Suggestions about the combat initiation, deployment and post-battle mechanics

[Marcomies]

Hello, I have been playing the Naval Action since February and for bit over 330 hours total so far and would like to start by thanking the developers for making this great game. I decided to join the forums and write down some observations and suggestions about the part of the game that bothers me the most at the moment: the transitions between world map mode and the combat mode, especially the aspects of it that result into immersion breaking and unreasonable outcomes to PVP encounters, some of which can be exploited to great extent.

 

The way PVP combat is started on the world map usually resolved the distance at which the combat starts on the battle map and so has a huge impact on how the combat itself goes. Together with the end-battle escape system and the way the post-battle screen (and the following spawning to the world map with invisibility and invulnerability) are currently enabling some very unrealistic tactics to avoid and escape combat on the world map. I know these issues can be worked around to some extent but that is just a work-around, not a solution to the actual problem.

 

My suggestion are not only aimed at fixing the exploits in the current system but rather improving the immersion of combat and making the PVP encounters at sea more decisive, while both tying the world and combat modes together more tightly, and removing some unnecessary overlapping and conflicting aspects of the two modes.

 

 

Here's the largest and most immersion breaking problem with the current transitions between world and battle modes:

 

First part of the problem is that if you are chasing a player on the map (in a faster ship) the player trying to escape can initiate combat at max distance, during the 20 second countdown it's not usually possible to close the distance to any meaningful extent (lets say you are chasing an enemy going 20 kn downwind and you are moving 21 kn yourself for example). As a result a battle will be started so that the escaping enemy is near or beyond the maximum range of long guns and after a short while the enemy can leave the battle, even if the chasing player was actually catching up to him.

 

Second part of the problem is that after this the escaping players enter the post battle screen, there they can spend a long time waiting for the enemy to get bored waiting. The people can leave the post-battles screen when they please and at different points of time and each of them will get the invisibility period and invulnerability. This results into an absurd situation where the hunting team is often in a wide circle around the site of battle, waiting for the enemy players to leave the post-battle screen and lose their invisibility and invulnerability. This feels like something more fitting for submarine warfare than age of sail combat.

 

Another option/exploit possible exclusively for pirate players is to actually start a combat with another pirate and so pull all the pirates of the group out of the world map, after which they can leave the battle and enjoy the benefits of leaving the battle. Even if the chasing player(s) have time to join the battle, they are faced with the absurd decision of picking one of the pirate sides in that battle.

 

 

Here are my suggestions on how the mechanics could be changed to reduce the amount of unrealistic exploits, making the pvp encounters more decisive and the outcomes more reasonable.

 

World map physics and combat entry: Remove the effect of world map positions between the attacking and defending ship(s) on the starting distance of the ships in combat. It would be reasonable and realistic to presume that the combat "starts" at or near the maximum firing distance of the weapons with longest range. Everything that happens inside the weapons range should be resolved in the battle mode. Positions on world map would only affect the direction and alignments of the ships.

 

This would remove the need for the unrealistic and unnecessary mini-game of trying to get into the best possible positions on world map at the end on the 20 second attack timer, leaving all the finer maneuvering to the battle mode itself. The 20 second timer could be removed entirely and the pseudo-realistic physics of the world map (slow turning ship with high inertia, moving at double speed in compressed world) could be simplified so that it would better fit the scale of the world map (less inertia and faster turning) as the initiation phase would no longer have so direct effect on the combat encounter itself.

 

Player would make the decision of attacking an enemy player by clicking attack button, which would be possible even before the target is in the actual attack range and the combat would start as soon as the target enters the attack range (which would represent the cannon range of long cannons on battle map, less than the current attack ring on the world map). Every player who is inside the attack range or enters the attack range during battle start countdown would be pulled into the combat and placed into the vicinity of the combat starter/target.

 

Any reinforcements that arrive to the battle during the 2 minutes timer(after the battle start timer) would enter the battle map from beyond the gun range of closest player (maybe the distance could increase as the battle timer goes on to model the difference in the time scale of world map and combat mode) from the direction which the combat was started from. This would make the starting of combat feel more natural and realistic as there would be no overshooting a target or other oddities that do not make sense on the world map scale in age of sail combat. This suggested system would basically mean that if a ship comes into shooting range of another ship on the world map, it would be able to try to take that shot in the battle mode.

 

 

Leave battle (escape) mechanism: Currently leaving a battle is way too easy, chasing a ship in the combat mode is all about keeping a ship tagged in using whatever guns are available. It is almost impossible to keep even a slow ship in combat if the battle starts at anything more than a medium range (and that is with long bow chasers). This really makes no sense and is very gamey mechanic that lets a slow ship escape combat just by starting it itself and makes escaping from a middle of a battle possible.

 

I'd suggest a system where the combats starts with the closest ships always being at little over the maximum range on long cannons. After the battle start countdown the ships should preferably start at full sail and speed, instead of starting dead still with sails down. The only way a ship could escape combat is if can stay outside a range, that is a bit more than the starting distance, of every enemy vessel. So (for example and with arbitrary numbers) lets say a long cannon has the maximum range of 1400 meters, combat would start with the shortest distance between two opposing ships being 1500 meters and a vessel that spends a certain time, like 15 seconds, further than 2000 meters away from any enemy ship would be able to leave the combat.

 

This way a slower ship could never run from a faster ship without using a more beneficial point of sail or some serious maneuvering or crippling the enemy (using your stern chasers would actually be useful for escaping rather than a reset for escape timer). Leaving the battle from in middle of the combat or without warning would also not be possible. For situations where a ship is chasing a ship of equal speed the current leave-battle-timer style timer could be used but with 20-30 minute wait time so the combat could be ended early if no meaningful amount of shots are hitting targets and the encounter is clearly indecisive (or the attacker is just stalling for time).

 

 

Post-Battle and return to world map: Staying in and leaving from the post-battle screen and the invisibility following the return to the world map are some of the most exploitable and exploited aspects of the entire game.

 

All players should be automatically removed from the battle mode within a few seconds of the battle ending and moved directly to the world map. The post battles screen should be replaced with post battle window in the world map mode where the loot and captured ships could be sorted out. In order to not force players into rushing with inventory management in middle of world map chase situation, the loot window should be usable even after the player has spawned to the world map and moved away. The requirement for moving loot into port would be first moving the loot from the post battle window, into the current ship's hold and if player fights another battle, the loot from previous battle would no longer be available.

 

Invisibility should be shortened to 5-10 seconds and it should only be a way to balance the different loading times of players, not a time during which the player can try to sneak away from the possible people waiting outside. With the simplified and more scale appropriate physics of the world map sailing, the inertia and turning of the ships on the world map should not play as large role on moving out of the battle and with the following suggested changes to invulnerability, the players leaving the battle would still have a good chance of escaping

 

Invulnerability timer should be largely dependent on how the player entered the battle (attacking or defending side) and how he left the battle (sinking the enemy, running from the battle or the enemy running from you). The timers would have the following logic:

 

attacking side + sink the enemy -> short invulnerability

attacking side + run from the enemy -> short invulnerability

attacking side + enemy runs from you -> medium invulnerability

defending side + sink the enemy -> medium invulnerability

defending side + run from the enemy -> medium invulnerability

defending side + enemy runs from you -> long invulnerability

 

This would mean that for example that if a running player is attacked and the runner manages to escape the battle he would then have a medium invulnerability timer, which could be something like 2-3 minutes. This would model the fact that a combat encounter would most likely last only under an hour while reinforcements arriving to the scene from beyond the 2 minutes battle timer range would probably have to sail hours or even days real time to reach the site. Even a small speed boost like +20% on top of the normal speed could be added to the first half of invulnerability to give the runner a head start. This way it would be harder to blockade a combat site and attack a player leaving combat.

 

The overall situation on the world map when the the invulnerability timer ends would be more authentic with the escaping player sailing in front of the blockading ships that arrived to the scene later. This would also reduce the effectiveness of the unrealistic and immersion breaking tactic of pulling a fleeing enemy ship into combat by attacker just to give the reinforcements time to arrive at the scene. The long invulnerability timer of defender in a situation where the attackers leaves the combat would discourage the practice even further and encourage only initiating combat when the attacker has intention of really fighting.

 

 

The effect of these changes: These changes would clearly divide the world map mode and combat mode so that things that happen at guns range happen in the combat mode and everything beyond that happens in the world map mode. Combat would never start from silly situations like two ships sitting dead in the water with sails down, 200 meters from each other. On the other hand the combat would also never start from a situation where enemy that is being chased is way outside gun range and simply disappears from the combat after couple minutes, before the possibly faster chasing ship has time to catch up with it.

 

The changes would reduce the unrealistic and unnecessary effect of the simplified sailing physics of the world map on the starting situation (and therefore, the outcome) of actual combat encounter and would leave most of the finer and faster dodging and maneuvering to the better physics of the combat mode. The maneuvering and initiation of combat on world map mode would no longer overlap with maneuvering in the actual battle and the encounters would be more decisive.

 

The changes to the post-battle procedure, invisibility and invulnerability would mitigate the effect of time-scale difference between the world and the combat mode in a way that is more fitting for an age of sail than the current, almost submarine warfare like, stealth and waiting game. It would both give a fleeing player more realistic and fair chance to escape from further combat and discourage unrealistic use of combat to slow down the fleeing player on world map. The outcomes of encounter would be more about what would happen in real life rather than using and fighting the game mechanics.

 

 

That turned into a really long text. Thanks if you read it!

[ingerad]

A couple of questions I didn't see answered here:

 

How would you handle relative wind direction with this setup at battle start?  Would you keep it set up similar to how it is now or would you have it default to a certain wind direction at battle start?

 

That's a small one, but it plays into the bigger question, how would you have this interact with the planned changes to bringing nearby land into the battles?  I could see these two issues leading to some weird interactions in your proposed plans.

[Precious Roy]

I would like the battle area and the ow to match as much as possible. That's what makes it more than a shooting gallery. 

[Marcomies]

How would you handle relative wind direction with this setup at battle start?  Would you keep it set up similar to how it is now or would you have it default to a certain wind direction at battle start?

 

That's a small one, but it plays into the bigger question, how would you have this interact with the planned changes to bringing nearby land into the battles?  I could see these two issues leading to some weird interactions in your proposed plans.

 

Wind direction would have the same relative direction at the start of the battle that it had on the world map (see the picture at the end of this post). As for the terrain, I don't see this system having any problems with it that the current system wouldn't also have.

 

I don't know what exactly how the devs are planning to do with the battle map terrain but i would imagine it would be something like the system used in Total War Rome II for example, where the battle map is a 1:1 scale version of the world map terrain. I don't know if and how the shallows will be on battles maps but if the battle was started so close to the shore that some shallow water ships can run to the shallows then escaping there from a larger ship would be an option to them.

 

 

I would like the battle area and the ow to match as much as possible. That's what makes it more than a shooting gallery. 

 

The suggested system would still make the situation on battle map very similar to the situation on world map. The current system where battle can start with the opposing ships being inside the carronade range of each other just makes no sense especially if the defender would have wanted to start the battle at longer range. Battle should only ever start from a situation where every ship is at least maximum gun range away from the enemy.

 

 

Here's an attached picture that shows a very basic world map pvp encounter and the suggested resulting deployment to the combat mode. I will probably make another one about more complex starting situations and how those could translate into the battle mode.