Wonderbread

How about the option for fleet formations

I agree. Of all the things we needed, ship paints werent at the top. While i do imagine it was fairly easy to add them to the game, it could have waited.

Now that we have ship paints, maybe we could get "paint schemes" for our sails.

I havent even tried using brace due to the fact it disables the crew. Currently the only time i see it being useful would be while running from a fight, such as in a trader, which if thats the case you dont stand much of a chance anyway.

Thats awesome

sadly i was never able to play POTBS, i went into the real navy a few months after it came out, and by the time i was able to try it the servers were dead. It seems the golden age of sails is a hard niche to properly reconstruct in a manner that is fun for everyone. I would like to see this game succeed, which is why i post things that stand out to me personally. I like to hear every side, whether i agree or not. With Sea of Thieves coming out this year, the need for additions that will bring in new players is needed, and fast.

nuff said

The bonuses wouldnt be about increasing firepower to make the ship a floating fortress, it would be about increasing the efficiency at which ones ship operates at sea. It also wouldnt take away from the need for a person to be skillful in sailing. If you want it to be all about the skill of the player than no ship should have any upgrades, regional bonuses, or quality ratings.

The officer we can purchase and level up is, basically, the same dude for everyone albeit a different name. Maybe we could have different grades of officer (basic->exceptional) that comes with their own "built in perks". Lets say the officer is a cannon master. At the basic level, he has no built in perks, so he wouldnt have a classification. As you get better grade, reload speed (or dispersion) can increase similar to powder monkeys or pellews sights. With how hard it is to find exceptional, non-craftable upgrades, it would help mix things up. Firstly, it would give additional bonuses that don't require points. Second, upon finding a better officer, it would require you to make the decision to swap out officers, and train the new officer from 0. This could open the possibility to have an officers quarters, and maybe have 2-3 officers kept in port to switch between. Much like cargo, they should remain in the port you offload them to, with the option to have them transported to a port for a price. I keep seeing how people want realism in the game, but yet dont want captain specific skills. Realistically, officers would have specific skill sets that differ between them, on-top of basic nautical skills every sailor would learn. Even in the modern navies of the world, almost every department has its own officer will a profound understanding of the areas they are in charge of, along with some knowledge of other departments.

It would be. Both players choose an amount to bet, or dont, then accept and winner takes all. That way there is the option to lose/win something, without it being an officer life or ship dura.

How about adding an option to place a bet vs your opponent.

Realistically speaking, every age of sail captain had their own way of doing things. Specifically the way their crew was trained, how often, and how hard. All the captain skills would do is be an "enhancement" to a single person play style, that will evolve as the player progresses through the ranks. Captains that saw a lot of combat may run reloading or rigging drills, just like a merchant trader would seek out new connections wherever they would conduct business. While i do understand that the game may be a bit unbalanced, the captains skills would not be easily maxed out. If a person chose to max out a certain skill, the only person they can be upset at regarding their "lack of strength" in a certain area, would be themselves. It also opens up the opportunity for certain niches to be created, such as a master shipwright or master trader. While those 2 skills would be great to have, they would also have to sacrifice some potential combat ability. The regional bonuses i don't think are all that unbalanced, but the lack of ability to use those regions, makes it tough. The distance to certain ports also makes certain builds a waste of time. So as an idea for the regional bonus, why not have a system similar to labor contracts, but to transfer the regional bonus as a note. Essentially, it would be a "step by step" guide for the crafter, but we would obviously only see it as "such and such" regional bonus note. This eliminates the need to actually build the ship in that region, while still requiring some sort of struggle for certain builds. If every bonus was available at every port, it would take away the need for port battles, aside from the resources each port produces. I hope i didn't bounce around too much. I don't have a response for the fire barrels as of yet, but i'm sure i will come across an idea that needs critiquing. Like stated above, i don't have a response about the fire barrels. I do agree about getting raked in a SOL, but the idea came up more for trade ships to help prevent ganking. Having a faster trade ship built, or having escorts for defense would be smart, sometimes its not possible. Having a final line of defense, before an anti-boarding build, may bring more supplies to different areas. It would also make players think about attacking a trader just that much more. If players did not speak out about ideas, games would be dev designed and ran 100%. I would rather an idea be used, and discarded as trash, over the option of having no changes or changes that the devs think will work. The fact is 150 players, playing ~6 hours a week, will experience far more than a dev fixing bugs for 40 hours a week. As players it falls on us to speak out about rights and wrongs of the game. That's the point of an alpha/beta/ea game release, aside from trying to get $40 from as many people as possible before you cancel the project. The OW speeds i think did need to be increased. If you kept OW speed the same as in battle, the server highs would be comparable to the first 30 minutes after maintenance is over. Very few people would be willing to spend that kind of time sailing across the Caribbean. If that is what you wanted, i believe Microsoft sells a sailing simulator. Another point on OW speed. The last 5 minutes before a maintenance shutdown, in my opinion, should have a significant speed boost so last minute sailors dont lose their shit. Yes, we should pay attention to the time. Yes, we should plan accordingly to work around the shutdown. There are those times though that time can be lost, even with messages, or a battle runs longer than expected. I havent seen many players on right before shutdown, so the impact wouldn't be that great except for the stragglers. I know i may have skipped a few things, but i did my best to reply to everything. I appreciate the feedback from everyone, and keep it coming. ---Wonderbread

My Fellow Sailors: A few ideas i have thought about, and talked about on global, have finally been written down. A few of these have been brewing for awhile, and a few came up while writing. Im sure most of these have been talked about, and may be in the forums. No, i didn't search the forum for these topics. No, i don't really care if there are other threads covering these. These are my thought, basically as they came to me, either through reading notes or remembering conversations. Lets help the devs bring out the potential of Naval Action. ------------------------ Fire Barrels ------------------------------------------------------- Ships with horrible turning can be destroyed by smaller ships. A surprise can stern camp a santi and take it down without too much trouble(Just tons of time). Trading ships also have a habit of being ganked, chained, and capped. To offset these annoyances, i propose fire/exploding barrels. The intention would be to deter or slow down a following ship. It would be a barrel dropped off the stern of the ship, with a timer set by the player(slider?), and it explodes and causes a large flame. The barrel wouldn't be meant to destroy the ship, just cause minor damage. It could potentially catch sails on fire, and cause some sort of crew or rigging shock. If the barrel exploded towards the rear of the ship, it could cause rudder damage. The timer would have a time to detonation range of 3-30 seconds, so it has the ability to damage pursuers that are further away, as well as close up. The timer would need to have a variable on the actual set time (due to a fuse having to be measured and cut in battle) between a flat 15-25% time variation. The other option would be 10% on the "too short" side and 25% on the "too long" side. This allows for the chance it can prematurely explode and damage the ship of the person dropping the barrel. Each ship shouldn't have more than 3-5 barrels, scaled to the rate of the ship. 4th-5th rates have 1 or 2 barrels, 3rd rates 3, 2nd rates 4, 1st rates 5. If a ship is carrying barrels, no less than 2 should be carried in case one doesn't explode. Rates lower than 5th shouldn't need them due to shallow hulls/lack of player use. The barrels could be an upgrade option (non permanent since its only barrels) with each "tier" allowing more barrels than the last (Basic -> Exceptional). Also, a prep time should be included, with the option to drop the barrel early. Dropping the barrel early would increase the "error" range of the fuse, up to 15% greater than a fully prepped barrel. This also opens up the option for a skill, such as decreasing fuse error or lowering the prep time. The purpose of the barrels wouldn't be to act as a main weapon, but as a last resort for defense. ------------------------ Officer Skills ------------------------------------------------------- Officer skills allow us to make our sailing styles a little more unique. Sadly, the skills don't vary enough to keep anyone guessing how an enemy ship will handle in battle. I propose keeping the officer skills, but also adding Captain Skills. Your officer gets 1 "skill" point per rank, with a max of 10 points. The diversity of skill choices to ship choices isn't that great. Captain skills could be implemented to switch that up a bit, make people guess a little more. Captain skills would be attached to the players avatar, not their officer, and would gain a few points at certain rank milestones. The captains skills could include things like cannon trials(reload speed, dispersion,etc...), rigging specialist (Sail rising and yard turn speed, lower damage to sails), shipwright (adds extra bonuses to ships beyond what the regular player makes, use less LH or supplies), boarding training (similar to marines, but for the crew), wind master (adds slight speed bonus to ship), entrepreneur ( better prices in port shops, lower costs for contracts), hull tech (better/faster repairs while at sea or in battle,High enough level allows 2 repairs in battle), shipboard defense (better defense against boarders, defensive only), leadership (adds more overall crew to the crew pool, not to the ship itself). The milestones could be set points between each rank. Each rank could have 2 milestones( current level -> milestone I -> milestone II -> next level), with each milestone giving a certain amount of skill points. Rank 1(Thief) starts with 3 points, milestone I gives 2 points, milestone II gives 1 point, rank 2 (Rascal) gives 3 point, milestone I gives 2 points, milestone II gives 1 point, etc . . . up to rank 10 (Curse) which will give 3 points, but no milestones since it is the highest rank. Having a system like this will make grinding feel more rewarding, while making each player more unique. The skills could be categorized by sailing, crafting, and trading. Having the option to choose a captain skill, without the risk of losing them, would make players feel more connected to the game community. It would also allow specialization of each player, such as a player being a dedicated ship builder, but not having the same sea prowess as a dedicated fighter. This wouldnt negate the "perks" (no longer skills) one would get from their officer. The officer perks would allow everyone to have a baseline set of attributes so they could still do a little of everything. ------------------------ Port Shop ------------------------------------------------------- The port shop needs a little streamlining. If i sell something at the bottom of a list (i.e resources), it sends me back to the top of the list. While it is only a minor inconvenience, that little bit of time adds up to a lot of frustration when trying to sell quickly. The slider when buying/selling is also a pain to use. Using a +1,+5,+10 next to the slider would be helpful. When buying cannons the shop only allows 1 purchase at a time. I think the maximum should be raised to at least 5 when buying. If i want to use the same cannon for bow/stern chasers and broadside, i would like to be able to buy them all at once. With the lag in the system, that can also become frustrating. ------------------------ Warehouse ------------------------------------------------------- The warehouse can become extremely cluttered, and difficult to find something. I know there is an option to show certain types of items, but being able to create my own tabs would be beneficial. Tabs such as "ship build", "future upgrades", or "trade-able goods" would make playing a little less cumbersome. An option to "Show items in shop" would also be appreciated, so i can choose to not see the items in the shop and accidentally sell them. ------------------------ Ship Docks ------------------------------------------------------- Currently we can only have 5 ships docked at a port. I think the maximum should be raised (8-12) through gold purchases. To keep it a little less cluttered, a building (private dockyard) could be built, and each upgrade increase the maximum ships allowed in the port. ------------------------ Clans ------------------------------------------------------- Clan ranks are a big miss when it comes to forming a community . The current system of owner/officer/member seems a bit shallow for a group of people playing together. The ability to have more "ranks" in a clan would give people a view-able goal to strive for, and to show their value to that clan. It can also be set up to allow clan members to be easily recognized of their role (crafter, trader, raider OR Leader,1st mate, 2nd mate, senior crewman, junior crewman, recruit). Having the ability to transport goods from ANY city to the clan warehouse would be nice, or showing on the clan page where the warehouse is located. I appreciate everyone who took the time to read through, and all comments will be appreciated, and discussion is encouraged. Great games are not made. Great games are shaped. Shaped by the ideas of players, and the following discussions. Naval Action has a ton of potential, and i would like to see it become one of the greats. Fair winds and following seas --- Wonderbread O7 Please excuse my lack of observation, I did my best to make sure there are as few grammatical errors as possible.