fixing the Basic Cutter problem

[Slamz]

Idea:

Basic Cutters are only available in capitals.

Everywhere else has Trader's Lynx for 0 gold instead of Basic Cutters.

I see this doing a few interesting things:

#1, while long distance PvP with a Basic Cutter is still possible, it's "one and done". After you sink you will need to go back to your capital if you want another free combat ship. It won't prevent Basic Cutter "gank groups" but it'll be a lot more time consuming for them to keep coming back. If they want to base locally they need to bring real ships. Killing them will at least represent a time sink for them.

#2, free Traders Lynx gives everyone a decent money maker (and prevents anyone from ever being stuck with no ship at all). You'd still much rather have a Traders Brig (which has 3x the cargo room) but if you ever need a free, small trader to get back on your feet with, there you go.

#3, camping people's capitals will be riskier because THEY have unlimited free combat ships right there and you don't.

What do you think?

[Kloothommel]

actually a great idea!

[Guruthos]

that would be a solution for the problem. but it would force all beginners to strat in capital region (if the country has more then that region) maybe it could be a solution to be able to change the region of your cutter once a week so if you wanna move you still can. on the other hand that could leed to that these kind of players using this technic will move the region to PVP regions

[Daguse]

54 minutes ago, Slamz said:

 

Idea:

Basic Cutters are only available in capitals.

Everywhere else has Trader's Lynx for 0 gold instead of Basic Cutters.

I see this doing a few interesting things:

#1, while long distance PvP with a Basic Cutter is still possible, it's "one and done". After you sink you will need to go back to your capital if you want another free combat ship. It won't prevent Basic Cutter "gank groups" but it'll be a lot more time consuming for them to keep coming back. If they want to base locally they need to bring real ships. Killing them will at least represent a time sink for them.

#2, free Traders Lynx gives everyone a decent money maker (and prevents anyone from ever being stuck with no ship at all). You'd still much rather have a Traders Brig (which has 3x the cargo room) but if you ever need a free, small trader to get back on your feet with, there you go.

#3, camping people's capitals will be riskier because THEY have unlimited free combat ships right there and you don't.

What do you think?

The "Cutter" problem will go away in a few more days, once everyone gets their fancy ships back. As well I found doing missions in my cutter netted me a lot more money per-hour then trades did. 

[admin]

Basic cutter will be a basic ship for basic pve. It won't be able to attack players or enter pvp battles. 

[PG Monkey]

1 minute ago, admin said:

Basic cutter will be a basic ship for basic pve. It won't be able to attack players or enter pvp battles. 

Excellent decision

[Bart Smith]

39 minutes ago, admin said:

Basic cutter will be a basic ship for basic pve. It won't be able to attack players or enter pvp battles. 

Finally. Very good decision!

[surfimp]

So, new players and those who lose their ships are consigned to a mandatory grind of at least ten low level PVE missions.

That's based on my impression of current shop prices for 7th rates and the cannons needed to equip them. At roughly 30 minutes and $9k/mission, that's around 5 hours of play time. Which has to be repeated whenever your "PVP approved" 7th rate gets sunk.

How are new players ever going to get PVP experience with such punishment?

[Mrdoomed]

54 minutes ago, admin said:

Basic cutter will be a basic ship for basic pve. It won't be able to attack players or enter pvp battles. 

Will players be able to attack it? If not then you just made a free spy ship that cant be sunk and can freely transport goods in enemy water without fear.

On the other hand if players can attack cutters but cutters cant attack them then the same jerks exploiting cutters will be the same kind of guys who just camp and kill newbs in cutters who cant fight back.

Its a shame people can no cooldown teleport and use this to make cutter swarms to game the game. Probably wouldnt happen so much if they could only teleport once every few hours.

[Vllad]

1 hour ago, admin said:

Basic cutter will be a basic ship for basic pve. It won't be able to attack players or enter pvp battles. 

Hopefully along with this you present some additional features that allow nations down to just their capitol ways to still participate in PVP. Right now the basic cutter is the primary catch up property that small nations possess.

Over time not everyone is going to win the RvR game. Unless you plan regular re-sets or team swapping (not recommended) many nations will ultimately be left with just the resources their capitol county produces and that location being farmed for PVP marks.

What incentive will you provide that nation with limited resources and ship building capabilities to keep fighting on? If the goal is to keep those players logging in the basic cutter has to be replaced with something that the losers of RvR can fight in. 

Mrdoomed just pointed out above all the exploits that all of us thought of immediately with your post and I can think of a few more. The basic cutter is the core of your game design that everything else is built upon. From newbs, starving nations and stat ramp up. I would be very careful before making any changes to it despite the cries otherwise.  

Edited June 6, 2017 by Vllad

[Slamz]

40 minutes ago, Mrdoomed said:

Will players be able to attack it? If not then you just made a free spy ship that cant be sunk and can freely transport goods in enemy water without fear.

I think I would let Basic Cutters be attacked but they cannot start or join fights. Once in the fight, of course, they can fight as usual. They just can't initiate or join on the open world.

Yes it means there's newbie bashing but that's nothing new at all.

If your team's newbies are being preyed upon, that's up to your team's veterans to put a stop to! Always has been.

27 minutes ago, Vllad said:

Hopefully along with this you present some additional features that allow nations down to just their capitol ways to still participate in PVP. Right now the basic cutter is the primary catch up property that small nations possess.

 

I think we solve this by again making the basic cutters be attackable but not initiate an attack.

So if your team has been totally screwed and this is all you have, then you group up and do missions (to raise cash). If a camping enemy attacks then he ends up dragging your whole basic cutter armada into the instance and then you just cause him as much damage as you can and he has nobody to blame but himself.

So a camping enemy has to decide if he wants to leave you alone to go raise money, or attack you and have to burn rig repairs at the very least because you're going to spend the whole match putting chain shot through his sails. He can waste your time but he can't totally stop you.

 

Able to be attacked also solves the spy problem.

Edited June 6, 2017 by Slamz

[Vllad]

22 minutes ago, Slamz said:

 

Able to be attacked also solves the spy problem.

As long as being attacked means being dragged into attacks directly it has possibilities. If I am down to my capitol and I somehow find a way to smuggle in resources to build ships and escorting trade ships with all basic cutters is viable it has potential.

I still prefer your idea on the only basic cutters that can attack are in your capitol, we just give them a new name. Call them Royal Cutters. If you want to get a Royal Cutter and sail it from your capitol 2 hours away to use it in PVP then I think you have paid the debt and have a right to use it in PVP like every other ship. This keeps them from being spammed.

At the same time if you are a nation down to your capitol they now remain a viable means to make blockades go away. Then you can spam them all you want. If you want to camp a nations capitol for PVP marks then you deserve to be attacked by free Royal Cutters. Once you get further away from capitols then the Royal Cutter becomes a rarity. Basic Cutters which can be gotten for free any where else can be attacked but can't engage in PVP directly.  

Edited June 6, 2017 by Vllad

[Salty Dog.]

1 hour ago, Sansón Carrasco said:

So, new players and those who lose their ships are consigned to a mandatory grind of at least ten low level PVE missions.

That's based on my impression of current shop prices for 7th rates and the cannons needed to equip them. At roughly 30 minutes and $9k/mission, that's around 5 hours of play time. Which has to be repeated whenever your "PVP approved" 7th rate gets sunk.

How are new players ever going to get PVP experience with such punishment?

loosing should have consequences.  This isn't against New Players or people that loose their ships, it's against people that are using free ships to attack ships that cost money and against people using alts in basic cutters to farm pvp.  If that is you, I can understand not liking this.

[Salty Dog.]

46 minutes ago, Slamz said:

I think I would let Basic Cutters be attacked but they cannot start or join fights. Once in the fight, of course, they can fight as usual. They just can't initiate or join on the open world.

That would still make farming pvp points "free".  At least by removing basic cutters, the pvp farmers will need to buy a ship to sink.

[surfimp]

9 minutes ago, Salty Dog on Global said:

loosing should have consequences.  This isn't against New Players or people that loose their ships, it's against people that are using free ships to attack ships that cost money and against people using alts in basic cutters to farm pvp.  If that is you, I can understand not liking this.

I am a solo PVPer who prefers 7th & 6th rate ships and hunting player traders.

In the past I was able to establish my own production buildings, outposts, etc and crafted my own ships.

Post 10.1, I can still do this, but recent patch changes mean it takes far, far longer due to exorbitant costs, etc.

This new proposal mandates a PVP focused player is now instead going to be forced to do PVE grinding for many hours before I will even be allowed the privilege of engaging in PVP.

I have over 400 hours in game since Sea Trials, so am a "casual" by NA's definition. This is still many multiples more hours than I have in any other game in my Steam library.

What I am reading here is that I should just uninstall NA again and wait for NA Legends to come out. It's too bad, because solo PVP hunting in the OW is great fun. Apparently that very realistic and entirely historic play style is not appreciated or encouraged in this game. Fair enoug, RVR doesn't interest me and PB the least of all. I can see my interests and this game's direction have diverged, so be it.

[Mrdoomed]

21 minutes ago, Sansón Carrasco said:

I am a solo PVPer who prefers 7th & 6th rate ships and hunting player traders.

In the past I was able to establish my own production buildings, outposts, etc and crafted my own ships.

Post 10.1, I can still do this, but recent patch changes mean it takes far, far longer due to exorbitant costs, etc.

This new proposal mandates a PVP focused player is now instead going to be forced to do PVE grinding for many hours before I will even be allowed the privilege of engaging in PVP.

I have over 400 hours in game since Sea Trials, so am a "casual" by NA's definition. This is still many multiples more hours than I have in any other game in my Steam library.

What I am reading here is that I should just uninstall NA again and wait for NA Legends to come out. It's too bad, because solo PVP hunting in the OW is great fun. Apparently that very realistic and entirely historic play style is not appreciated or encouraged in this game. Fair enoug, RVR doesn't interest me and PB the least of all. I can see my interests and this game's direction have diverged, so be it.

Once no cooldown teleports allowed revenge ganks to roam free it stopped being a game for casuals,  or solo hunters on the ow. I struggled with it forever and finally gave up because it was just not fun anymore. Im trying again with the new patch but i can see its gonna be same thing so im not excited and probably wont play long before frustration sets in.

Lets face it this game ismt for us.

[surfimp]

32 minutes ago, Hodo said:

Which to be honest takes me about an hour to make in a privateer just OW hunting.

When you say "OW hunting" do you mean PVP capping player traders, or PVE?

I play in US time zones so I am lucky to have even 300 people on the server during prime time. So my player hunting is far less profitable. PVE grinding, if I really focus on it, nets maybe 20-30k/hr if I just do low level missions in the Basic Cutter.

Either way, grats to you because a consistent 75k/hr is something I have never seen in this game outside of compass wood, etc back in the day.

Also, getting a Shipyard & Workshop setup so you can craft your own is now tremendously expensive... from memory it's 100,000 gold for the Shipyard, plus 1000 Oak wood, and something like 150,000 gold for the Workshop plus 1000 Oak wood and a few other resources.

Just the 250,000 gold will take me 28 PVE missions at 9k/each, and almost 10hrs of play time. I'd guess the materials requirements will take a similar amount of time, if we include what's needed for both the production buildings and the ship/cannons.

So we're now talking roughly 20 hours of PVE grinding to get to the position where I can "easily" replace something like a Privateer. "Easily" meaning only 2-3hrs grinding to replace.

That's a whole lot of PVE in a game that's got a sandbox-style open world and supposedly encourages PVP.

To be clear, I am experienced operating with groups online, I have flown flight sims quite a bit with squads where we organize missions together, chat on TS, etc. That's not what I'm looking for in Naval Action, however, I prefer the solitude of the solo experience.

However the devs' clear signal is that this game is now setup so that such solo play is strongly discouraged, and the removal of Basic Cutter's ability to engage offensively in PVP is simply another echo of that. It's not wrong for them to do with their game what they want, but it's clear that it's no longer a game that's "for me."

Edited June 6, 2017 by Sansón Carrasco

[Slamz]

56 minutes ago, Sansón Carrasco said:

This new proposal mandates a PVP focused player is now instead going to be forced to do PVE grinding for many hours before I will even be allowed the privilege of engaging in PVP.

The game encourages trading more now. That's your money maker, not PvE grinding.

There are some incredible money makers that involve selling manufactured items to ports that will consume them and by moving "trade goods" between capitals and free towns (or, if you think you can do it, between one capital and another). The more enterprising people in my guild have made literal millions doing trading, already. Some of the trade runs were also very, very short. There was one port where they were making iron ingots (I think it was) and selling directly to that port for huge profit versus what it cost them to get the raw iron and coal. (Most of the real easy money is already farmed down so you'll have to figure out what the next hot commodity is.)

The game also clearly encourages you to shop around because ports may have raws for sale that are a good deal under the click cost from production buildings. The only frustrating thing is you don't how much stuff a port has for sale until you get there.

 

Bottom line, as relevant to this thread, is that you should not legitimately need to PvP in a basic cutter. If nothing else, it's very little grinding to get into a Privateer, a real Cutter or something like a store bought Mercury.

Edited June 6, 2017 by Slamz

[Cabral]

2 hours ago, Mrdoomed said:

Will players be able to attack it? If not then you just made a free spy ship that cant be sunk and can freely transport goods in enemy water without fear.

On the other hand if players can attack cutters but cutters cant attack them then the same jerks exploiting cutters will be the same kind of guys who just camp and kill newbs in cutters who cant fight back.

Its a shame people can no cooldown teleport and use this to make cutter swarms to game the game. Probably wouldnt happen so much if they could only teleport once every few hours.

 If the cutter hold is reduced to 0, they can't be used as traders.

[Mrdoomed]

19 minutes ago, Cabral said:

 If the cutter hold is reduced to 0, they can't be used as traders.

And new players cant loot anything the attack

[Cabral]

16 minutes ago, Mrdoomed said:

And new players cant loot anything the attack

 They can when they start using privateer.

[Hethwill]

1 minute ago, Cabral said:

 They can when they start using privateer.

Or Lynx aye.

Basic Cutter be like the Tiger Moth plane which has no guns but can be perfectly used for proper "combat" training.

[Hullabaloo]

Is the Basic Cutter a bit OP in PVP?

Hard to hit, fast, Infinite Repairs and Nothing to lose.

Me and a mate were in surprises and were trying to take on 2 Indefatigables and a Renommee! The plan was to stay away from the big ships and try and cap the reno

It would have been interesting but then a basic cutter came in and stated chaining, We kept disabling it but it kept repairing, we eventually de-masted it but not before another had come in and was doing the same, we got low on rig repairs and in the end decided to leave! That took a little while too as the cutter was able to keep up for a bit and kept getting the odd hit. There were no rig repairs at the nearest freeport and we had to go home.

It's fine that they could come in and make a contribution..but they were the biggest threat!.... and with absolutely NO risk to themselves.. that's a little bit imbalanced for me

Either: make them less effective in PVP....how about repairs in PVE only? or base cannons = reduced penetration/range and/or no chain?

OR: no BASIC cutters allowed in pvp, you have to at least buy a cutter

Or: Make it so that there is something to be lost

It also makes the Lynx and the Privateer a little bit obsolete, they have their advantages but I would go for an infinite repair, 0 cost basic cutter in most situations.

 

 

 

 

[Guruthos]

ALready said in another topic for cutter pvp by admin that they will remove the pvp possibility with the cutter

[Hullabaloo]

ok cool, good to hear