Crew management update - discussion

[Thonys]

+1

 

I find it somewhat unrealistic in current game that every trader ship (especially when they are carrying contraband) has a bunch of Marines on board. Show me one smuggler in history who has hired Marines

 

well ..

 smugglers did not have marines/soldiers on boars (that would be strange to have the authority looking on your contraband)

 

but the normal sea going vessels (traders) had soldiers (or could have) on board for the outpost in a a far away territory

 

sea going marine ships (warships) had always marines on board ..(in peace a normal attachment, in war much more)

Edited June 3, 2016 by Thonys

[Guest]

well ..

 smugglers did not have marines/soldiers on boars

 

I'd agree with you but in game NPC contraband traders have them on board 

[Eishen]

well ..

 smugglers did not have marines/soldiers on boars (that would be strange to have the authority looking on your contraband)

 

but the normal sea going vessels (traders) had soldiers (or could have) on board for the outpost in a a far away territory

 

sea going marine ships (warships) had always marines on board ..(in peace a normal attachment, in war much more)

 

nor pirates do carry "marines" , but for the sake of simplicity change mentally marines for "mercenaries" "condottiere" or any apropiate substitute for "group of armed people specially trained in close combat aboard a vessel"

[Fastidius]

Teleporting is an essential part of the game whenyou have a map so damn big.  I have 8 outposts all of them with a shallow,4th and a 1st....there was no way i could get the ships there to actually create fights without cutter teleport mechanics.  lose a battle lose a ship...simple,  teleport is not the problem in my eyes.

 

also don't derail, this is moderated

Edited June 5, 2016 by SteelSandwich
Removed forum pvp

[admin]

 

Teleporting is an essential part of the game whenyou have a map so damn big.  I have 8 outposts all of them with a shallow,4th and a 1st....there was no way i could get the ships there to actually create fights without cutter teleport mechanics.  lose a battle lose a ship...simple,  teleport is not the problem in my eyes.

 

 

 

Nelson could not teleport captured ships to Portsmouth. 

People were exploiting this feature like hell. Starting from pirates using surrender, or nations using NPC traders or smugglers. Its time to let it go.

[Anne Wildcat]

Nelson could not teleport captured ships to Portsmouth.

People were exploiting this feature like hell. Starting from pirates using surrender, or nations using NPC traders or smugglers. Its time to let it go.

That was Nelsons job. We have real life. This is a GAME. I do not want to spend hours sailing a new ship to an outpost due to the fact I lost all dur on my old one. Maybe allow ship deliveries from your shipyard, the trading screen (if the ship is new only), or the store. Edited June 3, 2016 by Anne Wildcat

[Azzak]

I think the problem of teleporting comes from fleets of 4th rates and higher teleporting everywhere for factional warfare. Maybe you can make 4th rates and higher impossible to teleport, but allow it for 5th rates and lower ? 

For example make a delivery system for 5th rates and lower, where you have to pay and it takes time for it to appear in your port.

 

BUT

 

This can't be done for 4th rates and higher, so fleets still have to sail to take ports.

 

What does it do ? Small groups of players can still have fun and play, players with limited time can plan ahead and use frigates and stuff where they want.

However for factional warfare in big ships you have to spend time, be careful to not get spotted etc, while small frigates fleets could be deployed everywhere as long as people have outposts.

 

That would greatly encourage the use of 5th rates in the world and stop the competition to have full santi for PVP. Maybe you want to take a port but you don't have many 4th rates nearby, so you have to do it with some 5th rates anyway.

 

 

I would also put some crew adjustements :

- At the end of a battle, a % of lost crew is healed. This depends of the upgrades and officers onboard. It is needed because otherwise it'd make returns to ports too frequent, especially for PVE.

- The ability to give crew to other allied ships in the OW. Your ally has a lot of dead ? Give him some so he can keep up fighting. Definitely needed for both PVE and PVP.

Edited June 3, 2016 by Azzak

[Fastidius]

Nelson could not teleport captured ships to Portsmouth. 

People were exploiting this feature like hell. Starting from pirates using surrender, or nations using NPC traders or smugglers. Its time to let it go.

same could be said for port battles....90% are undefended....Let them go

 

Your the guys that made pirates a Hacked nation....turn them to a normal nation 4 months ago like was mentioned you not have the issue.  Map is too big for low population...your design.

 

sailing ships by pressing asdw is not what nelson did...let it go...

 

Your a developer of a game and your making choices without actually playing the game...what clan do you sail with ? How many ACTUAL hours of play do you have....how often have you AFK sailed 18 days to get to plymouth?

 

we try and give insightful comment on something and get a one line backhanded response....

 

don't point at me and say im the one making bad habits when your design causes it.

Edited June 3, 2016 by Fastidius

[admin]

That was Nelsons job. We have real life. This is a GAME. I do not want to spend hours sailing a new ship to an outpost due to the fact I lost all dur on my old one. Maybe allow ship deliveries from your shipyard, the trading screen (if the ship is new only), or the store.

 

You have to think of the opposite side

 

Smaller nations, can't be easily rolfstomped by magic teleport of lineships from Mexico to Antilles

Also if i lost my First rate to a player i actually have a chance now to take it back - because enemy will probably be under crewed and my ship will be controlled by an NPC officer in that player fleet.

Also you actually don't have to sail hours if you operate in one area.

 

No magical teleportation of the fleets is a good thing as it increases potential pvp + creates more traffic on the OW. 

[Fastidius]

You have to think of the opposite side

 

Smaller nations, can't be easily rolfstomped by magic teleport of lineships from Mexico to Antilles

Also if i lost my First rate to a player i actually have a chance now to take it back - because enemy will probably be under crewed and my ship will be controlled by an NPC officer in that player fleet.

Also you actually don't have to sail hours if you operate in one area.

 

No magical teleportation of the fleets is a good thing as it increases potential pvp + creates more traffic on the OW. 

So explain to me how you think the guy that lost the first rate was talking to the 8 mates who come out to help him.   was mental telepathy part of the idea too?

 

he lost his damn ship.  he doesnt get a free chane to have him and 10 of his mates gank it back.

 

same as the guy who engaged wasnt guaranteed the win

 

sail alone lose your ship...  win a ship your have a bunch of enemies when you exit so you have to log at the battle screen....  your design

[Anne Wildcat]

The last patch was great for privateering, when this comes it will kill it. Right now Brits & US hang out at LA Tortue to PVP against pirates. Some pirates hang out on the US coastline. All you need is to get a larger group together, once this hits, and within a month, they will be all wiped. I have my privateer at Island Harbor (although being a noob, haven't used it much) Map stomping happens bc people feel ports are meaningless or timers do not allow for large groups to defend. Work on conquest & port battle mechanics please.

The last patch was great for privateering, when this comes it will kill it. Right now Brits & US hang out at LA Tortue to PVP against pirates. Some pirates hang out on the US coastline. All you need is to get a larger group together, once this hits, and within a month, they will be all wiped. I have my privateer at Island Harbor (although being a noob, haven't used it much) Map stomping happens bc people feel ports are meaningless, the map is too big for the population size, or timers do not allow for large groups to defend. Work on conquest & port battle mechanics please.

Edited June 3, 2016 by Anne Wildcat

[admin]

 

Your a developer of a game and your making choices without actually playing the game...what clan do you sail with ? How many ACTUAL hours of play do you have....how often have you AFK sailed 18 days to get to plymouth?

 

 

 

You salute the rank not the man

paraphrasing this - you critique the ideas not the people. You won't get far by attacking people on the forums. 

 

I have 1920 hours and only pvp, next time watch what you say and how you say it. 

 

Regarding afk sailing. 

You don't need to AFK sail to plymouth. You can teleport there yourself using outpost and use your ships you have there. 

If you don't have ships there sail them there once.

If you are losing them often there maybe you should teleport a crafter there (you don't need a ship to do it).

Crafter then can build ships for you there and you can use smugglers to transport goods to plymouth.

 

By doing so you will have a lot of pvp, because you will need protect your smugglers + you will have ships in that port. 

[HeadTrauma]

All the folks saying TL: DNPvP...

Has the small battles/large battles mechanic been removed from the missions screen?

[Uilleam]

My take on the crew management ideas:

 

Crew will have to be hired for certain price for the sailor

Makes perfectly good sense, I was expecting this to happen at some point.  Will you be able to buy better crew for a premium price?

 

Crew will be lost if you sink or blow up

Also makes perfectly good sense.

 

Crew will become persistent between battles

Agreed.

 

Players will be provided with 40 free sailors at the start of the game which cannot be lost (to support new players), this number could go up with rank up to a certain limit

Alternate approach here would be that as you hire more sailors at one time, the cost goes up as the number of available sailors go down.  If you do something like this, could you also add the option to "shanghai" sailors?  If you forcibly take people off of the streets to form your crew, the performance should be reduced though (although it could go up over time, the time for this to happen should be quite long).

 

Crew will be available for hire in all ports that you can enter

Even if you enter as a smuggler?

 

Crew will have to be assigned to ships that you capture to be able to use them

This makes sense

 

 

Ships that you capture will have to have crew to be transported back to port

There will be only two options for the ship you capture:

• Add to fleet (assigning crew)
• Sink

Where I completely disagree are the example comments:

This means that fleets could come back, but they will be based on your crew that you can manage and you will actually have to hire that crew paying for them

 

This makes no sense to me, but maybe I'm not understanding correctly.  I capture a ship, I transfer crew to it, are you saying I now have to re-hire the crew?  Or do you mean I have to hire sufficient crew for the ship when its back in harbor?  In the first case, no, that's not how it worked, crew would work under detached orders to crew a captured ship, they're already 'hired'.  If the second case, that would make sense, but why couldn't I simply transfer crew from one ship to another in port?  There's no need to have a fully crewed vessel if it's just resting in harbor.

 

This also means that ships no longer will be teleported to outposts and players will have to get their captures to ports themselves

This seems like a terrible idea.  I'd rather just sink everything I capture than do this.  Way too much added time, and what if I want to send a trader to a resource port while I continue to patrol with my warship?

 

May I offer a couple of suggestions?

Captured ship has a per cent chance of being lost on its way back to port. This is historically accurate and logical.  A battle damaged, undercrewed ship could be lost to storm, latent battle damage, or another encounter with an enemy vessel.

 

Second, with regard to sending ships to ports, a (likely unpopular idea) would be that you can only send ships to flagged ports (no more sending ships to free towns).  Also, in keeping with the first suggestion, sending goods from one free town to another should also have a (low) chance of being lost in shipping (maybe 5%).  ON the other hand, if I can send cargo from one free town to another, there shoudn't be any reason I couldnt send to any port I have an outpost in.  This has a couple of benefits, enemy players can't just send ships to the freeport anymore.  You can send cargo to any outpost from a free port, I think it balances things better than no sending ships to ports, and gives something that makes logical sense in return.

 

Regards,

Uilleam

 

[Cecil Selous]

You salute the rank not the man

paraphrasing this - you critique the ideas not the people. You won't get far by attacking people on the forums. 

 

I have 1920 hours and only pvp, next time watch what you say and how you say it. 

 

Regarding afk sailing. 

You don't need to AFK sail to plymouth. You can teleport there yourself using outpost and use your ships you have there. 

If you don't have ships there sail them there once.

If you are losing them often there maybe you should teleport a crafter there (you don't need a ship to do it).

Crafter then can build ships for you there and you can use smugglers to transport goods to plymouth.

 

By doing so you will have a lot of pvp, because you will need protect your smugglers + you will have ships in that port. 

 

 

Exactly. Today most of the crafters are concentrated in the capitals. Which meens everybody who doesn't craft and has the money, buys their ship there. And of course needs to sail it now a very far distance to their favorite outpost (which are mostly freeports to harass). Maybe it's time that crafters choose other mainports and make their nations owned regional capitals what they are by name. Develop them, fortify them and defend them. The new port battle mechanics with forts etc will be helpful for this. Clans can communicate between them who is responsible for which front, region whatever. Then free crafters can also concentrate on these ports. It's all up to the players, like finding pvp, which isn't really hard and I never get the whining about it.

Edited June 3, 2016 by Cecil Selous

[Guest]

Crafter then can build ships for you there and you can use smugglers to transport goods to plymouth.

So you can build ships in an occupied/enemy port? Or why you need smugglers?

[admin]

 

 

This makes no sense to me, but maybe I'm not understanding correctly.  I capture a ship, I transfer crew to it, are you saying I now have to re-hire the crew?  Or do you mean I have to hire sufficient crew for the ship when its back in harbor?  In the first case, no, that's not how it worked, crew would work under detached orders to crew a captured ship, they're already 'hired'.  If the second case, that would make sense, but why couldn't I simply transfer crew from one ship to another in port?  There's no need to have a fully crewed vessel if it's just resting in harbor.

 

 

 

You are rear admiral rank (allowing 1100 men)

You had 350 men on your ship when you sailed

You captured another frigate (for example losing no-one)

You transfer 50 men to another vessel (minimum required to sail the vessel)

This ship is added to fleet and sails with you (and you can give him orders)

Once you reach the port you can hire another 300 men (because your rank allows it) - and sail with 2 frigates.

So you can build ships in an occupied/enemy port? Or why you need smugglers?

Plymouth is a free town

[HeadTrauma]

I've been working on a document proposing changes RE the so called "Pirate Problem" for the last two weeks. I'll copy/paste parts here;

 

 

Overarching  game mechanic adjustments/reworks or changes;

1.     Crews and officers: General

a.     All crews need Provisions, food/water/rum. This will make it a lot more challenging for ships sailing outside national waters as well as Pirates raiding in enemy waters .

b.     Crew is a limited resource. If you take a prize ship, you need to assign crew and an officer to sail it back to port, leaving you short-handed.

c.      Pirate crews want booty/loot. If you are seen to be a reluctant captain, or not providing enough loot, morale will fall. Mutiny becomes a possibility.

d.     After a certain period,  pirate crew will demand division of money pool. Shares are paid out, captain and officers get bonus shares. The better the shares, the higher Notoriety bonus and chance of retaining officers/crew.

e.     Nation Navies get paid (including you, the Captain) small salaries, require less prize money. If not looked after, same morale/mutiny event can occur.

2.     Crew and officers: Recruitment

a.     Pirate captains’ Notoriety will affect ease of recruitment. I.E, the more notorious you are, the easier it will be to recruit numbers as well as experienced crew and officers. If a prize is taken, portion of prize ships’ crew may join yours.

b.     Crew being a resource means that they are limited in availability in ports. If a 100 captains are all trying to recruit in 1 port…you get the picture.

c.      Nation Navies have same challenge, but option to use Press gangs. This will result in “easier” crewing, but lower quality/green crew. Green crew = penalty in ship handling/fighting.

 

Captured prizes should also have the option to be sent to outpost. If selected, AI sails ship to the selected outpost in OW. Risk of being intercepted / sunk is realistic.


 

[Skully]

• This also means that ships no longer will be teleported to outposts and players will have to get their captures to ports themselves

I think having the ability to hire NPC captains to transport ships is a must before we go down this line.

 

It would not be reasonable to expect PvP-ers to sail for hours either as smuggler, trader or transporter to simply bring ships and/or materials in.

 

For the time being we could do with "teleporting" ships for gold and time.

 

Apart from that I love to see this change come through.

 

PS. I will smuggle, trade and transport mats for "reasonable" prices to those locations.

Edited June 3, 2016 by Skully

[AfkSailor]

Doesn't capturing a ship through boarding kill all crew? How are you supposed to add crew through capture?

[admin]

 

It would not be reasonable to expect PvP-ers to sail for hours either as smuggler, trader or transporter to simply bring ships and/or materials in.

 

crafters already are doing that. and in general they don't sail for hours.

 

 

+

Its always nice to see a good old double standard

• pvpers wanted traders to sail demanding removal of teleport with cargo
• but do not want to sail with captured ships

You don't need to sail for hours

You can bring your ship capture to the nearest free town - they are scattered evenly around the map - approximately within 20-25 min of travel from any populated area.

[mikawa]

 

Once you reach the port you can hire another 300 men (because your rank allows it) - and sail with 2 frigates.

Expand into extreme: I would not like to see single human players sailing around in a bunch of First-Rates-Fleets (Similar to these huge AI fleets we already have) with no chance for a casual player to attack them. What can be done to prevent this?

[admin]

Expand into extreme: I would not like to see single human players sailing around in a bunch of First-Rates-Fleets (Similar to these huge AI fleets we already have) with no chance for a casual player to attack them. What can be done to prevent this?

 

 

Crew limit stays

+ cost to replace crew (which did not exist before)

 

Assuming if 2 santis in a fleet are allowed. 

Rear admiral will have 1100 crew limit So if he sails 2 santis he will have 550 on each. (or any other combination he picks with a slider)

[Quineloe]

Seems like a lot of "PVPers" are getting rustled they can no longer capture 1st/2nd/3rd rates at leisure and use magic teleport button to get them to safety.

I like this.

 

 

Your "us vs them" attitude on this is very refreshing. 

Have you considered liking or disliking something by its own instead of looking what the people you don't like think of it?

 

Yeah, this adds penalty to sinking. It therefore doesn't really concern PVE players. If this doesn't even affect you, don't you think it's a bit petty to like a change because it punishes someone else?

 

and "PVP players" aren't sailing around exclusively in big ships.

[Guest]

You don't need to sail for hours

You can bring your ship capture to the nearest free town - they are scattered evenly around the map - approximately within 20-25 min of travel from any populated area.

Can we then have more available slots for building outposts? Maybe double them?

Edited June 3, 2016 by Guest