then. When in range of the enemy they will be armed with swords or pistols and fire when in range They will join the crew in boarding attacks. Sailors Sailors manage the sails most of the time, secondary include manning the wheel and swivel guns, and rarely crew the cannons if no other crew are present. If no positions are open they will walk around on the ship. Depending on the modules of the ship sailors may be armed with muskets, pistols, grenades, and swords, weaker loadouts result in weapons like hammers and clubs being used. They are usually the first to respond to ship repairing. Marines The marines may climb and fire from mast tops or fire on deck when in range of the enemy. They will also man swivels and cannons. Although low priority they will manage the sails and man the wheel if no other crew are present. Depending on the modules used marines may be armed with grenades. But by default all will be armed with muskets . If there are Marines on the ship then one officer will represent the Marines commander. All marines will join the crew in boarding attacks. Gunners Gunners are basically the same as sailors, the only reason they're called gunners is because they need to man the guns at the start of the game. Gunners will have the same skin as sailors. Gunners will be armed with the same type of weapons as the sailors. If the cannon is destroyed the gunner will move to the next unoccupied gun. If all guns are occupied the gunner will perform the same tasks as the sailor. Gunners will perform animations such as loading the gun and brace for firing. Gunners will join the rest of the crew in boarding attacks. Crew Death Since crew is client side death is determined by a dice roll when the crew fire the muskets or swivels The crew rendered only represent a small portion of the entire ships crew. As crew are killed more will spawn from beneath the ship and take the place of the dead crews seat Crew will stop spawning as the crew numbers decline Boarding Attacks The crew will perform boarding animations when the ship boarding occurs Since crew is client side the crew fighting on the enemy ship will not represent the actual battle The current boarding gameplay will still determine how the battle occurs Graphical Options It would be great if we can decide how much crew to render on the ship. POTBS had a similar feature where a player can decide to render 0-100% of the crew. The crew even had animations such as cannon management and sail climbing. Although it was very generic to what Empire Total War offered. Include a slider that allows us to limit the crew rendered from 0-4000 max. Include a rendering distance that allows only the closest ships to render their crew if you wished Generally any options that could improve the performance of the game would be great, I already understand how demanding the current game is but I would do anything to see crew in the game Crew Rendering Examples I have compiled a list of the crew rendered As crew gets larger for each ship the scaling increases, this offers a near perfect transition in crew size from each ship The list below is an example of how crew complement ingame might look like depending on the ship size The gunners represent the number of visible cannons, each ship requires 1 captain as well as a number of officers. The remaining will go to marines and sailors. Each ships crew is determined by two factors, the first is the number of gunners needed to be rendered due to the visible guns. The second is based on the scale of the ships crew size. So a Trincomalee has 24 guns and it will need 48 gunners, then we add in the scaled down crew. Since a Trincomalee has 325 crew it will be 1/11th scale which is 39 crew. So 39 crew+48 gunners represent 87 crew rendered on this ship. 0-25 1/5th25-50 1/6th50-75 1/7th75-100 1/8th100-200 1/9th200-300 1/10th300-400 1/11th400-500 1/12th500-600 1/13th600-700 1/14th700-800 1/15th800-900 1/16th900-1000 1/17th1000+ 1/18th -------------------------------------- Cutter - 6 - 24 Gunners - 1 Captain - 1 Officer - 2 Sailors - 2 MarinesYacht - 6 - 24 Gunners - 1 Captain - 1 Officer - 3 Sailors - 1 MarinesLynx - 7 - 16 Gunners - 1 Captain - 1 Officer - 3 Sailors - 2 MarinesPickle - 7 - 24 Gunners - 1 Captain - 1 Officer - 2 Sailors - 3 MarinesPrivateer - 8 - 24 Gunners - 1 Captain - 1 Officer - 4 Sailors - 2 MarinesBrig - 12 - 32 Gunners - 1 Captain - 2 Officers - 4 Sailors - 5 MarinesRattlesnake - 13 - 20 Gunners - 1 Captain - 2 Officers - 6 Sailors - 4 MarinesSnow - 13 - 32 Gunners - 1 Captain - 2 Officers - 5 Sailors - 5 MarinesNavy Brig - 15 - 32 Gunners - 1 Captain - 2 Officers - 5 Sailors - 7 MarinesMercury - 15 - 40 Gunners - 1 Captain - 2 Officers - 5 Sailors - 7 MarinesMortar Brig - 13 - 32 Gunners - 1 Captain - 2 Officers - 5 Sailors - 5 MarinesNiagara - 17 - 44 Gunners - 1 Captain - 2 Officers - 7 Sailors - 6 MarinesCerberus - 21 - 28 Gunners - 1 Captain - 3 Officers - 7 Sailors - 8 MarinesLe Gros Ventre - 28 - 20 Gunners - 1 Captain - 4 Officers - 11 Sailors - 12 MarinesRenommee - 24 - 32 Gunners - 1 Captain - 4 Officers - 11 Sailors - 8 MarinesSurprise - 24 - 44 Gunners - 1 Captain - 4 Officers - 9 Sailors - 11 MarinesIndiaman(28gun) - 34 - 1 Captain - 5 Officers - 14 Sailors - 14 MarinesDiana - 26 - 48 Gunners - 1 Captain - 4 Officers - 10 Sailors - 11 MarinesFrigate - 28 - 44 Gunners - 1 Captain - 4 Officers - 11 Sailors - 12 MarinesBelle Poule - 28 - 32 Gunners - 1 Captain - 4 Officers - 12 Sailors - 11 MarinesPirate Frigate - 27 - 22 Gunners - 1 Captain - 4 Officers - 12 Sailors - 10 MarinesEssex - 28 - 20 Gunners - 1 Captain - 4 Officers - 11 Sailors - 12 MarinesTrincomalee - 29 - 48 Gunners - 1 Captain - 4 Officers - 13 Sailors - 11 MarinesIndefatigable - 28 - 32 Gunners - 1 Captain - 4 Officers - 11 Sailors - 12 MarinesConstitution - 37 - 68 Gunners - 1 Captain - 5 Officers - 15 Sailors - 15 MarinesIngermanland - 39 - 48 Gunners - 1 Captain - 5 Officers - 15 Sailors - 17 Marines3rd Rate - 46 - 44 Gunners - 1 Captain - 6 Officers - 19 Sailors - 19 MarinesBellona - 46 - 44 Gunners - 1 Captain - 6 Officers - 19 Sailors - 20 MarinesPavel - 50 - 42 Gunners - 1 Captain - 7 Officers - 21 Sailors - 21 MarinesChristian VII - 53 - 40 Gunners - 1 Captain - 7 Officers - 23 Sailors - 22 MarinesVictory - 53 - 36 Gunners - 1 Captain - 7 Officers - 23 Sailors - 22 MarinesSantisima - 58 - 60 Gunners - 1 Captain - 7 Officers - 25 Sailors - 25 MarinesOcean - 59 - 32 Gunners - 1 Captain - 7 Officers - 25 Sailors - 26 Marines ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks for reading this thread. Again if we can make it client side then I think most players will be happy knowing they can see a realistic number of guys walking around on their deck. The bigger question is whether we can see crew on other player ships and whether ours will be able to interact with theirs. If that can be done then this will be the best ship game to date. 4
OTMatt Posted May 15, 2016 Author Posted May 15, 2016 Updated thread with ship seat example and lowered the max crew sizes.
saintjacktar Posted May 30, 2016 Posted May 30, 2016 Dear Thread followers, I like this idea, crew annimated and interactive on deck would be awesome. I believe Napoleon Total War & Empire Total War did this with thier boarding mechanic in which you would see men jump from deck to deck and physically board the other ship. Cannon recoil would be awesome to see, if you could some how make it client side so as to not effect performance that would be excellent. Regards Captain saintjacktar USS BANSHEE Australian Flotilla Tattered Flags United States
Sir Ballard / oo7 Posted August 9, 2016 Posted August 9, 2016 I love the idea of "amount of crew per ship" being on the client side, running a 980ti, there is still heaps of room for extra graphical functions. I do feel the amount of animated crew on the ships at the moment extremely underwhelming... might this be on the list of things to do?
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