COMMAND AND CONTROL

[CJFlint]

My suggestion is to put a command & control system in place for group pvp and group missions or anytime players are grouped. This will help in issuing commands and orders to fellow team mates, with speed and clarity. Orders like waypoint, attack, defend, block, spike, speed, formations ect ect It will cut down on confusion "fog of war". Who ever is the group leader or "wearing the hat" will be the leader, there will be no 2 people fighting for control. 

 

POTBS had no command and control built into the game what so ever. Players used chat or 3 rd party voice com like vent or team speak to relay orders and info back and forth. So there became a huge gap between good groups and bad groups. The best groups fighters played together all the time, knew how to work to together, use 3rd party voice software, had good character builds for group fighting, and even new how to exploit the games broken-ness to their favor (which is the truth lol). There was even x teaming involved in some cases (anything to win mantality). They made their own command control. If you did not know this, no matter how good you were at pvp you would have allot of trouble in group fights, and end up very frustrated with your teammates. The reason is simple, because command and control was never put in game. If you did not learn the tribal knowlege how you would fail. So it wasn't always the players fault for losing, it was the games as silly as that sounds.

[Johny Reb]

Along this thread of group fighting Id like to add one or two suggestions for group fighting.

 

Along with the comment above about command and control, it would be nice if its implemented that the Admiral in charge could mark a target in some way. Something like how WoW had it where the group leader could but a symbol over one guy for 1st priority and another symbol over another guy for second priority...

 

my second suggestion:

even if you don't implement the above brainstorm than have a way to tab through the enemies in both directions. In Potbs' Port battles I have often tabbed so quick through the names that I accidently tabbed through the guy I wanted. An ability to tab "backwards" would have been nice

[admin]

Tabbing is not needed. Our firing systems requires you to aim and take into account enemy speed, distance. Also we have friendly fire - most likely you wont shoot into closely packed groups. 

Admiral will have tools to mark targets if he unlocked those skills

[Barberouge]

I LIKE THIS PROPOSAL

 

(BTW and on a side note, would it be possible to restrict player names such as K I L L E R, which somehow kill the immersion feeling ?)

 

 

 

I like this proposal but maybe blocks would be going too far. Blocking is a very basic move in naval combat, which should be mastered by any captain. Maybe blocking wouldn't be an order but rather a signal triggered by the targeted player ?

 

I have mixed feelings about speed and formations. Speed is mostly useful during sailing phases, and only requires one word. Formations can change in the heat of the battle, and hearing the orders can make them more quickly executed than reading a picture (as opposed to spiking which requires to find a name). Also fleet orders work quite well with SoLs or line fighting, but become less important as the ships maneuver faster or are in melee, where the players ability to read situations by themselves becomes more critical. Still they could be useful in some situations.

 

I'm not sure however about the purpose of such commands. I don't think they could make voice comms useless, I'd rather see them as good additions to voice comms. Furthermore I'd question their ability to play a role in learning PvP. Naval combat basics might be about knowledge, but winning fights is about awareness. If PvP becomes reading picture orders, some players might not build their own experience of the fights. Also I think voice comms are good to learn to rookies. Some maneuvers, or the overall goals of a specific fight, aren't easily explainable by in game pictures (for examples, shooting the sails or the hull, or a turn-as-one in staircase formation). I agree that theorically the learning means should be the same for everyone, but in practice the use of third party software worked well in all the MMO games I've been playing so far. I don't know about the "faction warfare" mode though.

 

During the first weeks of PotBS, having multiple people fighting for being the chief during the battle was quite awful and often did more bad than good to the fleet.

 

 

 

Also I agree with Johny Reb suggestions. Furthermore I'd like some command tools given to group leaders. It would be very useful and historically accurate: admirals, fleet admirals, squadron admirals, vice-admirals, counter-admirals, rear admirals depending on the countries. I think his comment about tabbing was more about reading the state of an opponent ship rather than targeting for shooting. I'd rather have command tools given from the get go rather than unlockable.

 

Maybe adding different target mark colors depending on the ammo type would be interesting.

[Adair]

my second suggestion:

even if you don't implement the above brainstorm than have a way to tab through the enemies in both directions. In Potbs' Port battles I have often tabbed so quick through the names that I accidently tabbed through the guy I wanted. An ability to tab "backwards" would have been nice

In POTBS alt+tab would take you backwards through the list, just like tabbing through fields on a web page.

 

Mind you, it's not like they told anyone that in the tutorial, along with half the keyboard commands and shortcuts.

 

Like, did you know Alt+click would fire a battery if it wasn't fully loaded? You didn't get all the cannons at once, but those extra few rounds sometimes came in REALLY handy.

[CJFlint]

Confusion could easily cause the who group to get sunk in potbs. I'm sure maybe we don't want to admit but we all probably have seen port battles and group fights go south. Some but not all of the time I think some of the group failures and loses were due to POTBS it self not having a decent command and control system, and the players not able to use voice com or understand the game exploits.

 

With this said a good command and control system built in with and voice com built into the game would help with the pvp population and help with some of the confusion that happens. It would close the gap a little between good pvpers and not so good pvpers if were comparing to POTBS, in regards to group pvp. Even if we only get some sort of command and control system, without voice com that would still be good.

 

Solo is a whole different can of worms.

 

Also I don't like having to compare your use examples from POTBS so much.....but the game had so much good about it, and so much bad about it that its hard not too. Naval Action is going to be a age of sail MMO, and there's really not much else to use examples from. There things to be learned both good and bad from POTBS. 

[Barberouge]

Also I don't like having to compare your use examples from POTBS so much.....but the game had so much good about it, and so much bad about it that its hard not too. Naval Action is going to be a age of sail MMO, and there's really not much else to use examples from. There things to be learned both good and bad from POTBS. 

 

I've been trying to clear my mind from using PotBS features or PotBS setup as a basis. Not because of good or bad, but because it's like a smoke screen. Then when things resemble to PotBS, its setup should be looked at.

 

Naval combat especially, resembles to the PotBS one: ships moved by wind with batteries firing different balls. And if we remove the magical skills from PotBS, we still find a very good basis regarding gameplay. Furthermore I'd say that any naval combat game not only would, but should feature the same combat tactics (which were close to what happened historically).

 

You used words (spike, block, formation) that fit to both NA and PotBS. I used other ones (line fighting, melee, maneuvers, sails or hull shooting, staircase formation, turn-as-one) that also fit both NA and PotBS. Those aren't PotBS examples, those are naval combat description.

 

 

 

I like naval combat in games because it requires sailing characteristics awareness, ship control and complex group maneuvers and tactics. For example, I've ever met one guy who mastered PotBS 1v1 almost perfectly. That says a lot about the potential of naval combat. But that also had to do with PotBS magical skills. I've seen quite a fair amount of excellent groups though.

 

In NA we'd have potentially the same tactics, but with different sailing characteristics and ship control. Also we'd have aiming, collision damage, friendly fire and flooding. That brings more variables in the table. NA will definitely not be PotBS.

[CJFlint]

Well regardless, In POTBS we saw a steep learning curve when it came to group pvp. I saw port battles fall apart into complete confusion, most of all on the pirate side on tiggy. Really poor teamwork and a lack of command and control, on the tiggy pirate side. It really caused me to question the role pirates in that game and if pirates should even be in RvR in the 1st place. On the brit side I did RvR with decent results, good with some loses. On the pirate side I did not do RvR for the most part because it was just terrible team work, and did not feel like replacing Herc or PHerc dur points every battle. I think command and control is really needed the most when you have 20 + vs 20 + players. Like I said earlier, unless a group worked all the time together they probably would not fair well. There was no doupt a huge gap between good group pvpers and bad ones. To many people would get discouraged and not even bother. On the pirate side I quickly learned that our faction did not do well in RvR, and not to even bother unless it was a port were I had econ. In my time playing POTBS I saw some of the best results mainly playing national and the complete worst mainly playing on the pirate side.

 

Now there was a few good 6 groups on the pirate side, but not enough. Most of them were re-rollers. 

 

Part not all, just part of the reason for the failures that I saw mainly on the tiggy pirate side, were due to lack of command and control. LOL one person on vent said trying to get the pirates to work together, is like trying to herd cats! lolol

 

Learning from that, I see a real need for a decent command and control system for anything above say 2 vs 2. Its really needed for bigger battles were its a port battle type fight, were there's 20+ vs 20+, it just is.

[Barberouge]

IMO the confusion in PotBS port battles was due to many factors. Participating in a PB involved grinding PvE. It wasn't needed to have participated to the flip, people could farm points afterwards. Many players were PvE players who just came here when their nation was winning. Those who wanted to learn the PB tactics, nations who wanted to create a common war effort, therefore had to deal with difficult conditions.

 

The overall will to win maps often required charismatic individualities, and a fair amount of RvR societies. Nation leaders were often port battle leaders, but some advanced nations had a political organization and a bunch of admirals. The best fleets I've seen consisted of players who were used to open sea PvP, and who could fulfill the PBs.

 

The pirate nations especially, included many casual players who were often discouraged by both the specific pirate scoring system and early defeats. The pirate RvR was close to perfect from my point of view though, realistic and requiring more efforts. However, it was based on the assumption that other nations would fight each other, which didn't happen so often.

 

But basically the quality of the RvR and of the PBs was related to the atmosphere in nations. On the Rackam server, pirates won multiple maps because they had a united, motivated nation. On Roberts, the pirates won 4 maps out of 45 since game launch, and none since 2011. The British won the first 6 maps in 2008, and the rest of the conquest history can be separated into domination periods of the nation which had enough good PvP players, charismatic leaders and overall less PB players.

 

 

 

There are logical reasons why everyone criticized PotBS RvR system, and why so few epic maps happened. NA conquest setup should be very different. I'd advocate more open conquest goals so that nations could choose what they want to fight for, tools to organize united nations, and overall more historical accuracy and epicness !

 

 

 

Also I fully agree about the need of command and control tools for groups.

[SerrialKiller]

I think marking targets should be easy for the fleetcommander like demasting shortcut commands and things but not vissible for the enemy side f course. Using teamspeak ore vent is always an better way the in game voice using. Thing might be best that the fleet commander can order who to hit like in wot whit the T button ore something like that then isseu an command like grape ore bar ore anything in that way.