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Forthcoming shipbuilding changes [Heavily Moderated]


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No, the events was not available to everyone, not everyone can play the game every day, not everyone can play the game all day...

 

Events were available on multiple saturdays with date and time known well in advance. After being pulled for rework, one of the changes promised in the rework was that events will be at random locations and times so that people in different time zones and in game locations have an easier time participating. There will be more chances in the future to get event ships. At the end of the day, unless you had a life threatening emergency, it was a choice to do something offline instead of spending an hour or two in the game. You had the opportunity, but chose to spend your time on something else.

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 At the end of the day, unless you had a life threatening emergency, it was a choice to do something offline instead of spending an hour or two in the game. You had the opportunity, but chose to spend your time on something else.

OR someone could have a job that actually require to work on saturdays right? So that person shoud make a choice of play a game and MAYYYYYBE get a ship orgo to work!!! Yeah it is a tuff situation!

Edited by ArmoredKorps
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I love many of the items under consideration. I do however dislike the notion of 1 dura ships. I'm all in for a more realistic game, but devs have repeatedly stated that they'd like to see more PvP ingame and if ships become 1 duras it will mean that ppl will be far less inclined to sail a ship they've spent an inordinate amount of ressources to make (as in the grinding system that as of now is our crafting system). I'd love to feel the anxiety when facing opponents knowing that my ship will be lost - a real setback suddenly - but I don't believe it will promote more PvP, on the contrary, and if I had to choose between more PvP and less realism I grudgingly has to accept that I love the battles more than the realism of them and I'd rather play more battles than immerse myself even deeper into a fictional reality.

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OR someone could have a job that actually require to work on saturdays right? So that person shoud make a choice of play a game and MAYYYYYBE get a ship orgo to work!!! Yeah it is a tuff situation!

 

A game IS a hobby. It is an activity concerning free time. It is a strange approach to see things from the opposite - can't hobby because I work instead of, glad I can hobby because I work.

 

I think we all got your message. I am glad you are a productive member of Mankind.

 

Can we get over it now ?

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Disagree strongly with the proposed changes.  Here's why:

 

1. People seek out gold ships precisely because they are the best.  People like to seek out and acquire the best, or close to the best.  Its fun.  In other games that might mean playing a little longer to get a better sword, or better spaceship.  Same goes for upgrades.  People like to customize their ships with upgrades.  Its also just another thing to chase, which adds meaning to the game.

 

2. There is plenty of variety in the game, I've fought plenty of battles with basic ships, especially last minute surprise battles I didn't have time to ship my finest into the area.  I also use basic ships as fleet ships all the time.

 

3. If you want more variety in the quality of ship, you need to incentivize that variety.  A victory costs roughly 6,000 labor hours to build.  Why wouldn't you spend another 1,000 to make it GOLD instead of basic?  Now if that GOLD is going to cost you 12,000 labor hours,  instead of 6,000, I'd be surprised if smart individuals didn't start to consider just how high in quality to make that ship.  Is a GOLD vic worth 2 basic Vics?  Interesting debate.  You control the rules, you control the incentives.  And the way you've structured the rules, you've incentivized building only GOLD ships.  Incentivize building other quality and they will absolutely appear and appear more regularly.

 

4.   Another reason why everyone builds GOLD ships is that you've incentivized building gold ships in order to drop blueprints.  Make the blueprint drops roughly equal, and remove that huge incentive to build GOLD lynxs and gold pickles, so you get a BP drop.

 

5.  Stop allowing the AI to flood the ship market with basic ships.  There is ZERO incentive to build basic ships because the AI floods the market with them.  I'm fine with allowing cutters in every port, but Green Connies and Trincs?  You can't complain that nobody builds less than gold ships when you give the players no reason to do so. 

 

Almost everything in life comes down to incentives.  If you incentivize building a variety of size and quality of ships, people WILL build them.  But currently, the smart player builds mostly huge gold ships.  Because that's what you've incentivized.  Test dramatically increasing the cost of bigger and higher quality ships, and allowing BPS to drop from all ship builds.  My guess is that youll start seeing good frigates in the OW instead of just GOLD SOLs.

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Huge mistake. Really disappointed. The reason that the middle upgrades are infrequently used is that the investment in building them is not rewarded (because of the limited spaces in shop slots.) And there are definitely some upgrades that are good for different ships too.

If you set it so that each level took something like 2x as many notes to produce, the exceptional would be much more expensive and only the wealthiest players would use them. Then you would get a lot more if the middle quality having a value.

Please rethink this devs.

 

As to the rest of the stuff, I think it is very pre-mature, since we have hardly had enough time to test things out since the last big patch which as made resource gathering a MUCH tougher experience.

Edited by Arctander
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Not keen on a wipe, personally, but things are so messy at this point after so many sweeping changes...  We'd need to keep our EXP/Ranks, and perhaps be compensated in some way, but if it is absolutely necessary, so be it.  Just know that a wipe will absolutely lead to a loss of many former players.

 

I think I like most of the crafting changes, but I'm just not a fan of grey/yellow color scheme.  I think you should keep the current scheme, but just make it grey/green/blue for captured/crafted/special.  It leaves room for adding things later on with purple/yellow.  That also means upgrades can still follow the same scheme.

 

I'd personally like all ships to either be 1 durability, or rechargeable--an all or nothing approach--either way is fine by me.

 

The biggest takeaway I got from all this though is the consideration of adding limited ammunition.  My fear is that this will lead to ships being too weak to compensate for fewer shots, unwinnable battles/stalemates, or people abandoning the ranged combat phase all together in favor of strictly rage boarding, which even with unlimited ammunition, is a major issue.

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Not keen on a wipe, personally, but things are so messy at this point after so many sweeping changes...  We'd need to keep our EXP/Ranks, and perhaps be compensated in some way, but if it is absolutely necessary, so be it.  Just know that a wipe will absolutely lead to a loss of many former players.

 

I think I like most of the crafting changes, but I'm just not a fan of grey/yellow color scheme.  I think you should keep the current scheme, but just make it grey/green/blue for captured/crafted/special.  It leaves room for adding things on later purple/yellow.  That also means upgrades can still follow the same scheme.

 

The biggest takeaway I got from all this though is the consideration of adding limited ammunition.  My fear is that this will lead to ships being too weak to compensate for fewer shots, unwinnable battles/stalemates, or people abandoning the ranged combat phase all together in favor of strictly rage boarding, which even with unlimited ammunition, is a major issue.

 

Green/Blue/Gold maybe? Or Green/Blue/Purple.

 

There's a stigma about grey ships, I've tried more than once to give away basic Endymions and no takers (yet people will pay good money for green ships that are only fractionally better).

 

Agreed on the need for a fresh start of sorts, been a long time and many changes since last wipe.

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Hello Сaptains!

  • Other experimental ideas like 1 durability ships and other changes

 

ETA Dec-Jan

Discuss 

 

I honestly do not understand why this keeps being circled back to.  What is the advantage to the PLAYERS, and how is it more fun, to increase the rate at which ships are lost and have to be replaced?  Stay away from "realistic" and address the entertainment value of it.  This is not a real war, it's supposed to be fun.

 

1 Dura ships remove every attachment a player has to ships.  No personality, no sense of owner ship, just disposable zeros and ones, with willingness to fight/play the game tied to how much sacrifice/time a player has to do to constantly replace lost productivity/time.

 

Tie that in with the current mechanics around labor hours, (which I actually think are pretty good), and you are directly limiting how long a player who isn't that good and keeps losing ships, will be able to play the game.

 

If the goal is to keep everyone from being in the highest rated ships all the time, then I think you have already gone a good way with the crew costs and splinter damage.  

 

Please point me to any successful game where after a loss of a single battle you are effectively locked out of playing the game for several hours while you wait for your labor resources to accumulate.

 

Now, because I hate just criticizing without a suggestion.

 

Remove Dura completely from the system.  Since we are getting rid of "special", when you are sunk, and all captured ships are "grey", your custom ship has to go in to dock for refit/repair.

 

Each ship has a several cost options in labor hours/materials for refit/repair.  I would allow for labor hours to go into the negative for this, with a surcharge added if that's what you did.  

 

In this way you can ALWAYS get back into your favorite ship, and more importantly, keep playing, but it costs you more in the long run if you keep losing your ship. 

 

Bottom line, less Dura and availability will always hurt the casual player way more than those who have a veritable library of ships accumulated.  The former would be blocked from play, and the latter will have enough backup ships to use whatever type they want regardless of attempts at restriction on numbers.

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What about Marines? I am using grey, green, blue, purple and gold, thus they are not useless.

 

Agreed.  Marines are one of the few upgrade types that work well, IMO - as there is a trade-off for picking one type over another.  I think more upgrades should be like this.

 

That said, I think that there should still be a quality/rarity factor in the game.  We seem to be basing some of our decisions on a player population that is largely composed of maxed out players.

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This is exactly what is needed for crafting. With the new system you will be able to craft ships that you want with explicit Bonuses and De-buffs applied dependent on how the ship is crafted not some arbitrary tier system. I craft all the time, and I have to agree there is no reason to build a ship if its not the lowest grade or the highest. We might see some mid level ships here and there, but I am sure that they are very far and few in between because there is no reason to craft them. To a crafter 3-4 extra notes to upgrade a ship is peanuts to the value of the ship.  Why do we have to have some arbitrary color code when you can simply look at the stats of the ship like every other game I play, in fact you will probably find more variability in the ships at market with the new system.

 

The color tier system is a left over relic from when the game was mostly played by capturing ships, where their color was determined by a roll of the dice.

 

I also like the idea of building specialty ships that take lots of time to craft, this give crafters some goal to aim for in the long run. My hope is that we can turn to a one durability system now where you can sell your ship Crafted or Captured on the market as it should be which also promotes capturing vessels.

 

There was a time in NA when you could basically only sail capture ships because the market was very expensive, and I must say, I never had a difficult time moving up in ship types with those mechanics.

Edited by Rramsha
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the devs  really need to go back to the beginning and make a decision are we making an 18th century naval action simulator or an 18th century naval action game ....at the moment they are trying to do both and its starting to fall apart ... its been nearly two weeks since the patch ...and i don't have enough game playing time to harvest fine woods transport them to the area i want to build my ships in ..gather all the other parts transport them ...then .raise hostility in areas ,,,reduce hostility in other areas ,, be online at specific times for attacking pb ,,,defending in pb ..all this when you may need to sail for a minimum of half an hour to an hour for each action  . its all getting too much i don't have the 10 hours a day this requires to play ...bringing in limited ammunition ..will just add to the time sink this game is .... i dont care that the devs think its strange that a cutter can fire a thousand shots ...and that ammunition takes up space ....so hold space is reduced ....i want the excitement of a battle ...not having to make 2 extra trade runs of an hour each because i cant carry full amunition and a full cargo load ....

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...we find it very strange that a cutter can fire 10000 shots in battle. We believe it should be a player choice.

If you want your ship to be a little bit faster or agile and you are confident that you shoot well take less shots per gun.

 

...make your ship too fast (lots of sails) you might capsize if you don't control wind pressure at extreme angles of heel

 

Good points IMHO.

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ammo supply will work like double charges

we find it very strange that a cutter can fire 10000 shots in battle. We believe it should be a player choice. If you want your ship to be a little bit faster or agile and you are confident that you shoot well take less shots per gun. (But they will still refill after every battle to save your time) they will only matter in the instance).

Same with the unbalanced ships potential.. if you remember the gunboat capsizes this bug could be spread to all ships - make your ship too fast (lots of sails) you might capsize if you don't control wind pressure at extreme angles of heel

I just want to point out that it's completely impossible for a cutter to shoot 10,000 shots per battle.

Battle time = 90 minutes = 5400 seconds per game

4lb medium cannon reload time (fastest possible) = 25 seconds

Cutter carries 12 guns, so (5400s per game x 12shots)/(25 sec per shot) = 2592 shots per game

I realize that could be looked at as symantics, but I really hate false numbers being throne around.

Also, this shows me that 2592 shots all weighing 4 lb will equal 10,368 lbs, which is 4.7 tons. Is this an unrealistic weight for even such a small craft? (I'm honestly asking as I'm not aware of a cutters true capabilities).

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I just want to point out that it's completely impossible for a cutter to shoot 10,000 shots per battle.

Battle time = 90 minutes = 5400 seconds per game

4lb medium cannon reload time (fastest possible) = 25 seconds

Cutter carries 12 guns, so (5400s per game x 12shots)/(25 sec per shot) = 2592 shots per game

I realize that could be looked at as symantics, but I really hate false numbers being throne around.

Also, this shows me that 2592 shots all weighing 4 lb will equal 10,368 lbs, which is 4.7 tons. Is this an unrealistic weight for even such a small craft? (I'm honestly asking as I'm not aware of a cutters true capabilities).

Well you forgot 2 things in your last bit, 1 is the powder charge which also takes weight. Another you forgot is the space that powder and shot take.

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Okay, I think this can work. I think I actually like what Admin has proposed here, but it needs some clarity and player agency to really make it shine.

 

To clarify, I do agree with what others have said - Common and Fine ships are seldom made because they provide very little benefit for the effort invested. A simple change would be, as I have said previously, to get rid of crafting notes (since they're a pointless middle step) and use coins directly in upgrades or ship crafting at a scaling rate - more coins per quality step. Additionally, doing the same with Fine woods while making Fine woods more common (~10% guaranteed rate from harvesting, shows up in small amounts in ports that produce the base woods) would be an acceptable solution for ships.

 

However, that's the old system, and what Admin is proposing here has real promise as long as it allows the crafter control of multiple aspects at a time. Here's how I'm perceiving this, and let me know what you think:

 

Crafting a ship would be done with a series of sliders. Each slider would have seven steps, and start at the middle. Each step would have its own quality value assigned to it. As a ship crafter, you would not have direct control over ship speed or cargo space, but indirect control of them through other aspects in construction. Building a weaker, lighter ship will result in a faster ship

  • Build Strength - Affects overall vessel health directly, direct affect on ship weight. (e.g. Increasing BS also increases weight, which in turn hinders both speed and turn speed)
  • Planking - Affects leak rate, direct affect on ship weight.
  • Crew Space - Affects crew amount, inverse affect on hold space.
  • Rigging Quality - Affects sail health, mast health, sail rising speed, and yard turning speed. Direct affect on speed, max roll angle, and sailing crew. (More sail = Faster ship, but more force applied above center of mass, so more roll applied)
  • Stiffness - Affects pitch and roll and moderate affect on hull thickness. Direct affect on ship weight and inverse affect on cargo space.

Each of these aspects would be under control of the crafter at the time of the build. Various steps in the qualities of these (Terrible, Poor, Mediocre, Average, Fine, Great, Exceptional) would affect the build requirements as well as labor hours involved. An Exceptional Build Strength would be more resource- and labor-intensive than a Terrible Build Strength - but that Terrible BS would be rather light and fast.

 

Detailed Example of slider values (per step, inverse effect for negative steps):

  • Build Strength: +5% Hull Health, +3% Mass
  • Planking: -10% Leak Rate, +2% Mass
  • Crew Space: +2.5% Crew, -5% Hold Space
  • Rigging Quality: +5% Sail & Mast Health, +2.5% Sail-Rising & Yard-Turning speed, +0.025 Main & Jib Sail Force,  +10% Sailing Crew, +5% Max Roll Angle
  • Stiffness: -5% Max Roll Angle, +2% Mass, +2.5% Hull thickness, -2.5% Hold Space

Mass would affect both turning speed and maximum speed. Let's say I built an Endymion (impossible, I know) with Exceptional Build Strength. Its base speed would drop from 13.77 to 12.63 (9% increase in mass - Base Mass div. by Current Mass). If I instead built a Le Gros with Terrible BS, Planking, AND Stiffness, its base would go from 11.9 to 15.06 (!!!) - and its hold would increase to just over 3,300 - but it would be useless in a fight. If I built a ship with Exceptional Rigging and Terrible Stiffness...well, lets say there's a solid chance it might just tip itself over in a stiff breeze.

 

Edit/Update - Not previously-covered, ship captures! - Capping AI ships shouldn't be completely worthless, but should have generally-average qualities. Each ship would, for each of the 5 categories, be captured with a random value, weighted thus: 60% for average, 25% for Fine or Mediocre, 10% for Great or Poor, and 5% for Terrible or Exceptional. With this, it would still be technically impossible to get an all-Exceptional captured ship (2.5% for 5 categories, approximately 1:100,000,000) - but even with negative values, they are still useful, just for different purposes.

Edited by Kiithnaras
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As for ammo

 

I think having ammo amounts could be an issue. People will either carry as much ammo as possible or battles will end when everyone is out of ammo. Maybe ball should be unlimited and all other ammo types can be loaded in desired quantities with wight penalties as needed. This will also stop the whole having to always buy ball when you dock to refill ball ammo, which will get very annoying after a short while.

Edited by Rramsha
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Hello Сaptains!

 

We will abandon the 5 color grades for upgrades and ships. Fine (blue), Mastercraft (purple), Common (green) are not used and thus are useless. Nobody makes them and nobody buys them. 

 

...

 

Just a moment please...

 

Grey, green, blue and purple ships have been build in the past ans from time to time I've even bought them. I agree that in the past (e.g. before the port wipe) there were mostly Gold ships build. This was result of the availability of resources. That Situation has been changed completely with th port wipe (e.g. only six ports producing Silver or two ports producing Live-Oak). For a certain amount of time Clans might have their warehouses filld with these resources, but once they have exhausted that reserve I would expect to see a lot more of grey, green, blue and purple ships sailing around as most People can't affort to build only gold ships.

Probably you Devs should wait some weeks to see the real Impact of the port wipe patch.

 

This one sounds like a quick shot from the hip to me.

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Everyone knew a wipe was going to happen sooner or later,  however I would prefer it to not be announced at all.  As it stands we have a situation where some will carry on as normal for a month, and others will go back into hibernation and the server population will drop to levels just before the port reset.

 

I'll put up with any changes you make, some have the potential to work well.  But please, we as testers/player/customers don't need to know everything despite what some people here say.  I would rather be hit by a bus and not see it coming, than watch it slowly approach and not be able to get out the way.

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Well you forgot 2 things in your last bit, 1 is the powder charge which also takes weight. Another you forgot is the space that powder and shot take.

Well cannonball volume will be small. I found that they are 3 inches in diameter, so 1.5 inch radius. I will convert to meters as they are a better unit, so the radius is 0.0381m. Using the volume of a sphere equation, V = (4/3)(pi)(0.0381m)^3 = 2.3E-4

Finally, multiply that by the number of cannon balls, and I get 2.4m^3, which is not a large space at all. Granted they can't perfectly fit together, but effective stacking can get pretty close.

Like you said, this still doesn't consider powder, and sadly I can't answer you on that piece ^.^

Edited by Guest
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I like the three ship classes. Provision the ship with shot and powder will be a good element of player balanced ships, independent from ship's quality level.

I hope that all types of shot (balls,chain and grape) will have to be bought by players, too.

This would make double shot perk redundant, since balls are limited anyway.

For ships properties I would not make them simply speed, but "speedy hull" resulting in less cargo space, "increased sails" shall result in more heeling, like too many or too big guns, which shall result in capsizingin the extreme, as mentioned. This shall be indicated by some stability factor, that shall be visible in the ships stats.

on the other hand shall undergunning result in less heel.

So all ship properties shall be connected with speed, heel, cargo space and hull strength.

If this is well balanced, we will have great customized ships, especially if over gunning is allowed, we might see interesting battles. (maybe with storm maps?)

I hope that every ship will have now a somehow historical number of marines on board without this upgrade. Maybe their weapons might get upgrades, but no more.

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The very first reaction: the dream might finally come true !!!

 

Removing the ship quality and putting emphasis on tuning/balancing ship characteristics is a good move indeed. I am looking forward to testing that, even at cost of my beloved yellow ships, BPs, and money stash.

 

Limited ammo came as a bit of a surprise proposal, but very pleasant one. This would open new opportunities for balancing game and adding a layer of complexity to battles. Historically, ammo load was a huge factor. Limited ammo is a MUST HAVE feature imho!!!

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