[Missing] Functional pirate faction in grand campaign *Beta Attached, needs testing*

[mikoyan99]

This mod is no longer available as the attachment is missing! If you have a copy please post a reply. See also: #46

Hi,

Many things have annoyed me in Empire: Total war (as i'm sure they have most of you), and apart from the random crashing, innacuracies on some of the models etc, I was annoyed by a lot of the minor factions being unplayable, both in custom battles and Grand Campaign. Browsing through these forums, I see many have now been included properly by members here, and I've installed the factions mod myself to give them limited playability. What i'd really like to do is make the pirates playable in the grand campaign - at the moment, with the factions mod, theres trouble with fog of war, lack of any sort of tech tree, and with only one land unit being recruitable - the buccaneers - which you can only recruit 8 units of - it's just not working. therefore, what I propose is:

Land units:
Remove the cap on recruiting buccaneers.
Use the models and textures of the pirate mob with line infantry stats to give the pirates a reasonable core unit
Retexture the light infantry black and give them grenades if possible. Grenades were used in boarding actions, and I think the skirmish formation would give a nice rag-tag look.
Cavalry - irregular cavalry or gendarms/provincial cav with black retexture should do the trick. I don't know of any real world pirate cav sadly.
Artillery - ships guns would be great, but it's probably not possible to get them off the ships. otherwise, a random mix of the indian artillery with pirate crews would probably be best.

Naval Units:
Not much to do here; ideally, add 4th, 5th and 6th rates (ships this large were used by some more notorious pirates), and indiamen (as capured merchant vessels also featured in pirate fleets)

Starting regions: A large city (Caracas ideally) as a capital would be handy as the pirates have no universities etc to start off with. Maybe capturing one would be more fun however.

Diplomacy:
There isn't a diplomacy option at the moment for pirates sadly, so perhaops addibng them and having them at peace with unasociated countries (like the mughal empire, denmark, venice etc) would be handy (as the odds are stacked a little against the atm), at war with surrounding countries like new spain, 13 colonies etc, and allied with the barbary states perhaps.

I think thats would make them more or less playable, or at least make them fun to play. More stuff could be added later as needs/wants dictate.
Sadly, I have no modding experience whatsoever; what I do have is a good amount of knowledge and books on the golden age of piracy and on wooden sailing ships, so i'd be happy to do unit stats, general information etc. If given proper instriction, i'd also be more than happy to help with code etc.
Sorry if it sounds a bit cheeky, but I think a mod roughly along these lines would be good fun to play and add something a little different o the game.
Cheers,
-Matt

[mikoyan99]

Ok, some progress today:


I used the unpacker from this site to get into the "Patch.pack" file, then edited "units_to_exclusive_factions_permissions", where I cloned the relevant units (line infantry for each theatre, cavalry etc), renamed the nation "pirates" and set the varibale to"True". This has unlocked most of the units I want, although it's not possible to unlock all of them that way as they're not all listed in that table.
using the "Units" table, I tried to edit the restriction on the buccaneers (listed there as "pirates") but sadly it reverted back to 6 each time I saved the file.
Next, ideally i'd like to change the models round on the line infantry to the pirate mob ones, sort the fog of war out (although I don't think anyone has managed that yet) and most importantly sort out the diplomacy so they become totally playable.
If anyone could render any assistance that would be handy as I don't know how to proceed; i'll upload the files I have edited if you tell me how to do so. I assume I need to save the edited patch.pack and upload that.
-Matt

[skullman86]

Not sure if I can be of any help but it looks like you have some interesting ideas.Definitely gonna keep an eye on this one.

[mikoyan99]

Cheers, it's turning into my first mod so hopefully it'll come out ok. Does anyone know how to unlock pirates in custom battles, preferably by modifying the existing patch file? I need them unlocked so I can playtest new units etc. The existing unlocker will overwrite my modifications, and doesn't include pirates anyway.
Cheers,
-Matt

[iambecomelife]

Nice work. I have started working on a major pirate mod for ETW (although I have no plans to complete it unless a team can be assembled). One of my major ambitions is to reconfigure the game so that there's a virtual black market, with pirates pillaging actual cargoes and reselling them for profit, like in many of the classic pirate games.

Out of curiosity, do you know how to create more individual variation within a unit type? Ideally, pirates should have a wide array of ragtag clothing so that they do not look like a conventional military force.

[Kennylz]

You can take any Pirate units that are only available in Naval battles and make land units out of them, if there are any. If you give them cav don't make it strong, at all. Just some light cav that is inferior to most other countries. I imagine the best thing going for pirates would be stealth and melee, or even cannon, not trying to fight like Europeans.

[mikoyan99]

You can take any Pirate units that are only available in Naval battles and make land units out of them, if there are any. If you give them cav don't make it strong, at all. Just some light cav that is inferior to most other countries. I imagine the best thing going for pirates would be stealth and melee, or even cannon, not trying to fight like Europeans.

How do I do that? As I said, for the artilley i'd like to have a 6-12pdr. ships gun with associated sailor/pirate crew. I'm going to try and scratch build some new units today with the tutorial on here, so that should be good. The basic idea first of all is to make a basic pirate "line infantry" as a core for the armies, then build up from there. Or, perhaps as you say a light infanrty style "boarding party" with stealth/muskets or pistols etc.
I agree on the cavalry, I think something basic would be best. perhaps using the pirate models on horseback with cutlasses?
I'll dig into some of my books today for information on real pirate forces, as odly enough there was a pirate kingdom in madagascar in thye early 18th century.
-Matt

Edit:
Started my digging around, so far i've found references to:
Pikes
Muskets
Very long hunting uskets; I think rifles would be the best representation for these.
Pistols
Grenades, and other sorts of thrown nasties.
Grenade launchers! They had these to fire grapnels at enemy ships.
Blunderbus

I've found references of ships up to fourth rate in size being used (Queen Anne's Revenge), although smaller vessels were more common. These arn't represented very well in empire sadly, something to rectify at some point.
Aside from madagascar, pirates also had bases in New Providence (Bahamas), Port Royal (Jamaica) and in the carlionas, thanks to a governor who turned a blind eye.
-Matt

[mikoyan99]

Sorry to double post but more useful progress:
Added rocket ships, bomb vessels and up to 4th rates to the naval inventory
Added pirates to custom battles (from tutorial on this site)
Added and modified pirate mobs to custom battles and grand campaign - they function as a sort of halfway house between militia and line infantry now, and can be recruited from most towns.
Added pistols and grenades to buccaneers, and removed the unit cap. Thanks to dogmeat for the pistol tutorial.

I tried to clone the buccaneers to use as a base for another unit, but I couldn't get them to appear in-game sadly. Also, i'd like to edit the picture and text in the unit information box if possible, but havn't found out a way of doing so yet.
Any help appreciated, especially on the bits i'm having trouble with(artillery mods, diplomacy etc)
Cheers,
-Matt

[PubliusKhannus]

haha this is brilliant work, i will be following this intensely as i am awaiting the download.

[mikoyan99]

Thankyou very much. I'm currently working on victory conditions using the esf editor, and I may change the start regions about a bit (again, thanks to people here for those tools and tutorials).
If you want a cheap and dirty beta I can upload my patch.pack file if you like.
-Matt

[Kennylz]

How do you feel about doing a similar thing for the Barbary States after you finish this? They are Pirates too you know, and you'd have more Arab/Islamic type models to work with already.

About the ship model thing I was referring to the fact that I've seen a couple mods rip the "marine" models that are used on european ships and make land units out of them, so if the Pirates have a naval only type of unit that you could search for the section where such "marine" type units are located and try and find the pirate Faction one, but it is likely that they already share the same model.

Oh, and you should make the Pirate's economy at the beginning of the campaign incredibly poor, so much that they lose some money every turn, forcing them to have to capture vessels for the money to survive or get to raiding islands fast.

[mikoyan99]

I'd be happy to do a similair mod for the barbary states; as you say, they were indeed pirates, and it should be a lot easier to do them.
I'll have a look at doing changing the models around, but i'm still mainly working by trial and error so it may take some time. The pirates on the ships are are the same as the land based ones i'm afraid, but i'll have a lookm to see if I can detach a gun model from the deck. of one of the ships.
I'm loath to make things worse for the pirates; as it is, they're at war with everyone ("we shall hoist the black flag and declare war upon all mankind") and things should be tough enough as it is.
At some point this evening i'm going to post a list of things I need help with here, so if you're interested in this mod and have the solutions please tell me.
-Matt

[mikoyan99]

Sorry to double post again but even more useful progress:
Modified the campaign regions/victory conditions so the pirates now have objectives and victory conditions for their campaigns (using efeditor + tutorial here)
Started playing about with the model values for the cannons and hit the jackpot:

Animations are a bit off- the cannon crew glide about and don't use the ramrod, but apart from that all that needs changing is the crew. Havn't found a way of doing that yet, and I need to clone the unit first as the current modification affects all of the early european demi-culverins and sakers.

Ok, this is a list of what I or we need to do to get this mod complete or perfect.
To complete (i.e priority):
Change crew for modded cannons

Clone modded cannons and give them their own entry, inc icon and information etc (the box that comes up when you right click).

Modify the pirate mob info into "Pirate boarding party" and add a custom picture (It's line infantry ATM)

Modify the buccaneer info and add a custom picture (It's line infantry ATM)

Diplomacy - full diplomacy needs to be added to pirates, and their starting enemies reduced drastically.

Campaign - add a faction description on the grand campaign screen.

To perfect (i.e as time allows):
Modify some of the ship models - the fluyt and sloop are just heresy as it is and need moifying into their authentic forms. Ketch-rigged sloop! why is it called a sloop when it carries a ketch rig! (not including sloops of war of course, but they were seldom ketch rigged). Also modify the fluyt so it's shorter and has a propper fluyt stern (looks a bit like an arse with no crack, not a galleon stern as it does now).

Make some new small ship types - just for the sake of beauty, some of the interesting ships like polaccas, brigantines, snows, barques etc would be nice. Most could be made already by switching bits of model around (i.e this mast on that hull etc)

Make some more custom pirate units - not sure what yet though.

Modify the music to be more piraty. Pehraps have sea shanties being sung by the pirate units.

Change the flags so different ships and units get different pirate flags. Very few pirates had the same flags.

Make some sort of black market.

-----------------------------------------

Any other ideas welcome, if you have any idea how to do any of the above pleae let me know. When it comes to releasing the mod, most liely i'll have to email my raw files to someone experienced who can make them user friendly (although the actual modification to them will already be done), as I don't know how to release this in a form people can use.
Cheers,
-Matt

[Julius Caesar Salad]

This sounds awesome. Keep up the good work!

Maybe you could include famous pirates as names for generals.
Also - and this is most likely just idealistic thinking here - but wouldn't it be cool if somehow, using the mission system, you would get missions from certain factions, and if you completed them, you'd get a relation bonus with said faction... probably not do-able, but it's nice to dream.

[Kennylz]

You might want to look into incorporating Darthmod's naval balancing into this mod. As it is, he has done the best at making the naval battles have a lot more character by giving each nation it's own pros and cons to its ships and seamanship, along with making the sea combat a little less arcadey. Since a lot of this mod will be able sea-battling I think it would be worth to at least check it out.

And if you ever get into retinue's it might be nice to add a lot more to give the player some extra role playing enjoyment in the later stages of this mod.

Great work so far.

About the missions thing... I'm pretty sure you can put them in linear order, like the rest of the factions have them.

Mission 1 - Establish foot-hold: Conquer x regions and x factions will become at peace with you (recognize your legitimate existence.)
Mission 2 - Privateer for Britain: Conquer x regions which France usually has. Britain signs a trade agreement and gives x money.
Rinse repeat until only Indians and Great Britain are left in the theatre, then you get a mission to attack Great Britain from the Indians, which would be the end of a 'pirate carribean campaign.' Then you'd have America to launch from and attack Europe. Then maybe reforms with some uniformed, but very scruffy and unscrupulous looking retextured infantry.

But hey, that is getting ahead of myself.

[mikoyan99]

Lol, I think that may be looking a little far ahead. I've found at least some of diplomacy files (in main.esf), and i've edited "war" values to "neutral", which should mean the pirates start off at peace with most people, but I can't tell which nations are which (I think they should start off at war with most of the american factions, and allied to the barbary states) and I still don't know how to add them in to the main diplomacy box in game.
One simple thing people should know is how do I change the faction decsription from "not playable" to a block of text like the other factions have? It can't be difficult, I just don't know where it's kept.
Once we've got those two, I can release a beta/first version.
-matt

[dead rabbit]

Just getting the unit cap off I'm all over this one.

[the_mango55]

I've been working on a Pirate mod for a while myself. Mine will probably be a bit different though, I'm going to keep the campaign stuff as is, i.e. no diplomacy. I like the no trade/no diplomacy/being at war with everyone experience. It makes a Pirate campaign different than a regular campaign.

Ideally, you should be able to make yourself ally with (or make yourself a protectorate of) one faction to become privateers, but I have a feeling that is impossible.

I will make one comment though, giving pirates rocket ships seems a bit ridiculous. Pirates capture ships, when's the last time you captured an enemy ship with a rocket ship? Sure, they force ships to surrender, but soon after they explode.

[mikoyan99]

This mod isn't finished yet, so please don't take the unit lists as final; for example my pirates currently have grenadiers and guards but I don't think they should feature either!
My first intention is to make the pirates function like any other faction, then to specialise from there; at the moment we have no diplomacy which limits my options somewhat. When I come to do the barbary states it should all be a lot easier as they have full diplomacy already (although everyone still hates them).
-Matt

[mikoyan99]

Ok, edited the faction description and changed some of the unit names, so i'm happy to release a beta now. I'll need a volunteer though I can email the files too (patch_en.pack, startpos.esf and patch.pack) so they can be made into something someone can actually use; I havn't a clue how to turn it into a mod sadly.
-Matt