Class Distinctions

[SirThorne]

Opinions seem to be divided on the issue of character classes, so I thought I might throw out some ideas.

The current system makes no distinction between a merchant, privateer, or a naval captain.
This works rather well, since it allows players to freely choose what they would like to make their focus at any given time.
The downside however is a lack of immersion in a specific character story, and a disconnect from the other realistic aspects of the game.

I suggest allowing players an open system that mirrors reality at least a tiny bit more closely.

Players should be given two options when creating a character; Naval Officer, or Entrepreneur. (optional)
 

---NAVAL OFFICER---

 

Naval Officers would start with a military vessel, but one of similar size to the yacht.
These players would be assigned to a vessel by the Admiralty, and given free repairs in national ports.
Players may choose to go on half-pay, if they wish to use their personal vessels.
These players may also resign at any time from the navy, relinquishing their current naval vessel and becoming an Entrepreneur.
These players should use military rank names.

Points of Note
+
    * Naval Officers may be assigned to vessels, including lineships. (but not everyone should be sailing large rated ships!)
    * Naval officers have a larger crew capacity compared to Entrepreneurs. (Bonus marines as well?)
-
    * Naval Officers must still purchase their own high quality outfittings. (basic outfittings are free.)

    * Naval Officers must send ships to the Admiralty for a slightly smaller profit than a direct sale.
    * Naval Officers may not sail captured ships without Admiralty approval. (may request to command captured ships, must wait for response.)

   
    
Overall Naval officers should have very low profitability due to a larger crew that must be paid, therefore, most should hopefully choose to captain smaller vessels.    
  

 ---ENTREPRENEURS---
    
Entrepreneurs would start exactly as players start now, with a yacht, and free reign to go where they please.
These players would be able to choose to sail as merchants, privateers, or pirates, in much the same way as we do now.
Nothing should prevent these players from joining the Navy later, as long as they maintain good standing with their home nation.
These players should use non-military rank names determined by play-style. (e.g, a max level character who attacks friendly vessels is called "dread pirate" or w/e)

Major Changes

+
    * Entrepreneurs may bribe their way into enemy ports to do business. (suggested limitations? smaller vessels cheaper?)

    * Entrepreneurs may command any vessel they capture, or sell it at will.

-
    * Entrepreneurs can't buy or craft lineships. (but may capture them in battle.)
    * Entrepreneurs have a reduced crew capacity compared to naval officers.
    
Entrepreneurs should have much higher profitability due to smaller crews, and easier access to resources.


---Crew Mechanics---

    * Gold rewards in combat should scale down as your crew count scales up.
    * Players should have the option to hire as few sailors as they thing they can manage with.
    * Players should be rewarded with more XP and with Admiralty points for having the majority of their crew survive a battle.

The gold scaling is realistic, as it forces you to pay your crew a portion of your earnings, while also rewarding players for sailing small ships.
The option of hiring a smaller crew is essential as it allows the owner of a large vessel to sacrifice performance to save money.
Finally, the additional experience and favor from the Admiralty discourage suicidal tactics that allow players to game the system by killing their crews to save money.
(note that this tactic should remain valid for pirate captains...)

 

I'd be interested in further suggestions and tweaks that people might offer.

[Wetworth]

Wouldn't that just be PotBS?

[SirThorne]

Wouldn't that just be PotBS?

 

It doesn't seem that way to me, but if you would care to elaborate perhaps I can tweak the suggestion.

[OlavDeng2]

I dont think it is something which should be choosable upon character creation but rather you can choose it sometime in the game, or if you dont choose anything you are just a privateer(note. not a pirate).

 

Gold rewards should not be scaled down however you should have to pay more in ship maintanance, pay your crew and rations and such.

 

I think that naval officers, if they get provided with their ships should get smaller(or the same gold amount works as well), you are forced to send captured ships to the admerality and you dont get paid for it, however you get your ships for free(which you sail) you still get paid(i prefer lower gold count for battles but you get a fixed cash amount everyday dependant on rank)

 

reduced crew capacity and limitations on what ships you can buy is a big no no, these limitations should come from how much crew and maintanance on the ship you can pay, thus making smaller ships like frigates more economically viable.

 

The limitations on what ships you can sail is hated in this community by a lot of people(see what happened when we were forced to sail certain ships) and what you are proposing i feel goes directly against what this game is about, open world freedom, i dont mind roles and think having a naval and a privateer role would be good for the game, imposing ship limitations, making one objectivly better in combat(due to ships of line and larger crews) i feel that this is a poor suggestion

 

just my two not so well written cents.

[SirThorne]

I dont think it is something which should be choosable upon character creation but rather you can choose it sometime in the game, or if you dont choose anything you are just a privateer(note. not a pirate).

 

This is a point I wasn't sure about, but it seems like the option to begin a naval career should be available from as early as possible. If not at character creation, than as soon as you are in game, from port.

Please however, don't let it fool you into believing that you will be locked into a play-style based on your starting choice, as that was not my intent.

 

Gold rewards should not be scaled down however you should have to pay more in ship maintanance, pay your crew and rations and such.

 

Functionally similar effect here, but expensive maintenance seems more prohibitive to players than reduced rewards.

since I propose naval officers get free repairs on their naval vessel (I'm sure this was suggested elsewhere actually...) it makes sense to balance their rewards to compensate.

 

I think that naval officers, if they get provided with their ships should get smaller(or the same gold amount works as well), you are forced to send captured ships to the admerality and you dont get paid for it, however you get your ships for free(which you sail) you still get paid(i prefer lower gold count for battles but you get a fixed cash amount everyday dependant on rank)

 

I agree with some of this, but (at least historically) naval officers DID get prize money for captured ships, and relied on that money rather than their otherwise sparse pay.

Specifically, the crew changes I suggest should make a naval captain prefer to sail a smaller ship if they want to make any money, where they should only choose to sail a line-ship if they think they will be participating in a port battle or other major event. (the line-ship should offer much smaller rewards due to the crew receiving so many shares of each prize.)

 

Half of the point here is that people may enlist in the navy at any time to help their nation out, but they don't get big monetary rewards for it. (just the occasional chance to sail a first rate.)

 

Changing between the two modes of play should really be as simple as sailing to a port, (perhaps your capital?) to enlist in the navy, or simply resigning at any port where you own your own vessel. Naval officers should still be able to sail their own ships as well, but perhaps not be able to complete some naval tasks while outside of their assigned vessel. They should also be unable to bribe officials at enemy ports like entrepreneurs can.

 

It might be more complicated for pirates to enlist as they would first need to get a letter of marque and get on their chosen nation's good side, but otherwise it should be pretty painless.

 

reduced crew capacity and limitations on what ships you can buy is a big no no, these limitations should come from how much crew and maintanance on the ship you can pay, thus making smaller ships like frigates more economically viable.

 

I'm not suggesting disallowing players from sailing ships of any size.

My suggestion is that crafters may not craft lineships, but anyone may sail them if they manage to capture them. (perhaps craft them for the admiralty as a limited resource)

An advantage however should be given to a skilled naval crew in this situation, and as such, they would be the only class capable of fully manning the very largest line-ships.

An argument could be made not to limit capacity, and I can still see this suggestion working without that limitation, as long as the incentive still remains to hire smaller crews.

 

The limitations on what ships you can sail is hated in this community by a lot of people(see what happened when we were forced to sail certain ships) and what you are proposing i feel goes directly against what this game is about, open world freedom, i dont mind roles and think having a naval and a privateer role would be good for the game, imposing ship limitations, making one objectivly better in combat(due to ships of line and larger crews) i feel that this is a poor suggestion

 

I don't feel like these tweaks limit very much for anyone, save for making line-ships a bit more rare, and giving people a relatively light nudge towards smaller ships.

One major point here is to add variety, and not force all players into the same end game frigate or line-ship.

 

I see your argument about making naval officers objectively better in combat, but I feel like this is less of an issue in the correct context. As the Naval career is something you can opt into at will, players can choose to enlist when the nation needs a combat boost, and leave when they feel they have contributed enough, returning to whatever they were doing before. These changes do give Naval officers an advantage against privateers and merchants, but it is realistic, and seems reasonable as they are choosing to focus their efforts into the combat portion of the game while losing out economically.

Note also that the extra crew really only impact the largest vessels, and naval officers should not be sailing those most of the time.

 

Ideally, the nation should have a balance of players in different roles with players enlisting in larger numbers to help out in port battles, and other times of war.

The economy should benefit from having players who are not currently enlisted by allowing entrepreneurs to move goods into/out of enemy ports (mostly in smaller ships), and by other possible economic contributions to the nation.

 

just my two not so well written cents.

 

That was a well thought out post and I thank you for it.

I have to say, after a > year long absence, I'm still a bit out of the loop on current opinions.

[Captiva]

Quote: "One major point here is to add variety, and not force all players into the same end game frigate or line-ship."

 

I agree with SirThorne here. This, in my opinion, is one of the more important issues within the game i.e. keeping an interest and a need for sailing all classes of ships throughout the life of the game. If this can be accomplished by means of various rewards without the player feeling that they are being forced to do something they don't want to do, then I believe the game will ultimately be more open and more rewarding for the player in the long run.

[SirThorne]

I would certainly like to see smaller ships remain relevant outside of shallow port battles, and this is at least a start towards that goal.

I think some thought might need to go into ways to encourage various play styles, for example, offering entrepreneurs who have a letter of marque to take missions revolving around disrupting enemy trade, while giving naval officers missions centered on defensive operations, and such. These would be optional, but worth a bit of extra coin for privateers, and worth some XP/Admiralty points for Naval captains.

[William the Drake]

I agree there needs to be a distinction between who can do, sail, and operate in certain circumstances, but I think these options should be chosen as the [layer progresses, not when they begin the game

 

I have suggested skill and career trees based on player focus in my Skills, Specializations, and How the Player Plays thread.

 

Having players aligned with a navy receiving smaller cuts and no rewards from captured ships is a step in the right direction. But there needs to be a trade-off to make it appealing; perhaps naval players receive more XP instead of gold than regular players? 

[SirThorne]

I have suggested skill and career trees based on player focus in my Skills, Specializations, and How the Player Plays thread.

 

Reading your other thread, I see a few interesting additions, but my knee-jerk reaction is to avoid anything that involves skill trees, as they nearly always lead to one or two viable builds with all others being considered useless garbage.

 

 

 perhaps naval players receive more XP instead of gold than regular players? 

 

I think at least one of my two previous posts suggests something that would do this, but yea, I agree with you 100% here. They should also be getting some Admiralty points toward fancy line-ships and such.

[William the Drake]

Reading your other thread, I see a few interesting additions, but my knee-jerk reaction is to avoid anything that involves skill trees, as they nearly always lead to one or two viable builds with all others being considered useless garbage.

 

Coming from the PotBS skill tree pov, I can completely sympathize with said knee-jerk reaction. However the biggest distinction between our two suggested systems and the PotBS setup is that we must avoid perk/bonus based skills. I.e. there there shouldn't be any "magic" skills that improve overall cannon range by 200 yds that only NOs have access to, there shouldn't be a skill that magically makes only Freetrader sails catch more wind and thus make them able to sail faster than anyone else. 

 

I would argue that my suggested system did just that (as it was a conscious decision after having been constantly annoyed by the fact that NOs could alpha-spike pirates long before we could even engage)

 

Yours does this as well, with the only possible exception regarding crew sizes:

 

+

    * Naval officers have a larger crew capacity compared to Entrepreneurs. (Bonus marines as well?)

-

    * Entrepreneurs have a reduced crew capacity compared to naval officers.

 

I think this is starting down the road of having some players given a unique advantage based on class (vs. having an advantage based on access to modules, which everyone has access to)

The key here, I think, is to place incentives on Entrepreneurs having less crew and NOs to have more, and you have done this with the gold scaling: If the Admiralty is paying (a percentage of) crew salary and thus less out of your pocket, of course you should want to hire more crew. But you don't have to and could pocket the leftover money. Conversely, an Entrepreneur could maintain the same amount of crew as a NO, but this would come completely out-of-pocket, and thus be less lucrative than sailing with the minimum crew needed. In this case, the Entrepreneur must consider a risk-reward investment.

 

 

---NAVAL OFFICER---

These players may also resign at any time from the navy, relinquishing their current naval vessel and becoming an Entrepreneur.

 

I would actually like to see as system where a player must consider a commitment of time to serve in a Navy: X amount of in-game time or X number of missions given by the admiralty must be successfully completed before being able to retire. It could even be done to where if you stick through your service, you can retire with some sort of bonus/benefits (special title, flag/pennant, clothes, bonus pay upon retirement), whereas leaving early will not only mean you don't get any reward, but you may also lose some honor/respect with said Nation.

 

+

    * Entrepreneurs may bribe their way into enemy ports to do business. (suggested limitations? smaller vessels cheaper?)

 

I very much like this idea, especially someone who wants to operate as a smuggler. It would be even more interesting with a system like one I've outlined here: Pirate Havens, Port Security, and Trade Regulations

 

Port Security- The level of port security dictates the ease or difficulty of a non-faction player (and Pirates) to enter a port. Port Security can be increased in a number of ways, all that draw from the port's wallet/economic success: things such as building a Fort or Prison, stationing a Garrison of troops, ordering sea patrols, etc. will increase Port Security (all of these will also require an initial purchase price and subsequent upkeep price). The Higher the security, the harder it is to sneak into a port.

 

Higher security would mean a higher price to pay as a bribe in order to get in. The higher security would also mean that your character would also need a good bit of persuasion skill to even have the option to bribe in the 1st place.

Edited December 6, 2015 by William the Drake

[SirThorne]

I like the idea of fleshing out systems like port security, I personally like the idea of pirates operating out of national ports.

They would need to maintain friendly relations with the port government to avoid a crackdown, but could offer some benefit to the port's profit margin or something as well.

On the subject of Naval officers getting additional crew, it helps not to think of them as a separate class. I really think that might be the major stumbling block here, and admitedly my thread title doesn't clarify matters.

(edit: For the record, you are right, removing the bonus crew would not break the rest of my suggestions. Meanng it is a detail that can be dropped if need be.)

Players would enlist and gain extra crew during the time they remained in active service, but they would temporarily lose some economic privileges. Players who didn't care about Econ could remain in the Navy all the time, but other players could join up before major events to bolster their national defense. they would have a combat advantage, but that would only be due to their ability to fully crew line ships. Lineships in the system offer very little opportunity to make any money, so unless a port battle is about to start, most captains should be avoiding them entirely. (Unless they don't mind being completely broke.)