49.2 Hotfix
irishjohngamessteam_community_announcementspatchnotes
Fixed a Sporadic issue regarding crew payments.
Here is the link to the discord where most tracking / communication is happening:
https://discord.gg/Ws9fjmHP5U
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This week marks 5 Months in Early Access! I couldn't be happier with how things are progressing.
This Major Update focused on improving the project itself from a development standpoint, but a good few improvements, and a bunch of bug fixes are also releasing today.
The last month has been crazy with heat here making it difficult sometimes to focus on heavy implementation tasks, but its given me time to do something that I've wanted for a long time!
The changes done included a large audit and analysis of the project. I won't go into the numbers but there was a huge impact on the project itself that required quite a bit of dredging work! More info on this for those interested is on the #dev-updates channel on the discord.
The refactor was a success & the project is much nicer to work on as a result, with an impact being mostly on ease of use, and speed of upcoming development.
Most of what was done here should be completely invisible to the player with the exception of some performance improvements and stability. I'm hoping some of the work done has eliminated some of the more annoying memory issues that have been reported also.
Steam Input integration (Experimental) So this is a huge one. I'm hoping that it'll be nice and stable over the next few updates. There are a few guideline items from steam that I'm missing but I plan on putting those in right away and hopefully we'll have long needed / requested support for gamepads and the like soon. I know some folks were using 3rd party items for this in the past so this should make your lives a lot easier! For those of you on Steam Deck - more improvements are coming on that end as well. I hope to have the Steam Deck implementation working a lot better over the coming Major updates.
Steam Rich Presence will keep your statuses updated with what you're doing. More changes are planned on that for the future but its in a decent state now.
Steam Timeline integration is now available - I know some of you were looking forward to this one :) All major items are now assigned a timeline event.
Some small improvements to the UI have been made! A lot of scaffolding and prep work for some major screens has been started. Overall - most of what was done was in preparation for a major UI pass later this coming month.
Some of the upcoming items include a Ship details (Glossary) screen, and a Faction Summary with customisation options, buildings and their statuses, wealth, mayor details, etc.
A tremendous amount of bugs were fixed this patch - some huge issues, and some of those more annoying items.
A huge amount of reports have come in also, so thank you very much to all sending bug reports & having the patience for me to fix them.
A big thanks to folks as well who jump in and send campaign files and the like. I know that's an annoyance and I really appreciate it. 99% of the time if I can see an error or issue in my development environment, I can fix it. The problem with such a huge project & these gigantic campaigns that can span weeks is that sometimes the issues reported are very hard to recreate. So getting these files sent on is a huge help :) Thank you.
Some major backbone systems in RoP have been improved. Some reworking has been needed in some of them, but for the most part, players should notice an improvement in stability across all stages of gameplay.
This was a huge undertaking and went parallel to the refactor above - most of the items like I mentioned, are invisible changes in terms of gameplay. But in terms of development - I can go full sail ahead on some of the more major items without having to worry about some aspects of the project that made these tasks very technically challenging.
Here' a full list of the items completed since the last Major Update.
New
Steam Timeline integration
Steam Rich Presence integration
Steam Input integration *Experimental!
Scaffolding for the new "Ship Details" (Glossary) screen on the Main Menu. \
Ships in Tow are now displayed in the Fleet Summary View
Scaffolding for Building In Progress Summary / Faction Island Summary.
Faction influence range / overlays. \
Added Treasure Maps as a chance-reward for sink missions or fleet battles.
A massive audit / refactor of the project has been done to assist in future development & speed up the engine a bit.
Timescale changes and Day iterations were reworked a bit to improve stability and reliability.
Fixes
Fixed major issue when players hit RTS mode too early during Tutorial 2 it would lock up forcing player to restart the level.
Fixed some overlapping UI cases.
Fixed issue where finding / being given treasure maps would cause double-entries in the captains log.
Fixed issue where Objectives were showing during Visits.
Fixed issue where visits would position the player camera in a bad offset position instead of centered on the island.
Fixed issue with State transitions for the Visit feature.
Fixed issue with Translations not working on the Main Menu
Fixed up some overflowing text in the Bottom Bar and Island screen menu.
Fixed some LOD popping issues at lower bias scales.
Fixed issue where capturing a settlement would grant a free Governors Mansion.
Potentially fixed issue with some strange UI issues during alt-tabbing. *I was unable to repro this issue but put in some safety around it.
Fixed issue where ship limits were off by one - allowing brawler to claim 6 ships in certain situations (one other occurrence caught also)
Fixed issue where ships would sometimes spawn underground on the campaign map and hopefully some pathing issues.
Fixed an error happening occasionally on initialisation of a battle map related to objective lists.
Fixed statistic gathering error caused when the application is unloading unexpectedly.
Fixed issue where sometimes tooltips would remain after screens were closed.
Fixed issue where duplicate history items would be added when capturing an island.
Fixed off-by-one error with claimable ships.
Fixed incorrect number of ship calc for hovered item status *tricky one, might have a few more cases where it is incorrect.
Fixed issue with Visited Island being sometimes the wrong date.
Fixed issue with Manage Settlement sometimes not giving the correct completion date or charging the right amount of gold for upgrades.
Fixed issue where some fleets would have 0 crew when entering a battle.
Fixed issue where passive income upgrades would not increase wealth of a settlement.
Changes
The event system across the whole project has been improved.
Some major events have been completely reworked & migrated to a new, more reliable system.
Improved some spawning logic.
Disabled Achievements during Tutorial (Except for the Complete Tutorial achievement)
Added new Close button to Diplomatic Overview
Moving the camera into the water whilst sailing will no longer cause it to go towards the ship center.
Huge thank you to everyone helping providing feedback & reporting issues on the Discord and Steam Forums. An incredible amount has arrived over the past month and my upcoming plans have been updated and improved as a result.
We've almost hit 500 reviews also - I can't express how incredible this is. One of the best ways to support the ongoing development is by providing a review so thank you very very much to those of you that have done so. I really appreciate it.
The latest sales and other major pirate games have definitely grown interest in RoP also. Alot of great feedback & ideas have been pouring in from people that have been enjoying the other games. I've always wanted RoP to remain quite unique in its play style and features, but its been very helpful to see what folks are enjoying about other games, and what can be improved on RoP.
Last month I attended Run for the Border - a fantastic Irish game development event. Its great to see so much emerging talent in Ireland, a lot of interesting projects to look forward to.
In the coming months I'll be headed to Nexus! Hope to see some of ye there :)
Here is the link to the discord where most tracking / communication is happening:
Until next time,
John
Time is flying! Today's update is mostly driven by feedback from you fine folks! A bunch of QOL suggestions, improvements, and fixes have been included. I appreciate everyone taking the time to report issues as they encounter them! With all of the major changes this month, the workflow has improved drastically and allowed me to improve balancing, tweak some mechanics, and track down to fix issues much easier than before.
Rise of Piracy remains on Sale at 20% off until the end of the Summer Sale!
RTS mode gets a small enhancement with the addition of a Reload indicator. Now you'll be able to see when a ships guns are coming up or ready, and adjust accordingly. Additionally, when changing shot type for a ship, they will require a reload before being able to fire again.
A new screen detailing every major faction's relationship with eachother is now available under the Diplomacy tab. This should give you a nicer look into the various relationships between the factions allowing you to make better decisions when it matters.
A new difficulty setting was introduced this patch. For Easy and Medium difficulty, you will still be awarded Gold and Renown when leveling up, but for harder difficulties you won't receive any. This setting is customizable so you can choose the options that best fit your desired experience at any time during your campaign.
The artist behind RoP's musical score, Jor, has improved some of the existing tracks in the game, and added some nice new ones. As well as adding some new sound bytes for various events that happen in the campaign.
There has been some nice additions to notifications, improvements to information given on various screens, improvements to the RTS controls, and some jank removal this patch.
Some improvements were made to the existing systems that have been put in place this month. With the most major section being the Construction tab, we now have the ability to add improvements to the lands we conquer.
This will continue to improve over time as early access progresses, and will have a major impact on island defense, and specialization.
Some gigantic issues were identified and obliterated this patch! Some that have been in place since before Early Access began but continued to elude me are finally vanquished. The work I completed this month has made it possible to identify and improve issues much easier in future.
Some new issues arisen this past month from that work have also been solved, with a few more still outstanding. I'll be working towards fixing these issues as my top priority for the upcoming patches.
Here' a full list of the items completed since the last Update.
New
Island info screen now lists off all enemies instead of just the first one in the War section.
A new button was added to the Diplomacy popup to open up a more detailed overview of the relations between the factions.
Campaign Objectives screen now displays the player relationship color for each faction listed.
New Difficulty setting: Bonus Gold and Renown toggle. Enabled by default but now togglable in the difficulty settings. Disabled in new campaigns on Hard or higher difficulty.
Trees now make a sound when falling.
New audio tracks have been added, some existing tracks updated.
A new Tavern ambience will now play whilst in the Tavern screen.
Ships in pursuit of the player now trigger a new audio sequence.
New option added for "Purchase & Add to Defence Fleet" from Shipyard in one motion - QOL especially for Brawlers.
Ship Reload indicators. You can now see the "loaded" status of your ships cannons in the RTS ship identity UI when selected, hovered or Shift-held.
Fixes
Fixed major issue with spawning that would sometimes direct players to incorrect locations for Missions.
Fixed major pathing issue that was causing ships to cross through terrain on the Campaign Map. This issue may still occur on rare occasions but major progress was made in tracking it down and putting safety in place to protect against it.
Fixed issue that would cause an error when transport fleets escape the player in pursuit.
Fixed incorrect ship types and comparisons when initially opening the Loot screen.
Fixed issue where ships in combat would sometimes spawn in the sky and never reset to a correct position.
Fixed issue where Objective list would not refresh and sometimes show with bad information.
Fixed issue where the screen would freeze up if controlled ship was sunk and other flagships existed.
Fixed flagship button issue where control would not fully transfer to new ship.
Fixed issue where sometimes allied ship sinking would appear as enemy ship.
Fixed issue preventing Sailing UI updates when flagship changed until player re-entered sailing states.
Fixed issue with 3rd Person sailing causing boarding targets to be incorrect.
Fixed issue preventing Defensive Ships damage being persisted.
Sunken Defensive ships now correctly disappear from islands fleets.
Fixed issue where the incorrect number of defending ships would be displayed in the Island screen and subsequent popups.
Fixed rounding error on Upgrades screen preventing level 6 from showing on some upgrades.
Fixed levelling issues with Buildings and their costs not scaling correctly.
Fixed sporadic & rare Difficulty settings persistence issue.
Fixed issue with the appearance of Red Barrels / destructible gunpowder crates having a different appearance when destroyed.
Fixed issue preventing destroyable barrels being targeted.
Fixed issue preventing Flagship switching after being sunk in Sailing mode.
Fixed RTS camera jolt when switching flagship.
Fixed issues with the Danish capital having a lack of Gunpowder barrels and Towers of the wrong scale / appearing without colliders.
Fixed input issue for tablets and drawing devices during the Flag Customization screen.
Fixed issue with Auto-firing not showing when switching to Sailing state.
Fixed a crash happening after the final Mutiny stage has passed.
Changes
Increased Encounter Amount
Rebalanced the enemy fleet aggression with players - should be more frequent now depending on difficulty and player Level.
Added an alert for Allied ships sinking.
Islands being at war with Pirates is now not declared in the Island info screen.
RTS Camera no longer moves when CTRL is being held.
Rebalanced some campaign fleet aggression settings.
Changing cannon shot type now causes your ship to reload cannons.
We've crossed 450 Reviews! Never believed we'd get to 450, let alone in just 4 short months, incredible, truly thank you all.
Again, thank you to everyone providing valuable feedback on Discord and through the Steam Forums. As a solo developer, it helps a bunch to see the constructive feedback rolling in, allowing me to check in on priorities and make sure we're on the right course. Community is at the core of what Early Access is all about so thank you to everyone contributing to that end and helping to grow and protect it.
Until next time folks! Happy hunting,
- John
This week's update is a bit lighter in appearance but packed with enhancements, scaffolding, optimizations and some super annoying bugs have been squished! Plenty of planning has been completed on some of the major upcoming items & we're staying the course on the Manage Settlement screen and some other roadmap tasks!
The engagement logic has gone through some major changes over the past few months and some changes were needed mechanically. I still have some more changes in mind on how to make this feature a bit more engaging but for now I've separated out the logic and enhanced it a bit so that it feels a bit fairer at all difficulty levels.
The Character and Ship targeting got some TLC this patch, target priorities and leading has been enhanced a bit. With these changes I've also added a layer that initially has made possible the "Ignore Civilians" feature which was requested heavily by you folks here and on the Discord. These changes also handles the Surrendering troops feature that will arrive soon.
An issue that has been plaguing players for quite a bit was the "Tokyo Drift" issue. This has finally been tracked down and fixed so no more "drifting around corners" on the campaign map! Thanks to everyone who contributed to testing and reporting it (initially as Tokyo Drift)!
Spawn issues regarding mid-map spam and encounters has been solved with this patch and the previous hotfix. There has been a complete rework of the spawn system over the past month and some items that were previously disabled / rendered broken by the rework have now been re-added and fixed up. Happy with how smoothly that has gone and thankful to everyone who has helped with testing as it was a huge change overall.
A good bit of scaffolding has been completed over the past few weeks for some new features and even a few new ships that I'm hoping to include over the coming months. These ships will replace some existing placeholder ships that are hanging around of lower quality so I'm excited to add them.
The Manage Settlement: Commerce screen has been planned out also with some nice features that I'm sure you'll enjoy.
Here' a full list of the items completed since the last Major Update.
New
Attempting to flee from an enemy fleet in pursuit will now allow you to attempt fleeing again immediately if you're not facing the same enemy.
Civilians are no longer targeted by default by player troops. They will still scream and flee, and can die to explosions / cannon fire / manual targeting. This also works for "Surrendered" units but currently that feature is not fully implemented.
Fixes
Fixed issue that would cause fleets positions to be incorrectly saved and positioned in the map center.
Fixed issue preventing the Custom Battle setups to start when Characters have not yet been created.
Finally Fixed "Tokyo Drift" issue on Campaign map when navigating terrain!
Fixed issue preventing indicators from appearing when shift is held.
Changes
Various initial setup safety measures have been put in place regarding spawning mostly.
Captured Tribal Hero's will now become sailors instead of Officers.
Rebalanced the engagement decisions for higher difficulties.
Redone the UI for Barracks, Fort, Gates and Armory indicators.
Redone how the UI indicators are gathered and shown.
Improved targeting logic and performance for troops.
Redone some targeting logic for Ships and improved lead targeting.
Scaffolding for the 3 new ships that will be added over the coming months.
Big thank you to everyone reporting issues & providing feedback especially those of you still testing items on the test branch as updates are pushed, close to releases especially.
Thanks to all of you providing reviews also. It means a lot that you'd take the time to provide such nice sentiments for all to see :) It's all very motivating and appreciated to see folks enjoying the game as it evolves through Early Access.
Hope everyone is staying safe in this heat! The past few weeks have been a nightmare to work through. Remember to stay hydrated folks <3
This Friday I'll be heading to the Run For The Border event in Cavan, Ireland! Really looking forward to catching up with my fellow Irish indie developers & other creatives at the event! Last time was a blast and I'm sure this one will be fantastic also.
Here is the link to the discord where most tracking / communication is happening:
See you next week!
John
Most of this weeks update has been focused around the Manage Settlement screen, with a bunch of important bug fixes along the way and some nice QOL has been snuck in here and there :)
An early look at the new Buildings and Features system is now in place! Finally you can upgrade and add features to your island to make it more efficient, exploitative and secure!
Please note that the feature isn't fully complete - but its close, from a campaign perspective. You can queue up buildings at your conquered / occupied islands in 4 different categories, each building having their own effect on the various other systems within the island. A full list of these buildings, their costs, effects and time to complete is available in game and on the discord.
I have plans to expand the functionality over the coming weeks and have something close to feature complete by the next Major update! There are some placeholder assets in place currently as we finalize details for some nice artwork to go with this massive feature which I'm looking forward to!
Todays patch brings a bunch of bug fixes. Some awesome suggestions & reports were received over the past few weeks and got some much needed TLC.
The spawn system in the game has gone through alot of changes over the past month or so. With so many huge changes to such a core system, its only natural to have some issues pop up here and there. Thank you to all of you who have made reports and suggested improvements to the new stuff! Its been a huge help & I'm delighted with how its shaping up. A few more improvements here and there and It'll be in a really nice place.
I also identified an issue that's been lurking in the shadows for a long while and showing very seldomly to a few of you. Sporadic bugs are the absolute worst! So squishing one, and some knock-on effects in one fell swoop is fantastic.
Something I wasn't really a fan of adding to the game was hitpoint bars. It's been suggested so many times though that I just had to add it! Personally, I'm a big fan of minimal ui - so I decided to add this as a difficulty setting. You can now enable Ship Hitpoint Bars in the difficulty settings for the game. Enabled by default in existing campaigns. :) New campaigns will have this setting disabled by default for Hard and Impossible difficulty.
For this patch, I decided to add a new identifier to the UI for flagships. As I was in that scope anyway, and so many things have changed with the way a players fleet is represented - I added a flagship indicator to the ship ui. I have plans to improve and change things greatly in future for this, but for now - its in a decent spot.
The Objective list in the battle map has gone through some changes also, you can now hold shift during RTS to show the list at any time, and double click on an objective to zoom towards it. Reminder that you can hit TAB at any time to select your flagship, and double-tap TAB to bring your camera to your flagship.
Here' a full list of the items completed since the last Major Update.
New
Manage Settlement - Buildings & Features early pass. Expect plenty of placeholders as art assets are being finalized.
Added a new Difficulty Setting to enable visible HitPoint bars above vessels during battles. (enabled by default)
Ship identification UI's now have a yellow glow for Flagships for easier identification.
Battle Map Objective list is now double-clickable to zoom to location and has mouse-over cursor change.
Fixes
Fixed major issue where friendly fleets would engage players.
Fixed rare issue where ships might spawn in the sky.
Fixed issue where Encounters would only happen with ships engaged in a Mission.
Fixed issue where mission ships would disappear and reappear off-map.
Allowed for sink missions to be complete after a retreat if the mission-ship was sunk during battle.
Fixed offset issue on the Minimap.
Fixed issue where multiple missions of the same type would sometimes not be complete when stacked with others with similar/the same target fleet items.
Fixed issue caused by creation of multiple campaigns during the same run.
Fixed issue with new spawning system where some Defending fleets would not take the same faction as the island they're defending.
Fixed issue where some fleet ships could have mis-matched faction to the rest of the fleet.
Fixed issue where some defending fleets would spawn as pre-surrendered.
Fixed issue where some surviving ships of NPC-only battles would sometimes end up with negative HP and not sink.
Fixed Campaign spawn issue where ships would sometimes spawn way above campaign map and gain invalid pathing mechanisms.
Fixed issue with captured flagships not resetting after joining other fleets.
Changes
Various balance changes were needed for impossible and hard difficulties regarding aggression of enemy fleets on the campaign map.
Removed the concept of "Maximum Building Amount"
Added some more safety around the "Surrendered ships take less damage" Difficulty setting.
Added safety around the battle entry pathways to ensure correct Factions were applied to every ship involved.
Thanks to all of you reporting and providing feedback especially as we get into these bigger roadmap items. I hope you all feel heard & see the influence you're having on the game as the patches come through.
Here is the link to the discord where most tracking / communication is happening: https://discord.gg/Ws9fjmHP5U
Until next time,
John
I returned from TwitchCon earlier this week and after a fantastic break away from RoP, I was eager to get stuck back in! Just before the convention - I had began a giant rework of the Spawning system. This has been a potential problem area since before Early Access and had I decided a rework was due.
Since before the Early Access release, there has been multiple entry points to the battle maps that have caused some heartache at times. I've now standardized this section of the code base and improved it in every way. No more race conditions or annoying timing problems - a much simpler and easier to modify / maintain system is now in place.
Because of this rework, we now have access to tackle some of the more exciting Roadmap items, as well as improving what was in place, and squishing many issues in the process.
Shipless Battles and inland ground fights are now possible - these are mentioned in the Roadmap and something that I wanted to include for a while. Defending your islands against enemy assaults and much more limited engagements in-land without the support of your fleet will bring a new dynamic to some of the battles along with more variety and exploration possibilities.
I've heard you folks! As time goes on, your save folders are getting huge! The deletion process is tedious & the amount of save games generated are causing ye problems.
Auto-Save is now a togglable feature in General Options.
Enabled by default, you can now toggle off the auto-save feature. Every campaign has 4 slots that the game will auto-save into. 4 files per campaign. You can now turn that feature off if you'd rather use Quick Saves, or create your own saves.
Save Games are now overridden if named the same.
If you try to save a game with the same name that you've previously used, you'll receive a prompt stating that the save file already exists and asking if you'd like to overwrite it.
Delete All From Campaign
This addition to the Load Game screen will allow you to delete all save games from an entire campaign. You may notice some Tutorial campaigns showing up in the Load Game screen also but this is a legacy issue that I'll handle next patch.
Overall very happy with these changes and looking forward to your feedback on them.
Depending on the type of battle, and the size of your fleet, you'll now get different introductions to the battle. This was a direct result of the above improvements to Spawning - an overview/intro sequence was required so this is what we have now. Before, the intro to each battle was identical regardless of battle type / size of fleet. There's been some great ideas shared with me around this over the past few days and I'm looking forward to improving it over the coming weeks.
Render improvements and some optimizations should show some gains during Battles. Most of these changes will be hard to feel until you're engaging in larger scale battles. I have some more ideas on optimizing late-game fleet and island battles that I plan on implementing over the summer.
The Construction tab has received some more attention - I was able to design the systems that I'll be implementing over the coming weeks! I'm hoping to have this function ready for the Major Update for June.
Here' a full list of the items completed since the last Major Update.
New
Holding Shift will now allow you to increase the game speed by 0.5 each time. Without Shift, its 0.1.
Intros for battles are now different depending on what type of battle you'll play. Fleet overview, single ship previews and Island displays.
Added AutoSave enabled flag to prevent auto-saves from being generated. This is a setting under General - Autosaves are enabled by default.
Allowed overwriting of Save Games. Now you'll get a prompt asking if you wish to overwrite games with the same name for the current campaign.
Added new alternative hotkey for increasing/decreasing battle time - Equals / Minus (For folks without Numpads or Keanu-mode keyboards)
Fixes
Fixed issue with overflowing text when upgrades had small floating point inaccuracies.
Fixed issue where sometimes ships would become invincible when upgrades reduce the damage dealt by cannonballs, and the difficulty option for reduced surrendered ship damage is enabled.
Fixed issue where sometimes your ships would spawn with some enemy ships during island invasions.
Fixed issue with Visit Mode being unleavable with new spawn sequences.
Fixed pathing issues with The Windless Haven sometimes allowing units to spawn as swimmers instead of ground troops.
Fixed issue with Telescope activation during End battle screen causing locks.
Fixed issue with Cursor states not fully resetting in Menus.
Fixed spawning/initialising issue in Invasion Tutorial
Fixed issue where player spawn points would sometimes target incorrect enemy positions.
Changes
Redone the entire spawn mechanism and allowed for ship-less battles and other upcoming Roadmap items.
Lowered the maximum game speed increase to 3x in battles due to reported Physics issues.
Improved some Tutorial aspects, items & spawns.
Windmills are now destroyable.
This patch required quite a bit of testing, so thank you for everyone trying the game on the Test Branch & keeping me posted with issues. I really appreciate the time and effort.
Here is the link to the discord where most tracking / communication is happening: https://discord.gg/Ws9fjmHP5U
See ye in about a week!,
John
Another big update to mark off the first 3 Months in Early Access! Plenty of heavily requested changes, as well as some nice QOL and bug fixes included since the last big update. Some of the work I completed early on since the last Major Update has really paid off in terms of getting some of these items in a bit easier.
Splash and Dash! The Retreat or Flee mechanic has been in need of some updates for quite some time! Now if you have a change of heart during a battle, and choose to leave, the game will assess your threat level. If your threat level is low enough, you can safely leave the battle & return to the campaign map, keeping all that you've .. acquired!
Items that influence the threat level are:
Enemy ships nearby
Enemy Towers
The time you've spent in the battle
The last moment a ship in your fleet has received damage
I'm looking forward to improving this mechanic further based on your feedback so do let me know what you think in the discussion boards and Discord.
Although it was always possible to "mod" in your own flags, now you have the added quality of life with a brand new file selection dialog when in the flag creation screen! Hit the Upload button and you'll be presented with a file browser, navigate to your desired image and you can bring it straight into the game! Check out how good MicroProses' Ocean Fest promo image looks as a flag!
Finally! I know! You can now take goods from enemy fleets without having to claim the ships that hold them. Overall even getting visibility of these items is useful, you can also destroy items on your ships to create space for these items. I'm considering the addition of a crew section to this screen also but I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this before pulling the trigger.
This has been requested a good bit since we went to Early Access, and with the previous patch's new difficulty spike with "Level locking" ships being available, this makes more sense to add now. You can take ships in tow at the penalty of campaign Movement speed - even if your fleet limit has been reached for your current level. Ships taken in tow will automatically sell at the next port you visit. I have many more plans to improve this screen and overall looting experience in upcoming patches.
I've been experimenting over the past few weeks in an attempt to speed up the initial loading of the project, especially for the first time. The initial load times are not great and although this doesn't effect gameplay, and speeds up subsequent loads - there are ways I can speed this up. For now you can expect to see some small differences before you see the initial Main menu with the addition of a load screen.
Plenty of progress has been made in the background in this ongoing task. You can expect another section by the next Major update - most likely the Building segment, and perhaps the Production segment.
New
Flag upload! You can now upload flags directly from your PC.
Added cheat for Removing Fog of War from Campaign map.
Retreating from battle is now Leave battle. You can choose to leave a battle at any time - depending on the risk posed by enemies or damage you're actively taking, you'll be able to keep loot and enemy vessels without having to secure a total victory.
Added 3 new achievements.
Capturing a point during a battle grants gold - scales with amount captured & difficulty - also, you can keep this if you "leave battle".
Partial Looting - You can now loot cargo from fleets that have surrendered to you, without having to take the whole ship.
Take ships in Tow. You can now tow unclaimed ships from a battle to a port for sale. Your fleet will suffer a movement penalty while ships are in tow.
Fixes
Fixed issue where Scenario difficulty settings were ignored.
Fixed issue with legendary items sometimes being able to be sold for higher than purchase price - especially when playing Trader.
Fixed Negative Port balances blocking transactions.
Fixed movement issue with Follow targets - this was a knock on effect from the Smooth Movement changes.
Fixed issue where Encounters would sometimes not spawn on the campaign map.
Fixed issue where enemy ships would sometimes not catch what they were chasing.
Fixed issue with the 46 gun SOTL missing some cannon assignments.
Fleets chasing Player will now engage combat much earlier and lose target much further away.
Fixed unreachable capture point on Huntingris Islet
Fixed issue where crowns for Flagships would not be culled from the Fleet details screen.
Fixed Encumbered ships overflowing UI issue.
Fixed "Can't Afford" issue with Island Market transactions when island values are in the negative.
Fixed issue with enemy fleets perusing player would lose target easily & not be able to catch up.
Fixed issue where the incorrect amount of gold would be taken when buying an upgrade.
Fixed issue where money spent on Ship Upgrades would not go towards the Island Wealth.
Fixed issue preventing the triggering of Capture 10 islands Achievement (Archipelago)
Fixed issue where claimed ships after a battle would duplicate into their original fleets without being properly removed.
Fixed issue where fleets with no ships could break other fleet logic.
Changes
Changed the way that the project loads up initially.
Changed Time increase amount to 0.1 instead of 0.5
Objective list now shows during battle when Shift is Held.
Objective list now has the faction flag associated with each row.
Reordered the Starting Perks.
Added another Capture point to Huntingris Islet.
Islands now take a hiring fee for Tavern units.
Made campaign fleet TargetLost wait time difficulty based.
Campaign Fleet Engagement Range is now difficulty based.
Redone some Pause Menu items.
Redone the Retreat popup to give a detailed overview of what was damaged, lost and recovered from a battle that has been left.
Rebalanced Bribing a little - more punishing to fail, less rewarding to succeed.
Changed Bribe Captain achievement to Threaten Captain.
Redone sale price calculation for damaged ships.
You can now release your own fleet ships into the claimable ship pool.
You can now scuttle claimable ships from the Claim Ship screen.
Thank you to the community for all your screenshots! Especially N'Fuei who recently hit 1000 uploaded Screenshots!
The roadmap has received a nice few updates this month with a few more items ticked off, and a new item added to the Short Term goals to represent the Manage Settlement work.
I'll be jetting off to the Netherlands this week for TwitchCon! I attended an animation conference on Friday and bumped into the CEO of blender! Alot of interesting folks and great projects happening currently in Ireland in gamedev and adjacent spaces - its great to see.
This past month has been fantastic - reaching 400+ reviews, joining the Corsairs bundle, and the Steam Ocean Fest! The crew has grown on the Discord to over 1300 members. Delighted with how things are going & the feedback I've received has been incredibly valuable to me as a Solo developer. I can't thank ye enough :)
A quick reminder that the best way to support development is to leave a review on the steam page. Thank you to everyone who has left a review so far :)
Here is the link to the discord where most tracking / communication is happening: https://discord.gg/Ws9fjmHP5U
Appreciate ye folks, and until next time, Happy hunting!
John
For this Regular Update, I've tried to mostly focus on bug fixes and stability across the board. I decided to tackle some refactoring also of some of the older core codebase, and in doing so made a few of the Roadmap items a lot easier to achieve in upcoming updates :) As well as these main items, balance, difficulty and some ground combat improvements were made.
Never lose track of your ships or capture points again! The top compass bar now shows objectives, friendly and enemy ships! These are color coded as follows:
Vessels and capture points: Green for friendly, Red for enemies, and Blue for allied.
Surrendered or abandoned ships show in White, and sunken vessels show in grey.
Some of these items are also represented with on-screen, and some off-screen indicators. Holding shift will reveal these indicators.
A large refactor of the code base around the spawning issues was the central focus for the first few days of this patch. This has improved reliability, squished a few bugs, and allowed me some wiggle room with regards to how battles start! The main items that are included in this patch around this area include:
the roadmap item: "Mid-Battle encounters!".
Enemy Spawn formations.
Island defense fleets now spawn across multiple defend points.
I have plans to expand on this over the next few weeks :)
One of the most impactful improvements over the past few weeks has been the inclusion of the difficulty settings popup. This kind of customization was heavily requested and discussed on the discord and I've improved it a lot for this patch. I'm delighted this feature has been so well received and look forward to improving it more in future. Please do keep the suggestions coming on what you'd like to see here as this feature is entirely driven by your feedback.
The overall difficulty has been replaced with difficulty presets - you can open up the difficulty customization and change the parameters before a new campaign, or change at any time during the campaign through the pause menu.
Ship combat and Ground combat difficulty has been split up and a bunch of scaling related items have been added to the options.
I've also heard your frustrations here and on the discord about ships sinking after surrender, so I've added a new difficulty setting there that will allow them a lot more armor after they've been abandoned / surrendered. Still, if you're choosing to blast the enemy with multiple 120 SOTL they may still sink!
Depending on selected difficulty settings, enemy fleets will scale differently on the campaign map and become more aggressive.
Some major frustrations have been addressed in this patch, a full list is below but some of the ones you may recognize are:
The jittery movement on the campaign map.
Command wheel blocking some UI elements depending on ship positions.
Some ships having an extra w key press required to drop 2nd sails.
Muskets Overkilling targets instead of re-targetting once their primary target is killed.
Enemy fleets fleeing early and peeling one ship at a time to engage.
Some more planning, artwork and scaffolding has been completed since the last patch with regards to this. I should be able to get the building and production systems in for an upcoming recent patch.
New
Compass items show for friendly and enemy ships, as well as Capture Points.
Holding shift now reveals helpers to identify ships and Capture Points on and off-screen.
Defending fleets will now spawn in less uniform positions.
Spawning for both Player and Enemy troops, ships and islands has been fixed up / improved & refactored, improving reliability and predictivity.
Roadmap Item - Fleet Mid-battle Encounters. Encounters you join will now have the involved parties involved in battle.
Added Difficulty Preset selection to the Difficulty Customization.
Added 3 new Scaling Difficulty Sliders - Scaling for Gold, Renown, and Experience.
Added Difficulty Slider for Treasure Scaling.
Added Difficulty Slider for LevelUP Exp Amount Scaling.
Added 2 difficulty selectors for Ship Combat and Ground Combat.
Seasons now change in time.
Right clicking on a selected ships' unit card will now bring the player camera to it. s
Campaigns starting at Hard or Impossible difficulty will have harder enemy starting fleets and they will scale faster.
Added cheat for Campaign to change Character Class.
Added new Difficulty Setting which is Enabled by default - surrendered / unoccupied ships take less damage.
Fixes
Fixed issue where some ships would "Skip" a sail unfurl order when hitting the W key.
Fixed issue where unoccupied ships would be identified even if sunk.
Fixed control lock on Visits.
Fixed spawn issue with 3+ enemy fleets.
Fixed a multitude of spawn point issues.
Spawning Enemy fleets will no longer idle when the flagship is outside of range of an enemy ships or has no cannons.
Enemy ships should no longer have invalid underground spawns.
Enemy spawn points no longer shift to below some background islands.
Fixed out-of-bounds spawn issues for fleet battles containing over 4 fleets.
Fixed issue with Sink victory conditions sometimes duplicating.
Fixed issue where Visiting an Island would sometimes not show the defending fleet.
Fixed issue with Fleet Review mode having some invalid parameters causing some spawn issues.
Fixed issue where Above-ship UI would block other functionality.
Fixed sporadic issue where enemy ships would flee and peel one ship at a time in some cases.
Fixed issue where gunfire would sometimes overkill dead enemies instead of attacking other enemies in range.
Fixed issue where sometimes End Game Melee Units would stand idle after engaging.
Fixed some splash damage issues for end game units.
Fixed issue where Pistoleers would sometimes double-shot before reload completion.
Fixed Level Up scale issue where values were reversed at some difficulties.
Fixed Path Finding issue where sometimes smooth paths were not possible on the campaign map causing pathing issues.
Fixed issue where player ship would stutter on the campaign map during movement at 4x speed.
Fixed minimum crew issue for Schooner, Sloop and Brig starts.
Fixed issue with dismissal of crew members from ship cargo in drydock.
Fixed issue where trees would sometimes snag and block paths after being hit by cannonballs and falling.
Changes
Updated colours of Capture Points.
Player spawn stability has been improved.
Players should now always spawn into a battle in the same locations.
Enemy fleets will now auto-join formations with other friendly ships in the area when spawning.
Defending fleets will sometimes "hide" after spawning.
Enemy fleets now choose other formations.
Some changes to the victory conditions for Fleets, Pirate fleets require every ship to be subdued, colonial defence fleets only require their flagship defeated, some larger fleets will have 2 or 3 sub-flagships to defeat.
Improved Difficulty Settings reliability and defaulting for non-campaign games / tutorials.
Removed on-screen indicators for Ships.
Rebalanced some Cannonball Difficulty.
Added much more prominent trails for Tower shots.
Decreased the reload time for Towers at higher difficulties.
Removed some UI scaling from unit cards.
Some performance related improvements in RTS mode.
Buffed the Grenadier damage.
Nerfed Grape Shot damage - Scales with Ship Combat difficulty.
Nerfed crew death on Round shot hit chance.
Some small changes to fleet aggression on the campaign map.
Changed some compositions for enemy starting fleets.
Flagships in a Hard campaign will start with some upgrades.
All ships during an Impossible campaign will start with upgrades.
Improved targeting logic & performance for ships, towers and soldiers.
Increased formation separation amount for campaign NPC fleets & fleets spawned by cheats.
Removed fleet size restrictions (balance) for Hard and Impossible ship combat difficulties.
Rebalanced some ground combat.
Setting Ground Combat to Easy will now make your shots hit every time, this scales into Impossible difficulty as you'd expect.
Cleaned up logging.
Rebalanced Melee attacks.
Improved hold position "armour" for soldiers.
Buffed Musketeers for all factions.
Sped up reloads for all soldiers except Archers.
I'll be heading to TwitchCon at the end of the month, Run for The Border during the summer, and Nexus in September.
This coming week we'll be bundling with Corsairs - Battle of the Caribbean to celebrate their launch & I wish them all the best with their awesome looking Pirate game!
This patch was heavily driven by interacting with you all here in the discussion forums, and on the discord. Thank you to everyone who requested improvements to the game, reported bugs, and provided constructive critique :) Delighted with how things are shaping up and excited for the work in front of me.
Until next time,
John
Today's regular patch is mostly driven by fixes and enhancing some of the existing newer systems. I also managed to work in some of the most heavily requested QOL and improved overall stability. There was also some exploratory work done in preparation for some of the bigger jobs coming up later.
This patch is mostly loaded with features, bug fixes and balance changes. Here is a summary of some of the larger items.
Arguably one of the most impactful and noticeable changes this patch is the Pistoleer and Officers ability to reload on the move. The Musketeer remains unchanged, needing to take a knee to reload. But the officers and Pistols can let off their shot, and then move at a slower speed as they reload, allowing them to close distance and evade fire much easier. This opens up quite a bit of micro potential also.
Many more improvements to the ground combat systems are coming over the coming months so I appreciate your patience in that regard.
Grenadiers no longer friendly fire your units. It was much too devastating especially for your melee units when a grenadier would slowly lob a grenade towards an enemy unit as your cutlass units would rush in to stab him! I always thought of grenadiers as alternatives to sending slower land cannons to take out buildings and open up paths on the maps. But the attention and micro required to use them was too much.
You can re-enable this option in the campaign difficulty settings.
I've added a preview to selected islands in the Minimap. It will tell you a brief description of the island without having to get close enough to hover it. This is something that has been requested quite a bit over the last few months so this should tide us over until we have a more complete trade summary page created for all your discovered ports.
Item production from settlements on the campaign map has been improved - with additions of extra items in some ports, and multiple productions complete for the Capitals. As time goes on I'll be expanding and improving the trade system. These kinds of smaller system changes make future enhancements much easier.
This was exploratory work that needed doing for the Captains/Mayors update but I decided to make it a feature already. If you've completed the campaign, you should see a new "More" button showing up in your character creation screen. This work was also is part of a Roadmap item.
Although mentioned in the tutorials, some of the features there are not defined / explained well enough. Although I'll be improving the tutorials constantly, its very difficult to predict where the issues will happen. To compensate for that gap, I decided to record myself going through the tutorials and talking briefly about the more important steps within them.
I tried to keep the tutorials brief and separated them out so that if you're having issues with a certain step within them, you should be able to find the section you're stuck on easily. A link to the whole course is available on the Tutorial screen.
I've reviewed quite a bit of the UI in the game and added hints and tips here and there. As I reviewed some streams and videos of Rise of Piracy from the community, I've noticed that some of the QOL items are missed, over the next few updates I am planning on bringing these items to the surface a bit better by using hints and UI improvements across the board.
In addition to the above "Grenadier Friendly Fire" difficulty option, I've also added one that prevents players from claiming ships unless they've been unlocked. This feature is disabled by default, but can be enabled in the Campaign Difficulty settings.
Here is the full list of items completed for this update:
New
Added new Section to the Minimap for showing a summary of the selected Island.
Added more items to Capital production.
Improved UI on some Load Screen items and warnings.
Added extra selectable portraits for characters created after Campaigns are completed (With more coming soon!).
Pistol and Officers can now Reload while moving! (Including soldiers of colonial factions)
Added UI instruction and key for opening/closing cannon embrasures (K)
Added capture point to Callodge Edge.
Added hint for CTRL+Shift on the Deployment UI.
Added Guided YouTube Video Tutorials to tide us over during Early Access between improvements to the Tutorial systems and a Link to them on the Tutorial screen.
Added "Grenadier Friendly Fire" Difficulty Option.
Added "Allow Claiming of Level-Locked ships" to prevent claiming of ships that you have not yet unlocked after a battle.
Added experimental feature of setting the Uniform Color per-ship in your fleet.
Fixes
Fixed Major issue with the loading of the Campaign Tutorial.
Fixed sporadic issue where Legendary Items at capitals could be sold at low amounts.
Fixed Major trade exploit - Infinite money from nearby islands from rapid restarts.
Added more safety around some entry points into the game to prevent parsing errors / detect issues early.
Fixed issues in Load Game arising from Deleted or invalid Character files.
Fixed issue where Load Game select character popup would appear but not be closable.
Fixed trailing issue from Log book sequences not ending correctly before unloading.
Fixed issue where Continue button would blank out the screen and fail to load when File system was modified by players outside of the game.
Fixed issue where trees falling wouldn't go fully to the ground.
Fixed May 4th EasterEgg issue with weapon changes.
Fixed issue where NPC's couldn't open their embrasures automatically.
Fixed issue with unknown character music causing exceptions.
Fixed grape shot expiring too early issue.
Fixed issue where grape shot trajectory for Auto shot was always aiming high.
Fixed Order Lines not showing during RTS Freeze Time.
Hitting hotkeys while cheat menu is open will no longer trigger the hotkey.
Fixed issue where incorrect ship types would display on the Encounter and Fleet screens.
Fixed issue where troops wouldn't remember what ship they came from (causing overflow on flagships after battle)
Fixed issue where ships added to defending fleet in Tribal islands would disappear during reloading phase.
Changes
Removed distribution of Legendary early items for Capitals.
Improved Cost distribution & price changes.
Rebalanced some Cost changes for Capitals & Medium ports.
Updated some Difficulty Settings UI
Increased range of Musketeer
Increased reload speed of the Pistoleer
Added time hint to the Campaign Tutorial if time is paused when setting course towards Island.
Tutorial button on the New Campaign screen now goes to the Tutorial screen.
Freeze time now slows time down significantly rather than completely freezing it.
Changed appearance of all Destructable Barrels to an assortment of more obvious "Explosive red barrels" appearances.
Improvements to trajectory prediction.
I have plans to update the roadmap soon. Some of the major items that have been included since release was driven heavily from player feedback and don't exist on the Roadmap. I will be adding to these and prioritizing some of the more heavily requested features.
Rise of Piracy hit 400 reviews this week! I'm delighted with how the game has been received after only 2 months in Early Access. So many folks see the potential & have put many hours into it. Its extremely motivating. Thank you all so much.
Here is the link to the discord where most tracking / communication is happening: https://discord.gg/Ws9fjmHP5U
Thanks again folks,
John
Fairly large regular update fairly quickly after Major Update 40! This update focuses mostly on QOL and some of the most requested features to make your playthrough that bit more enjoyable.
I've added one of the top requested UI changes - the ability to undock and move around the bottom bar popups. Alot of folks with the larger monitors will no doubt enjoy the fact that these can now be individually resized also! To access this functionality hit the "hamburger" on each of the popups. You'll then be able to resize, "keep open" and move the items around the screen to wherever you'd like.
Some of you have expressed that the movement of the ships and deployment / movement of troops is too slow - so I've (kinda reluctantly!) added a way for you to speed up and slow down time. Please note that this is something that can mess with the physics within the game especially in larger fights! I'll be working on optimizing the impact but please do let me know if you experience any major issues.
To access this functionality - during a battle - hit Numpad + or Minus. This will allow you to increase the timescale in iterations of halves, up to 5x normal speed. You can also use it to bring it down to half normal speed if you'd like. Hit Numpad * to reset the timescale back to normal.
Another heavily requested feature from you fine folks! You can now customize the facing direction of your ships in battle. Some of the functionality of this screen is very unrealised and unsurfaced but I intend to surface it more as time goes on.
To change the starting facing direction of any ship in your fleet, use mouse-scroll inside the Fleet Formation screen. You'll notice the arrow around the ship will change. Currently I have limited this to snap in 90 degree angles, but that may change with your feedback :)
You can now view your fleet at any time without having to go into battle. Much like the Visit mode, you can hit the Eye icon inside the Fleet popup at any time to load into a battle map without any fighting. You can then survey your fleet & make sure you've got your formation just right.
More groundwork has been done on some of the other screens in Manage Settlement. I'm hoping to have some more ready before the next Major update :) Alot of extra resources and items are required for these screens so your patience is appreciated as we chip away at this task :)
Here is the full list of items completed for this update:
New
Bottom-Bar Popups on the Campaign Screen are now undockable / draggable / Pinnable and Resizable.
Timescale changes - hitting NUMPAD + / - to change time speed during battle and NUMPAD * to reset.
Added starting rotation to Formation setup screen (Mouse Scroll on top of a ship marker.)
Review Fleet mode! You can now view your fleet setup / rotations and all in a safe environment similar to "Visit mode". Hit the view button in the Fleet Popup.
More groundwork and scaffolding done for the Manage Settlement: Production and Building screens.
Fixes
Fixed formation issue when setting follow targets & offsets.
Fixed formations sometimes spawning super close to land.
Fixed issue with Chain and Grape shot sharing auto-range distance with Round Shot.
Fixed issue with Achievements not awarding when threshold reached.
Fixed issue where timescales were incorrectly reset in some cases.
Fixed issue where time freezing would sometimes follow through from RTS mode.
Fixed race-condition issue where Pause menu timescale changes were applied sometimes too late in some chains.
Fixed issue where the Campaign Difficulty setting "Ship comes with Crew" was ignored in some cases.
Fixed some overflowing items after Manage Settlement update.
Some performance improvements across the Campaign Map.
Changes
Changed the requirement for "Adequate Defense Fleet" for Manage Settlement
Timescale resets no longer happen when switching between player states.
Improved Achievement tracking logic across the board.
Added some stability and safety around the character retrieval initial items.
Massive thanks to everyone contributing to the dev effort with suggestions, feedback and reviews. I really appreciate all the kind words & the motivation I get from reading through them is humongous! I'm delighted so many of you are enjoying the game & see the potential as it grows. ːsteamthumbsupː
Also to all who have been sharing issues, and bugs from the test branch - thank you so so much! <3
Finally, big thanks to all of you sharing your screenshots here and on the discord! All of the screenshots above have been from the community! Fantastic shots - thank you!
Here is the link to the discord where most tracking / communication is happening: https://discord.gg/Ws9fjmHP5U
Until next time folks,
John
Today we celebrate 2 months in Early Access! I really wanted to make update 40 extra special so I tried my best to make it as feature rich with the things most heavily requested by you folks.
Some great progress has been made on the Manage Settlement feature - this was one of the most heavily requested items and has been in planning for a long time. I've managed to get a few sections of this ready, and made some great progress on the overall system. In this initial version, I've added some functionality allowing you to assign armies and defense fleets, change the tax level, production and some other small pieces. This is still early days on this functionality and I'm looking forward to the feedback, things are going well so far!
Another heavily requested and discussed features is the all encompassing difficulty settings! This includes scaling, balancing, and means so many different things to different folks. As its such a polarizing item with so many clashing opinions on how things should be, I've decided to take an approach that I hope will cover off all the various types of player we have by adding customization panel for new campaigns. Options are limited for now, but with many more planned.
You can change these difficulty settings at any time using the new button in the Pause menu of the Campaign. As we progress through development - more options will be available as I release patches, so you'll be able to take advantage of the changes by choice during your playthroughs - without having to start over.
For this patch I've also added a nice QOL feature, which is enabled by default for all campaigns. Auto-ranging is now available during battles. This feature can be toggled on and off at any time while in the sailing mode. It allows you to fire at ships without having to worry about elevation or powder settings to range them. The ship will automatically work these out and you'll have a good chance of landing some hits. You can still hold right click to switch to the old aiming mode for when you need full control. You can turn this feature off in the "Campaign Difficulty Settings" if you'd prefer not to have it, or just not use the J key.
Some more localization coverage was added but a quick reminder that Localization was never meant to be focused at this stage of the development and coverage and accuracy are very limited. Treat it as an experimental feature that you can enable/disable - I only hope it enables some folks to enjoy the game who couldn't previously.
Localization will be focused on in the future heavily during Early Access and will roll out gradually.
There has been a good few bug fixes and improvements across the board also. I'm glad folks seem to be enjoying the Letter of Marque updates & recent patches and changes. Thank you to everyone reporting in on these with issues and observations.
Thanks to everyone sharing their screenshots on the Steam community & Discord!
New
Manage Settlement progress:
Governance - Change Tax Level, View happiness and effects, Assign Mayor / Governor (Locked until Mayors/Captains update)
Defense - Manage Armies, Fleets and Coastal Defenses
Updated the main menu Version display for default and test branches.
Difficulty Customization (Early pass)
Hit the cog on the New Campaign screen to modify some of the difficulty properties for your campaign. More of these options will arrive in the upcoming patches.
A new Change Difficulty button now exists in the Pause menu of Campaigns so you can modify your existing playthrough.
Added light Localization support for Ukrainian translations
Added light Localization support for Russian translations
Auto-ranging is now available. When aiming at a target or looking into one direction - if there is an enemy in that direction, the game will automatically adjust your power and elevation to hit targets. For more granular control - you can disable this functionality.
Added a new control (Default is J) and UI for auto-ranging.
Holding RMB disables the Auto Ranging for the duration its held if Auto Ranging is enabled. This is so that you can still have granular control at a moments need.
Auto-Ranging settings will persist through sessions and battles.
Added hint arrow to the Campaign Tutorial "Time Controls".
Added new Button to the Campaign Tutorial that shows if tutorial hasn't advanced during an "Informational" step.
Fixes
Fixed some close range firing issues with some ships.
Fixed issue with potential corruption of campaign files when Transport fleets would exist too early.
Fixed brawler wording for ship size limits showing in Level Up popup.
Removed some old wording from the Admiral start description.
Fixed issue with the Objective naming on a medium port in Gaullinet.
Fixed issue where the scale of some falling trees would change after being hit.
Fixed issue where sometimes a fleet definition would bug causing ships to spawn incorrectly from their definitions - often times causing duplicate flagships & incorrect claiming.
Fixed issue where aggression in encounter was incorrectly calculated.
Occupy button will no longer be available if an Honor Mission for that faction exists.
Fixed issue where sometimes a faction in which you share a marque will not ally you in battle.
Fixed issue where enemies could not see friendly ships accurately enough in their Line of Sight checks.
Fixed incorrect cursor issue on the Time controls.
Fixed issue with Empty Markets sometimes causing errors (mostly unseen by players).
Fixed issue with rounding numbers on the Upgrades display.
Fixed issue where claimed / captured / moved ships would not retain their Upgrades.
Defending army is now accurately checking troop counts.
Fixed issue with Offsets of the preview area sometimes becoming off-centre.
Fixed Sloop flag ordering and positioning
Fixed issue with Tooltips sometimes showing incorrectly until 2nd pass with the mouse.
Fixed Negative amounts in the Withdraw / invest functionality.
Fixed Transaction Completions being logged as part of Withdraw/Invest.
Fixed issue with spawning in the Invasion Tutorial.
Boarding UI no longer can be modified.
Changes
Changed the Grape shot to a more condensed grouping
Changed some Lighting changes across the board.
Improved some of the Order line logic & made it a bit easier to modify later for the upcoming RTS control improvements.
Various balance & statistical changes.
Occupying a settlement no longer clears its Markets & grants everything to the player.
Occupying a settlement no longer clears its wealth.
Added scroll-wheel functionality to the Drydock fleet ship list.
Removed default flag from ship previews
Increased aggression of enemy fleets in Hard and Impossible difficulties.
Hard and Impossible difficulty now adds upgrades to enemy fleets.
Added a arrow-hint to the Cannon in Invasion Tutorial.
A lot of the features releasing today are larger tasks that will evolve over time, expect changes & improvements in the upcoming regular updates that I'm planning on releasing every Week, or every 2 weeks.
If you have suggestions / improvements on what you'd like to see in these updates, be sure to use the Discord or Steam Forum - I do my best to respond to every post, and all suggestions / critique and feedback is considered :)
Today's update was heavily influenced heavily by discord discussion & steam forum posts. Do consider getting involved in the discussions and suggestions on the Discord here: https://discord.gg/Ws9fjmHP5U
Thank you to everyone of you! I'm delighted players are enjoying the game & leaving reviews! Its incredibly motivating to see folks getting on board with the vision. Rise of Piracy is improving every day thanks to the players and that's what Early Access is all about :)
John
With update 39 comes some major changes to play styles & mechanics! Letters of Marque were available in the game but the rarity & availability was always a problem for folks. From listening to your feedback & suggestions, I quickly learned how important a system this truly was and decided to focus on it for this patch :)
You are now guaranteed the offer of a letter of marque from a faction capital, if you have excellent relations with that faction. Accepting this will effect relations with that faction - locking you to them as you proceed through the campaign as a part of their faction. As a result - you can now complete the campaign by allying / conquering the other capitals in the name of that faction.
This change has a lot of knock on areas & systems that have been tested to the best of my ability and folks on the Test Branch. Please bear with me if things aren't 100% perfect first try :) As always - the discord is where most of the bug reporting & suggestions / feedback is happening, and I continually check and respond to folks in the Steam Forums. https://discord.gg/Ws9fjmHP5U
I hope you enjoy fighting for your favorite faction in the campaign & enjoy the improvements, QOL and overall improvements to the game happening largely due to your feedback!
In tandem last week I spent some time planning & building some scaffolding around the gigantic task of "Manage Settlement"! I've made some great progress there and am hoping to have an initial version of these improvements available for you to play with in an upcoming patch soon. I know this feature is something you've all been waiting for, and it will bring some much needed depth to the occupancy of settlements and late game expenditures.
Here is a full list of the issues / QOL and changes from this patch:
New
Admirals now can start campaigns with letter of marque for any of the primary colonial factions. (In progress)
Letters of Marque are now guaranteed from faction Capitals Mayors if relations are high enough. This will damage relations with other colonial factions and the pirates.
Campaign can now be completed if you capture all capitals for your Marque
Ship Upgrades can now be reset allowing you to respec your fleet.
Breaking the marque agreement can be done at capitals of that marque - this will damage relations with the origin faction, but improve slightly relations with others.
Fixes
Threatening successes no longer adds a second flagship to player fleet.
Fixed issue with spawning where sometimes the ships would not match exactly what was in the Fleet Formation screen.
Fixed issue where spawn points would be chosen from incorrect positions on some maps.
Fixed issue where some Mission items would become inaccessible (showing 72NM away but not accessible).
Fixed a few issues around some fleets spawning in invalid positions in games that have been going on for a while (allow 2 in game days before tracking).
Fixed issue where fleets involved in an Encounter could still be fought by other fleets.
Fixed issue where Names were incorrect in stats screen.
Fixed issue on The Troubled Haven where the 2nd bridge was inaccessible.
Fixed spawning issue with large sprawled fleets sometimes spawning under land.
Fixed issue where sometimes defending fleets would spawn inside background islands.
Fixed issue where sometimes colonial faction islands would spawn without civilians.
Fixed some localization issues & bad wording in some parts of the Tutorial.
Fixed some LOD issues that would not show some items unless super close on lowest graphics settings.
Fixed issue where mouse cursor would be incorrect on the minimap.
Fixed a performance sink with Trees.
Fixed issue with Send Random Troop group sending incorrect units first.
Fixed issue with Sending Troops not updating the fill amount on the boat icon during deployments.
Changes
Changed some aggression settings for fleets when deciding to invade islands.
Screw 3 Decker ships now have 25 crew upgrade slots.
You may not take aggressive actions against factions if you have a letter of marque for that faction. (Encounters, fleet fights, island invasions and transport interceptions)
Character name is now used as the flagship captain name when beginning campaign. (This will all change heavily during the Mayors/Captains update in future)
Sailing Tutorial Waypoints will now spawn in front of the player.
Nerfed the relation increase received from gifting islands to factions.
Thank you to everyone who helped us hit 350 reviews this week also! I'm delighted so many of you see the potential and are enjoying the game, constant updates & interaction!
Reviews help the ongoing development effort massively, so if you're enjoying the game - please consider taking the time to add one.
Appreciate all of the discussion and feedback coming my way daily! Thank you to all contributing to the discussions here, on the discord and steam forums.
A reminder that the discord is where most of the Tracking / Discussion / Planning and Updates are happening.
Until next time,
John
Things are moving steadily along!
With this patch, the FPS drop when near water has been finally identified and patched out. This was actually holding back a lot of frames even when away from water, especially on AMD setups. You should notice some huge performance improvements in the Battle Map.
Thanks to the community for these awesome shots :) - Share yours on the discord!
New
Added Directional helper for Campaign Tutorials for folks struggling to find Treasure/Islands and hideouts.
Edit Flag added to the Player Popup.
Added Area Names to the MiniMap.
Campaign time will now pause when entering the Fleet Formation screen.
Added a bunch of details to the encounter hovers.
Added Repair All Functionality & Tooltip - Hold CTRL when clicking the Repair button.
Added CTRL+RMB as top line in RTS instructions/control display to emphasize the Soldier Attack-Move functionality. A lot of folks are missing this function and struggling as a result. I'll do more to emphasize its importance in future updates.
*Added Steam Cloud support \
Fixes
Fixed major issue with FPS Drop near water!
Fixed exploit around adding ships to fleet ignoring the crew cap using threatening.
Halved the amount of crew captured during Threatening success.
Fixed issue introduced by the End Game stats screen showing incorrect name for island when invading.
Fixed issue where relations were decreased before battles were starting.
Redone a lot of the Encounters screen and functionality.
Fixed issue where spawn points would not de-render at battle map start.
Fixed issue where the player ships would not show until after spawning was complete.
Fixed issue where some items would not be capturable.
Fixed issue where Encounters would sometimes not disappear after being defeated.
Fixed issue where encounter fleets would not retain their battle damage.
Fixed issue where tooltips would sometimes be extra wide in some cases.
Redone the Shipyard Replenishment logic & added Faction-specific ships & guaranteed spawn rates per type.
Fixed issue where sometimes battles wouldn't punish relations with factions.
Changes
Rebalanced some enemy primary fleet growth rates.
Changed entry points for Encounters.
Improved look of the Clouds
Changed time to live for all cannonball types.
Grape shot effective range lowered.
After a boarding operation - crews will take around 10 seconds to man the guns again. Until that time, they will hold fire.
Changed some wording on the Tutorials.
Special thanks to everyone checking the game between major releases on the Test Branch! Its great that so many of you have switched over and are enjoying the almost nightly updates :)
And of course the RoadMap Update!
Big thanks to everyone reviewing the game & sending nice feedback & commentary. The previous review truly blew me away with how it was received. I hope I can continue to meet your expectations on progress & add more features that you'll love.
A reminder that the discord is where most of the Tracking / Discussion / Planning and Updates are happening.
Thanks everyone, John
First off, a massive thank you to everyone who has tried the game, given feedback, reported bugs, and dropped a review! We had a rocky beginning but recovered well & I'm delighted that so many of you are enjoying the game!
With the first month and over 35 small patches out of the way, the game is much more stable now & we have a lot of the teething issues sorted! I have started trickling in some of the more heavily requested items as part of the patches.
Widescreen Support.
UI Scaling.
Key Rebinds.
Minimum Crew.
Overloading Ships.
Fleet wide orders and QOL.
Balance and Difficulty changes.
Telescope and Aiming improvements.
Overall stability between battles / campaign transitions.
Loot / Island Occupation changes.
Arrow key movement and other Accessibility options.
Minimap panning / zooming.
Performance improvements across the board.
Many of these items required back and forth between you and I, and a special thank you to everyone who helped make them happen.
EXPERIMENTAL: UI Scale option added.
Added a one-time tutorial recommendation to the New Campaign screen.
Cannons can now be sold from the Drydock. (Value Scales with Faction Relationship).
CTRL+S now selects all soldiers.
EXPERIMENTAL: Added Key Rebinds.
Added Island Capture options screen. You can now Sack / Occupy / Gift and a few other options after capturing islands.
Added a starting description to the Create Character screen for player classes.
Added an "Auto Crew" to aide in minimum crew requirement fixes.
Added Sort By Faction to the Minimap. discovered ports section.
Began work on "Manage Settlement".
Renamed Islands now appear correctly in Minimap
Fixed issues with Shipyards not creating ships when they should.
Fixed issues with Taverns not creating crew when they should.
Fixed some Stats screen issues.
Fixed major issue with the Treasure maps not functioning correctly after the stability update.
Storms now deal damage over time. Explorers are immune.
Treasure maps now show a larger area.
Increased range that treasure can be detected from.
Changed how stats are gathered after a battle has finished in some cases.
Removed Gold and Exp from end game stats screen. These are Campaign Map related items.
Some more balance changes around Troops & Ships.
I have set up a public test instance for those of you that are enjoying the frequent patches & updates. To switch to the test branch, right click on Rise of Piracy in your library, go to Properties and then Game Versions & Betas. Switching between the versions will not require you to restart your campaigns or anything like that. I'm taking extra care to prevent any campaign-breaking changes from happening every patch.
We have a long way to go before v1.0 but I couldn't be happier with all the feedback, ideas, and passion I'm seeing from you all. I'm really looking forward to working on the upcoming large features like the Manage Settlement Update, the Captains / Mayors Update etc.
A reminder that the discord is where most of the Tracking / Discussion / Planning and Updates are happening.
Thank you very much, John
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Rise of Piracy, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Rise of Piracy statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.
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