Ferries - a fantasy or able to be simulated?

**Dol Guldur** · 06-21-2005, 19:51

This may not be of much interest, but I thought I put my thoughts here in case anyone wanted to research it...

Sea, as I'm sure you know, can be placed on the campaign map land area (as if a wide part of the river, a river lake or stand-alone lake).

Ships can sit on sea.

Ships can load and unload troops.

Ship models can be modded.

Do you see where I'm going?

A faction-controlled ferry!

I'm talking landing platforms on either side of the "river", and a rope-guided raft/boat owned and controlled by one faction.

I'm not sure if boats/admirals can be bribed...but that would mean the ownership could change.

Ferries would thus have huge strategic value.

Anyway, those with more time and skill may wish to continue this.

I await all the reasons why it is not possible ;)

**Epistolary Richard** · 06-21-2005, 20:29

Are you talking about ferries for the campaign map or the battle map?

**Dol Guldur** · 06-21-2005, 21:06

The campaign map.

**Epistolary Richard** · 06-21-2005, 21:24

Okay, what do you want ferries to do that ships don't do?

**Dol Guldur** · 06-21-2005, 21:47

The ferry model and texture (sm) would need to be modded to look like a ferry. It would be locked in a stationery position on a small strip of Sea that looked like a river or thin lake, between two real rivers, on a land area of the campaign map.

The boat coud not be attacked, and it cannot move. The only threat would be some "event". It would need to use a slot which is not used by the faction's real ships.

I must admit I know very little about boats in r:tw - there's a whole forum dedicated to the naval aspect of r:tw somewhere...but its name and url escape me.

I'd suggest the lowest carrying capacity.

Can ships be bribed?

**Epistolary Richard** · 06-21-2005, 21:54

Just have a square of sea somewhere along the length of the river. Put a ship in it at the start of the game. The ship would be trapped, troops could embark and disembark. It couldn't be attacked because no other ship could reach it to attack it. There's no variation in carrying capacity, every ship stack can carry 20 units. I don't know if they can be bribed.

Or you could achieve the same effect with a bridge.

**Dol Guldur** · 06-21-2005, 22:10

Yes, of course have it there at the beginning ;)

No, a bridge allows all factions to cross and they look like bridges! And I really would like some crossings not to get bridges over them when you build roads (but that's another issue).

Strange there is a file that designates carrying capacities - is that remnant code?

I don't think they can be bribed - just tried; so the faction retains the ferry throughout the game.

**Epistolary Richard** · 06-21-2005, 22:29

Which file are you referring to?

An interesting idea would be to scrap rivers all together and just have long bits of sea, so players would have to have navies acting as ferries to control movement between the land masses. This would let you simulate stuff like longboats which were able to penetrate a long way inland.

Of course, that would block all troop movement without ships. And there's no way in the RTW engine to distinguish between shallow drafted ships and those with deep hulls.

**Dol Guldur** · 06-21-2005, 23:03

That would be the descr_ship.txt file in the data folder. It also designates the depth of which you speak.

Units can cross narrow sea strips if a certain amount of shore is sticking over the river - whether or nor the AI would deal with that or whether boats could still pass would have to be tested.

I have a map on which this occured - I may test it again.

**Epistolary Richard** · 06-21-2005, 23:12

Interesting... I don't think there's anything in that file which is referenced at all!

**Dol Guldur** · 06-21-2005, 23:31

Remnant code then? :(

**Dol Guldur** · 06-22-2005, 18:23

Hmmm...hang on..what's this then:

http://www12.brinkster.com/thelordz/...shipledit.html

**Epistolary Richard** · 06-23-2005, 09:48

Hmmm... that appears to be a tool that the Lordz released last year to generate descr_ship file entries. So the question would be, why release a tool if nothing in the file is referenced?

Well, I can't answer that. Certainly nothing appears to be referenced in that file. Modders may have believed that information in that file was referenced somewhere last year, but no one's mentioned it in the last three months or so. But maybe that's not the case. I suggest you play around with it and see if you get any results.

**Myrddraal** · 06-23-2005, 11:11

There are of course various depths of sea on the campaign map, and ships move slower through the deeper areas, and so tend to hug the coast, but whether this effect is hard coded for all ships, I'm not sure.