No problem, but wrong author! That guy just made the theme - he isn’t the person who writes that. I have my own personal twitter account. That I’ve had to lock because bots and crazy people keep following me.
Oops! Sorry! ><
I just completed my first venture through the Blackstone dungeon. Very cool. I had some thoughts and questions:
[ul] [li]I don’t know what quality category Treading Dark Passages is set to, but whether you succeed or fail in challenge, you get the message: “You are treading through dark passages.” Without a “Treading Dark Passages is increasing/decreasing…” message, it isn’t readily clear if success/failure results in a gain or loss of change points.
[/li][li]Also, you don’t get a “Treading Dark Passages has increased/decreased to (next level)” message. The only way to gauge one’s progress is to keep checking the sidebar qualities (which I find a bit distracting).
[/li][li] I’m afraid that I got a bit confused by the dungeon’s instructions: “Enter and raise your Treading Dark Passages to 5 to continue.” I was expecting a pinned card to appear when Treading Dark Passages hit 5. When that didn’t happen, I thought perhaps I needed to return to the beginning for the next step. I misunderstood the Retreat card’s “It will be no trouble to find your way back to the doorway.” I exited the dungeon and reset my Treading Dark Passages progress – oops! Maybe a “this will clear your Treading Dark Passages progress” warning on the Retreat card would help save foolish people (like myself) from our own undoing.
[/li][li]Upon completing the Treading Dark Passages quest, we’re told that we can use the Retreat card to leave once we’re “ready”, but we’re not told if there is anything else to find in this dungeon. Random Curios, no doubt, but it’s unclear if there is any reason to raise Treading Dark Passages beyond 5. You need an minimum of 3 cargo spaces to enter the dungeon, but I had about 18 spaces; if I keep looking, might I find more treasure, or are the dungeon’s special items exhausted? At the moment, it is unclear in-game.
[/li][/ul]
I just noticed:
The card “The Public House” has the branch: “Acquire some crew” listed twice. Is that intentional?
Cheers,
X.
Also, I don’t have any wounds, but all the branches on the card “Attend to your wounds” are open to me. Shouldn’t this card appear only when I actually have wounds? Or at least the branches should be locked?
Cheers,
X.
@Lockesmyth: I had assumed that the task was repeatable, hence my thoughts of returning to the site at some point in the future (besides simply testing certain things), but obviously I haven’t tested that theory yet. I intend to return with more supplies/etc. as my trip back was a little too close to out-of-supplies for comfort.
Unrelatedly, I’ve also enabled the Ask page on the Captain’s Log. Because I can. How does the Captain get your questions? Magic.
Also unrelatedly; I’m assuming the Restricted Trade License is flat-out unattainable at the moment, not just buried in the depths of the opportunity cards/etc.? The [REDACTED BECAUSE SPOILERS] are a little hard to shift without a license, taking up my precious cargo space and all.
Ed: I’m losin’ cargo space again! 12 provisions, 2 common clothes, 2 [REDACTED BECAUSE SPOILERS], 2 timber, and 13 free spaces. I recently sold more chests of Fine Clothes to Greengrass (two lots of 5 chests, and 2 seperate chests picked up from the Flotsam card) but I’m not sure if that’s the cause since that was supposed to have been fixed and all.
edited by Arcalane on 12/5/2012
edited by Arcalane on 12/5/2012
To be clear, it is not possible to repeat Blackstone and acquire its treasures again. Blackstone may be extended at some point, and/or I might create a Nex-locked option to replay the quest if I can figure out how to do so without breaking the economy.
Yes, Restricted Trade License is not acquirable at this time but the items you acquired from Blackstone do have uses.
FIXES
-
The quality change text for Treading Dark Passages has been removed. TDP will now display whether it is increasing or decreasing and what level it was reached.
-
‘Retreat’ card in Blackstone now makes it clear TDP will be reset.
-
Acquire Some Crew: Now only the currently available version is visible in each card. If you have over 90 crew, it won’t show at all however.
-
Branches of ‘Attend to your wounds’ are locked if you have no wounds, but the card is visible so long as you have Medicine skill.
-
Two missing ‘restore Cargo Space’ effects (selling a certain item to the Mistdown Society and carrying on by The Honesty) have been put in place.
IMPORTANT
If you think you have lost Cargo Space, I can fix it for you with access codes. Work out how much you’re short (by adding up all your trade goods plus Cargo Space) and PM me with the details. I’ll create a unique code for you to balance it all back out.
Ah, the sweet sound of surpassing £30,000.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the economy - the risks involved with Blackstone make it quite expensive to farm, and it uses up more time and resources than standard trading. I suppose what you could do is have a random batch of ‘treasure’ at the end each time after the first run, using randomized outcomes, since you can have multiple success outcomes for a given card, yes? The more profitable ones could simply be rarer. For instance, 5/10 times you’ll get loot worth £2,000, 3/10 you get loot worth £2,500, and 2/10 you’ll get loot worth £3,000. Or howevermuch.
[color=#b3b3b3]I apologize if I’ve missed some obvious solution, but I have a little problem:[/color]
I lost a few sailors to starvation on a trip to Greengrass. After landing, I realized that I have fewer than the 30 sailors necessary to leave port. So far as I can tell, there is no way to recruit sailors while in Greengrass – there’s no prison card for acquiring conscripts, nor can I hire sailors at the pub. Have I just missed something? Or, am I trapped in Greengrass? Many thanks for any insights.
Locksmyth - Just checked and there was an error, yes. You should be able to recruit sailors from the Public House now.
Excellent. Thanks! :)
[b]MAJOR UPDATE
[/b]Travelling between islands is now based upon the relative distance between origin and destination. The value of Making Headway required to reach an island changes based upon which island you Departed From.#
Example: Captain Beckett has been making some money trading clothes between Greengrass and Capital and decides it is time for a change of pace. She has already received the job from the Mistdown Society, so plans to head to Blackstone. She and her ship are currently upon Greengrass, though.
If Captain Beckett were to head directly to Blackstone, she would need to raise her Making Headway to 9 (45cp)! Even with half a hold full of Provisions (20), that would be challenging but overall more efficient in Provisions and Actions than taking a detour. Alternatively, she could stop by Portdown on her way (requiring Making Headway 7, 28cp) and resupply ships Provisions there before continuing on to Blackstone (requiring Making Headway 6, 21 cp, total 49cp for the journey.)
If you are currently in Open Sky (travelling between islands), you will notice the change after you next land and return to Open Sky.
If you encounter any bugs, have any questions or feedback, as always please post below. =) Happy flying!
ANOTHER MAJOR UPDATE
Woooh, 2 in 1 day. Aren’t you lucky? Tonight’s update is the first NAVAL BATTLE! If you are level 3 or higher (ie have completed the Blackstone ruin), visit Portdown’s Admiralty Offices. There you can begin the hunt for a pirate brig that has been causing trouble in the nearby skies.
Naval battles rely on three things: improving Battle Initiative before you enter battle (with new branches on some Open Sky cards), balancing Battle Initiative while in battle, and your own Command and Hostility abilities.
- The higher your Battle Initiative each round, the more damage you do and the less damage you take. It also makes escaping a battle easier.
- Attacking will increase damage dealt to the enemy but reduce Battle Initiative. Evading will decrease damage taken and increase Battle Initiative.
- If you fail a challenge, there is a 20% chance of a critical failure, which upgrades one point of Hull Damage received to Engine Damage! If a standard failure gives no Hull Damage, a critical failure instead deals 1 point of Hull Damage.
This is totally experimental and though I’ve done careful design, some maths and testing it’s almost certainly not well balanced. So, please, tell me what you like, don’t like and if you find anything broken.
Ah, so my Treading Dark Passages of 11 is not going to get me anywhere. Time to retreat and fix my wounds I think then.
From what I can tell, all of the cheaper trade goods (common clothes, ceramics, livestock, fine clothes and timber) all give the same profit margin (21%), and then fine foods (the next most expensive I think) only gives just over half of that (12%). I can’t remember if that’s everything I can buy without the license, but is this deliberate? If I sell timber that I’ve bought then I make 84 gold each, selling fine clothes only makes me 90 gold each - hardly worth the extra 350 gold the clothes cost.
Anyway, time to escape the dungeon… I’ve been enjoying playing, and the open-endedness gives me something to do while waiting for new content :)
Nope, Fine Food is much more profitable, at around 29%, according to my calculations. It’s easily the best choice for increasing your funds, especially now travel distances are relative (as they should be) rather than absolute. You can at least cover the cost of provisions using common clothes, or set out with bare minimum and scavenge on the way if you’re good.
Ed: The ‘Green land’ card (provisions or timber) could probably do with an option that doesn’t reduce Battle Initiative.
edited by Arcalane on 12/11/2012
In “The Boxing Club” I found a textual error:
That does not stop there nightly tournaments in the rat-runs, nor the great amount of money and booze from being exchanged.
This should be “their”
I may have more comments later but I figured I’d just toss things out as I go along.
I finished the first Naval Battle, and I quite enjoyed it. Like to discuss a few elements of the battle’s mechanics, so anyone who has not finished the the first Naval Battle: STOP READING!!!
BEGIN SPOILERS
- I just wanted to say that Using Battle Initiative (BI) as a way of modulating the risk level of available branches is a brilliant concept. [/li][li]BI doesn’t reset after defeating the pirate brig; it just hangs around.[/li][li]I happened to have put all of my 3 discretionary levels into Command (7) and Hostility (6). This may have given me some advantage in the naval battle (it still seemed pretty difficult; I limped away with x5 Hull Damage), but what if I had put those levels into Discourse and Larceny? How disadvantaged would I have been then? I don’t know how this could be balanced, but I wanted start the discussion.[/li][li] I think that limiting stat leveling is a great tool for moderating difficulty - especially in a game like Maelstrom. Which is why I was startled by having an option that would cause Discourse to drop (I didn’t select it, so I don’t know what the repercussions actually are, but…). Maybe there is a way to recover the lost Discourse later, but if there isn’t, that means that in a game with finite stat increases, players have an option to permanently handicap one of their basic abilities. I’m all for giving players choices that result in additional problems and difficulty, but the end result is that you, as the game designer, sacrifice control over the difficulty curve. Before the Naval Battle, all level 3 Captains had an equal number of total basic ability levels, now that is not necessarily the case. Every time a similar option is given, it skews the numbers even further. [/li][li]BUG: I chose to take prisoners and returned them in Capitol. But delivering 10 prisoners didn’t return the 10 units of cargo space (I’m back down to a total of 30 units of Cargo Space. I’ll PM you my cargo manifest).
END SPOILERS
Thanks for listening. I can’t wait for the next battle on the Open Sky. :)
Arcalane – Good point. An option to keep sailing has been added to Green Land.
Whitney – Thanks for pointing that out. It’s now been fixed. Happy flying!
Lockesmyth – See you PMs for a fix for your Cargo Space.
– Battle Battle initiative now resets when you defeat it. That was an oversight.
– Naval battles will always be challenging and rarely compulsory. A captain who raises Larceny and Discourse first may concentrate on trade or dungeon quests until they feel ready, though the Piirate Brig is defeatable with basic abilities. There are also future plans for equipment which will provide stat boosts, but I’m still working on the specifics of those.
– That prisoner trading oversight has been patched, in both Capital and Portdown.
QUESTION
There are a lot of areas Maelstorm could expand into next and I’m interested in your input. What do you want to see next?
[ul][li]Dungeons - There is a sun-scorched desert island far above Capital and even the farm islands like Greengrass, on the very limit of the sky. Old skyhands call it Captain Kelly’s Folly, and tell tales of wrecked ships and a lost city of the Builders hidden beneath the sands.[/li][li]Naval battles - There are bigger and more deadly pirate ships than sloops and brigs in the skies. There are even rumours of vessels from the Weislay Empire, the nation beyond the Stormwall, making skirmish runs against the border lands.[/li][li]New islands and trade routes - Capital, Portdown, Greengrass - they may be the biggest islands in the Republic but they are hardly the only ones. The Rock sits on the edge of the Stormwall, a heavily defended mining station and military outpost against the Empire. It supplies ores to Steppeholt, a foundary-covered island at the lowest point of the Republic, deep in the mists on the edge of the Maelstrom. Steppeholt, in turn, supplies metal to the heart of the Republic.[/li][li]War and politics - There is more to the world of Maelstrom than pirates and trade and ancient ruins. The Terrisel Republic and the Weislay Empire hold an uneasy ceasefire but it cannot last forever. What forces and agents works to destabilise the peace or manipulate the nations’ governments at home or abroad?[/li][li]Equipment - Be it respectable clothing, pistols, swords, eyeglasses or artefacts of the Builders, this expansion will let you equip various types of items to temporarily increase your attributes or reduce menaces.[/li][li]Upgradable ships - Your journey began on Portdown, home to the greatest ship yards of the Republic! Patrolling the Maelstrom is the gigantic ironclass, the RSS Bastion, which has its own refitting docks. With this expansion you can acquire upgrades to your ship to make it faster, more resilient, and much more deadly. (This update change ship flight and combat to use ships attributes, in addition to/instead of your own, requiring extensive redesign.)[/li][li]Anything else you can suggest! [/li][/ul]Please, post below with what area(s) you are most interested in seeing developed. I can’t promise the most popular expansions will be made first, but it’ll certainly be taken into consideration.
Happy flying!
Pirate ship defeated! I went in with a healthy BI advantage and gave them a good thrashing. Battle report!
First things first - that bloody Trade License. Or else I’m going to be up to my elbows in thruster parts at this rate. Then, I would say ship upgrades and new trade routes.
Ed: Having to hit the opportunity deck in order to get the card to unload prisoners is somewhat irksome and timeconsuming too.
edited by Arcalane on 12/12/2012
edited by Arcalane on 12/12/2012