Sail Damage

 I'm currently testing the new version, which should be ready this weekend.  The big feature added is sail damage.  Chain Shot ammunition is the ammo designed to damage sails.  The way it works is you fire into the enemy sails, and for Chain Shot the impact is detected.  Other ammo types simply pass through.  Sails get damaged from Chain Shot, but are fully functional still until they are destroyed.  Larger Chain Shot does more damage to sails than smaller ones.  I'll be adding this information to the Broadopedia.  

Once a sail is destroyed, it doesn't provide thrust when under sail power.  Currently this affects the max speed and sailing force as a percentage.  1 sail destroyed out of 10 means you have 90% of your sails still, so a 90% modifier.  5 out of 10 destroyed means 50% modifier, etc.  In the future I will be investigating changing this to a weighted system, where bigger sails have more of an impact than smaller sails, but that will not be the case today.  

How repairing sails works is with your same repair crew.  They apply work towards repair of 1 sail at a time.  Sails that are damaged, but not destroyed, will also be repairable.  Whether your repair crew first fixes leaks or sails is determined by a check box on the Repair tab which says Prioritize Rigging.  If checked, once all sails are repaired the crew moves on to working on leaks.  If unchecked, once all leaks are repaired the crew moves on to sails.  Once mast damage is added, masts will be repaired before sails.  Hull integrity will always be repaired last.  

In a later version I will be adding a window so you can see sail and mast damage in more detail.  Right now the output to the player will just be the number of destroyed sails in the Repair tab.  

Officers

 I've started working on the back end for the ship Officers feature.  The primary reason being that I've been intending to add it for a while, and UI changes need to be made to the Ship Maintenance window to support Cabin Upgrades, so it would be best to do that at the same time as the changes needed for Officers.  I'm going to get all the back end work done for both additions first, and the last step will be the UI and other client side changes.  So I don't expect to have either feature ready in the next update, but in some near future update.  

Enough on that, here's how Officers will work

Ships will have a number of Officer slots available.  To fill one of those slots you will recruit a new Officer.  You'll name the officer, and choose the officer's first specialty.  Officers provide a bonus to your ship based on their specialties.  Currently the planned specialties are as below, though I will add more.  

Watch Captain - Increase spotting distance
Sailing Master - Setting sail position speed bonus
Steward - Reduce food/water usage of crew
Surgeon - Medical crew bonus
Gunner - Bonus to repair effort required to fix leaks you cause
Carpenter - Repair speed bonus for leaks and hull integrity
Coxswain - Rowing speed bonus
Marine - Bonus to effectiveness of Marines used for boarding operations
Armorer - Bonus for handheld firearms

Doing the activity related to the specialty will increase the Officer's XP in that specialty.  Once the XP goes up enough, it will result in the Officer's level in that specialty increasing.  The Officer's level in a specialty starts at 1, and goes up to 5.  A 2% bonus is applied for each level.  So at level 5 you receive a 10% bonus.  Once reaching level 5, you can add an additional specialty to the Officer.  An Officer can have as many specialties as are available.  

Larger ships with multiple Officer slots can have Officers with the same specialty.  The bonus for all Officers with the same specialty is added up, but capped at 15% total.  

When your ship is sunk or captured, the Officers go down with the ship.  So a highly trained Officer becomes a loss you can't easily replace.  You will be able to transfer Officers between docked ships.  

On the Marine and Armorer specialties, eventually ship boarding will be added to the game.  At that time a new cargo item "Marine" will be added.  They will be soldiers dedicated to performing and repelling ship boarding operations, and will have greater effectiveness than your regular crew.  The Marine specialty will provide an additional bonus to these Marines.  The Armorer bonus will help specifically with the use of firearms for boarding (boarding will also involve bladed weapons though), but there will also be a feature where your crew uses firearms automatically at nearby enemy ships outside of boarding.  

So I've started the process of working on this.  I think it will spice up the ship customization a bit.  

Adding Hull Integrity Feature

Currently working on adding the new Hull Integrity feature.  How combat currently works is when a cannonball hits your ship, a comparison is made between the ammo's penetration value and your hull resistance.  When penetration is higher than hull resistance, chance to penetrate is also higher, and when penetration is lower than hull resistance then chance to penetrate is again lower.  This mechanic is explained in more detail in previous posts.  

What matters here, is you can get into a situation where you beat on an enemy seemingly forever with low chance to penetrate.  The Hull Integrity feature helps this.  Whenever you are hit, this hit will reduce your hull integrity value, whether penetrated or not.  So every hit now causes some damage.  Hull integrity is then taken as a percentage, on a scale of 0 to 1, and multiplied against hull resistance for penetration calculations.  

This means ships which have high hull resistance can eventually get beaten down by weaker opponents given enough damage to hull integrity.  Larger ammunition will generally deal more damage to hull integrity than smaller ammunition.  So in fleet battles a large ship can open fire on an enemy first, reducing its hull integrity, then smaller ships can join in with higher effectiveness, even if the first large ship didn't cause any leaks.  

As far as repairing hull integrity, whenever your repair crew aren't repairing leaks, or in the future sails and masts, they will apply their repair effort to hull integrity.  

Another cause of hull integrity damage is large fires.  Currently they can cause leaks, but now they will also damage hull integrity.  

Explosive ammunition, while not yet in the game, now are redesigned.  They now will be a low penetration but high hull integrity damage focused ammunition type.  The planned Ironclad ship has also been refocused, making it a high hull resistance and high hull integrity ship.  Explosive ammunition will be all but required to take it down.  

Consumables!

Several new consumable items have finished being added to the game for the next update.  From now on you'll want to carry Medicine and Repair Timber in your cargo at all times.  They are used as follows.  

Medicine - If you lack Medicine in your cargo hold, then your medical crew's chance of healing an injured crew is cut in half.  When an injured crew is healed, this will consume 1 Medicine from your cargo hold.  

Repair Timber - Similar to Medicine, if you lack Repair Timber in your cargo hold, then your repair crew's repair efforts applied to leaks are cut in half.  When a leak is successfully repaired, this will consume 1 Repair Timber from your cargo hold.  

Separately, all live cargo items now consume resources.  The existing Drinking Water and Meal Ready to Eat are used, as well as new item Animal Feed.  This triggers every 5 minutes when you are away from port, at the same time that crew use resources, and in the same amount.  1 unit for each 5 items, rounded up.  

All land creatures use Drinking Water and Animal Feed.  All sea creatures, except whales, use just Animal Feed.  All human cargo, except slaves, use Drinking Water and Meal Ready to Eat.  Slaves are treated extremely poorly, so use Drinking Water and Animal Feed.  

If any of these consumables aren't available in sufficient quantities for the live cargo items, then 1 of each live cargo item which needed that consumable is destroyed.  If both consumables aren't available, then 2 will be destroyed.  

Helpful feedback

 I've received a lot of help from someone off the Unity forums testing the game (don't know if he wants a call out).  I've received very helpful feedback, and will be putting in a number of changes based on it.  

* Going to exaggerate the acceleration and turning speed differences between the small ships and the large - added to 0.8.19

* Change the mass of money items to be significantly lower, so you can move around more Po8 in a single shipment - added to 0.8.19

* Adding human models to the decks of ships with animations - TBD future version

* Changing how sailing crew works, they will no longer affect top speed of the ship, instead affecting how quickly changing the sail settings applies to the ship.  Currently changing sail settings is instant, but the plan is to make it apply slower when you have less than the maximum number of sailors assigned to the role - TBD future version

* Add a demand ransom mechanic, so a player can demand another player drop their cargo in exchange to not be attacked.  If cargo is dropped, but player is still attacked, there will be a hit to a new reputation value - TBD future version

* Make larger cities look bigger - TBD future version

* Add "animal feed" items which will be needed to keep live items, such as livestock, alive while in your ship cargo and away from a port.  This will work similarly to the current meals/water usage for crew.  If there isn't enough feed, there will be a percentage of the live items destroyed.  - TBD future version

* When high flooding in your ship occurs, a percentage of the items in your cargo will be destroyed - Not added yet, but should arrive in 0.8.19

* When fires get to large size, there will be a chance to destroy items in the cargo hold.  This will occur when a chance is calculated for the fire creating new leaks - Not added yet, but should arrive in 0.8.19

* Ships on the minimap will appear as grey color until you are close enough to see their HUD UI with the exception of trade company and squadron members (though trade companies aren't implemented yet) - Not added yet, but should arrive in 0.8.19

* Will show zone borders in game on the minimap - TBD future version

* Add new "Hull Integrity" feature, where as a ship receives hits, even if they don't penetrate, they chip away at hull integrity.  Hull integrity is then taken as a percentage between 0f and 1f, and multiplied against the ship's hull resistance value when hull penetration is calculated.  This will result in ships, especially ships with higher hull resistance, getting more vulnerable to incoming ordinance as fights run longer.  When your repair crew is not working on repairing a leak (or in the future, repairing a mast or sail), it will work on slowly repairing hull integrity.  A new hull upgrade item will be added which adds a bonus related to hull integrity.  Hull integrity will be added to the ship repair information, as well as the UI HUD above ships, so you can see your hull integrity as well as opponents.  Larger ammunition will reduce enemy hull integrity more than smaller ammunition.  - Not added yet, but will arrive in either 0.8.19 or 0.8.20

* Add cannabis item - Not added yet, but should arrive in 0.8.19

* Ship cargo close to full will reduce the acceleration, turn speed, and top speed of the ship - Not added yet, but should arrive in 0.8.19

* Add a new "Cabin Upgrade Slot" similar to the hull upgrade and equipment slots.  Items will be added which add various bonuses when fit to this slot.  All ships will have at least 1 Cabin Upgrade Slots, but larger ships will generally have more available, similar to the other upgrade slots.  - TBD future version

* Make many of the internal stats for each port visible to the player - TBD future version

* Add medicine items which are an expendable item needed for healing injured crew, lacking medicine will put a significant penalty on chance of healing injured crew - Not added yet, but will arrive in 0.8.19

* Make lumber item an expendable item needed for all ship repairs, lacking lumber will put a significant penalty on all repair efforts - Not added yet, but will arrive in 0.8.19

* Adjust the position of cannon cameras to reduce view obstructions - Not added yet, but will arrive in either 0.8.19 or 0.8.20

* Add new "auto" crew check box, which automatically allocates crew based on a quick crew allocation selected.  This will be optional, and automatically disabled if the player makes any manual crew adjustments - TBD future version

* Add multiple custom quick crew options, where the player sets their own crew role weights, and can quickly switch to them.  - TBD future version

* Add a UI while at sea where you can view the same information as in the Ship Maintenance window at port - TBD future version

* Reorganize the UI in the bottom left of the screen, so all 3 tabs of information are always visible, and remove the cargo from there (since it will be in the new ship maintenance like window) - TBD future version

* Add market related information about cities to the Route Planner - TBD future version

There's a bunch other other really good ideas I'm looking into too, but the above is a good list to commit to right now.  Thanks a lot for any help and suggestions!

Added Market Orders Feature

 But there is a problem....  

So now when you open a city's market, and navigate to any subcategory of items, the button at the top right will become active which allows you to create a market order.  The market order will either be a buy or a sell order depending on which view of the market you are looking at.  This part works fine.  Previously you could only buy/sell to existing orders, which were all either default orders or orders created by the city's supply/demand system.  

Unfortunately there was a serious design oversight in that you cannot actually create market orders for items which don't already have an existing order on the market for that same subcategory of items.  This oversight wasn't noticed until testing.  

So I decided to ship the current design as is, and for the next release there will be a new interface added to correct this issue.  

Additionally in 0.8.18, there were minor improvements to logging, performance, the music volume now is faster to respond to updates, and the Made With Unity logo has been added to the opening splash screen.  

One big improvement for me though is bug reports are now stored in their own dedicated log file.  When initially added, they were just logged with the regular log files, which can result in them getting lost in a sea of log entries unless specifically searching for them.  The way the regular logging system works is each day when the server cluster restarts, all existing logs copied to the archive and then wiped.  This makes it a pain to search for bug reports, as I have to go through the archive.  Now the dedicated bug report log keeps them all in one place, and they are exempt from the wiping.  

Steam Store page now up

The Steam Store page has now been approved and is up.  Add to your wishlist!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061530/Broadside_Perilous_Waters/