Oceangoing trading/piracy map

I've been feeling vaguely "sailory" lately, so I was thinking of making a map based around sailing.

At the moment I have a basic idea based around the game EV Nova.

You start out with a single small ship and are free to explore the world as you choose. Eventually, you upgrade your ship, and then you can buy others.

Trading:
You'd buy goods cheap at one port, sell them at another for a profit, etc.
I'd have the ability to create predefined trade routes, etc.
You'd be at risk of other pirates, other merchants and taxes.

Piracy:
You buy weapons, attack ships, and loot their goods.
Navies/mercenaries would eventually hunt you down.


Trade goods and weapons you can buy will probably be limited by cargo or deck space.

This would be set in a Tanaris/STV style set of islands. Piracy and trading would raise/lower your reputation with factions:
I suspect the balance of land/water would be 50/50 as I'd also add some overland trading options with caravans, and maybe even an inland town.

A quick table of goods:
You would buy at low, sell at high places. Values would depend on the trading port and would decrease as you sold more to each port and increase based on environmental conditions (drought increases price of water and food for instance).
You could also capture locations that made these goods, and obtain them at a much cheaper rate, though you would have to defend the resource node, and supply workers and raw materials.

Anyone interested in the idea so far? I have several questions I'd like people to consider.
Should I add quests and an eventual goal, and should it be multiplayer?
Any other comments?

EV Nova was one of my favorite games way back when it came out. If you can pull it off, this sounds awesome. It might be difficult to do, though, given the map size constraints. As I recall, Nova was immense.

As for an eventual goal, I would make quest chains for each group you can gain rep with, each with an eventual goal.

Good luck!

Sounds interesting, reminds of Sid Meier's Pirates!

Your hero items could be things like cannons, different sailors, tackle, equipment, etc. Promising!

It's interesting indeed, but how would you make battle system? Sid Meier's Pirates! is somewhat cool but how can you make with WC3 engine.

Haven't played Pirates for years, and can't remember anything. Anyone feel like summarizing the battle system for me?

I was just going to use the default WC3 combat, but I hadn't decided how I was going to integrate cannon upgrades, crew members, manuvers, and what form boarding would take etc. Maybe a custom system would be a good idea.

I dreamt about this thread last night and four people had posted in it. 1. A random, 2. Rising Dusk, 3. a random and then 4. Rising Dusk again.
Posts 2 and 3 both said I should tabulate the idea, so I'll work on that.
Post 4 said I should set it "with a spookily scintilating Lordaeron soundset" and showed lots of screen shots of ruined buildings a stuff.

How should I integrate that into the map? Should I be worried I was dreaming about Rising Dusk?

Currently, I have a basic map outline in my head with STV down the bottom right, gilneas in the middle right, lordaeron up the top right, northrend up the top left, tanaris down the bottom left and various islands in the middle (mostly naga controlled, but some pirate, troll and goblin ones as well). I also need to stick in a night elf port somewhere. Probably the middle left.

Anyone have any feelings about the minimum number of ports required to make trading interesting? I don't really want the game to be that big.
And how do I make a port? Make it a single building, or should I make the port out of doodads, etc and make it a major feature.

I personally like the idea a lot. I think it would be a great game to play with friends (not sure how b.net would fair as it seems to be like a longer game/2+ hours).

I would have between 4-6 main ports, with various mini cities inbetween (maybe 12-14). As for ports, I would make it a bunch of doodads which look like the city/port. It would allow each port to be different (as it should) and provide some terrain appeal.

For a battle system, maybe some sort of cannon reloading delay and you must be sideways to shoot. (of course not all your cannons are on one side, so make the shots equal to half the cannons.

Some ideas:

1) long-range cannons attack with a parabolic artillery attack (think Mortar Team, Catapult), which allows smaller, faster units to avoid/out-run attacks that would normally crush them. Smaller attacks 9gunboats, sloops) could have direct-fire missiles that deal less damage, but have a higher speed and thus a smaller chance to miss. That way, you get a nice balance between bombardiers (strong LR attacks that can be dodged ) and skirmishers ( weak SR attacks that are unlikely to miss). Would add a nice micro element too: bombardiers would have to use the Attack Ground order to predict where their opponents are going to be, while the skirmishers would have to keep moving to stay alive.

2) items could represent different naval characters, for example: Carpenter (increases HP regen rate), Gunnery Sergeant (increase ranged damage), Sailrigger (increases MS), etc. Other items could be pieces of equipment you would epect to find a larger ships: Heavy Cannon (give fixed damage bonus, as well as a Storm Bolt-style attack at short range), Weapons Locker (gives melee damage boost to friendly infantry - would need a large radius to keep up with marines on the shore), Medicine Cabinet (healing aura for friendly infantry), etc.

3) Each ship can carry a consignment of marines, which they can deploy on land to capture buildings or enemy ports. The ship simply has a cargo hold that varies with the size of the ship, and any nearby friendly infantry can be given a lift from island to island. Sortof like the pirates storming Port Royal in the first Pirates movie.

This sounds like a very interesting idea. About ports, they should play a major role. It would be cool if you could leave your ship at ports and venture into the city, for various stuff like trading goods, getting quests, hiring crew. If you need a terrainer then I am all in for this, I love piratey maps and have been wanting to do something similar to this for years!

Well, My map kinda is stopped, cuz I've waited for 3 weeks for my terrainer to deliver my map back, but I don't get in contact with him so I have to drop my unfinished project... (I already had a crew landing system, easy boarding combat, neat cannonball system, merchant system...)

Well from now on I make everything myself...

so I hope you finish you map Jazradel