Demolishment has finished the scripted setup mod. You can now start a game with just a few clicks.

It allows for any combination of expansion modules and homebrew variants, including or excluding cards and components as needed, so this is a good opportunity for people to experiment without having to sort through the bags manually.

Check it out :

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2186011187

The new mods and weapons we have tested yesterday are now fully updated, along with the player aids and the notebooks.

Thanks to Parker for the photoshop work.

In an effort to keep things balanced, I say we interprete Old Providence's text literally, meaning any captain with a Spanish bounty can benefit from it, including non-pirates with a Spanish bounty.

Ok so things aren't as hectic as they were so I'm expecting to drop by maybe once a week or so. Today I had self-appointed free time and I used it to implement a few things that had been mentally itching for a while. Here's a change pack!!!

1- The Galleass has been increased to 3 toughness. I've done lots of testing with it. Everything else being equal, it holds its own well enough against a frigate but the frigate wins a little bit more often (but never by sinking so the extra toughness changes almost nothing here). It does ok against a man-o-war, but not better than a frigate would (unless you have low seamanship but high leadership). The extra toughness is so that the Galleass can now decently do big location raids. So now it's more on par with the frigate on average (costs the same after all) but is still situational.

2- (In Piracy 2.0) The smuggler's hold can now hide a contraband even from players, meaning it cannot be plundered unless your ship itself is claimed. It adds one situation in which surrender makes sense.

3- (In Locations 2.0) A naval fort can be visited to move the "spawn point" of the matching naval ship to an adjacent sea-zone.

4- 2 NPC pirates were added, a clipper and a galleass. In order to not upset the balance between naval ships and NPC pirates, I've made them both NPC traitor pirates who just attack any player (yup that's a thing now). The setup of the new events has been updated but is almost the same.

5- A Surprise Attack variant has been added. Rarely usable but very useful when it works.

6- The double shot and heated shot (you know... the ones we never use) have been modified.

7- It is now possible to retreat from crew combat or even steal the opponent's ship and continue naval combat with it or escape with it.

8- The big one... drum roll please... naval battles can now happen with any number of ships rather than just 1v1, even with more than 2 "sides". I had always thought about it but there were so many things to consider (shooting a ship currently in crew combat, who gets plundered and who gets the plunder, who gets the glory point, etc.) that I had never gotten to doing it. Well it's done. And it's a mess. But it's a fully functional, epic mess. It is now quite doable, and the incentive is there, for 2 or 3 measly flutes to gang up on a fully equipped frigate with a strong captain, or teaming up with naval ships, or NPC pirates.


So anyway... my internet is still not right for hosting, but if one of you hosts a game in the weekend and posts it a day in advance or so, I should be there. My weekend schedule is still busy but very flexible.

Eventually I expect things to settle down even more and then I may be around more too. For now though... that's pretty much it.

If you guys are wondering what hole I disappeared into, I'm gonna be super vague about it and say that a lot of stuff happened, some bad, some good, and now I have to work my ass off as much as I can from morning to evening, possibly for another 2 months, maybe more. I'm not sure. It has gotten so urgent and thought consuming that I literally forgot about the group. I'm not joking. It didn't even cross my mind to open steam.

I'll be back when things have settled down, hopefully with a better internet too so I can host a big game for old times' sake.

Have fun while I'm gone and take care of yourselves.

While procrastinating today, I took 30 minutes to upgrade the mod to 10 players. Since it doesn't require to load any extra images when unused, I doubt it would make any difference in latency, and I'm tired of having to copy and paste any change to the note book 3 times. I doubt we'll ever have a 10 player game more than once in our lifetime but hey, it looked good, and I kept a backup of the 8 player mod in case.

If you are very used to playing TTS, I don't recommend you pick teal or brown or you'll face something very annoying when you try to draw cards with the keyboard.