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Showing results for tags 'Variants'.
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With the introduction of trade and cargo to the game, it has become clear that ships specifically suited for hauling cargo are needed in the game. As such, the developers have introduced "Trader" versions of many ships: Trader Lynx, Cutter, and Brig. My concern is that, while the trader variants of these ships are very much needed, I strongly believe that the way they are being implemented may lead to a weak ship economy. 1st, lets look at how things work in the current system, with the brig: in port, you may decide to purchase either the base version, the up-gunned Navy version, or the unarmed trade version with larger carrying capacity. There are separate listings for each version. A port may have a Vanilla Brig on sale but no Traders Variant, or vice versa. You must pick one or the other to spend your hard earned doubloons on, and you better hope that whichever one you pick is the one you want. It may be a stretch, but I fear this may be going down the same road as PotBS, which ended up having numerous variants of the same ship. One ship could have a trader, courier, heavy, mastercraft, stripped, and civilian variant, all while technically being the same ship. All of which affected the overall game balance very little and only saturated the ship market with useless ships. Why build a brig when you could make more money on a Navy brig? So here is my suggestion: Modular Ships "But William!" you say, "The ships already have modules, you silly pirate!" Yes, that is true, but here I am saying the ship itself is what needs to be modular. For example, you go into port and think "I want to haul X to this port." So you go to the ship market and buy a brig. Just a brig. Then, for a small fee, you refit the brig into a traders brig. You haul your goods, make a profit, and have a bottle of rum to celebrate. But now you think "Boy, hauling is quite boring. It may be enjoyable for some, but not for me." Now normally, you would had to have sold back your Trader's brig, at a loss no less, and the buy a brand new Brig for full price. But if the ship itself is modular, you can pay a fraction of that price to re-refit your trader's Brig back into a default Brig. Or, maybe you are feeling adventurous, so you decide to spend a little more coin and refit the Trader's Brig into a Navy Brig (still nowhere near the price of buying a brand new Default Brig, much less a Navy one in the current system) With this system, you make the value of ships in the market stronger as opposed to having each variant splitting the demand. This and the players may be more inclined to test out different aspects and play-styles. Initially, the refitting process would be instant, so as to accommodate testing, but later down the line of development, refitting a ship should take time (and perhaps labor?) Also, special variants such as Navy variants might require a Navy Commission in order to be refitted. Lastly, there should also be Job-specific ships that have no "vanilla" variant to start with. For example, an Indiaman would be a trade-ship by default, however could be refitted into a warship variant (again, with a Navy Commission or some similar, which could only be acquired if your nation is at war?) Obviously Naval Warships would have no such modular abilities. Edit: there has recently been introduced a "Fire ship" fitting that increases a ship's likeliness to catch fire and explode,a s well as increase blast radius. I thing this should be another type of ship variant that reduces crew, armor, yet has the same effects, rather than just a fitting.