Picaroon Online General Guide

Picaroon Online General Guide by Mashanations

Population ,Tax Population and Corruption 

Idle Population
As the name suggests, these are the people in your settlement just sitting around doing nothing. They are the pool of people you will use whenever you order the construction of new buildings or ships. There is a natural growth of population, dictated by the ‘fertility’ growth rate. Fertility can be increased by constructing certain types of buildings: Mills and Bakeries (just what do they put in the flour?!) and Merchants (exotic, ahem, ‘goods’ from overseas).
The amount of idle population your settlement can support can be increased by building more housing.
Idle population does not require feeding but also provides no income.

Tax Population
When a building has been constructed you may notice that some of the people required to build it were returned to the idle population pool. The people that didn’t return have become workers in that building. Your tax population is the total number of workers across the entire settlement. Tax population are too busy working to get their own food, which is why most buildings have a food maintenance cost, but they’re also the people that you collect your taxes from. The money you make from taxation is directly related to your tax population and the tax rate you specify.

Corruption
As the number of workers in a settlement increases the efficiency of production declines. This is reflected by the ‘corruption’ value, and represents a percentage loss on production. The overall values you see for resource income in your settlement already take into account corruption, but the income values you see on the build screen don’t.
So, for example, if your settlement is on 50% corruption then a level 1 fishing hut will only produce 150 food, not the 300 food advertised.

How do I find out what my corruption and taxable population are?
On the settlement screen you can click on the gold/tax-rate display to toggle it between showing gold/tax-rate and showing tax-population/corruption.

Anything else I should watch out for?
If your settlement is running with a positive food income, and then you order the construction of more buildings only to notice that your food income has become negative even before they’re complete, you have been hit by an increase in corruption. Your new buildings were enough to push the tax population over a threshold that resulted in more corruption … and more corruption means a reduction in resource income.

Reputation and Scoring


What is reputation?
Reputation is your score: the player with the highest reputation when game ends has won.

I’ve built a million scouts and my score hasn’t increased
No, it wont have. Reputation isn’t given just for being a ship factory, or just for covering your islands with buildings.

So how do I increase my reputation?
Reputation is given for certain landmark events, such as getting your first level 4 fishing hut or building your first light cutter. Building an extra 50 light cutters will not give more score. You wont get reputation for every island you take control of either, but you will get reputation for certain landmarks along the way – such as controlling a second settlement, or controlling your 10th.
The only consistent and repeatable way to get reputation is to engage in combat, or tribute your resources. Every ship sank and every building destroyed will give you reputation.

So my reputation can only go up, never down?
That’s right. Because it isn’t a direct reflection of your possessions it means that you can still win the game, or at least rank highly, even if you are reduced down to one island and handful of ships. The reward for your successful attacks and conquests persists until the end of the game and no-one can take that away from you.
If you engage in an attack and it all goes wrong you wont lose anything, apart from ships. But take note that your opponent will be gaining from this – their reputation will rise as they sink your ships.

Tribute

What is tribute
Tribute is the act of sending resources back to your home nation. You can do this through the embassy screen (only available when you have an embassy on the island).
You can make a one-off tribute, which allows you to specify the amounts of each resource to donate up at that exact moment, or you can set up a tribute rate.
By defining a tribute rate you are specifying the amount of each resource that should be donated each hour.

Why should I tribute
Tributing resources gives you two benefits: a small increase in reputation score, for every XX amount tributed, plus end-game advantages if you are in the top 10 when the end-game is triggered.

What should I be aware of?

• Be cautious of defining a tribute rate for food if you are still upgrading buildings! The food maintenance cost of buildings increases as they are upgraded, and you may find that your settlement starves because you are tributing too much food with the increased cost of upgraded buildings.
• Tribute rates act independently of trade routes, so if you have a permanent trade route moving food away from an island AND a tribute rate defined for food then be careful you have done your maths correctly.
• As your corruption increases the resource production of the settlement declines, so be cautious of over tributing while expanding your settlement.

Specials

What are specials?
“Specials” are the name given to the wide range of boosts, buffs and debuffs available for use within Picaroon.

How do I get specials?

• As a new player you will be given a starting pack of specials designed to help you get going at the beginning of the game.
• You will receive a random special whenever you take over an unoccupied island (i.e. not one that is player controlled already).
• You can spend in-game gold to purchase a random selection pack through the shop, accessible from the embassy screen (so only available if you have an embassy on that island). Paying more for a pack gives you access to the rarer specials
• End-game specials are awarded when the end-game is triggered. These specials are coloured purple and only last for the duration of that game …
• There will be a real-world money way to purchase named packs of specials (for example, ‘The Mischief Pack’ or ‘Fleet Attack Pack’) at some point during beta.

How long do I keep my specials?
End-game specials only last for that game: when the game ends you lost all end-game specials. So, use them up while you have the chance!
All other specials persist from game-to-game until you use them.
BETA NOTE: this is beta, and the costs and powers of specials will change throughout beta. For this reason your collection of specials will not carry through to the release version. Any real-money spent during the beta period will be recompensed so that you can repurchase packs of specials upon release.
We will also be giving rewards in the form of specials to everyone who helped us alpha and beta test Picaroon.

Why can’t I play XXX special?
Each special has a particular type of target it operates on, so ensure you are trying to select the right kind of thing. For example, some specials only work on friendly fleets, others work on enemy fleets. Some work on areas of open ocean, some work on individual buildings or ships. Mouse-over a special to see that type of target it works on.
You have a specials power-bar (shown on the specials launch bar) and if you mouse-over the bar you will see something like ‘specials bar: 0/200’. Each special has a power cost, and when played this pushes the power-bar up. If the bar goes above the red-line then you can not play any more specials until it has cooled down. The power-bar cools down at a rate of around 10 power per minute, so if the tooltip says ‘300/200’ then you will need to wait around 10 minutes for the bar to return to the green.

How do I play specials?
Specials can only be played from the launch bar. Click to open the specials tray and drag out any specials you want to play into the launch bar. You can also return specials back to the tray by dragging them from the launch area.
Close the tray and you can now click on any special in the launch area to activate it: it will turn red and you will be prompted to select a target. Left-click the target to use the special. You can right-click to change your mind and not use the special.
End Game

What is the end-game?
The end-game is a phase of Picaroon which shakes-up the status quo and allows you to go out with a bang. Powerful ships and nukes are unleashed, and the race to be the outright winner when the game finishes steps up a gear …

How is the end-game triggered?
The end-game will be triggered when one of two things happens:

• The number of days remaining in the game reaches a set threshold. This is normally when 2/3rds of the game has elapsed
• When the total amount tributed by all players has reached a certain threshold. So players can accelerate the triggering of the end-game by tributing more.

What kinds of things are unlocked when the end-game is in play?
Super ships that tower above Behemoths, and have massive armour and firepower. Nuclear Super Subs that can drop below the seas on command and so become invisible to your enemies. Huge Nuclear Missile specials that will devastate even the most heavily defended islands.

Sounds great, so how do I get these end-game specials?
Anyone in the top 10 of the tribute table will be given a random selection of end-game specials, and everyone in the game will be given a roulette chip or two.
Roulette chips can also be purchased in the embassy shop, and give you a chance to gamble on receiving an end-game special. The only way to get the big end-game specials are by being in the top 10 tribute table, or gambling with a roulette chip.

Gambling?
Yes gambling. The chips cost a cool 1 million gold to purchase, gold which could be put towards more permanent specials that last from game to game. If instead you choose to buy a roulette chip you can use it to get a spin of the wheel. You have a 50:50 chance of getting an end-game special, or one of the booby prizes (1 million gold for a 60 minute “Le Strike”? Yep, it’s possible).
But you’ve got to be in it to win it, and as said earlier the only way to get those subs and nukes is with the roulette chip.