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A Humble Proposal [Testbed] It is my opinion that the present system in Testbed of unlocking upgrades to the vessel's performance provides vastly overpowered benefits for far too little effort that will create an environment of power creep, in nullifying the effectiveness of upgrades and creating a poor environment for simulation and play. It is far, far too easy to obtain access to extremely powerful upgrades that can be installed/uninstalled freely with no drawback whatsoever. Anyone that spends an hour, perhaps two in any ship can access a slot very quickly. Upgrades are hugely buffed with major benefits that are honestly shocking. My Cerberus, which has battled only three times ever against traders, now makes 13.70 knots for no cost whatsoever. When sailing the Belle Poule, it took a mere two missions to obtain powder monkeys which caused my guns to reload at an insanely fast rate. I can mindlessly exchange that at the flick of my mouse in port to lightweight ropes in blocks, in which the yards fly at significant speed even with 1/3 on sails. Don't even get me started on optimized rudder, in which I stern-camped a mercury in a bloody Belle Poule! That was really funny, but seriously though... These upgrades have a huge effect upon performance of the vessel. They can be obtained very easily and exchanged for no drawback whatsoever. With the present testbed system, it is feasible that a 12pdr frigate can outmaneuver a light brig. An Indie could potentially run down an Endymion, an Essex could reload its entire broadside before a Surprise can and a Victory could tack faster than a Bellona. All for relatively little effort. These are speculations, but dear reader, I am sure you get what I'm going at Now, I'm not here to whine about the devs or just report a problem, but to also humbly propose a potential solution. Hence, here is what I envision in a good system. 1: Retain the method for unlocking slots for the upgrades. I think it forces players to prioritize upon trying to amend specific parts of their vessel's performance, and bars captains from fitting overpowered vessels lest they have very significant experience on the vessel. 2: De-buff upgrades from their divine pre-testbed "Gold" level to the "Blue" level. 3: No free upgrades, all upgrades must come from books purchased from the Admiralty. 4: Accumulate experience for the following areas: -Gunnery: Increased by any/all hits scored, increased gunnery xp translates into better accuracy and lower reload. -Sailing: Increased by movement of yards (could be improved I know), the more the yards are moved in manual sails the faster they slowly get. -Boarding: Increased by kills logged in boarding combat, with a "prize" when a vessel is captured. Increases attack and defense modifiers in combat for that crew. Experience is ship-specific. Experience gained in battle is lost if the vessel is sunk, as is the present way of things. So essentially, slots are more difficult to unlock over time, and said upgrades serve primarily as small boosts to performance and the ship itself. Experience from firing the guns, tacking and various maneuvers with the sails, and boarding combat improves performance of the crew. Such a system could be difficut to implement, but I think it would be really awesome. You could go out with a new vessel, and train you crew in attacking traders and easier missions as you slowly increase the skills of your crew and gain access to upgrades. Then, with an experienced crew and some help from upgrades, you would then go into more confident battles with a sound ship. I feel that the system would encourage more people to pick ships and just stick with them, which is what I really love about the game, instead of simply trying to get the best ship on the spreadsheet. Encourage players to become experts with their ships, and be rewarded for it. Oh, and thank you devs for a wonderful game, and for the excellent progress thus far!