[Possible Mod] Caravels, Carracks and Other Ships... oh my!

[jaldaen]

So I'm considering a few changes to the ships of Colonization based off of research into the ships' different historical advantages over each other.

For example:

The caravel seems to have been better suited to coastal exploration than the carrack or other bigger ships. I am considering adding in a "Coast Guard I" (of some other name) promotion for ships and grant the Caravel the promotion for free. The promotion would grant +1 movement on coastal tiles.

I am also thinking of adding in the Carrack with a move 3, but "Ocean Faring I" which would give it +1 movement on ocean tiles. This is because the Carrack was better able to handle long ocean voyages and could harness the power of the winds better than the Caravel, even though it was bigger.

I'll also be looking at the other ships and perhaps adding new ship options, such as the East Indiaman, etc.

Of course if this is something you'd be interested in then please let me know as I only want to work on this if it is of interest to the colonization community and not just myself

 

[Bisonte]

I think the Dutch ships are faster than other ships, cause their trading abilities...
If you made coast guard movement... are you able to decrease the movement of other ships on coastal tiles ? i think that's an idea... so that the caravel is the only ship to trade at coasts....

sorry bad english ... i know, but i hope you understand me

 

[jaldaen]

I think the Dutch ships are faster than other ships, cause their trading abilities...

Indeed, and that's one thing I'll have to keep in mind going forward. If I do change the ships to be more historically accurate I will have to also consider how it affects each civilization.

If you made coast guard movement... are you able to decrease the movement of other ships on coastal tiles ? i think that's an idea... so that the caravel is the only ship to trade at coasts....

I'm not certain if you can flat out decrease all other ships coastal movement... I think it would be easier to just mod the promotion into the game and give it free to the caravel giving it a leg up on all the other trading vessels at least on coastal tiles.

sorry bad english ... i know, but i hope you understand me

That's okay... thanks for the comments

 

[Dom Pedro II]

You could also make ships that make the trip to and from Europe faster.

 

[Onionsoilder]

I think you should introduce a Sloop with 6 , that can carry 1 cargo but can't enter oceans at all. It wouldn't be a real good trading ship, but it could be used to quickly transport food or lumber to colonies running low and it would be good at running untrained colonists to native settlements to learn a profession. It could also get +100% Defense against Privateers due to it's speed.

Also,while the Dutch were traders, keep in mind they focused on bulk, not speed. Their famous ship, the Flyut, could carry a lot of cargo, but was slow compared to other trading ships of the era. Later they used Galleons as merchant ships, another slow(yet big) ship. Speed and exploration are more suited to the Portugese, if you decide to add them into your mod.

 

[Zuul]

Better have escape 25% instead of +100% defence (a "new" feature borrowed from cvi4 mods).

 

[Optimizer]

I have added a Clipper as a late game uber-transport, with 6 cargo holds, 5 movement and +1 vision.

It can only be built at the Shipyard.

 

[henryMCVII]

A brigg or briggantine could be some kind of pirate/privateer hunter (if you dont use privateers on your own). Make them weaker then privateers, but +50% or even + 100% against the privateer unit. So they are small regular war ships, intended for exploring and pirate hunting tasks.

 

[Belizan]

What I'm not sure I understand is how this translates into actual game mechanics.

My caravel gets +1 movement when traveling on the coast, but movement is measured on a per turn granularity (as movement points) whereas move cost is per tile. So... I get +1 movement points if I *start* the turn in a coastal square? Which I can then use to race through ocean tiles? or... Are you suggesting using clever common denominator tricks for movement cost for various watercraft vis a vis coast vs. ocean tiles?

 

[Optimizer]

One could give some ships double movement at the coast, and other ships double movement in the ocean.

 

[jaldaen]

One could give some ships double movement at the coast, and other ships double movement in the ocean.

This is what I meant... although if I did do this I would probably have to change the base movement of ships so that we don't have insane movement speeds

It would be great if I could do +50 movement on these tiles (then I would not have to change base speeds at all), but I'm not certain its possible without messing with SDK... and I'm not that good of a modder

 

[jaldaen]

Another thing I've discover in my research is that carracks, fluyts, and galleons had a wide-range of builds for them. Some carracks are small, while others could reach 2000 tons. So I'm faced with the question of if I want to make an "average" carrack or grades of carracks... and other varied ships.

Any preferences for how to handle this?

PS: I'm not an art guy, so if anyone wants to help with the unit graphics and buttons, let me know as I'd love the help.

Thanks,
Joseph