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Crew fatigue and a need for rest and repair after battle (no magic instant repair)


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People can do series of battles with 'fresh' crew now, even replenish them on the open sea and repair ships by one click if they have repairs on board, within seconds after leaving battle.

I'd like to see a longer recovering period after participating in battle, which renders you vulnerable to counter strikes. And you need protection by your mates if present, or head into the wide ocean or fog for winning the necessary time.

My idea wants to simulate the fatigue and exhaustion a crew has to experience after having gone through a battle. Many of them may have a shock from the experience of close death or having murdered someone else, and minor wounds to treat, while the ship undergoes first and most urgent repairs on open sea. Deck gets cleared of wounded and dead, debris removed. In this period you have to be seen as reduced in battle effectiveness.

Serial gankers get a disadvantage this way, the idea is suitable for protecting their victims, at least limiting their risk with each attack the serial ganker decides to do, soon after the first strike. Our present and often-discussed 'seal clubbing' problem driving new players off the server will see some alleviating if it is no longer done in series, or considerably less so, because the aggressor needs a rest and becomes vulnerable meanwhile.

You need a timer starting after each battle, which counts down the time until your crew (and ship) have reached full fighting ability and spirits again. Any battle you enter prior to reaching full capability must result in a percentage of reduced able crew and ship systems. So if you fight, you do so with a handicap. Not all sailors are back on station, morale is suffering; speed and turns, cannon loading slowed down. Chain of command may be interrupted while officers are in treatment, or appointed replacements not familiar with new tasks and subjects.

Everyone will try to withdraw from battle grounds and recover in some secure place until his fatigue timer (think of five minutes) has ended. Or else face the challenge of having to fight with the handicap. Instant repair and replenishing can be done after fatigue timer closed, not before, given you have the resources loaded.

Fatigue timer reduces effectiveness from 75 % immediately after battle, to 50 % at half time (2 minutes 30 seconds in my concept), to 25 % penalty reduction after 3 minutes 45 seconds, etc. However, one could discuss if a partial repair could be done if forced while fatigue timer has not ended yet, when you see an adversary trying to take advantage of your reduced readiness by attacking you meanwhile, so you have to rush crew into battle stations despite them suffering from the fight before. The fatigue timer should only be visible to yourself, nobody else. For the enemy, it has to stay guesswork if you are impaired at the moment, or not. You could even pretend to be crippled this way and provoke an attack on you...

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Dont we want more pvp rather than less? In my Experience, battles being open the whole 90 minutes helped a lot in terms of protecting newbies. Still not perfect though. With a more balanced and attractice patrol zone RoE, safezones should be actually 100% safe (and maybe a bit smaller).

I don't know how active capitals are these days. But the few hours I actually play I spend around free ports or patrol zone. 

Now, having to dock up after every battle would be kinda annoying I think. Maybe a little realistic yes, but battles in this game are sped up anyway. An engagement wouldnt just take 30 - 90 minutes but several hours.

I can also see some mechanic issues here. Due to the existence of OW and battle instances, we already got the revenge fleet phenomena. Even if the battle is fair, you can just kite and wait til your mates outside have assembled a net, while profiting from the OW speed boost.

That suggestion with a fatigue timer which lowers effectivity would boost such behaviour even more.

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The only thing I could extract from that - and being on the side of the non-hardcore player on this - is the ability of ships to replenish crew, in the OW, by usage of the total allowed.

The absolute only change would be, when in OW replenishment of crew only with Rum and never bringing new crew from the Rank allowance.

 

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4 minutes ago, Liq said:

Dont we want more pvp rather than less? In my Experience, battles being open the whole 90 minutes helped a lot in terms of protecting newbies.

Battles are open all the time in the reinforcement zone (for your nation) and close after 10 mins for enemy and they still die. :D thats actual not true

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5 hours ago, Sir Hethwill the RedDuke said:

The absolute only change would be, when in OW replenishment of crew only with Rum and never bringing new crew from the Rank allowance.

 

That would be good if we had more people. Maybe 1000 or more. But as it is, PVP — especially the non seal clubbing type — is to rare. We don’t need the few who want to fight disappearing to go recrew after every engagement. 

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36 minutes ago, Farrago said:

That would be good if we had more people. Maybe 1000 or more. But as it is, PVP — especially the non seal clubbing type — is to rare. We don’t need the few who want to fight disappearing to go recrew after every engagement. 

You and some others failed to notice the proposal aims at protecting the "non-seal-clubbing-type" from the "seal-clubbing-type" who is doing it in series. So what is this nonsense about, fantasizing about "the few who want to fight disappearing" if those profit from the idea?

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39 minutes ago, Farrago said:

That would be good if we had more people. Maybe 1000 or more. But as it is, PVP — especially the non seal clubbing type — is to rare. We don’t need the few who want to fight disappearing to go recrew after every engagement. 

Take more rum ?

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Repair attrition is a serious issue as it is. Its near impossible to go through more than one battle without starving for repairs and dying from attrition. Dont make it harder.

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8 hours ago, Sir Hethwill the RedDuke said:

The absolute only change would be, when in OW replenishment of crew only with Rum and never bringing new crew from the Rank allowance.

 

This is a good idea. Rum atm is not used much. 

If used this way though maybe make it a tad lighter.

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Cetric,

You have a great idea.  I would love to see it implimented.  Players could use fresh crew from fleet ships or other players.  Lots of potential.

Unfortunately in this community realism and immersion are negative concepts.  Only suggestions that promote lots of fights, with little of no waiting between battles, will generate support.

So much hate and impatience.

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Cetric, this is a realistic idea with lots of merit, but the problem is that the other unrealistic issues make it unfair by itself.  When a battle instance forms, other players can find it and if they are unable to join, they can wait in ambush, totally invisible to those inside.  Even worse, we have text and voice comms so that the player inside the instance can call for help.  In real life, a battle would be fought and it would be days or even weeks before anyone else heard of it.  In that case, your idea would have realistic value.  Many of the good ideas on these forums are beaten down because of the overall unrealism of the game.  This idea of yours might work if it was combined with closing the battle quickly (and hiding the swords), OW shifting which matches battle instance movement, and a longer invisibility timer.  It would pose a huge punishment on the player if it were instituted by itself.

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6 hours ago, Macjimm said:

Cetric,

You have a great idea.  I would love to see it implimented.  Players could use fresh crew from fleet ships or other players.  Lots of potential.

Unfortunately in this community realism and immersion are negative concepts.  Only suggestions that promote lots of fights, with little of no waiting between battles, will generate support.

So much hate and impatience.

I agree that it would be great with more realism in combat, but it's a game - we're far beyond realism at this point already, there are so many things that makes no sense now that we should just focus on making the game fun and enjoyable whilst maintaining the combat pace we have atm.

But why on earth would you want more realism in OW? There is NOTHING to do, I often sail around for 2-3 hours looking for PvP,... Please don't increase that time further. The game is boring... like really boring 80% of the time.. The combat is just so good that it keeps me playing.

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There were examples where ships lost battles because they ran out of ammunition (Leander vs Generoux), I cant recall any historical examples where ships lost battles because they were caught tired. So long term fatigue is out of the question. 

Fatigue could increase tactical depth inside the instances as moving 4ton guns back and forth is indeed tiring and historically reload rate fell drastically after 3-4 reloads. Same can be said about guns overheating. But this would require a complete battle redesign to have an effect on battle. As just adding fatigue will just increase length of battles (overall lower dps).

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3 minutes ago, admin said:

There were examples where ships lost battles because they ran out of ammunition (Leander vs Generoux), I cant recall any historical examples where ships lost battles because they were caught tired. So long term fatigue is out of the question. 

Fatigue could increase tactical depth inside the instances as moving 4ton guns back and forth is indeed tiring and historically reload rate fell drastically after 3-4 reloads. Same can be said about guns overheating. But this would require a complete battle redesign to have an effect on battle. As just adding fatigue will just increase length of battles (overall lower dps).

dont forget the slower yard movement over time reducing turnrate overtime^^

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Regarding fatigue: Don't forget that everything doesn't have to be simulated in-game. Players get fatigued and frustrated as well.

During long drawn-out battles you will notice that people's manual sailing becomes less coordinated and broadside timing becomes less accuate. This is why so many PvPers are successful in overwhelming their opponents early in the battle causing them to panic.

Adding in-game simulated fatigue would merely help inexperienced players by limiting the gap between skilled and unskilled captains. I prefer it when it's the skill-level of the player that determines fatigue, not the game telling you when you are tired/exhausted.

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I dont know if we need gun crew fatigue but sailing crew fatigue would reduce stern camping because constant swinging around and avoiding broadsides would reduce yard power.

I can imagine a system that work like the boarding prep system. Every yard turn removes some prep of the pool while over time it slowly fills up. Constant maneuvering would reduce sail crew prep to 0. Reducing yard movement speed by 90%.

 

In my opinion thats a better option than muskets to give big ships advantage over small ships and to reduce stern camping. Making broadside fights matter more.

Edited by z4ys
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10 minutes ago, z4ys said:

I dont know if we need gun crew fatigue but sailing crew fatigue would reduce stern camping because constant swinging around and avoiding broadsides would reduce yard power.

I can imagine a system that work like the boarding prep system. Every yard turn removes some prep of the pool while over time it slowly fills up. Constant maneuvering would reduce sail crew prep to 0. Reducing yard movent speed by 90%.

 

In my opinion thats a better option than muskets to give big ships advantage over small ships and to reduce stern camping. Making broadside fights matter more.

Now that's a interesting approach...

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35 minutes ago, z4ys said:

I dont know if we need gun crew fatigue but sailing crew fatigue would reduce stern camping because constant swinging around and avoiding broadsides would reduce yard power.

I can imagine a system that work like the boarding prep system. Every yard turn removes some prep of the pool while over time it slowly fills up. Constant maneuvering would reduce sail crew prep to 0. Reducing yard movent speed by 90%.

 

In my opinion thats a better option than muskets to give big ships advantage over small ships and to reduce stern camping. Making broadside fights matter more.

So a modifier that changes for each maneuver a ship does and adds a penalty to the Sail/yard turning speed, maybe also the rudder turn speed? And then after a period with no huge sail maneuvers then it would recover the crew energy and be back to normal..? 

I it if the intention is reduce the stern camping advantage little ships has on larger ships, then this has my support and I think it is brilliant. But if this is not a mechanic intended to balance the smalls ships advantage on larger ships, it could have the opposite effect. Line ships with even more speed reduction on the sail and rudder movement would make them more vulnerable to stern camping.. So it would be important that smaller ships suffer more from this than larger ships imo.  

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1 minute ago, Tiedemann said:

So a modifier that changes for each maneuver a ship does and adds a penalty to the Sail/yard turning speed, maybe also the rudder turn speed? And then after a period with no huge sail maneuvers then it would recover the crew energy and be back to normal..? 

I it if the intention is reduce the stern camping advantage little ships has on larger ships, then this has my support and I think it is brilliant. But if this is not a mechanic intended to balance the smalls ships advantage on larger ships, it could have the opposite effect. Line ships with even more speed reduction on the sail and rudder movement would make them more vulnerable to stern camping.. So it would be important that smaller ships suffer more from this than larger ships imo.  

first i would start only with yard penalty. If its not enough maybe slowly give penalty to rudder turning speed. But yeah why not.

A little bit of exaggeration but thats how i would say current path of sterncamping looks like. The light ship would suffer more sailing crew fatigue due to rapid maneuvering. But it all comes down how the big ship captain would react. If he accepts the turn fight he will suffer sailing crew fatigue as well.

image.png.1fe41d3d79c66487459a9104d37a0930.png

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