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Boarding + 'Determined Defender' suggestion


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I just wish they would fix the mini game of whoever clicks at the last second is the winner. With my ping and internet lag even against AI I need to attack at the three second mark to make sure it registers. So there is no way I’m going to try boarding combat against another player.  

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I don't see the problem with it. You only get 5 perk slots, 

1 hour ago, Oberon74 said:

The whole ramming thing is weak.  If a 4th rate (or higher) rams a 6th or 7th rate (90degrees or "T-Bone") the smaller ship should be destroyed.  If the smaller ship rams a much larger one, it should be like hitting a wall, with all damage (or most) on the smaller ship.  Ships of the same rate who ram should both receive damage commensurate with their angles of impact.  Demasting should be a near certainty when ramming results in a sudden stop.  major leaking should also be common. 

It used to happen in game, ships would sink from ramming or suffer very severe damage, I used to enjoy it but I have seen friendly ships sink each other in battles and stuff. I guess it got removed because they don't like the idea of a low skilled player in his chip shop frigate  ramming the elite pvpr in their solo pimped up seal clubbing mobile. Would be like having unlimited chain all over again.

Edited by Fletch67
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16 hours ago, Wyy said:

also maybe add that, to board you cant be lower then 20%(for example) morale than the one you want to board.

I think it's very good suggestion, you should probably post it in a separate thread :) 

Having morale on every ship and lowering it based on crew casualities and shocks would be great - eg. you could board for a limited time after shocking the enemy.

In this setting DD could increase regain of morale with time.

Morale would require some visible indication to work though.

 

In reality most ships were not sunk - most ships surrendered after being decrewed, incapacitated, or severely damaged, and were boarded afterwards. It sometimes took days for a ship to sink.

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I have a question.

Why a bigger by crew ship can always board a smaller by crew one. Are boarding nets and other preparations always useless on smaller ships?

If the answer is no why DD doesn't consider that?

Edited by z4ys
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12 minutes ago, z4ys said:

I have a question.

Why a bigger ship can always board a smaller one. Are boarding nets and other preparations always useless on smaller ships?

If the answer is no why DD doesn't consider that?

Unless I got the wrong end of the stick. Determined defender has nothing to do with the ship size, its dependent on the number of crew, You couldn't board a cutter in a first rate if you both had the same crew. I don't see much of a problem with it if I am honest although I think it could be 20% more crew needed to board,

Edited by Fletch67
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I'm re-submitting a suggestion that I posted a week or so ago because it addresses possible changes to boarding that may, in the end, also affect DD.

Admin's response was that only after the completion of 'localization', will they then address changes to boarding mechanics.

So if (hopefully) they use a version of their combat engine for the Ultimate General game and use it as a basis for a turn-based resolution to the boarding scenario, then maybe DD will function as a short term, but hard fought delaying action in order to achieve numerical parity or advantage in the initial stages of boarding. Below is my original post. Thank you.

...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Over the years, many players have wished for a change to the boarding mechanics in Naval Action. Game-Labs already has a combat engine for their Ultimate General game. I'm wondering if something similar could be implemented into the boarding aspect of Naval Action. 

I've attached a screen shot from a strategy game by the developers of 'Pike & Shot' for illustrative purposes only. Imagine the crude outline around the combatants as representing their respective ships.

1. The boarding battle would be turn-based, with the attacker going first.

2. Each player would have a set amount of time to move his various troops, including their facing, before his turn ends. The timer is needed to keep the pace of the boarding action from bogging down - similar to a timer used in chess matches. This would also help to mimic the frenetic, chaotic urgency of close combat.

3. The result of each players turn is auto-resolved by the game until one of the players wins the boarding. As they do now, all boarding upgrades will have an affect on the outcome of each players turn (boarding ladders, barricades, muskets, marines etc.).

The goal of this idea being, to improve on the current "rock, paper, scissors" gameplay.

 

 

Naval Boarding.jpg

Edited by Captiva
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3 minutes ago, Fletch67 said:

Unless I got the wrong end of the stick. Determined defender has nothing to do with the ship size, its dependent on the number of crew, You couldn't board a cutter in a first rate if you both had the same crew. I don't see much of a problem with it if I am honest although I think it could be 20% more crew needed to board,

Sorry for confusion I mean bigger = more crew.

Why crew is the factor that determines if pulling is successful or not. Can a smaller ship that still has full crew not defend the ship and deny boarding?

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30 minutes ago, z4ys said:

Sorry for confusion I mean bigger = more crew.

Why crew is the factor that determines if pulling is successful or not. Can a smaller ship that still has full crew not defend the ship and deny boarding?

Its done to stop it being abused not for realism. Its the same principle as using BR on pulling ships into open world battles.

 

40 minutes ago, Captiva said:

I'm re-submitting a suggestion that I posted a week or so ago because it addresses possible changes to boarding that may, in the end, also affect DD.

Admin's response was that only after the completion of 'localization', will they then address changes to boarding mechanics.

So if (hopefully) they use a version of their combat engine for the Ultimate General game and use it as a basis for a turn-based resolution to the boarding scenario, then maybe DD will function as a short term, but hard fought delaying action in order to achieve numerical parity or advantage in the initial stages of boarding. Below is my original post. Thank you.

...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Over the years, many players have wished for a change to the boarding mechanics in Naval Action. Game-Labs already has a combat engine for their Ultimate General game. I'm wondering if something similar could be implemented into the boarding aspect of Naval Action. 

I've attached a screen shot from a strategy game by the developers of 'Pike & Shot' for illustrative purposes only. Imagine the crude outline around the combatants as representing their respective ships.

1. The boarding battle would be turn-based, with the attacker going first.

2. Each player would have a set amount of time to move his various troops, including their facing, before his turn ends. The timer is needed to keep the pace of the boarding action from bogging down - similar to a timer used in chess matches. This would also help to mimic the frenetic, chaotic urgency of close combat.

3. The result of each players turn is auto-resolved by the game until one of the players wins the boarding. As they do now, all boarding upgrades will have an affect on the outcome of each players turn (boarding ladders, barricades, muskets, marines etc.).

The goal of this idea being, to improve on the current "rock, paper, scissors" gameplay.

 

 

Naval Boarding.jpg

How can you make boarding turned based when the rest of the battle around the two ships is in real time? Might be 20 other ships in the battle that can sail up and sink you while your involved in a turn based game.

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6 hours ago, Tiedemann said:

Determent defender works very well imo. The recrew option is very limited now, and has a long cooldown. So only reason you can't board players with determent defender in 1,5 hour, is either because you don't have a advantage or your not aggressive enough.

I know you guys, you just want it to be fast and easy again! Shot some sails, push against the wind and then chain board the player while your mates rake.. There is no skill involved in this, it's just a gank.

try to board someone in a PB and after that we talk...
now u need a calculator to know how many crew u need to get close to the enemy ship to have a nice boarding action... is silly and stupid... if you do all the grape all the work, and you are getting closer, the guy just use rum and brace and you are inhable to board... the time is gone and u lose your chance... is really stupid

BTW my ping in battle is 264 so i board only for fun and some times for need... but i think DD makes Book of 5 ring useless

Edited by Carlos_Condell
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I wonder how many people complaining about the Determined Defender mod being magic also have the mystical "Lord-of-the-Book-of-the-Five-Rings" mod.

 

(Which apparently turns your boarders into zombie Zorros in a cocaine-fueled euphoria able to jump over gunwales 12 feet tall.....)

 

Nothing out of whack there at all....  nope.

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3 hours ago, Anne Wildcat said:

I just wish they would fix the mini game of whoever clicks at the last second is the winner. With my ping and internet lag even against AI I need to attack at the three second mark to make sure it registers. So there is no way I’m going to try boarding combat against another player.  

Which is my point exactly and this effects everything from delay in firing guns to when ships become visible. People here calling out others as noobs and that they are pussies for using DD have sub 50 pings! The 300+ ping lag a significant impact it makes games like FPS impossible to play vs other players.

 

Edited by William Wade
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The problem lies in boarding and grappling itself, BECAUSE grappling is instant you're immediately grabbed and locked into boarding which is a fail and the reason DD exists in the first place. EVERY boarding action should be hit or miss, not just the first one, not because of some arbitrary perk, but because you outskilled or out maneuvered your opponent amongst the grapple fight (which doesn't exists in the current game) 

I've already made a suggestion on this, a simple grapple mini-game would suffice to keep boarding realistic and varied and not cheesy and 100% all of the time.
Problems like this need to be worked bottom up, a perk is a bandaid fix that still shows its scar at the end of the day.

 

Edited by Slim McSauce
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17 minutes ago, Slim McSauce said:

The problem lies in boarding and grappling itself, BECAUSE grappling is instant you're immediately grabbed and locked into boarding which is a fail and the reason DD exists in the first place. EVERY boarding action should be hit or miss, not just the first one, not because of some arbitrary perk, but because you outskilled or out maneuvered your opponent amongst the grapple fight (which doesn't exists in the current game) 

I've already made a suggestion on this, a simple grapple mini-game would suffice to keep boarding realistic and varied and not cheesy and 100% all of the time.
Problems like this need to be worked bottom up, a perk is a bandaid fix that still shows its scar at the end of the day.

 

How about when you attempt to pull a ship its a percentage chance of success witch is rolled. While the number of crew on each side are factored in. Thus less chance for a successful pull when outnumbered. If the pull fails both sides should take a few crew casualties, If the fail was a very poor roll the attacker should loose quite a few crew representing them getting beaten back. Level of prep could also be factored in. If the pull is a success then its played out as it is.

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28 minutes ago, Fletch67 said:

How about when you attempt to pull a ship its a percentage chance of success witch is rolled. While the number of crew on each side are factored in. Thus less chance for a successful pull when outnumbered. If the pull fails both sides should take a few crew casualties, If the fail was a very poor roll the attacker should loose quite a few crew representing them getting beaten back. Level of prep could also be factored in. If the pull is a success then its played out as it is.

makes perfect sense to me

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1 hour ago, Fletch67 said:

How can you make boarding turned based when the rest of the battle around the two ships is in real time?

I don't have an answer for you, Fletch67. The current boarding game is sorta turn-based already; the only difference being that both players are making there decision at any time within each 'timed' turn. In the proposed idea both players are still under a short timer for making their move, it's just sequential. 

At least we have a starting point for player suggestions regarding changes to the boarding game. The 'rock, paper, scissors' approach to boarding is sorely lacking when compared to the outstanding quality of ship combat.  

Thank you

Here is Admin's response to me:

Hello Captain

Boarding changes are not a priority at this stage
But once localization is done it will get into a top of the list

Edited by Captiva
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  • 3 weeks later...

Historically, some vessels used nets to prevent the enemy ship from boarding it so you could only rename Determined Defender to Nets or whatsoever. Also, this prevents a sinking ship from boarding you, which IMHO is not OK if the enemy ship's main deck is almost underwater already.

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I  don’t like Determine Defender. It ‘s: “take this skill and dictate the boarders your playstyle.”

I think Boarding should be more implemented in the See fight action to make it more interesting instead of just give the people an option deny it. I’d like to see following changes. Especially I like to solve problems with realism ;)

First of all make graping effective against unprotected crew on the deck. Weather deck Gun crew, Sailing crew and boarding crew. So people can defend against a boarding attack with grape. A ship in full boarding preparation has a bunch of unprotected crew on the deck. The Potential crew lose without boarding prep should be no problem half the sailing crew should be on Sails and the other half on deck so the potential crew loss is more or less negligible.

Example: Sailingcrew Trincomalee 135 half of them 67 on deck. A perfect graping over the whole deck by potential lose rate of 25% would be around 16 crew member. Realistic an OK.

I’d also recommend that the Sailing crew required is reduced by the amount of set sail (Half Sails half crew or something like that). So you could further reduce your potential lose against this deck graping and it would make more sense to reduce sails in Battle, like it was in reality.

Implement Muskets into the sea fight.
There should be a button to Man musket positions in the sea fight. On short ranges about 30m they’ll shoot to unprotected crew on deck. An elevation bonus would be great. This will make pushing with smaller ships much harder. The whole pushing process will cause losses on both sides. With the elevation bonus a bigger defender will be in favor. And it helps against stupid situations where small ships stay below ship guns and continuously shoot.

Implement a pulling timer for boarding
If you stretch the time which is needed to pull the ships together there will be more time to react. Forbid the pulling ship to use canons to favor the defender.  And implement skills/upgrades for the defender to further increase the pull time (another bonus on Boarding Axes?). Maybe allow boarding only for ships which where recently in rigging shock.

Determine Defender could look like that in the future
50 Morale bonus when get boarded
Bonus against boarding attacks

Summaries: Just try to get out of the paper, Scissors, Stone into a skill based boarding. More fun for everyone.

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Sounds like DD is doing its job and giving us realism.  Historically, most boardings were successful only when the target was helpless and outnumbered.  That's realistic.  This meta of ramming a perfectly healthy ship and pushing it into the wing then boarding with all your mods has become a habit in this game and is nowhere near realistic.  People who practice this tactic hate DD.  Winning with mods is garbage.

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