I am a developer for Crown and Cutlass (screenshots), a game sort of inspired by the old Pirates! games. We have a small team, and we are doing this just for fun. Anyway, I asked this question on our sourceforge forums (here), but we don't have many people read those forums. I thought I'd ask here, since I'm pretty sure more people read gamedev. Haha. Our naval battles are very early in development. Currently, one shot does one unit of damage. Ten hits, and you loose. I want to rework that to be more complicated, perhaps have sail damage, hull damage, and "crew damage". Anyway, I also just added the ability to repair your ship the other day. However, if you loose a battle, I currently leave the player with 1 health, take all his/her gold, and all his/her cargo. The problem is that to repair your ship, you need gold. Since the player looses all their cargo, they can't get more gold. It's also difficult to win a battle with 1 health (although not impossible thanks to my really bad AI). Understand that in the short-term, I'll probably just make it not quite take all of your gold, so you can go repair your ship and try again. Once we get farther along, I want to do something more ambitious. What should happen? Should that be game over? Should I maroon the player for some amount of time, or perhaps require completion of some kind of mini-game (escape from prison, etc) to resume normal play? Should I allow for buried treasure or secret pirate lairs or something? That way the player could return to their hideout and get some money they saved there. Perhaps I should allow some other way of earning money. Currently, you can attack ships or trade (although the economy isn't finished). How else could the player earn money? Perhaps people in cities could offer missions to deliver goods or letters or something to other cities. Let me know what you think. I'd like to just toss some ideas around. Thanks for the feedback.

Oh, I think the original Pirates! would say you were stranded on a deserted island for several months. Eventually a ship would come by and pick you up and just decide to let you be the captain. I always thought that was a little odd. Who would really let some guy you picked up off a deserted island be your captain? I would like to do better than that...

You could have little simple missions like you mentioned (deliver this note from point A to point B).

Another thing if you want to integrate more character integration - how about a 'favor' system? NPCs ask you to do a favor, and in return you owe THEM a favor.

Coming back from such a heavy damage amount should be a miracle anyways - makes it more fun that way.

Losing a battle means losing half your gold and other things, rather than all of it?

Or you can take after Steel Batallion: if you lose your mech without ejecting, it erases your savegame, because you died. Start again from the beginning.

Are you talking about single or multiplayer here?

Here is my suggestion. Take away the player's ship and basically put him an a wooden barrel with a sail. Only leave as much cargo as would fit in a barrel. Only leave as much crew as would fit in a barrel. Take half his money. The barrel obviosly should not have any weapons. This the player can still reach a port to buy a new ship, run away from enemies, or maybe even capture a ship in Hand-to-Hand.

perhaps the player is captured and sold to a slave ship. then (depending on how badly you were beaten) your remaining crew would rescue you, seize control of the slave ship and continue your voyage.

example: If you lost 10% of your crew in the battle, you get a brand new slave ship to be your new ship and possibly the old crew is more or less intact.

losing 70% of your men in the battle will result in a run down slave ship with only 1 or 2 old crew members rescuing you. You then have the choice to use the old slve ship or try to sell it and get a better ship and recruit new crew

This way, the player does not have to start from scratch and will regain most of their resources and crew if they did not lose too badly.

[Edited by - yapposai on April 10, 2005 7:04:29 AM]

Hey, sweet looking project! [smile] I love these types of games. (Please tell me it's not mission-based!!!!!)

Everything depends on the aesthetic you're trying to achieve. Should loss be a punishment, or open a new chapter of adventure? Is there any reason not to restore after losing a battle? If your game features leveling of any kind (ship, crew, etc.) I don't know of anyone who will want to start over completely.


If you want to be more ambitious the last thing you should do is just end the game. That's standard faire (and fine if you have save games, because they'll just restore), but not very unique.

You have to decide on the minimal acceptable level of gameplay when considering this. What is fun to do at your most stripped down level? Escape Velocity put you in a minimally servicable shuttle, which was the bare minimum to play the game. FPS games often give you some weapon with infinite attack ability. These are failsafes so that if the player absolutely screws up everything, they'll still have some way of clawing their way back.

Personally, I'd favor the barrel approach with the ability to explore land for treasure, but if you're not committed to giving land exploration its due (simple towns that can be raided, dangerous animals on land, enemy buccaneers), then this will be tacked on. It will also only work if the focus of the game is NOT solely on navel battles (anything that keeps you from the game's focus is a distraction).

I don't think escape will work because it doesn't solve the basic problem (money to restart). Mini-missions would only work if you get a basic starting schooner or whatever no matter what.

Schooner or a perverbial lifeboat (though i can't think of any pirate ship that would have a lifeboat? Well, maybe if you count the dingy they use to go ashore). You could also spice things up and put in several defeat scenario's, so loosing doesn't get to stale. Such as the hand-to-hand idea, you could make it so enemies try to board your ship and you have to fend them off in hand to hand combat.

I think it would be cool if you could have pirate stashes, afterall pirates are well known for their hordes of burried treasure. Having a greater attachment to your crew could be nice to, you could equip them with swords and old style one-shot pistols, recruit a navigator, munitions officer, etc. Give em each a cut of the booty, be stingy and they might mutiny on you. You could also capture enemy ships and make your prisoners walk the plank, or sell them into slavery, let them go, abandon them, etc. ;D

Thanks for the suggestions. This is for single-player game play, I haven't thought through all of the multiplayer gameplay yet. Generally, I think I'd like to avoid anything involving slavery. I know that was part of how things worked in the Caribbean during this time, but I'm not sure how to properly deal with it in a game.

Wavinator, thanks for the encouragement! I do intend to expand the role towns and the land will play in the game. I'd like to allow the player to leave his ship and wander around on land looking for treasure, and let towns be raided. Once we get nationalities, we want to have governors to go talk to, although (unlike Pirates!), we have talked some about letting the player effect international politics. What exactly that will look like still needs to be figured out, though. What do you mean by "mission based"? We plan on making it open-ended (much like Pirates!), although we may add a plot in kind of like Privateer, or GTA3-style. Is that what you meant by mission based?

Would a pirate crew really bother to go rescue their old captain? I'm not sure I'd count on my ruthless band of pirates to also be loyal to me... Perhaps along with some kind of rating for crew moral, I could have a loyalty rating. The more loyal, the more likely they would come rescue you or rejoin you later. Otherwise, you're left fending for your self.

What do you all think about this idea: if you loose a battle, you get sent out in canoe (I just happen to have a model canoe already). You can go back and get into your savings in towns, or dig up buried treasure if you have maps, and buy a new ship. You also could steal a ship from a town, but that would raise its' hostility towards you (which is something that needs to be flushed out, eventually, too). What do you think?

Three quick points:

Politics: I think that your ability to bring in profitable cargoes and benefit the pocketbook of a local politician would give you considerable sway over the local government, and would open the door for all sorts of faction reputation systems. How far you take it is up to your design and instincts.

Rescues: If I was a bloodthirsty, gold-loving pirate and the person best able to get me money and lead me to victory was captured, I'd consider it a worthwhile investment to get him back, if the risk wasn't too high. Loyalty is less a measure of this than respect would be.

Post-Defeat Scenarios: If your'e going to have the option to move your character about without a ship, why not have them row/float/swim/be marooned on a landmass, and let them set about getting a ship from there? Moving from town to town on foot, paying for sea transport and trying to make your way back to the Captain's quarters could be fun. You could assemble your remaining crew, pose as swarthy-yet-honest seamen, get a job on board a trade vessel and then hijack it and re-christen it to be your new vessel of plunder and doom.