Port Royale 3

[Bison]

from the manual Bison:-

In the dockyard you can repair, buy and sell ships.
Because the dockyards in the New World don’t build any
ships themselves, there is usually not much variety in the
selection of new ships. Thus you can only buy ships that
were previously sold by other merchants. Each town has its
own selection of ships.
Incidentally, you can have entire convoys repaired in
the dockyard. This spares you from having to reorganize
convoys, which can be a tedious process. Another advantage:
Repair times and costs for convoys are less than if you hand
over the ships individually.

Bah!  Now it makes sense.  It's like a used car lot, but for ships.  I'll get over it.  To be fair I played Patrician more than Port Royale, so there are some differences that I need to get used too.  Like buying used ships.

I don't mind the repair option.  What is crazy is that (unless that precious manual of yours has this answer too!) if you are running on a trade route using your captain.  You need to catch your convoy in a harbor.  Unactivate the trade route.  Repair ship.  Reactivate trade route.  Rather than just having the trade route "paused" during the repair process, which you schedule your captain to do regardless of location on your ship menu.  Anyway again not a big deal.  Just another mouse click or two.

[Bison]

I really only read the manual to figure out how to crew my ships, which you also have to deactive the trade route in order to hire crew, buy ammo, guns, swords.  And to learn about the manual trade settings, but it was pretty brief in regard to that.

[undercovergeek]

ill give it a thorough read this afternoon - im a manual geek

is there any interaction with the amount of settlers and what theyre doing? im not sure i want to get into colony management that much! i see figures for what theyre doing and i see that new immigrants come in on treasure fleets and are sent to viceroy towns, filtered to governor towns and finally are shipped to town towns - i dont think we as a player do anything - i hope

[Bison]

You do actually.  You build up the city buy houses, commodity manufactoring, etc...it's one of the ways to win economically.  You need something in the order of 75% of the population of a town working for you and a goodwill with the nation/population of the twon then the viceroy will assign the town to you for management.  It's also why you'd do the mission for the church or guys in the tavern for example to host a carnaval.  So you build up popularity in the town.

[Nefaro]

The graphics look okay to me.  I kinda prefer 2D in a number of situations.  It resembles the gfx in Patrician 4, so nothing unusual.

I don't think the 3D city graphics are bad, either.  Not astounding, but not bad.  *shrug*  I also never had a problem with the trade sliders in Pat4, on the contrary I thought they were much more user friendly than the multiple clicks required to trade a quantity of one type of good in previous iterations.  Now you just click, slide, release instead of setting single/tens/hundreds quantity click-hold multiple times, change singles/tens/hundreds qty again, repeat, repeat.  That was something that annoyed the hell out of me after awhile, in the earlier games.  Just interface preferences, and I think there are some options to change how that slider behaves IIRC.

[undercovergeek]

in a good way this is getting deeper than i thought - junior is going to euro disney this weekend with her mum - im in for a long session this evening and tomorrow - have you got a basic 'what to do in the first few turns/hour' Bison - i remember playing Pat3 for hours but still only had 1 ship. Im thinking the first goal is a warehouse in everytown so you can see the market prices?

[son_of_montfort]

Would it be such a bad thing if it turned out to be a modernised, updated PR1 or 2?

No.  It's not a bad thing.  It's still Port Royale.  I guess in regard to the graphics it just highlights the common occurance in games designed for both the PC and consol markets.  The graphics are tailored for the consol not the pc.

Woah! I had no idea this was also being sold on the console!?

I actually like the graphics quite a bit, but they are a significant upgrade from PR2 (and about the same as Pat4). I don't mind the trade sliders either, but I got used to using them in Pat 4 as well. They make buying a bit quicker than it used to be in the old ones.

That used ship thing seems new. Didn't PR2 have ship building? Maybe not... can't remember. I also think that the notion New World ports didn't build ships is a little jejune. And is that even accurate? IIRC, Boston made it big by building ships. Of course, I don't know about the Caribbean, but I thought there was SOME shipbuilding.

[Bison]

in a good way this is getting deeper than i thought - junior is going to euro disney this weekend with her mum - im in for a long session this evening and tomorrow - have you got a basic 'what to do in the first few turns/hour' Bison - i remember playing Pat3 for hours but still only had 1 ship. Im thinking the first goal is a warehouse in everytown so you can see the market prices?

Considering the game will do all the trading for you if you use a captain just take advantage of it.  Setup a trade triangle and put on profit or prosperious.  Once you make a little bank, buy your second and third ships.  Here you can make some decisions.  Also long as you are a political non-factor you can basically go with 3 trade routes and no crews/gun.  Build up capital, search for the remaining towns.  And then it's a matter of adding more ships to your convoys, doing the missions to build up faction favor and learning the commodity production routine of your commonly visited towns.    It's then that the warehouses can be built.  You need faction score, town approval and money to by the permit.

[Bison]

The graphics look okay to me.  I kinda prefer 2D in a number of situations.  It resembles the gfx in Patrician 4, so nothing unusual.

I don't think the 3D city graphics are bad, either.  Not astounding, but not bad.  *shrug*

If you buy it you will see the green blob that is the jungle on the islands. It's not horrid, but just bland. 

[son_of_montfort]

Anyone tried to combat to see if they consoled that up?

[Bison]

Well I've be attempting to play the adventurer campaign.  Attempting is the key word here.  I get the first mission to hunt for a pirate SW of New Orleans between Corpus Christi and Tampico (SP).  45 minutes of real life time and no pirate.  I gave up because frankly watching the ship follow a white line around the Gulf is not my idea of fun.  It was boring and frustrating at the same time.  When I get another 45 minutes of life to waste, I'll attempt to find the pirate again.

[undercovergeek]

just done 2 hours of the trader - its getting very busy and complicated but i cant escape the feeling im cheating - ive automated 3 routes and the money is pouring in on the prosperity settings but theres little i do other than watch the money roll in.

The windward islands have a massive demand for dyes, the place i get it from (new orleans) never seems to supply enough to my convoy on automatic - i can have 7 or 8 ports asking for dye and the ship will leave orleans with about 20 barrells fully capable of selling about 100 - the same islands demand coffee just as voraciously but the ship leaving Belize never seems to be full of coffee. Id feel much more rewarded if i could refine the dispersion of goods by bringing just coffee in from belize, and just dyes in from new orleans to a central warehouse and then dispersing them from there - ill give this a go next

[Bison]

The trade routes you define really become useful as you start to own commodity production buildings.  You can control the flow of goods for your production and distribution chains.

[son_of_montfort]

The trade routes you define really become useful as you start to own commodity production buildings.  You can control the flow of goods for your production and distribution chains.

This sounds like a plan for me. I now have those cotton farms (foisted on me by the campaign), so I need to start automating my trade routes.

Have they made it easier to have a "hub" by telling the automated trade route to pick up, for example, dyes from the warehouse and sell them to other ports?

As to the 45 minutes of pirate hunting... yuck. Hopefully this is a bug that can be squashed.

[undercovergeek]

The trade routes you define really become useful as you start to own commodity production buildings.  You can control the flow of goods for your production and distribution chains.

Ahhh.... ive found all the coffee producing regions down south so i have 100 coffee coming into the warehouse, 100 dyes coming into the warehouse and have just started building some coffee plantations on Belize, have found the clothing and meat producing areas too - im looking for the 'luxury goods' here (well, high priced at least!) - as far as i can see there isnt an 'auto' setting that will distribute goods from your warehouse - profit and prosperity dont touch whats in your warehouse as i can see - i got my fingers burnt trying to produce 'just dyes' fleets from the warehouse to those that need it - they were always running at a loss - im still experimenting here - great game (its exactly what i was looking for)

issues so far - the UI wont switch to another ship in another port even though its selected on the side bar - just 2 more clicks - no biggie
i have tried 3 times to find the womans husband who fell in the sea north of providence and i can never find him
getting pillaged by pirates, im supposed to, its great - just havent figured out how to strike back yet