An end to modules

[ragnar hairy trousers]

The early stages of this game ie sea-trials was purely skill based if you had a bellona it was a bellona full stop... victory depended entirely on player skill not what modules you had on board.

 

I propose instead CREW EXPERIENCE POINTS. 

 

the more time at sea the more crew xp. xp for each successful boarding or dismasting .

 

then if you specialize in boarding or say long range shooting then so does your crew and with time your crew will become experts in these skills.

 

if your ship is sunk then there should be a heavy penalty from crew xp if you surrender then the penalty should be less severe (ships very rarely sunk due to combat in the age of sail most contests resulted in a surrender).

 

as the system is now any noob with very little skill can use the mods to tip the balance against very skilled and experienced players! its very arcade like and to my mind game breaking.

 

A bellona is a bellona... its crew experience and the captains skill that should make the difference in combat!!!!!! NOT MODULES!!!!!!!!

 

Thank you for reading my post

 

Kind regards

 

Ragnar Hairy Trousers

 

p.s thank you to MR Puchu regarding our discussions on this subject. 

[OlavDeng2]

Im going to be honest here, i agree to a certain extent, as to say modules should still be available, but far from as common as they currently are and the crew experiance, while a nice idea should also only have minor effects(maybe 2-3 % bonus when maxed out)

Edited August 30, 2015 by OlavDeng2

[ragnar hairy trousers]

i agree that the bonus should be very little indeed.... the game should be about sailing and naval combat not "modules" as it is now

[LeBoiteux]

You are in favor of a skill-based game, that is great. So, you are against modules. I can understand.

And you refer to Sea trials when everybody had the same ship and the same chance to win. Great.

 

But, just after that, you introduce a feature that isn't exclusively skilled-based : crew experience based on the amount of "time at sea".

That means that a rather-skilled Rookie would have a disadvantage compared to a hardcore gamer who would be equally skilled. 

 

To me :

- Crew skills or specialization (in boarding, sailing, firing...) is a great idea.

- Modules can be interesting because they allow player to sail a specific ship and to specialize in some skills.

 

Crew experience as you put it, as realistic as it would be, seems to me as a feature that would artificially unbalance gameplay in favor of hardcore gamers, even though I can understand that you want to take into account player's experience.

Not a problem, to me, in a single player game (against AI), but it is in a MMO game, especially in PVP fights.

 

Just my opinion 

 

PS : btw, what you call "crew experience" is in fact "player's experience".

[D. Federico de Gravina y N]

Great idea, yesterday I was thinking in the same like you!!!!.

 

I think that the modules, should still be available, but only the modules that have effect to the ship, not to the crew(planking,speed trim, copper,etc..)

[Detonator]

I would like to see some kind of level up system, like a progression tree that's tied the Captain.  So you could spec yourself out however you liked.  I don't mind the upgrades though as long as they're balanced.  It adds versatility to the game.  Not everyone is good at the same thing so people should be able to customise their ships to suite their play style.

[admin]

Captains

Use/time based systems promote botting and are hostile to newbies.

They are also artificial walls that force you to play something that you might not want to play. 

 

We are against any time based or use based progression systems. Its all about you and how you fit your ship. 

Right now the only difference between rear admiral in a lynx and a rookie in a lynx is their skill difference.

 

Upgrades are going to stay. Tuning can be done. Upgrades are not level based and can be used by anyone to fit their ship to their individual play style. Level of quality is totally historical and represent differences in production and design.

 

Harrison's watch superior to other maritime chronometers of that time. Its was an exceptional quality watch.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison

[ragnar hairy trousers]

in that case sir maybe the modules need to be nerfed somewhat... they should not make as huge a difference as they do now 

[admin]

in that case sir maybe the modules need to be nerfed somewhat... they should not make as huge a difference as they do now 

yes. OP modules should be nerfed

please post suggestions in the data requests by wednesday afternoon.

[Crankey]

in that case sir maybe the modules need to be nerfed somewhat... they should not make as huge a difference as they do now 

 

o7 I believe we had the same agreement through comms recently.

 

Having mods that will give a ship a small tweak in favour of your playstyle is absolutely fine, but the current bonuses stacking or otherwise seems to be far more than a playstyle 'tweak'. Certain combinations are creating OP ships e.g. boarding.

 

I am in favour of lots of modules being possible, but providing only very small bonuses, which promotes good game play rather than a pre set win win setup.

[Schuetzengel]

and please make it so you dont lose the modules when on your last dura. it makes 1 dura ships way to risky and fighting without them againts somebody in a 5 dura - 5 slot ship with exceptional outfittings is frustrating (especially for new players)

[Ronald Speirs]

overhaul vanilla ships with no built in modules then crafting of perma modules and weather it be a sail, hull or gun modules but depending on the size of the ship to the percentage of increase and also negative affects if they apply then u could have general upgrades/ modules like survival or sail handling modules (ie Extra Pump, Fire Buckets, lightweight blocks or even crew training like better reload or accuracy, to make it more balanced all ships should be vanilla with only 3 perma slots that a player can craft or buy in shop then either 1 general or 3 general slots, i quite liked the POTBS ship customisation as it didnt go overboard and the upgrades didnt have a massive change to statistics, thats just what i think would work best compared to how this system is now.

[Laik]

We are against any time based or use based progression systems. Its all about you and how you fit your ship. 

Right now the only difference between rear admiral in a lynx and a rookie in a lynx is their skill difference.

 

As well as the number and colour of the modules they can find and afford. And finding and buying those modules is HEAVILY time-consuming, even with boosted money gain.

 

Crew was the most treasured resource during age of sail and preserving crew's lives was the sole reason for ships surrender. Without simulating this, you can't really have a complete age of sail experience.

 

I've been a long supporter of having the crew experience in the game. However this should in no way be a decisive factor for the engagement. The advantages of having experienced crew should be very slight (say, up to 0,2 knots additional speed, 1-2% more efficient at boarding, 1-2% faster reload). Very minor bonuses, yet desirable. Sinking should make you lose all crewXP, boarding - some, surrenderring - none. 

 

On top of that I believe ALL non-permanent modules should be 'grey' quality and easily accessible. Only structural modifications, that are being applied during crafting process should be up to exceptional quality. What is the reason for that? 1 dura ships are basically useless, because you want to have the best mods, and you don't want to lose them, so you won't use 1 dura ship. But if the mods are cheap and easily-accessible, you won't care about losing them. And you won't care about losing the permament mods either, because you can't transfer them to the other ship anyway.

 

One day we will also get officers which will allow us to customize our ships even more, hopefully with not too big modifiers too.

 

Last thing, which would add to the variety would be 'crew points' which you could spend towards specialization you want (say, 10 points, spend them towards sailing/boarding/gunnery/etc.). This simulates time spent on practicing certain skills while on the open sea. Again, it should be very minor bonuses.

 

With all those modifiers you could trim your ship the way that suits you. All of them combined should give you maybe 3-5% boost in one regard AT MOST (and this is a lot already). As opposed to putting Muskets -> you're a boarding beast, putting Speed trim -> you are a speed demon etc. This is very prone to exploitation and leads to 'one and only viable module setup'.

[Alex Connor]

Captains

Use/time based systems promote botting and are hostile to newbies.

They are also artificial walls that force you to play something that you might not want to play. 

 

We are against any time based or use based progression systems. Its all about you and how you fit your ship. 

Right now the only difference between rear admiral in a lynx and a rookie in a lynx is their skill difference.

 

Upgrades are going to stay. Tuning can be done. Upgrades are not level based and can be used by anyone to fit their ship to their individual play style. Level of quality is totally historical and represent differences in production and design.

 

Harrison's watch superior to other maritime chronometers of that time. Its was an exceptional quality watch.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison

 

Okay, I am convinced of the benefits of the modules system 

 

What about a system of crew similar to the modules?

 

IE, for each ship you get a certain number of slots for crew, and slots for officers. A hired group of crew (20 or 30?) fills one crew slot, officer slots are for individual officers. You can hire groups of crew in ports with different skill levels and specializations, topsmen, gunners, marines, etc. Plus less specialized groups such as able seamen. Basic skilled men are easy to find, the more skilled rarer. Perhaps pay to upgrade (train) them? Gives a way for people to customize their crew according to the specializations and skill levels of the men they recruited.

 

Crew loss in battle could be reflected in losing at random groups of crew based on the number of men lost, with heavier losses if the ship sinks (very heavy losses if the ship blows up), this would give an incentive to surrender if the fight was hopeless and save the lives of your crew.

 

After battles you might find recruits to replace losses, friendly prisoners rescued from an enemy ship or pirates being able to lure some men to join from the enemy ship (special perk of being a pirate) with different levels of skill and specialization. 

[Puchu]

Prelude: 

 

Since i was mentioned in the main topic i feel the need to set this right. And i dont want to see an awesome Idea flushed down the toilet by one wrong post. Basically im almost 100% supporting Laiks post as well.

 

The issue with the crew:

 

In the age of sail the crew on a ship mattered hugely. It has often been said, that to properly sail sols, you would need a huge amount of well trained crew. It has often been said, that one of the advantages of the british navy was their superior nutrition and sailors ability. How crew and captain work together would be a decisive factor in age of sail sailing and combat. 

 

--> The lives of your crewmembers are very precious to a captain and you wouldnt want to put them at unnecessary risks.

 

To make a proper age of sail game, you need the lives of "your" men to be valuable, because that will influence a lot of a captains decisions.

 

 

Right now in NA the lives of "your" men have no value at all. 

 

This leads to weird unrealistic behavior: 

 

- No surrendering (because there is nothing to preserve)

- Suicide bombing (because it doesnt matter if your crew dies on an exploding ship)

- Boarding at max crew. (accepting big losses on your own side)

-  and so on

 

The Idea:

 

Make lives valuable and the preservation of lives a desireable thing.

 

A possible way:

 

Crew gains experience through fighting. Noone ever said it should be time based. I'm strictly against any time based factors. (Fighting in this case means: Gunnery and Boarding combat. Just like the regular exp is calculated now, would be a possibility) 

 

Crew looses exp by dieing. So in every fight, you gain some, you loose some. 

 

Crew exp gives bonus to e.g. yard turning speed, reload, boarding, morale, and so on. 

 

A max level crew should give enough bonus to want it alive, but only so few, that it can still be beaten by proper sailing.
This is a balancing act. But at a first glance i would suggest starting with e.g. boarding: a full exp crew gives, amongst others a 2% advantage in boarding, which would be 8 sailors on a constitution. Just a veeeery slight edge, but still worth keeping. 

 

I dont know how quickly crew should reach their capped max level exp.

 

There are a lot more other ideas possible with this (that we can elaborate in a different post), but this is the basis of it.

 

If anyone comes up with a different idea of making the lives of sailors valuable, i'm up for it. But dont just say "make crew cost money" because that means nothing in the long run and just increases the grind. 

 

On modules:

 

This system was never meant to replace modules.

 

If we have modules, they have to fit 2 requirements: 

a ) all module types have to be equally valuable. If there is 1 build that is just better than the others and everyone has to have it, you might as well not have mods at all.

b )modules have to be so weak that you cannot win by "modules alone". This means, their bonuses should be so slight, that you can still outskill them. 

 

There has been a lot of discussion about the boarding mods. if I'd use the boarding as an example, i think that a 5 slot ship, stacked with 5 boarding mods should have something like a 10% advantage in actual boarding combat in total. Again, just a slight tuning towards your playstyle. It's a really hard thing to balance the mods, we all know that. But i would love their bonuses to be tuned much lower for the next test.

 

The decision of the devs needs to be, how heavy they want the geargrind to be. The more advantages (bonuses) you can buy with ingame money, wich somewhat equals playtime, the more grind there will be. But that's a devs decision.

 

"Right now the only difference between rear admiral in a lynx and a rookie in a lynx is their skill difference" and the modules he can buy because he has the money or bought them alrdy from all the places he has alrdy visited. 

[Dragonfire]

In the end of everything this game has to find "Balance"

 

Can a player ever hope to compete with a player that can play 5-6 hours a day 5-7 days a week  and reach significant rank and have all the mods and gold  he or she needs to dominate anyone (case in point Shelby )?

Most people have jobs and family obligations that prevent that many hours of becomming very skilled as some in this game.

 

I very much doubt without the mods in place they could survive without great frustration becoming the norm.

 

That said I could see the higher rank you gain the less mods available to you. You attain Rear Admiral or Commodore then you should have the skill to go against a Flag or post captain or lesser ranks  with one mod max or no mods.

 

Might make a captain think twice preying on lesser ranks not knowing what 3 or 4 mods the junior to him chose or it might make the battle a lot more interesting if the attacked captain thinks maybe his mods might be enough to have a chance beating the higher rank

 

Might be worth a try and see what happens might result in a lot more pvp.

 

Higher the rank you get and more experience then less mods available.

Lower the rank more mods you can use to get you up to speed and try to survive and not make it a feeding frenzy on newer players.

 

Just a thought might balance the game a bit more.

[ragnar hairy trousers]

i did not mean time based for xp...  i just meant that over time you could build up xp for your crew by fighting and sailing.... in battles!!!!

[ShiverMyTimber]

Captains

Use/time based systems promote botting and are hostile to newbies.

They are also artificial walls that force you to play something that you might not want to play. 

 

We are against any time based or use based progression systems. Its all about you and how you fit your ship. 

Right now the only difference between rear admiral in a lynx and a rookie in a lynx is their skill difference.

 

Upgrades are going to stay. Tuning can be done. Upgrades are not level based and can be used by anyone to fit their ship to their individual play style. Level of quality is totally historical and represent differences in production and design.

 

Harrison's watch superior to other maritime chronometers of that time. Its was an exceptional quality watch.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison

Doesn't it take time to earn gold?

Therefore the guy in the lynx (okay, we'll be somewhat serious) mastercrafted yacht with 4 upgrade slots and yellow/gold upgrades in each slot surely will have invested more time into the game than someone who plays for an hour a day, knows how to sail a yacht to the same amount of skill as the other player and ends up losing because player A invested time on modules.

Having officers who gain XP and loyalty to you over time is exactly the same as having someone go out, earn as much gold as possible then scour the seven seas (possibly using a bot to get them from port to port safely, giving all potentially hostile ships a wide berth) to buy themselves a mastercrafted ship and fit it with all the best modules.

I assume that, if the development team is against time or use based progression systems we'll see the removal of XP and everyone promoted to rear admiral?

I apologise if my tone seems overly harsh though I love playing devil's advocate and your post seemed like a complete oxymoron to me.

[Hussar]

personally I think a fully experienced crew would give more than a small/slight advantage.

[Detonator]

        I did say tied to the captain in my last post, I did mean the crew, I guess I was just referring to them as one in the same.  But yes I do think being able to level your crew in some way is a good idea.  It will add value to your crew, because it is as Puchu says.  Blowing up your crew just to evade being boarded or fighting to the last man isn't really the way thing's would have been done back then.  There should be a reason to surrender and there just isn't one right now.   Levelling them up doesn't have to be time/use based, it could be done as the captain is right now, through damage dealt.  Then it's almost impossible to bot it or use a macro.  Because you would have to actually be fighting.  The only way I can think of being able to do it is stat padding and should be really easy to spot. 

 

       I'd like to even see some kind of XP debt if the crew XP is never gonna be an option.  Could maybe scale with the amount of crew lost during a fight, means if you loose your crew enough times you could end up with a high enough rank to command a rowing boat .  Just kidding, a bit extreme but just over exaggerating it to get a point across.

[ShiverMyTimber]

personally I think a fully experienced crew would give more than a small/slight advantage.

It might, but you're still ignoring the elephant in the room.

It already takes time and money to get the best ship, people can use bots for this much easier than coding a bot to do things such as board and do everything correctly.

In effect I could probably find someone and pay them to make a bot for me that just sends my ship out of port and after trader only ships (except maybe the snow) and run this bot for like 18h a day until I reached rear admiral in about a week, with a more intracately coded one, running similar to the NPC's current AI you could use your bot to go after lots of bigger targets. 

In effect, my point is the only way you are going to take away advantage of older players over newer ones is to completely remove the XP and gold system and then all you have is a ship FPS.

However if you added officers and ships where the crew gain experience (yet these officers and ships with crew can be tradable, though there may be a loyalty factor when traded that would affect their performance; for example a ship with the best trained crew and officers with full loyalty to player A is traded to player B. the ship had already gotten to 100% loyalty to A but when traded it drops to about 35%. However if a ship is captured the crew (and officers, if any) would start off as mutinous and if you tried to send them to a port they would just mutiny against your skeleton crew on board their ship, meaning you would have to transfer crewmen and maybe an officer to the captured ship, to keep the prisoners from forming a mutiny. Another scenario would be that player X has been sailing in a fleet with player Y for a long time, they've gone through many battles together and emerged victorious, say player X wants to sell or give his ship to player Y; the crew, knowing that player Y is a good captain would immediately have a higher than usual trade loyalty rates (around 75%), this bonus would also carry with player Y's other ships, but since the crew haven't seen Y in action the bonus would be smaller and would be around 60%.

 

Loyalty shouldn't be too hard to acquire (and possibly lose), just a few battles won against NPCs and your crew will love you, especially if you use something like "divide spoils" at the end of the battle, losing about half your gold won in that battle to your crew and officers.

[Puchu]

Yes, there are many interesting ideas on how to further develop crew exp, to make ever more fleshed out systems. (Most interesting one imo would be to include crew morale as well, but for now imo we should keep it simple.)

 

For now, I would love to hear different thoughts on how to make lives matter, and possibly an admin thought on the general matter if possible to clear up if we should continue to think in that direction.

[Hugh Latham]

What are the bots referred to  in some of these posts?

[Benjamin Hornigold]

Imo the massive effect of modules is off-putting.

 

modules should be much lower effectiveness, 2 ships can look the same, weigh the same but one is much better ship than the other...seems odd to me.

 

I think having a small effect of modules and small effect of crew skill would be more enjoyable and historical

[Blackjack Symons]

What are the bots referred to  in some of these posts?

 

Technically a form of cheating. It's a code, much the same as the AI we encounter in-game, that is set to do certain things. In other games there are aimbots, which enhance people's aim to inhuman levels (in CS:GO for instance). What they're discussing here, however, are bots that essentially sail your ship for you. 

 

In essence, it makes things easier on the player. Some exploit the system, others just take the human effort out of it (e.g. a bot that is programmed to sail your lynx from Brunswick to Plymouth would mean that you could ignore the game for the two hours or so it'd take for the ship/bot to get there.)