Jump to content
Game-Labs Forum

Nathan Poldark

Ensign
  • Posts

    10
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Australia

Nathan Poldark's Achievements

Landsmen

Landsmen (1/13)

8

Reputation

  1. And one final set of stats: percentages of crew on trader's vessels compared with their military equivalents: Indiaman: 380 / 500 x 100 = 76% Le Gros Ventre: 240 / 280 x 100 = 85.71% Trader's Brig: 60 / 110 x 100 = 54.54% Trader's Snow: 65 / 120 x 100 = 54.17% Trader's Cutter: 20 / 50 x 100 = 40% This tends to support my argument that the LGV has way too many crew. If it had less crew, it would have more cargo space. It also suggests that the Indiaman ought to have less crew and more cargo space.
  2. Here's a little fairness math. Grossly oversimplified, of course, but only intended to give you a general idea. Let us suppose that space that isn't used for crew is used for cargo (fairly safe assumption) and that crew numbers for all ships are realistic (fairly unsafe assumption, as it turns out). Let us further suppose that the Indiaman's military equivalent is an Agamemnon, the Le Gros Ventre's military equivalent is a BellePoule, and the obvious military equivalents for the other Trader's vessels. It follows that the amount of space corresponding to a crew member is the difference in cargo space between the military ship and the corresponding trader divided by the difference in crew size. Let's compute the ratio for all Trader's vessels, and see if there is any consistency: Indiaman: (4000 - 750) / (500 - 380) = 27.08 Le Gros Ventre: (1900 - 590) / (280 - 240) = 32.75 Trader's Brig: (1750 - 250) / (110 - 60) = 30 Trader's Snow: (900 - 350) / (120 - 65) = 10 Trader's Cutter: (500 - 150) / (40 - 20) = 17.5 Trader's Lynx: (500 - 150 ) / (50 - 20) = 11.66 Hmmm, not really. Let's arbitrarily use the Indiaman for our baseline. Now, looking at the difference in crew for the other vessels and the cargo space of the military vessel only, we can compute what the cargo capacity of the trader's equivalent ought to have been: Le Gros Ventre: (280 - 240) x 27.08 + 590 = 1673.2 Trader's Brig: (110 - 60) x 27.08 + 250 = 1604 Trader's Snow: (120 - 65) x 27.08 + 350 = 1839.4 Trader's Cutter:(40 - 20) x 27.08 + 150 = 691.6 Trader's Lynx: (50 - 20) x 27.08 + 150 = 962.4 That bears a vague resemblance to the actual cargo space stats, but considering the actual relative size of the ships, it's apparent that most of the smaller vessels have way too many crew. Let's now redo the computations using the mean of all of the above ratios, which is close enough to 21.50: Indiaman: (500 - 380)) x 21.5 + 750 = 3330 Le Gros Ventre: (280 - 240) x 21.5 + 590 = 1450 Trader's Brig: (110 - 60) x 21.5 + 250 = 1325 Trader's Snow: (120 - 65) x 21.5 + 350 = 1532.5 Trader's Cutter:(40 - 20) x 21.5 + 150 = 580 Trader's Lynx: (50 - 20) x 21.5 + 150 = 795 That's possibly a little bit saner, but it once again highlights a serious discrepancy with the Trader's Snow.
  3. I suppose reducing the Trader's Brig capacity would alleviate the problem somewhat. Whether or not this is fair would depend on the LGV compared to the Indiaman. Is it the case that the Indiaman still has 4000 capacity? I have only wiki stats such as http://www.navalactionwiki.com/index.php?title=Ships to go on. The very name of the LGV (I understand Le Gros Ventre means something like "The Big Belly") implies that it can carry a lot of cargo (not sailors - as I mentioned, I think it has too many of these!), and it can't.
  4. Fair point, perhaps. But the "brig sized raiders" CptVonGunn was talking about would be able to inflict enough sail damage to slow the LGV significantly, and probably be able to tank damage for long enough to grape the LGV to the point where cannon reloads were unworkably slow. Anyway, my complaint was about the cargo space, not the handling characteristics. Sail a Trader's Brig alongside a Le Gros Ventre and note the size difference, then ask yourself why the Trader's Brig can carry 1750 and the LGV only 1900!
  5. Nonsense. A couple of players in privateers would be quite capable of worrying an LGV to death - although it would take a long time. They'd just stern camp it and grape/ball it mercilessly.
  6. I made the mistake of crafting a Le Gros Ventre under the Mega-patch 10.x New Cruelty (150 PVE marks for the BP plus 15 PVE mark permit per build), only to discover that at some point the hold space had been nerfed - not the 3000-odd that I remembered from days gone by, but now 1900. This makes the LGV useless. You're better off with the vastly cheaper Trader's Brig with only marginally less hold capacity (1750). To make things even worse, the LGV has received absolutely no love from the recent patch that added full gun fits to trader's vessels. One would expect the LGV to now have a gun fit like that of a Renommee, but no - still 10-a-side broadsides only, no chasers, no weather deck guns. Please increase the hold capacity of the LGV to a reasonable amount, and allow it to fit more cannons (perhaps at the expense of crew, the LGV always had a few too many in my opinion). The Indiaman still has a capacity of 4000, what was the logic in reducing the LGV's capacity so drastically?
  7. Please bring back the Neutral faction - but do it properly. A neutral faction is clearly not going to remain neutral if it is attacked by anyone other than Pirates. That means that Free Towns and Neutral Towns are ass-backwards. It's the Neutral towns that should not be able to be captured by anybody, and the Free Towns that should be freely capturable. Neutral towns should be rare and Free Town plentiful (same ratio that exists now, but reversed). To avoid messy port recapture and unassailable empire building complications, I'd strongly advise that you do not allow Pirates to capture Neutral ports, nor allow the Neutral faction to capture any ports, even though those actions may be conceptually permissible. Ideally, I would actually prefer to see player free-trading implemented via a "rules of engagement" mechanism rather than a "Neutral faction". That is, have a different set of rules for trader vessels versus military ones vis-a-vis inter-faction diplomacy, i.e. not just how your faction feels about foreign faction X, but how your faction feels about traders from nation X (free trade/letters of marque/total war) and also how it feels about military ships from nation X; generally (but not necessarily) you would expect more tolerance for the former than the latter. But of course you really need a diplomacy system first! While the neutral faction does exist, you must not allow multiple characters per server, because it leads to the situation where everyone has a neutral alt, who exists for the sole purposes of spying and siphoning resources from foreign ports to their primary.
  8. Sometimes, in lulls in the fighting - typically when forces are split - I find myself wanting do so something to assist allied ships in distress. Provided that I first come alongside the stricken vessel and slow to a near stop, it seems to me that some reasonable possibilities might include: * Repair kit donation - if my (donor) ship is of the same or higher class than the recipient ship, I feel I should be able to donate materials for repair. That is, if I have unused repairs I should be able to gift one or more of them to the recipient, so they can perhaps fix that broken mast or plug some leaks that are slowly sinking them. * Crew donation - similarly, if a ship's crew has been severely depleted by boarding action or gunfire, I should be able to donate them as many of my crew as I wish, down to a bare minimum I need to do anything useful (say, 15%?). * Crew rescue - if the vessel is sinking or has just sunk (with rigging still above surface for sailors to cling to), I should be able to rescue a small percentage of the crew to supplement my own. Yes, I realise most sailors can't swim, but if I get there in time I should nonetheless be able to save *some* who are still clinging to debris. * Towing - okay, so this one would not be as simple as the others to implement, but the situation can arise that a tactically important SoL is stranded with rigging damage - and in the Open World outside of combat, storm damage and rocks/reefs/beaching could leave some of your NPC trading flotilla in need of assistance. If, in the Open World, we will be able to hire NPC ships to add to our fleet,then all of the above would also play an important part in PC fleet survival - which is obviously something we will have a keen interest in, with our own money on the line!
×
×
  • Create New...