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Dealing with the number of 1st-3rd Rates (Warning!: Radical Idea Inside)


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I'm aware that I'm probably going to be shot down in pieces by suggesting this but it has on my mind for quite some time now. All I ask is that you read the following, consider it, and be constructive in your responses.

 

JvCLGnX.jpg
 

One of the things that is a problem in NA, depending upon your perspective, is the prevalence of 1st-3rd Rate ships. They're all over the place. PB fleets are comprised of 1st Rates, screening fleets too, blockading fleets tend to be full of 1st-3rd Rates with a couple of 'taggers'. A lot of people go for the 1st-3rd Rates because they're the biggest ships, filled with guns, and when you're going toe-to-toe with an opposing fleet you'll need those big, tough, well-armed vessels, especially if that is what they're bringing. This means that smaller Rates don't get much of a look-in beyond small fleet actions, privateering, and solo play. On a personal level I find it jarring to see so many 1st-3rd Rates sailing around (on top of the hordes of 'Admirals'), and as such I think a bold, resolute and radical move might be in order. Buckle yourself in for this is what I'd suggest: Disable 1st-3rd Rates.

Before hammering the reply button in indignation/anger/disappointment/disgust/what-have-you, let me explain further, for I'm not yet done. When I say 'Disable 1st-3rd Rates' I mean remove them from public crafting and replace them as one-off crafting plans that have a very low chance of appearing. As in really low. So you participate in your PB/event and when it comes to loot there'd be a severely low chance of getting one of the blueprints. For example, and these numbers are completely arbitrary, there might be a 1:250 chance of a 3rd Rate, 1:500 for a 2nd Rate, 1:1000 for a 1st Rate - as said, numbers are arbitrary.

What would this achieve? I can see the result being three-fold. Firstly, greater use of 4th-5th Rates in PBs/Screening fleets, which would in turn make those sorts of things more accessible to newer/casual players who haven't got a 1st-2nd Rate and the crew for it. Secondly, 1st-3rd Rates would have the physical presence that such a large, well-armed vessel would have had in reality. Imagine if you will, turning up to a PB with members of your nation, in your 4th & 5th Rates, going into the battle and seeing the opposing team have a Bucentaure amongst them, its slab-sides studded with cannon. Sadly, and this is the sticking point, the third result would be clans hoarding these now extremely precious ships until they have an entire fleet and go romping around in them en masse, so that we're back to square one.* Either way I personally would love to see 1st-3rd Rates becoming super-rare & hard to get hold of beasts of war that would intimidate just with their presence due to their rarity and power.

Any thoughts?

 

*My solution to this is as follows:

  1. Crafting plans are awarded not to a player but to their clan. Introduce a system for a Clan/Squadron harbour & allow only 1x 1st Rate, 1x 2nd Rate, 3x 3rd Rates to be docked there at any one time. Therefore the 1st-3rd Rate is the property of the clan and sailed by an appointed clan member. This would require quite some explaining on both ideas as to how it'd work but as a rough idea...
  2. Decay overtime/high upkeep required. Making them expensive to keep in harbour, let alone sail to combat, would ensure that they'd have to be supported by fellow clan members and not just the player themselves. Alternately, they decay over real time until they can't be sailed anymore (not that I'd advocate that approach myself).
  3. ...answers please on a postcard to Rikard Frederiksen, Hunde-Eylandets Compagnie, PO Box 'Dog Island'. Or post your 'number 3' below.
Edited by Rikard Frederiksen
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You know some of us actually like palying first rates and not jsut because they carry a lot of guns. This is by no means a realistic game so why do a small amount of people constantly demand that us SOL captains lose our content?!?! I could even agree to the demand to make 5th rates the leading ship class however can people get this bloody content removal/nerf idea out of their heads please.

Maybe jsut maybe the idea could come up to just make 5th rates more viable so people for RvR and the majority of PvP sail 5th rates. Then us SOL captains can still enjoy ourselves without losing our aspect of the game and you guys can look at a lot more frigates. Tbh I dont even know why I still bother trying to talk this over - should SOLs ever be removed/made nearly unusuable I'm outta here anyway. The Surprise and Rattlesnake are fun maybe once or twice a week but thats it and thats not enough.

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what if u can have only(max): 1 - 1st , 2 - 2nd , 3 - 3rd , 4 - 4th , 5 - 5th rate ecc... all ship 1 durability.

so in this way u wont see every time full fleet of 1st rate because the max is 1 for each player, so they will be rare as it should be, but u will see more 5th rate

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Easiest way to combat that is to introduce an exponential crew maintenance cost. Captains usually did not pay their crew, but the government/military did. Due to this being a game it would be incredibly difficult to have a central pot that everyone draws from for crew costs, so instead the cost goes to the captain. Essentially, the bigger the ship, the more more you pay per in game day to sail it.

Add maintenance cost for the ships as well as a degradation on ships that are anchored that again is exponential on the ships size. This way, players will simply not be able to afford to have 5-6 1st rates in dock while sailing a 7th. They will become a rarity, something you only pull out for the defence of the most valuable ports.

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2 hours ago, Eldberg said:

Easiest way to combat that is to introduce an exponential crew maintenance cost. Captains usually did not pay their crew, but the government/military did. Due to this being a game it would be incredibly difficult to have a central pot that everyone draws from for crew costs, so instead the cost goes to the captain. Essentially, the bigger the ship, the more more you pay per in game day to sail it.

Add maintenance cost for the ships as well as a degradation on ships that are anchored that again is exponential on the ships size. This way, players will simply not be able to afford to have 5-6 1st rates in dock while sailing a 7th. They will become a rarity, something you only pull out for the defence of the most valuable ports.

these suggestions only hits new players, but not the ones that have alredy 400 or even 600 million gold, yes there are players with that much money, the problem of current overflow of ships is sitting in the economy with unlimited resources and unlimited gold that also lead to an exeptional inflation, and hurt again small new players.

also most people only using their SOLs for pve farming. 1strates atm only have a place in portbattles, outisde of that its hard to gather a hitsquad of SOLs. But even i was part of such hitsquad with a handfull SOLs and me in a frigate, fighting offa supirior enemy

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On an individual basis, I don't think there's a willingness to bite this bullet and actually be the player who cannot have, or afford to use, 1st rate ships. It'll be okay as long as it's someone else. When you say, "imagine when seeing a SOL in an attack fleet is a wow moment." Everyone pictures themselves as the object of envy. When reality comes around and it isn't them, they'll just be frustrated and cry foul.

The trick is to arrange as many battle scenarios as possible that naturally make SOLs the poorer choice of ship to use. For instance there's a suggestion for PBs to make one, or two of the capture circles ignore SOL class ships for cap counts. It's an attempt to mimic the effect of shallow areas in the PB instance without the devs having to actually code detailed bathymetric maps. Something they're said they're not willing to do. It's a simple idea, and better than what I suggested by far.

What can be done to make this true in OW too? I dunno - but we have smart people in these forums. Hopefully a few more will have Einstein moments and come up with good ideas.

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I don't know if it's bc I'm a girl, but I hate big ships. I prefer to brawl over linefight, maneuverability over tankiness. Maybe this game needs more girls. ? But I do like the pb idea that one of the circles doesn't get points for SOLs. My suggestion to reduce SOLs is get rid of crafting SOLs but have a SoL something gained through admirality. However since everyone seems to want their big ships the end result will be the same, everyone who wants one will get one.  And as it may take longer through admirality, it could discourage players, causing more to leave. So I don't know. 

 

Edit,

I would also like to see an increase in the number of shallow water ships on the OS, outside of shallow water areas. Right now frigates seems the standard for PVP. Not sure how to do that either. 

Edited by Anne Wildcat
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its a game ....I dont understand why people want it to reflect reality ,,, we all play because we want to be Nelson or some other famous captain........

the Devs can alter the gameplay or ships however they want ...and people will always want to use the ship that gives the the most fun ...ie killing more without being killed themselves ... we can make any class of ship the meta ...the argument will be the same ...

we can make the game like many others where when you go into battle there is a limited supply of each class ..but that limits the game to an arena style game ...and those with the fastest internet speed get to choose the most popular ship ....but i9t does away with crafting trading and the OW ...

the clan idea wouldnt really work all that would happen is there would be a multitude of 1 or 2 people clans ..

there is enough angst in the game about the devs making certain ship Bps available to only a few ... imagine the uproar if only a few could sail 1st rates

 

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Yes. I agree the biggest Ships should be seldom. But i dont agree to make it random by any drop chance.

Instead that it should be a hard Teamwork to build just one 1st rate, so it limits itself.

The should be a big "WHAT THE hello kitty"  when someone lost the biggest ship in game.

In addition i would like to see a Clan / Squad ship dock

 

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1 hour ago, Grundgemunkey said:

its a game ....I dont understand why people want it to reflect reality ,,, we all play because we want to be Nelson or some other famous captain...

All I can say is, speak for yourself. My interest personally does not come from a desire to emulate a famous naval captain (I got over that a very, very long time ago), but from the ships themselves and the era. As for reflection of history, for some of us that is a little desireable. For myself I would put it down to my love of history, that I currently study history academically (therefore surrounded by historical fact with the copious amounts of reading I have to do), and I'm a picky fellow who likes to have historical reality (to a feasible extent) in a historically based game.

1 hour ago, Grundgemunkey said:

the Devs can alter the gameplay or ships however they want ...and people will always want to use the ship that gives the the most fun ...ie killing more without being killed themselves ... we can make any class of ship the meta ...the argument will be the same ...

...but you are bang on the money here. So 1st-3rd Rates are restricted, suddenly the best 4th Rate or 5th Rate becomes the meta and that is the ship you see at the expense of others. It is a predicament without answer, really. I just wished to stir up some debate to see if there could be an answer.

20 minutes ago, JonSnowLetsGo said:

Giving the BP to a few lucky guys is not a solution for balancing ships.

Indeed, but I didn't want to just say "Hi, I think this is a problem, discuss" without bringing anything to the table. Maybe Anne's suggestion of having to go through the Admiralty is better, as I think pretty much all of us can agree that no-one likes RNG.

3 hours ago, qw569 said:

@Rikard Frederiksen

Could you answer on my two questions?

  • How many ships !-3 rates on PVP1 server?
  • How many ships 5 rates on PVP1 server?

I think in game too many Bucentaur because it was a present to all players when servers go offline.

I have absolutely no idea, as you can well surmise, as I don't have access to any of the in-game data. I can only go by what I see in-game, read on the forums, and hear from people. There will be by the law of averages more 5th Rates kicking around in general, but where ever I go in the game where there are plenty of players (10+) I can guarantee they'll be there in 1st-3rd Rates. It is the age-old arms race business.

7 hours ago, maturin said:

3rd Rates weren't remotely rare.

Depends how you term rare, really, and in what context. In terms of actual physical numbers built? Rather rare compared to other, smaller, quicker to build, arm and man ships, such as 5th & 6th Rates, but where you had serious engagements between ships you'd commonly find the '74 there. I added the '74 as a rarer vessel on the grounds of my point on numbers built, but purposefully put the arbitrary chance of getting the blueprint at a very low amount because of the latter point on their turning up in engagements.

1 hour ago, Anne Wildcat said:

I don't know if it's bc I'm a girl, but I hate big ships. I prefer to brawl over linefight, maneuverability over tankiness. Maybe this game needs more girls. ?

Maybe I'm more feminine than I thought!

Edited by Rikard Frederiksen
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Wait for the wipe and everbody will post crying about how sotl are out of reach.

At the steam release seeing a consti was very impressive and even snow seemed dangerous, that was the good old time. But getting to a 3rd rate was an objective to me.

If i knew by that time that i had no chance to get one i don't think i would have played that long. Ofc, by the time i reached the rank for 3rd rate, 3rd rates were already useless and everyone was sailing in victory and 3rd was just good to be ganked by surprises ^^.

 

 What i think would solve what you observe as a problem: map / ship/ gold reset more frequent. Or keep your idea for 2nd and 1st rated ships, because 4th and 3rd rated ships were not rare, and sotl gameplay is what a lot of players are playing for.

 

Edited by Baptiste Gallouédec
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1 hour ago, Rikard Frederiksen said:

All I can say is, speak for yourself. My interest personally does not come from a desire to emulate a famous naval captain (I got over that a very, very long time ago), but from the ships themselves and the era. As for reflection of history, for some of us that is a little desireable. For myself I would put it down to my love of history, that I currently study history academically (therefore surrounded by historical fact with the copious amounts of reading I have to do), and I'm a picky fellow who likes to have historical reality (to a feasible extent) in a historically based game.[..]

Depends how you term rare, really, and in what context. In terms of actual physical numbers built? Rather rare compared to other, smaller, quicker to build, arm and man ships, such as 5th & 6th Rates, but where you had serious engagements between ships you'd commonly find the '74 there.[..]

Seriously? Your first sentence sounds like you have that academic snobbery down already, and spiced with being dead wrong on the recorded history, too.

Here are some numbers for you: in 1804 the Royal Navy had the following ratings and ships:

  1. ships of at least 100 guns: 10
  2. ships of at least 90 guns: 21
  3. ships of at least 64 guns: 48
    ships of at least 74 guns: 94
    ships of at least 80 guns: 13
                                     total: 155
  4. ships of at least 50 guns: 27
  5. ships of at least 32 guns: 164
  6. ships and sloops of at least 14 guns: 197

Third rates (and up) were not rare in reality. The fifth rate Frigates only just outnumber the third rates. Even if you add the 6th rates, if you enter the Royal Navy in 1804 you had a better than 60% chance of serving on a SoL, just by dividing the manpower demand and fleet composition above. This is war time. In peace, a lot of the SoL would be laid up and maybe then you can argue that they were rare, but Naval Action by definition is war time, we have Port Battles (and blockades "screening fleet") every day.

You can argue OW fleet compositions (most vessels would have been smaller traders) but since we all are essentially navy captains of sorts, commanding SoLs isn't some super rare gift of god, it was a (sometimes hated, because of blockades, and not a lot of chance for prize money) part of normal duty.

What is the fascination of making ships rare in the game that were not rare in RL?

Where does this elitism come from? It certainly can't come from a want of depicting reality..

Edited by Snoopy
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That would be another artificial/unnecessary restriction in a sandbox style game.

A good way to achieve less first+second rates is to set appropriate costs for first, second and 3rd rates. E.g. assumed a first rate is 40% stronger than a 3rd rate, then the cost could be 80% higher. Of course 3rd rate cost needs to be set to make these ships quite valuable already. No restrictions, no new mechanics are needed.

 

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I meet mostly frigates unless big clans comes sailing by with a fleet. 

So I don't see the problem. Any solo SOL is as good as dead in OW.

I use my frigates far more than my SOLs.

Even though I like my 3rd rates the most. They where almost just as common as frigates by the way. So you complains must be out of personal references and not historical reasons.

 

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This discussion is nuts. SOLs where as plenty as frigates in napoleonic age. Furthermore they usually outnumbered frigates in large battles.

Sometimes I wish they didn't chose the Carribean as OW but Europe instead. Too much "I want to be a pirate-movie-star" over these forums.

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15 minutes ago, fox2run said:

This discussion is nuts. SOLs where as plenty as frigates in napoleonic age. Furthermore they usually outnumbered frigates in large battles.

Sometimes I wish they didn't chose the Carribean as OW but Europe instead. Too much "I want to be a pirate-movie-star" over these forums.

There were plenty of 3rd rates, but we have plenty of first rates. Instead of 3rd rates beeing valuable and firstrates beeing special, 3rd rates are useless and firstrates the common PB ships. 

36 minutes ago, Rickard said:

the problem that you stated in your post can be easily fixed ; change the ships available for Portbattles, no more only 1st Rates or 4th Rates but a mix of ships like in real life.

Then you have all first rates sitting in front of the ports. How do you explain them why they are not allowed to join? Then i would prefer to restrict the crafting.

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2 hours ago, Snoopy said:

Seriously? Your first sentence sounds like you have that academic snobbery down already, and spiced with being dead wrong on the recorded history, too.

Then I apologise for the way it sounds but it is true. I don't want to pretend I'm Nelson or a fictional character like Aubrey or Hornblower, I do truly appreciate a close to the reality of history and if I'm wrong on my perception from what I know then I am wrong, as your numbers show to the prevalence of '74s (I was not able to find a decent set of numbers for available Rates for the RN - although context is important as to the deployment of those ships on a global scale). I take a vague interest in naval history and have never professed to be an all-knowing person on the subject and I'm more than happy to be corrected.

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14 hours ago, Davos Seasworth said:

I agree that the ratio between Ships of the Line and Frigates is out of proportion and something will eventually need to be done. 

Biggest problem is folks want to be in the biggest best ships no matter what.  Other than Port Battle limits there is nothing to encourage being in anything else.  Some folks flat out refuse to play anything other than 1st rates.  Many of us love other ships. I'm not a big fan of slow big targets (even though I spent 4 years of my life on a floating target).  I think incentives like PvP Deep water event should of been limited to 4th rates and below.  Just like the shallow one is for light ships.  This will give the frigates more reason to be used.  I think in some port battles since they can't do shallows they could have more things like islands and such you need to get around to get the objective, something 1st rates aren't known for there agility and great wind directions.

And you know what I think the biggest thing we can do to fix all these 1st rates and such problem.  WIPE THE DANG SERVERS.  We got so many folks with so much resources stocked up from the old days when many mechanics where broken.  Make it so we have to actually earn those mats again and collect them to build ships.   Right now every one is sitting on stacks of ships and resources that has been playing the game more than as a casual player.   Every one just uses each other regions instead of fighting over them.  There is many issues that can be addressed and change other than keep changing the current mechanics.  A SERVER WIPE WOULD WORK BEST.   If folks leave than they weren't here to test the game in the first place.   Though I admit Pirates need new mechanics before you do this and well this would be a great time to bring in those new ship crafting mechanics.  

Edited by Sir Texas Sir
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This discussion is a bit simplified. If you like to hunt a trader, I would not reccomend a Santissima.

If you need to wipe out an enemy fleet, a Victory could be a useful tool, though.

In OW battles a mix between raking frigates and SOL can be very useful and a combination of types is preferable.

ROE could making better battles for us, but now they favor pirate play and organized PB.

It's a matter of priorities. I would love to have easier access to bigger battles, but I guess that's somewhere out in the future. Maybe even in NA2.

Edited by fox2run
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