Today's build adds the new Escort mission type. You can get this mission from any town.
Once you have the mission, a ship wheel will appear on your compass directing you to the merchant ship.
You can also find the merchant ship on the overhead map.
When you arrive, the merchant ship will be locked in battle against pirates.
I originally had this set up so you would escort the ship (meaning fly with it) in the overhead map and pirates would find it and attack, but this was actually really boring. So I changed it to have the battle ready to go as soon as you arrived.
Once in the battle, your ships will form up as usual, with the addition of the merchant ship behind your ships.
The merchant ship is treated as one of your ships, except you cannot give it orders. In the screenshot, I have 3 ships and the final hit point bar is the merchant ship. Merchant ships have less hit points than their battle ready counterparts.
If the merchant ship is destroyed, your are reduced to zero hit points, or all of your ships are retreating, then the battle is lost and the mission is failed.
If the merchant ship reaches it's destination (a glowing circle behind the enemy ships) or you destroy all of the enemy ships, then you win the battle and the mission is a success!
This update also includes:
- Added the gold reward for completing a mission to the animated quest complete UI.
- Fixed a bug that caused npc ships to max out at rank 2 rather than rank 3.
- Slightly reduced the gold reward for the destroy rival convoy mission.
- Slightly increased the gold reward for the protect merchant mission.
Once I have all of the mission types in the game I will probably add some more aspects to them. For example, you may need a certain level of notoriety with a faction before you can take an escort mission from them. I'll also be using the different mission types as part of the story.
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]
