Crew management update - discussion

[ulysse77]

i would assume higher ranking officer had priority

Edited June 9, 2016 by ulysse77

[PL_Harpoon]

The more often a non-replenished ship gets into battle the higher the absolute losses will be - ergo: if a ship has been into 1 battle and lost 15 crew during the battle the battlescreen could show 10 injured - 5 killed and for the next battle this ship will only have lost 5 sailors. If the ship goes through 5 battles before making port again it would show 15 out of 15 killed after the fifth battle. Getting into port (aka better medical supplies and free time) would reset the counter.

 

I'm not so sure about that part. Firstly, it sounds a little convoluted to new players who don't have time to sit on forums. Secondly I don't think that battle wounds would deplete surgeon's supplies that much.

 

You should be able to use your labour hours to press a certain amount of low quality sailors that could evolve into better sailors over the time.

 

This shouldn't be available for pirates.

 

 

You could be able to drill your crew, maybe also using labour hours, to level your crew and/or your officers up in quality.

 

This sounds great on paper but could result in situations where bad players with more spare time (just farming their crew) could stomp on players with less time. And it would screw up those that use their labour hours for crafting.

 

 

transfer orders (akin to low grade, mid grade, high grade notes) that could be crafted or bought could send in fresh crew from the homeland, giving either prisoners, pressed sailors or transferred able seamen at high cost

 

Just as above this could result in time>skill.

 

 

Hmmm... what was the normal procedure during this era about captured crews ?

 

I suppose they were just prisoners. Unless you were British capturing American ship, then you could press some as "deserters".

Edited June 9, 2016 by PL_Harpoon

[Qwolf]

I like the proposed changes, and am certainly game to test them all.  I would like to emphasize what would be both historically accurate and an incredible addition to the game:  Crew experience.  Sailing a ship was complex.  Fighting a ship even more so.  Green crews were slower to set sails, slower to perform sailing manuevers, and could buckle under the stress, noise, violence, injury, and death of combat.  A highly experienced crew gave their ship a significant advantage in rate of fire, maneuverability, gun accuracy, and boarding actions.  Losing an experienced officer, botswain, sailing master, etc, was a big loss for a ship, while good and experienced crew and officers was a huge asset.  In reality and in the game, experience could thus be dynamic, ebbing and flowing with action and losses.  Capture an experienced crew, and your experience might go up.  Lose a large number of experienced hands, and the green replacements would lower the crews overall experience and efficacy.  It would also be a joy, in game, to take a crew of green hands and officers and develop them, over time, into a crack crew, only to have to start to rebuild that experience when officers or crew were lost. So I'd like to suggest that the developers consider adding crew experience and officers, if and when able. 

 

This could be accomplished in easy ways:  By simply adding an overall ship specific experience.  Lose the ship, lose the experience acquired.  Experience buffs sailing and fighting attributes (rate of fire, accuracy, sailing speed, ability to tack and work the sails)

 

This could also be accomplished in more complex ways:  A crew's experience ebbs and flows based on actions, captures, and losses.  Officers can be hired, gain experience, and be lost. 

 

In my view, any method of adding crew experience to the game would both enhance the enjoyability of the game and its realism.

[Uilleam]

I found this post to be interesting and thoughtful, and I generally agree with it.

Crew "durability" and "quality"

loads of injuries in a ship battle could be actually seen to by the ship's surgeon if there was one.

Better the ships surgeon, the better the recovery rate, and the number of kills reduced, makes sense to me.

The more battles the crew survives the better their chances of only being injured would be.

This point I disagree on. No matter how skilled you are, if you get hit with a cannon shot, or a "splinter", you're going to be severely injured, regardless of skill, being maimed or killed in battle of this kind would remain largely luck, while surviving a boarding action might be influenced by skill in a sword fight, you can still be taken out by someone behind you, or even a random shot from a musket or deck gun.

Increasing quality of surgeon and or boatswain might also influence that factor.

Surgeon would increase chance of survival for the injured, I think the bo'sun should increase your crews combat effectiveness.

more Crew related upgrades

Certain upgrades like advanced medical equipment (non-rusty bone-saws?), medical instructions and lemon juice as well as air-trap sails could decrease either the number of deaths or if you follow the idea of crew durability from further up- could also increase that factor

This could be part of the quality of the ships surgeon? How would this be added otherwise? I'd rather not see it as another upgrade given how few slots there are now, but I like the idea.

captain's cutter and dinghy could be added to retain a larger amount of crew that can be accessed after a certain period if the ship has sunk.

Nice idea, but how could it be implemented?

game functions / ports

Don't hate me for this - but docking a ship at a free port and then logging off should result in a desertion rate for pressed crew - it would also make giant ganking fleets parked in neutral harbours much more challenging.

A desertion rate based in overall crew morale would be good, maybe more when you dick at neutral or freeports, but would happen at all ports when morale is low. Impressed sailors would have much higher desertion rates.

You should be able to use your labour hours to press a certain amount of low quality sailors that could evolve into better sailors over the time.

Counter point, should pressed sailors ever evolve? Not saying it's a bad idea,but, could be a cost associated with pressing in general.

You could be able to drill your crew, maybe also using labour hours, to level your crew and/or your officers up in quality.

This is an interesting idea.

transfer orders (akin to low grade, mid grade, high grade notes) that could be crafted or bought could send in fresh crew from the homeland, giving either prisoners, pressed sailors or transferred able seamen at high cost

Interesting idea, I like it better than the provisioning proposal.

Provision orders could send in provisions and upgrades from the homeland at high cost.

I don't quite buy into this one. Provisions from Europe would no longer be fresh by the time they arrived,and in any case, I'm not sure provisioning would really be an issue since ships would able to return to port in only a few days on our map of the world...just feels like an unnecessary level of detail.

The ability to give shore leave could be added in your nations' ports, replenishing the durability or increasing your labour hours at a small desertion rate cost

If you send crew on shore leave, morale goes up....but, you should pay a penalty on readiness, such as a timer that forces you to wait a minute or two while the crew is rounded back up, or, alternate, you can't sail again for one day of game time, or something along these lines.

Ships could still be automatically send back to ports by prize crews - however, prize crews would only be able to join your crew again after a period of quarantine / shore leave / debriefing - still increasing the cost factor of capturing as intended but without the inconvenience of having to bring a ship back on your own

I like this, so you send a prize to port, you lose access to those crew for a set period of time. Makes more sense than having to rehire them.

Exchanging prisoners (diplomatic feature) - for the to be implemented diplomatic system it could be possible to replenish the national crew-staff by making a prisoner exchange with another nation, even while being in war. This could be a feature that would not be available to pirates that in exchange could have less desertion rates.

Nice, but, I would argue that pirates not have a desertion rate as they'd eventually be caught and hanged.

Conclusions based on your post:

Rum rations, grog rations and liberty add to morale, victories add to morale. Defeats, having pressed crew, no liberty, grog or rum decrease morale. Low levels of morale lead to desertion, high level of morale leads to higher performance.

Ships doctor/surgeon improves survival rate of injured crew. Skill, I think, does not reduce chance of injury or death, but we should have a mechanism to improve crew skill,but skill goes down with replacement crew, and goes down even more with impressed crew.

We can send prize ship to port at cost of crew.

Best regards,

Uilleam

[Blackjack Morgan]

Still think this has a much more significant impact potentially on PVP then it does on PVE. Once you get out of a cutter and gain a modicum of proficiency with the combat system it becomes virtually impossible to lose a fight to the AI. Even if the fight starts to go bad you can simply sail away....the AI is so inept it couldn't catch a cold. So, unfortunately once again, you will end up producing a system that increases the risk for PVP exponentially over PVE with no increase in reward. 

[Uilleam]

I'm not so sure about that part. Firstly, it sounds a little convoluted to new players who don't have time to sit on forums. Secondly I don't think that battle wounds would deplete surgeon's supplies that much.

This shouldn't be available for pirates.

This sounds great on paper but could result in situations where bad players with more spare time (just farming their crew) could stomp on players with less time. And it would screw up those that use their labour hours for crafting.

Just as above this could result in time>skill.

I suppose they were just prisoners. Unless you were British capturing American ship, then you could press some as "deserters".

Two comments...

I read a book, If a Pirate I must Be, I don't recall the authors name, but he describes how pirates treated captured sailors, in essence, over some period of time, captured sailors eventually joined the pirates crew if their own free will, as life as a pirate was a better live than their former lives. Not all switched over though, and if the pirate ship was captured, some would avoid being tried for piracy due to the majority of the crew swearing oaths as to the status of captured sailors.

The other comment is that hat in this time period, there were few perishable medicines...alcohol, tourniquets, and surgical instruments would be about it...but perhaps someone can chime in with better knowledge...

[KrakkenSmacken]

Actually, I was thinking of even more automated system.

 

Let's say we have a 2v1 engagement and after some combat the single ship has struck his colours.

 

Player, who dealt 30% of all damage instantly receives his share (30% of prize money and 30% of crew available for reinforcements). The other player gets to decide whether he wants 70& of prize-money or the ship.

 

That's just bad math and exploitable.

 

If he takes the ship, then that is +130% prize value total. 100% ( value of the ship) +30% (prize money) distribution.

 

That's why the taker of the ship should get to select (70% prize money), or (ship -30%) prize money and get the ship, so that it's always just 100% of a ship.

Edited June 9, 2016 by KrakkenSmacken

[Hethwill]

I would expect correctness on the treatment of capture crews to be in game and not be a rush to "enslave" crews.

 

This is not the age of total war. There was a "diplomatic protocol" of sorts. To jail the enemies for a certain duration, and to honor the officers as guest prisoners.

Exceptions might exist.

 

Some has an insight on this ? A solid one ?

[Enraged Ewok]

I would expect correctness on the treatment of capture crews to be in game and not be a rush to "enslave" crews.

 

This is not the age of total war. There was a "diplomatic protocol" of sorts. To jail the enemies for a certain duration, and to honor the officers as guest prisoners.

Exceptions might exist.

 

Some has an insight on this ? A solid one ?

 

From Roosevelt's The Naval War of 1812, captured sailors (during this war) were typically treated quite well. Usually they were paroled after reaching shore, and occasionally used for prisoner exchanges. Ships that were burned or sank after capture would have had their surviving crew removed to the victor's ship, which would carry them until it found a neutral ship to offload them to or returned to shore.

 

That being said, I am not sure how often men were pressed into service by the British when they captured American traders or privateers, as Roosevelt's book tends to deal more with the US navy and not privateers.

[blademage]

for me it sounds great, but seems to be an increase in overall game complexity / difficulty again. It would be the right moment to introduce officers

[Khendon]

provisions should be added to crafting

the reasoning is simple - ships were well supplied for 4-6 months of travel. In game time it means that you most likely have lost your ship by then.

Hey boss, I've had a victory for 2 months and a paval for about 6. Along with several other ships for even longer due to almost exclusive paval and victory usage.

My traders Lynx is nearly 10 months old and I used it for high risk trade runs frequently.

I firmly believe we should be required to supply our ships with food water and ammo.

Pirates of the burning sea, elite dangerous, And Eve online require ammo,

You recently sites cid Myers pirates requiring you to sail prizes back, well you also were required to supply your crew with food. I really hated the requirement to disband the crew after a time. Like shut up and sail.

Elite dangerous requires fuel for space ships.

Point is that each of these requirements is a beautiful niche for players to get themselves into. Each thing creates a potential market that should be handled by player to player transactions.

[Lannes]

Hey boss, I've had a victory for 2 months and a paval for about 6. Along with several other ships for even longer due to almost exclusive paval and victory usage.

My traders Lynx is nearly 10 months old and I used it for high risk trade runs frequently.

I firmly believe we should be required to supply our ships with food water and ammo.

Pirates of the burning sea, elite dangerous, And Eve online require ammo,

You recently sites cid Myers pirates requiring you to sail prizes back, well you also were required to supply your crew with food. I really hated the requirement to disband the crew after a time. Like shut up and sail.

Elite dangerous requires fuel for space ships.

Point is that each of these requirements is a beautiful niche for players to get themselves into. Each thing creates a potential market that should be handled by player to player transactions.

I am completely against onerous paperwork and time-wasting that takes away from gameplay and also forces people to join clans (which they may not want to do) over being a loner in a nation (which should be also a playable option).

[Konali89]

This might be completely off topic but i would like to see crew being related to exploration. Part of the Naval Action Experience. 

 

 

I think it would be interesting to see crew having different kinds of characteristics based on the origin. Both positive and negative effects. In order to achieve this you would have different kind of crew types that you could hire in different parts of the open world. It could be based on your reputation as a captain with that certain area of origin. Let's say you would sail to the coast of North America and you would that way gain reputation and unlock that certain crew type with different characteristics than crew from Cuba for example. 

 

It is very rudemental and a basic thought but i think you could add somekind of a stimulation to go explore a bit and maintain your standings with that civilzation and inherent crew type. Offcourse very optional and it would not have significantly better or worse things that perhaps crew of your own origin. But you could think of characteristics like uhm, moral, strenght, leadership, carpenter/woodworker skills etc etc.

 

Now i ramble on and as i started with it might be completely off topic, but it is just something i think would be interesting and if fully optional i think would create some immersion aswell.

[Kanay]

I like the idea and will make game more realistic, no more magical TP's, no more endless enemies fleets coming outside your capital as long as they want and recovering magically the crew and ready to go again with a repair kit once they get out of a battle, this will bring more port captures to get bases closer to the waters you want to do stuff in and i like the overall idea.

 

One thing that i think about is how repair kits have to be reworked to make this work , right now we have repair kits linked to ships, or linked to ranks for the consumables, when we will capture a ship after demasting it totally and if we get tagged again in a battle on the way back we will have a ship with no masts, free to capture in the battle session.

 

- The repair kits should change, instead of current method linked to the ships themselves or them rank we should have some kind of universal repair kits composed of x quantity of fabric for sails, some kind of masts parts, some planks, cordages etc loaded in the main ship.

 

Each ship consuming a certain quantity of planks fabrics etc to be repaired, based on his damages.  This will allow to load some of those universal repair kits on the main ship, and use some on the captured ship after the battle.

 

Let's say you have loaded 100 pieces of fabric, 20 masts parts, 100 cordages, 200 planks etc, after the battle in the result screen your will see that your own damaged ship to be repaired will need 13 pieces of fabric , 20 cordages, 25 planks etc, then you can do this also for the captured ship if you want to keep it and assign some of your crew to it, for example you will use 2 masts parts , 10 pieces of fabric for the sails, 18 planks etc , even if it repairs it only at 75% maximum, not getting a fully repaired ship but something able to sail decently in battle instances.

 

 

With the current system being tagged in a battle after your first capture will probably means the easy and quick loss of the captured ship, it will be under-crewed and often having the sails to a level not even allowing him to move.

[Roche Brasiliano]

So, implement the option to "put fire on captured ship" and add a cool animation showing the ship burning, cuz it will be my main option from now, likewise sink ship. To hell to that captured ships, burn them all!

[Kanay]

And also maybe allow us to live scavenge some parts on the captured ship, like take some of his guns and carriages, some of his sails and some other parts that were stored for replacement purposes and could have realistically be scavenged in the open seas between two ships before making it sink.  

[PL_Harpoon]

That's just bad math and exploitable.

 

If he takes the ship, then that is +130% prize value total. 100% ( value of the ship) +30% (prize money) distribution.

 

That's why the taker of the ship should get to select (70% prize money), or (ship -30%) prize money and get the ship, so that it's always just 100% of a ship.

 

Well, my original idea was that when you capture a surrendered ship it isn't exactly in a pristine state. But I admit that with the current costs of repairs (quite justifiable) it's not much of a drawback, and your idea of paying back other captains  from "your own pocket" if you decide to take the ship is much better.

 

This opens another question.

Theoretically if you send a ship to admiralty it still needs crew to reach a friendly port. If we go with that option than who will supply the crew?

[Bach]

Well, my original idea was that when you capture a surrendered ship it isn't exactly in a pristine state. But I admit that with the current costs of repairs (quite justifiable) it's not much of a drawback, and your idea of paying back other captains from "your own pocket" if you decide to take the ship is much better.

This opens another question.

Theoretically if you send a ship to admiralty it still needs crew to reach a friendly port. If we go with that option than who will supply the crew?

Unless we're talking 1st or 2nd rates most player ships aren't worth it to capture. Most players pvp in a 5 dura frigate or 4 dura 4th loaded with purple and gold outfittings. A single gold extra pump or steel tool box costs as much as the entire frigate. No one is going to be grabbing up one dura player capped ships and using them for anything but throw alway ships. Which isn't bad. I'm just pointing out that there isn't any need to capture every single ship and that they already come with a huge drawback if you choose to invest the crew to bother taking them. Edited June 10, 2016 by Bach

[Khendon]

I am completely against onerous paperwork and time-wasting that takes away from gameplay and also forces people to join clans (which they may not want to do) over being a loner in a nation (which should be also a playable option).

me too. but making it impossible to stay at sea forever with out resupply or "mid air refueling" via another ship would be cool, paying the crew would help decrease the number of mega ship fleets running around. IMO at any rate.

[PL_Harpoon]

Unless we're talking 1st or 2nd rates most player ships aren't worth it to capture. Most players pvp in a 5 dura frigate or 4 dura 4th loaded with purple and gold outfittings. A single gold extra pump or steel tool box costs as much as the entire frigate. No one is going to be grabbing up one dura player capped ships and using them for anything but throw alway ships. Which isn't bad. I'm just pointing out that there isn't any need to capture every single ship and that they already come with a huge drawback if you choose to invest the crew to bother taking them.

All this is true, but if we're going to have some kind of crew management AND a new surrender system (which IMHO is mandatory in this case) there needs to be a way to deal with those situations.

It would affect all battles, not only those with capping in mind and definitely not just PVP.

I think that those changes will affect PVE just as as than PVP.

[Fessaer]

Hi,

Playing here for two weeks, so I can be a little subjective, but from long online MMO experience I can tell that:

1) There's  a very little need in high-rate-one-dura ships  - in most cases fittings for them cost many more, so full fit for ships can cost much more, than the one-dura ship itself. It's simply impractical to risk your main ship for obtaining "small sack of resources". Unless you're able to refill your own ships durabilty using capped ships, thus making these ships really usable. As long, as I can see - currently people boarding in PvE just to speed up grind process and raise little more money.

So, I don't think that crew management will really increase open sea traffic - people won't cap ships exactly how they do that now, because it's just wasting of time.

2) Personally for me, PvE part of the game currently is VERY boring and don't looks motivating new player like I am. The only really interesting part - PvP battles.

And PvP with such large map and only 800 online NEEDs to hold some kind of teleportation or ship transfer. Without that, PvP gaming process will consist of 80% of boring ship transfer - I've tried to sail long journey twice. 2-3 hours of sailing without any player visual contact is not much of an attraction, really.

I understand part of the players, who support hardcore realistic sailing gameplay, but they forget, that such gameplay won't attract much more players to the game as it has already, so online won't increase much, making the game unprofitable. Keeping nice balance between realistic and "arcade" gaming with adding more activity options is the key.

[Jesters-Ink]

Love the sound of this, although it probably suits us PvE players more than the PvP ers.

 

I think we should be able to press from captured ships and we should be able to really over crew our ships, obviously at the cost of more food required.

 

Ships that lose a lot of crew in a fight should "strike" without needing to be boarded. (or at least strike if the hear your pipes sound up).

Might have to depend on if they have lost mast/s and or guns too.

 

Are there going to be "grades" of crew, some better than others, will we be able to gain crew XP ie, improve their skills in gunnery and or sail trim/ship speed/rate of turn? A crew that has been around and seen more action, done more sailing, be better at their jobs.

 

Crews that eat well perform better too?

 

There are so many cool management/benefit options available . . . .

 

So looking forward to this update.

 

Disregard each idea if already mentioned. 

[Jesters-Ink]

I am completely against onerous paperwork and time-wasting that takes away from gameplay and also forces people to join clans (which they may not want to do) over being a loner in a nation (which should be also a playable option).

 

To me, this IS game-play.

 

To sail and fight, sail and fight, sail and fight, even when you type it, it looks repetitive.

 

It would be cool to have some "immersion", a flavour of another time, another era.

 

At the moment, the game seems a little bit same ol same old, but with the proposed content, it's starting to sound like something people can really get their teeth into.

[Jesters-Ink]

Be good if we could have an in port option to send goods/ships to other port locations for a reasonable fee?

[TheDukeOfDeath]

well looks like this patch will be the nail in the coffin for me, i didn't sign up to play sailing and crew management simulator, i signed up to play a decent game about sailing warships in the 18th century