Ship gameplay

This is the staff and balance reference for ships as players experience them: where to buy them, every command, the hull, weapon, equipment and crew catalogues, the cargo economy, and what everything costs. The engine behind it (lifecycle, heartbeat, combat maths, persistence, NPC AI) is in SHIPS.md.

All numbers are copied from src/ships/ship_variables.c, ship_cargo.c, ship_shop.c and src/specs/specs.assign.c at commit 2209da668. Prices are shown in platinum. The tables store copper, and 1000 copper is 1 platinum. A "tick" is one second. The "hours" the shipwright quotes are mud hours of 75 seconds, so 75 ticks make one quoted hour.

Players read the in-game help ship topics and help ships (see SHIPS.md for where those have drifted from the code).

Contents

• Where ships are sold
• Commands
• Hulls
• Weapons
• Equipment
• Crews and chiefs
• Cargo and contraband
• Costs and timings
• Runtime properties

Where ships are sold

A shipwright is a room with ship_shop_proc. You can buy a first ship at any of them. Every other service needs your ship docked in that room. The ten ports are the shipwrights that also trade cargo, and they are the only places customs inspects a docking ship.

Ships can also dock at any ROOM_DOCKABLE room they maneuver into. That gives no services beyond a safe berth.

Commands

At a shipwright

Anyone can list and buy a first hull. Everything else acts on your own ship, which (except for list, summon and sell ship) must be docked in this room and not undocking. Maintenance blocks buy hull, buy cargo, buy contraband, sell and summon. Battle stations block sell and summon.

At a crew hall

A crew hall is a room with crew_shop_proc. You must own a ship.

On board

Bridge commands work in the room with the control panel (the bridge). order, lock and fire need the captain, a group-mate of the online captain, or an immortal. Any passenger may use look and scan.

From outside, enter <ship keyword> boards a ship in the same room. The keywords are ship, the class name and the owner's name. You cannot board a ship that is flying, a warship that is moving, or any other ship going faster than 9, unless it is sinking.

Immortal commands

Immortals also skip build times, undock in 2 ticks, summon instantly (even at battle stations), maneuver without cooldown, board moving or flying ships, and bypass the contraband requirements and the captain check. An immortal on an NPC ship's bridge counts as its captain, so the AI keeps running after the captain dies.

Hulls

list hulls numbers hulls from 1 (class index + 1). Merchants carry cargo. Warships carry none but have more armour and mounts for their weight.

• A price of 0 means not for sale to mortals. buy hull never accepts the last class. The epic-point cost column is 0 for every hull, so no hull purchase uses the epic-transaction path today.
• Hull weight sets the repair stock, frags for sinking the ship, crash hits, summon price, ram size and levistone weight. Its square root (√hull) scales stamina costs and the size bonus to be hit.
• Max load is the weight budget for weapons, equipment and cargo (each crate weighs 2). Weight above the free allowances slows the ship linearly (see SHIPS.md). The _slots column in the source is unused: every hull has 16 slots.
• The Magical Automatons crew, Mirabolan Merchants (+10% cargo) and the speed-bonus crews change these figures. The helm's SEADOG innate adds 2 to max speed.

Arcs, mounts and armour

Each arc lists its maximum number of weapon mounts, the maximum weapon weight on that arc, its armour and its internal structure. Two arcs with armour and internals both at zero sink the ship. One makes it immobile.

The in-game list shows weapons as F/S/R/P, fore, starboard, rear and port. Port and starboard are always equal.

Weapons

list weapons numbers weapons from 1. Damage is per fragment. n× means n fragments per shot, each landing separately.

• Spread scatters where each fragment lands around the firing bearing, so 360° weapons can hit any arc.
• Reload is in ticks, cut by up to about 15% by gunnery skill and lengthened by fatigue. Flight is in pulses (quarter seconds) and scales with range.
• Ballistic weapons (catapults and the Long Tom) care most about closing speed. Direct-fire weapons care most about crossing speed (see SHIPS.md).
• A flying ship is 4 squares up, and ranges include that: a surface ship three squares away is five from it, and a weapon that reaches 4 or less cannot hit it from the water. Two flying ships are level with each other.
• A warship's sails take 85% of every sail hit (warship.sails.damage.reduction), before Ship Damage Control.
• The Mind Blast Cannon does no damage. A hit stuns the crew for 5 + 15 × range factor ticks (no steering, firing, reloading or repair) and knocks everyone aboard down inside mid-range.
• Capital weapons (Light and Heavy Beamcannon, Mind Blast, Fragmentation, Long Tom) are limited to one capital item per ship, and the levistone counts too. They also require ship frags or gunnery skill of at least 1600, 1800, 1700, 1900 and 2000 respectively.

Where each weapon can go:

"And up" follows the list order, so "Destroyer and up" means Destroyer, Frigate, Cruiser and Dreadnought.

Equipment

One of each item per ship. It occupies a slot but no arc.

Equipment installs instantly: its table weight is 0, and install time is computed from that weight.

Crews and chiefs

A ship always has one crew. Its three skills (deck, guns, repair) train with use and never fall below the crew type's base. Hiring a new crew keeps your training, less 1–5%, floored at the new base. Chiefs speed up training in their department, add to its modifier, and raise the crew to their minimum skill four times faster. See SHIPS.md for the formulas.

Hiring a crew needs the price in coins and either ship frags of at least the crew's "frags" figure or current deck, guns and repair skills all at or above the new crew's base. Hiring a chief needs the price and either the frags or your crew's skill in the chief's department at or above the chief's minimum.

Crew halls on the good side (43220, 43222, 133075, 28197) turn away racewar-evil characters. Evil-side halls (43221, 9704, 22481, 22648) turn away good characters. Room 77 lists every crew and chief.

Crews

The "level" shown is the table level + 1, and the table level also adds to all three modifiers. Crews with no price cannot be hired by mortals: the Northshore Pirates, Twilight Cove Bucaneers, Marauders of the Four Winds, Dark Sun Syndicate and Scions of the Abyss crew NPC ships. The Automatons come from the automatons quest: fuse two moonstone fragments with the core from Cyric's Revenge, then ask erzul automatons.

Chiefs

All chiefs are also listed in room 77. A new chief replaces the current chief of the same department.

Cargo and contraband

Ports and goods

Each port produces one cargo and one contraband commodity. "Port" and "commodity" share the same index.

Appetites

cargo_location_mod[] is the heart of the trade game. It gives each port's appetite, as a percentage, for every other port's goods. Rows are the port buying from you, columns the goods' origin:

The same matrix applies to contraband. Every value is the sailing distance printed by calculate_port_distances() (now dormant), so the matrix is symmetric and longer runs pay more. Deramuth ↔ Venan'Trut (165) is the shortest route and Sarmiz'Duul ↔ Thur'Gurax (314) the longest.

Prices

Per crate, where mod is the live market modifier for that port and commodity:

• Buying at the producing port: base × mod[port][port].
• Selling at another port: 1.5 × base(origin) × appetite / 100 × mod[port][origin].
• Selling back to the producing port: half its current asking price.

Adjustments on a sale:

Cargo purchases also apply the EPIC_BONUS_CARGO discount. Players see cargo prices from a delayed copy of the market, refreshed every ship.cargo.updateDelayedPrices.secs, so nobody can trade on a move the moment it happens. Immortals and contraband use live prices.

Market movement

• Buying multiplies the port's own modifier by 1 + buyAdjustMod × crates. Selling multiplies the buyer's modifier for that commodity by 1 − sellAdjustMod × crates. Contraband moves several times further per crate.
• Every ship.cargo.update.secs each modifier drifts towards its neutral point by (distance + 0.1) × rate, without overshooting. The neutral point is sellPriceMod for a port's own goods and buyPriceMod for everything else, both 0.6 as shipped, so an untouched market settles at 60% of the formula prices.
• Every modifier is held inside its band, minPriceMod–maxPriceMod (cargo 0.54–0.69 around its 0.60 neutral point, contraband 0.85–1.3), on load, after each trade and after each drift. A heavy trade stops at the edge of the band instead of crashing or inflating the price.
• world cargo reset puts every modifier to 1.0, which the cargo band then holds at 0.69 until drift brings it back to 0.60.

Capacity, jettison and salvage

• A crate weighs 2. The free space is the lesser of the hull's cargo rating (+10% with Mirabolan Merchants) minus the load, and the remaining weight budget divided by 2.
• buy cargo and buy contraband stack onto an existing slot of the same goods and record the invoice, so list cargo can show profit. Only then do they take an empty slot.
• Jettison drops crates over water, and each has a 50% chance to float as a salvageable crate. Sinking ships jettison their whole hold. NPC ships under fire jettison some cargo.
• Salvage needs the ship stopped. Warships have no cargo rating, so they may hold up to max load / 5 salvaged crates instead. Salvaged crates carry no invoice.
• Summoning clears all cargo (see Summoning).

Contraband

• Buying needs ship frags at least the commodity's requirement, or crew skills of deck ≥ 4×, guns ≥ 1× and repair ≥ 2× that requirement. Warships cannot buy contraband, and neither can a captain at the maximum alignment, 1000 (MINCONTRAALIGN). The allowance is the hull's contraband rating scaled down when the ship is weight-limited.

• Customs runs when a ship docks at a port by maneuvering. It also runs on summon arrival, but a summoned hold is already empty. A port never confiscates its own contraband. For each crate of every other kind, the confiscation chance is:

  text

  c = ship.contraband.baseConfiscationChance (35) + crates_in_slot / 2 - sqrt(ship frags) / 5
  c = c + (100 - c) x (1 - hold load / hold capacity)
  capped at 100; a negative result becomes 5
  

  A full hold of ordinary cargo hides contraband best. Every confiscation is logged to the status log and LOG_SHIP.

Costs and timings

Build and install time accumulates on the ship's maintenance timer. The ship cannot sail, and cannot be summoned or sold from, while it runs. The Trader achievement (10,000 crates sold) halves hull, weapon and equipment times. Immortals skip them.

Summoning

summon ship sends for the ship from anywhere, including Davy Jones' Locker. The ship must not be sinking or at battle stations, and the caller must be raidable. The summons clears the hold (except for immortals), puts everyone ashore and parks the hull in the transit room. On arrival the ship docks at the calling shipwright, customs runs, and the hold is cleared again, immortals included. Travel time uses the ship's speed with an empty hold:

A sunk ship arrives with no sail. Its speed counts as 2, so fetching a wreck from the Locker takes about 62 minutes.

A summons still under way at a reboot or copyover is lost. The ship comes back where it last docked (Davy Jones' Locker for a wreck) and can be summoned again. The fee is not refunded.

Timers at sea

Ship Damage Control

The Ship Damage Control epic skill protects its owner's ship while the owner is aboard: every sail and hull hit from another ship is cut by 4% plus a fifth of the skill (14% at 50, 24% at 100), never below 1 point. Spells and other damage a character deals to a hull are not reduced. The headless commodore (mob 2733, in Headless) teaches it from epic.skills.minLevel (default 30) in 10-point lessons. The first lesson costs 240 epic points and 16,000 platinum, and the price rises with the skill. New Chaos characters with starter epic skills enabled start with it at 100.

Sinking consequences for the owner

A player ship is never destroyed by sinking. It becomes a sloop with every slot emptied, is docked at Davy Jones' Locker, and keeps its frags and crew. It has no sail unless an NPC sank a larger hull. The crew loses some training, and the ship loses its share of the victor's frags (nothing if an NPC made the kill). Insurance pays a share of the old hull's list price to the owner's bank, or to an auction-house pickup if they are offline:

Runtime properties

Read with get_property() from lib/duris.properties (section [ships]).

Related environment switch: CHAOS_STARTER_FRIGATE (see CONFIGURATION.md and CHAOS_MODE.md).