Until items in the hold affect speed like cannons, there is no point to chasing human traders

[NorthernWolves]

I think the time has come.

I have not played in sometime, I got on the test bed today and spent time chasing a couple of humans, a Traders Brig, a couple of Gros Ventres. I was in a Surprise and naturally they left me far behind.

It brought back the feeling I had when I stopped playing, it isn't a good feeling.

Another player mentioned in global (is this why it's going away?) and I agreed, for what ever number you assign to cannon weight for affecting speed, assign that effect to the equivalent weight for what is in your hold.

100 tons should affect your speed the same, whether it's 100 tons of cannon or coal or cotton or fish.

[Macjimm]

17 minutes ago, NorthernWolves said:

100 tons should affect your speed the same, whether it's 100 tons of cannon or coal or cotton or fish.

Does anyone know if this is true? 

Seems to me I remember reading in a post that the weight of the cargo may not slow a ship down.  At least not as much as we may think.   Cargo may work well as ballast and actually help increase the ship's speed.  Balancing the load may be more important than net weight.

Sometimes what we "feel" intuitively does not have a basis in fact.  

Any historical maritime experts than can illuminate this?

 

[NorthernWolves]

If we want to get historical and technical, Traders Brigs cannot, no matter the load, outrun frigates. Trade ships also ran skeleton crews to cut down on costs. This is why trade ships often traveled together with escort. 

American brigs and fore/aft vessels took millions of tons of commerce and nearly all of it from larger vessels. Brigs took many Indiamen. The large American frigates caught brigs, schooners and anything else they wanted.

The speed bonus to trade ships in this game is a 'balance' addition and it hurts the game.

The President ran down the Belvidera and was overtaking her until she dumped 14 tons of water. 

 

[Macjimm]

1 hour ago, NorthernWolves said:

The speed bonus to trade ships in this game is a 'balance' addition and it hurts the game.

I had no idea.  Thanks for the update.  Sounds very gamey.  Sounds similar to increasing the range and rate of fire of a rifle to equal a machine gun just to make gameplay more competitive?  I would have thought most players would rather just have systems that model reality.

[Raekur]

If cargo is going to affect speed then there should be an option to dump cargo kept in the game. I have seen many pirates complain about traders dumping cargo and so adding something that would make cargo affecting speed and removing the ability to dump cargo would be signing a death warrant for traders. Granted all this will do is further promote the pirates argument that traders should hire escorts. Problem is that with removal of escape to friendly port that any battle entered will just permit the pirate to escape and follow the trader and engage again and again until the trader is captured or sunk. Unless the number of escorts outnumber the number of pirates then escorts will not help much as the escorts will not be able to keep the pirates tagged in order for the traders to be able to escape. End result, anything that hinders a trader from being able to escape by speed will destroy trader use..the numbers simply do not support it.

[Guest]

Don't know nearly enough about the subject, but I'm guessing that the positioning of cannons is highly detrimental to ship speed since they have to be above the waterline and to the sides, which is pretty much the complete opposite of the ballast being located as far below the waterline and as close to the center as possible. Cargo has more freedom, and I'd assume that cargo weight was used to act as ballast to some extent, no need in trucking around a bunch of worthless rocks if you can replace that weight and space with something else - hence empty cargo ships potentially becoming slower.

That said, trader ships seem to be excessively fast at present, especially so in the OW. Hopefully with the greater freedom for players to escort their traders that speed could be dropped a bit since it will be easier to be an effective escort.

Edited April 24, 2017 by Guest

[Raekur]

6 minutes ago, Aegir said:

Don't know nearly enough about the subject, but I'm guessing that the positioning of cannons is highly detrimental to ship speed since they have to be above the waterline and to the sides, which is pretty much the complete opposite of the ballast being located as far below the waterline and as close to the center as possible. Cargo has more freedom, and I'd assume that cargo weight was used to act as ballast to some extent, no need in trucking around a bunch of worthless rocks if you can replace that weight and space with something else - hence empty cargo ships potentially becoming slower.

That said, trader ships seem to be excessively fast at present, especially so in the OW. Hopefully with the greater freedom for players to escort their traders that speed could be dropped a bit since it will be easier to be an effective escort.

Being an effective escort has nothing to do with speed, it is being able to turn around and engage a hostile while the traders go to full sail and move away. The biggest complaint so far from pirates is not having to deal with escorts but having to chase down traders who can outrun them. Granted if your in a live oak frigate and are trying to chase down a tradeship that is built from bermuda cedar then there is no reason why the pirate should be able to catch the trader. The issue I have is that some pirates do not want to have to chose beforehand what hunter ship they are going to set sail with...there is a difference between a ship build for intercepting traders and one that is built for dealing with warships. From some of the posts it seems that some players want to be able to set sail with ANY ship and be able to deal with any encounter without having to plan ahead or be caught with the wrong ship for the encounter they stumbled into. I have sailed with a ship built for interception and never had an issue with catching a trader even with having to over take one from behind so I do not understand the complain they have unless they are using a live oak or mahogany hull to catch a ship built for speed. 

[Sir Texas Sir]

8 minutes ago, Raekur said:

Being an effective escort has nothing to do with speed, it is being able to turn around and engage a hostile while the traders go to full sail and move away. The biggest complaint so far from pirates is not having to deal with escorts but having to chase down traders who can outrun them. Granted if your in a live oak frigate and are trying to chase down a tradeship that is built from bermuda cedar then there is no reason why the pirate should be able to catch the trader. The issue I have is that some pirates do not want to have to chose beforehand what hunter ship they are going to set sail with...there is a difference between a ship build for intercepting traders and one that is built for dealing with warships. From some of the posts it seems that some players want to be able to set sail with ANY ship and be able to deal with any encounter without having to plan ahead or be caught with the wrong ship for the encounter they stumbled into. I have sailed with a ship built for interception and never had an issue with catching a trader even with having to over take one from behind so I do not understand the complain they have unless they are using a live oak or mahogany hull to catch a ship built for speed. 

Yah sounds like he got a bad tag.  I know LVG's can be a pain to catch int he OW cause almost all traders where given a OW boost in speed, but if your running any war ships that ins't tanked out and you get a half decent tag (easier now with the 15 sec tag timer over the old 20 sec) you should have no problem running down that traders whip.  Specially if you have any for guns to beat there sails down as they run from you.

[Tiedemann]

First off the specs of your ship has as a huge impact, but a speed built LGV is never easy to catch.

On test bed we now have the option to escort our own trade ships with a warship. So imo the the game is ready for a more realistic weight penalty for trader ships, according to their loaded weight. Would also make it easier to "see" if the trade ship is fully loaded or empty for enemy players. The only issue is that I have seen devs posting that it would make it to easy for players to capture the trade ships. But because you now have the option of escorting the trade ships, it belive it is a balancing feature. And it will make traders think before going out in 3 fully loaded traders.  

I'm imagining a player sailing with 3 fully loaded Indiamens doing max 9 knots in battle..    

Edited April 24, 2017 by Tiedemann

[Guest]

40 minutes ago, Raekur said:

Being an effective escort has nothing to do with speed, it is being able to turn around and engage a hostile while the traders go to full sail and move away. The biggest complaint so far from pirates is not having to deal with escorts but having to chase down traders who can outrun them. 

Which was my point - escorts are barely even used because people have had to rely on the stupid AI (sadly, player escorts are still rare). Now that once the patch is implemented we can act as our own escort, speed will hopefully no longer be the make-or-break factor that it currently is and we can look into other options.

As for sub-optimal ships and interception ships, let me guess, the interception one is a Surprise? Because as of late it has become the sole go-to ship for lone raiders, which is terrible given how the rest of the ship roster has gone ignored. It all compounds - the increased trader OW speed means that it becomes considerably more difficult for otherwise viable ships to cut off sailing angles, the trader gets plenty of time to hide among the ever-present forts and AI fleets, and the tag ends up at max range for a long protracted sail-cutting session. They can either be faster or slower, but the dissonance between the OW and the battle instance speed makes for bad gameplay.

Edited April 24, 2017 by Guest

[Raekur]

It would be nice if the AI were able to operate with an acceptable level of compentance. I think one thing that would really help is being able to switch between ships if you have a fleet. With that option you could enter the battle in the warship, set course to intercept the pirate, switch to the traders, set them on course to escape, then switch back to the warship and finish the battle while the traders continue out. If some people want to whine about making things more realistic then there needs to be a higher level of control over all of the ships under a players command.

[Fargo]

2 hours ago, Borch said:

I agree that it used to be the case on live servers but on testbed economy is changed tottaly making it absolutely dependand on traders/crafters/miners.

If you will make PvP raiding easier than hauling goods (which is still tes case in my opinion) then traders will be gone from the game. Needless to say that this scenario will result in lowering playerbase (no resorces, no money - no craft - no crafted ships - no new game experience).

What would you propose to somehow help the traders if the cargo weight speed debuff would get to the game?

Dont forget that waters become more save on the other hand. Also when more traders are traveling the same routes, its easier to organise fleets and escorts. Just two LGVs not made of fir will beat a Surprise or Frigate quite easily.

We want more to do in the OW, uncatchable traders dont help with that. Giving traders saver routes instead of motorboats should be the way to go. Its a big difference between beeing able to attack a trader with a risk (balancing), or not beeing allowed to attack (restriction). Instead of denying either trading or hunting in general, we should favour trading in home waters and hunting in less secured waters. 

Btw. thats also the general problem when all ships are able to sail on speed cap using speed mods, nobody can catch anything.

[Raekur]

Unless the number of AI fleets is increased there is no way to implement a "safe route". Trading in home waters would need items worth trading over short distances, don't really see that happening. OW speed does vary a little, so the way to intercept something is to make sure you spend the time to get in position first instead of trying to chase down something from a bad position and then whine when you are unable to intercept prior to the target making it to port.

[Sir Texas Sir]

55 minutes ago, Hodo said:

No offense but if your Surprise got out run by a trader brig, then your Surprise is SLOW.

A Trader Brig does what 11.6kn no mods, at best 14kn with everything on Earth tweaked.  Hell my Brig will do that and it only has copper plating and speed build oak ship bought on the market.

Yah I'm thinking some bad tags or something. I do have one trader brig that will out run most ships, but that is upwind cause I built her to do that. It's my oldest ship on Live and she was the second exceptional ship I ever built and I still have.  She's never been caught so she's still on full dura, but it's cause I turn the tag into my favor and all ways run the best wind against who's chasing me.  You get a crappy tag your not going to catch me.  You get a good tag and know what your doing (most folks don't) than I should be very dead.

 

Though I do think the OW trader boost needs to be dropped even though it's small and I think they need to look at fleet speeds again cause I seen a LVG with a wappen in fleet out run my Trinc on OW, and the Wappen top speed is less than 11 knts so it shouldn't be out running anything.

 

As for speed of a loaded ship.  Sorry guys ships are made to go there top speed with a full cargo, not empty, in fact if they are empty and didn't put ballast in to comp they could be very unseaworth.   So all this talk about lowering speed cause of cargo is BS. This is why hold optimization makes since giving a speed penality, cause if you over load from the normal cargo load of a ship it becomes slow and dangerous at sea just like an empty ship is too.

[Vernon Merrill]

1 hour ago, Hodo said:

No offense but if your Surprise got out run by a trader brig, then your Surprise is SLOW.

A Trader Brig does what 11.6kn no mods, at best 14kn with everything on Earth tweaked.  Hell my Brig will do that and it only has copper plating and speed build oak ship bought on the market.

I'm sorry guys, but this is NOT the case...  Speeds in OW and Instances are NOT linear.  I have complained on numerous occasions of being in a cedar/pirate/speed Surprise and not being able to catch an Indiaman the entire route between La Tortue and Mortimer.  Now, I know for a fact that this player was full speed-built with no cannons.  HOWEVER, in no universe is a speed Indiaman faster that a speed frigate.  I understand there has to be a balance for gameplay reasons. But, again, there is NO scenario where the Indiaman is faster.  As to the hold affecting speed, my good friend who happens to be a naval architect (albeit submarines) for the Navy, says that anything that increases the amount of surface area that has to be pushed through the water will increase drag, resulting in more power needed to push it.  I.e., the boast CAN be just as fast, but with equal winds, the heavier boat will be slower.  

Oh, and I can also almost guarantee that a poor tag is not the problem.  Northern has been around since BEFORE sea-trials.  We can still blame him for fine-woods, however.

Bottom line:  The balance between traders and frigates is necessary, but not quite right yet. 

[Vernon Merrill]

4 minutes ago, Hodo said:

 

I dont care how long someone has been around, you could have played every day since launch, and still suck at some aspects of the game.

But the OW speeds are a problem, but that is because trade ships get a speed boost in the OW.

Exactly.  And the problem needs to be addressed...

 

[Tiedemann]

I vote speed nerf on LGV and Indiaman!