Forthcoming hot fixes next week - ships of the line penetration discussion

[Quineloe]

they are destroyed faster yes

 

not sure if it is good or not. i have heard some like it some hate it. Which means its a good unboring feature

what do all think of sail damage?

Maybe if we were able to repair sails more than once as long as the damage is just limited to canvas it would be better. As it is now, it's a bit too easy to destroy sails and disable a ship at long range now.

 

if you are tagged in pursue(from behind) the sail damage should be tripled (in conjunction to speed 5% for a hit)((rear sail, 3 masts sails , and front sail))

the flank damage can be the same (as it is)

You realize canvas isn't paper, right? It takes a lot of force to punch through a sail with a large object. That force is then lost. Is chain shot even capable of penetrating three sheets of canvas?

Edited June 2, 2016 by Quineloe

[SeamanStaines]

I like the high sail damage using chain, it feels intuitively correct that sails can easily be wrecked. However perhaps the range of chain is currently a little too high? Is this based on historical data? 

[CaptVonGunn]

1) YES

 

2)NO

 

3) TO many Marines on ships....  Quality should be the factor.. Marines numbers should be historical for the ship class... ie 4th rates around 45-50 1st rates 120ish ect.... but Gold ones would fight better then Green

[Manta Scorpion]

they are destroyed faster yes

not sure if it is good or not. i have heard some like it some hate it. Which means its a good unboring feature

what do all think of sail damage?

We often fight in smaller numbers. They just shoot sails because they can afford it. We cant return dmg in the same way, since atm it is easier to melt sails down (nearly every angle) but it s hard to get hull down. And if it dosnt work out for them, they just flee. So the side with more numbers should just shoot sails in small scale pvp. Would be cool to put sail hp a bit up.

Some more sail repairs would be interessting. Perhaps also a hull repair more but with a huge cd, like 30 min.

Edited June 2, 2016 by Manta Scorpion

[Hethwill]

I'd go with increased spread at every 100m for chain instead of touching HP.

[Sire Trinkof]

Sails damage is too much in my opinion, it is the way to go now, shoot sails, stop the opponent and hammer him to death.

Gameplay wise it is fun... But those tactics did not worked wel' IRL for anything else the chasing, and hammering hull right from the beginning proved to be more efficient rather than taking sails out...

Fun is important, but correct and successful tactics of those century should be also in-game.

[Inkompetent]

I'd go with increased spread at every 100m for chain instead of touching HP.

This would probably be a good starting point. Means that point-blank chain does a lot of damage (as can be expected seeing the amount of canvas, and both running and standing rigging that would be hit with significant force), but chaining people down from range become a venture more of luck than anything to be relied on.

[KrakkenSmacken]

This is an excellent video! Clearly showing the real killer of those days, not the projectile but the splinters...

 

 

Naw. Mythbusters sorta proved it wasn't the splinters.

 

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/6542-mythbusters-pirate-pig-splinter-test-video.htm

[KrakkenSmacken]

Sails damage is too much in my opinion, it is the way to go now, shoot sails, stop the opponent and hammer him to death.

Gameplay wise it is fun... But those tactics did not worked wel' IRL for anything else the chasing, and hammering hull right from the beginning proved to be more efficient rather than taking sails out...

Fun is important, but correct and successful tactics of those century should be also in-game.

 

 

How much did the ships move back then while firing? I think we move around much more than is historically accurate, at least from what I gathered reading about the Vasa

 

Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)

 

"At Tegelviken, where there is a gap in the bluffs, an even stronger gust again forced the ship onto its port side, this time pushing the open lower gunports under the surface, allowing water to rush in onto the lower gundeck. The water building up on the deck quickly exceeded the ship's minimal ability to right itself, and water continued to pour in until it ran down into the hold; the ship quickly sank to a depth of 32 m (105 ft) only 120 m (390 ft) from shore."

 

Sharp turns with open gunports is probably a pretty big problem.

 

Besides, we also don't have Grape doing the job it used to on sails.  I suspect that's because people would use that rather than chain if it was effective against sails AND crew.

 

Can't have rock paper scissors if paper can't be cut.

[Quineloe]

Overall it's fairly good now, just a tad too hard to punch through ships above your own size.

[Fastidius]

AI Boardings at the moment are a gear check. 

 

AI Boardings. If you have boarding prep on you will win if you have marines equal or higher than the enemy.  If you have boarding parties also then you will win faster.  There is very little chance the AI will outplay you if you keep prep up.   Santis fall in 3-5 rounds because they attack if they have more crew and make their decisions too early.  It is only challenging on Fine gear.  With MC and higher your pretty safe to cap 2 or 3 1sts in a battle.  Not sure how you feel about this as developers.  As a player i think this is about right because AI is for teaching IMO.  Means people don't take on ships without gear and that gear is required to the point you choose boarding or DPS specs. Perhaps tune their decisiontimes based on their ranks....ie a rear admiral decides in the last 3 seconds.  Commodore 4 seconds, flag 5 seconds etc etc.

 

PVP boarding is more challenging but again if you out gear them you will generally win.  I Personally think that you should have a marines upgrade slot on all ships so that boardings are generally more equal.  you can still focus on boarding or DPS but by having a mrines slot on all ships there is always a fighting chance.  green marines VS no marines is still a significant advantage when equal crewed.

 

Having a better understanding of the statistics in the UI would be good IMO.  Gunnery builds are overlooked by most people and perhaps if you make a marines slot you could add sharp shooters as feature to musketmen with it's own mod type.  give it a defence boost feature so that a sharpshooting gunnery setup kills more when defending and bracing against an attack.

 

At the moment Swords setups just brute force most options.

 

 

My honest goal for the whole Upgradesthing would be.

 

• Remove Duros completely (this will help build the economy)
• Remove port production and let the players set prices to fix economy issue.  You can tweak crafting hours regen to make economy work better but having any supply and pricing set by the AI will hurt the economy designs.  As time goes on you will find that the players will come to the right prices. I know our clan's economy works and is pretty stable and is based of building production values.  The only headaches come from when someone buys bulk stock from a AI vendor.
• make all non permanent upgrades not disappear when a ship sinks.
• Make marines a seperate slot not in the upgrades section so that you can have them on everything however each time you lose a ship it derank a level of skill.  ie EXC Marines die they become MC.  and say each time you win 5 times your marines uprank.

I think this would be far more appropriate design for marines, Ships and Marines in my opinion and would benefit crafting and economy in a general sense.  It also somewhat deals with marines being a crew adjustment rather than and stat adjustment.  Also gives you a reason to board everything you can and keep ships alive.

 

 

If you ever want to talk about economics I have pretty much everything you would ever want spread sheeted and am happy to help Devs with this area. 

Edited June 8, 2016 by Fastidius

[KrakkenSmacken]

Maybe if we were able to repair sails more than once as long as the damage is just limited to canvas it would be better. As it is now, it's a bit too easy to destroy sails and disable a ship at long range now.

 

 

You realize canvas isn't paper, right? It takes a lot of force to punch through a sail with a large object. That force is then lost. Is chain shot even capable of penetrating three sheets of canvas?

 

I wonder what the difference in strength is given different wind direction/strength.

 

 Loose fabric does not tear, it bends and absorbs the momentum as it distributes the force over the entire surface.  In light wind, (funny, with all the realism in this game wind is still a constant force rather than a variable one) or with your sails deliberately loose, it should be harder to make holes.

 

Certain angles to the wind should probably change the tolerance/damage by chain.  Of course the opposite would be true.  Like a crack in a windshield on a cold day, a small hole could cause a sail to rip in half if the wind was high.

 

Of course Myth busters proved that a Cheese canon could shoot holes in canvas, so there is that.

 

2:30

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLfkwF59wIY

Edited June 8, 2016 by KrakkenSmacken

[Kronans]

ok look at thise ther made a real gun from the time year 1620 and a ship side how it was made for warships that time. myth busters make a thinner side.

 

[KrakkenSmacken]

ok look at thise ther made a real gun from the time year 1620 and a ship side how it was made for warships that time. myth busters make a thinner side.

 

 

The splinters while more numerous in the above footage did not appear any larger or faster there than they did in the mythbusters footage.

 

Now medical being what it was back then, I suppose a few splinters could have turned all infected and eventually killed the crew member, I just don't see anything from that other footage that would indicate the increased amount of splinters were anything more than marginally more dangerous.

 

Certainly not as murderous as the cannonballs, one shot of which was able to penetrate THROUGH four full sized pig carcasses. 

 

Fun little argument though.

[DeRuyter]

A crew member with multiple splinter wounds could be just as combat ineffective as a dead one cut in two by a ball, just sayn'

[maturin]

The splinters while more numerous in the above footage did not appear any larger or faster there than they did in the mythbusters footage.

 

Now medical being what it was back then, I suppose a few splinters could have turned all infected and eventually killed the crew member, I just don't see anything from that other footage that would indicate the increased amount of splinters were anything more than marginally more dangerous.

 

Certainly not as murderous as the cannonballs, one shot of which was able to penetrate THROUGH four full sized pig carcasses. 

 

Fun little argument though.

You've seen the 32-pdr carronades shooting holes through a model of Niagara, right?

 

The splinters penetrated an inch of plywood. And one six-inch ball would create a cloud of splinters that could cover an area fifty times greater than the trajectory of the ball.

[KrakkenSmacken]

You've seen the 32-pdr carronades shooting holes through a model of Niagara, right?

 

The splinters penetrated an inch of plywood. And one six-inch ball would create a cloud of splinters that could cover an area fifty times greater than the trajectory of the ball.

 

Actually no, I had not seen that, but I think I just did.

 

 

Splinters through an inch of plywood is impressive, but if it was the 1999 live fire footage I saw, it looked like the plywood guys were fronted with Styrofoam to highlight the splinter damage, besides I found this quote on the link above.

 

"No. This test was made with a much larger cannon of a type not even available in the golden age of piracy (you do rememder that the MB episode was about a "pirate myth"?). They used a six-pounder, completely realistic for their intentions. That the results of a huge naval cannon appropriate to a man-of-war a hundred years later are different (as seen in this video) doesn't invalidate their test at all."

[Kronans]

The splinters while more numerous in the above footage did not appear any larger or faster there than they did in the mythbusters footage.

 

Now medical being what it was back then, I suppose a few splinters could have turned all infected and eventually killed the crew member, I just don't see anything from that other footage that would indicate the increased amount of splinters were anything more than marginally more dangerous.

 

Certainly not as murderous as the cannonballs, one shot of which was able to penetrate THROUGH four full sized pig carcasses. 

 

Fun little argument though.

what mythbusters dont take account is the speed the ball have and the waves behind it. and also when it hits the hull it also giving splinters in eyes cuts and metall fregments from the ship when the balls takes the bults, hits the guns. in thise time they wanted to take over the ship and repair it at home. and scientists that have been looking at thise have also sad that it was mening to take the crew so it was going to be easer to board the ships. mytbusters only looked at the splitners was doing the damige. but when they fired that gun they also took speed, chock and how organs whud take it.

[Cmdr RideZ]

This post is a bit late, but...

 

I like that not all the guns can penetrate all the ships from all the ranges, or even from close ranges

It just makes it to feel more realistic.  Indeed, I am against more arcade shooting simulator.

The small guns are always very efficient to rake or shoot the sails.  Have even faster reload time for that.

There are other ways to balance the small guns.

 

Raking is and should be buffed, even more.  Often I offer my stern to be shot at vs the side.

Balancing between stern and sides, should be that you really do not want to take that rake.

The gun decks were ~"long corridors", or so I have understood, seen when visiting the old ships.  When rake hit this kind of working environment, it was devastating.

Notice, when raking is buffed -> Smaller guns with smaller realistic penetration values will be far more useful.

Now if you buff the penetration as well, and/or damage.  Small guns can penetrate the sides, + will be able to rake well, + faster reload to shoot the sails as well.

You easily overshoot here, and small guns will turn to be OP.

 

Tweaking marines, I think boarding needs rather lot of improvements.

Would not waste time to just and only tweak the marines.

 

I think you should keep the realistic armor/penetration statistics.  Tweak the HP/DMG instead.

More DMG, less HP -> Shorter battles, with realistic penetration model.

 

Why they build SOLs if every rowboat could sink one?

If you now make it easy to penetrate SOLs, I am sure you kill the fun from the SOL players.

SOL alone vs fast frigates, will get stern camped, and rakes are buffed, and should be buffed even more I believe.

2xSOL, should be already very dangerous for fast frigate fleets.

If I can penetrate the SOL with my muskets, it just takes all the fun from the SOLs.

Stick with the realistic penetration values.

 

 

Medium Frigates are fun because those are agile?

SOLs are fun because those are ~floating fortresses?

 

In MMO gaming, when balancing the game, there seems to be one fact that always is defining the fun.

Which ever is the current FOTM (Flavor Of The Month), seems to be a lot of fun.  99% of people just follow the FOTM, and declare that as a fun thing to do right now.  I think that most of them do not even understand that it is fun just because it happens to be FOTM.

So when you see that players say that X is fun, there is a very high change that it is the current FOTM -> OP.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Cmdr RideZ

[Hethwill]

At the moment, with the tweaks and bits moved about we did went a step back. Carronades or longs, generally speaking. Two fixes ago mediums really made na appearance again, now they fade away once more.

[KrakkenSmacken]

. but when they fired that gun they also took speed, chock and how organs whud take it.

Yea, that was what I really noticed about the Niagara footage.  The splinters may not have done much penetrating damage, but all the figures wobbled around from the concussive forces.

 

If World War Z (the book, Battle of Yonkers story) taught me anything, it's that explosive ordinance does more damage by force than by penetration. I could easily see doctors of the time assuming all the dead and injured was caused by caused by contact with flying objects, and not "just" the shock waves caused by impact.

[maturin]

 

"No. This test was made with a much larger cannon of a type not even available in the golden age of piracy (you do rememder that the MB episode was about a "pirate myth"?). They used a six-pounder, completely realistic for their intentions. That the results of a huge naval cannon appropriate to a man-of-war a hundred years later are different (as seen in this video) doesn't invalidate their test at all."

Mythbusters is a TV show.

 

Their 'myth' was based on false premises in two ways.

[Ned Loe]

Please read these records concerning splinter wounds during Crimean War ship fights:

 

http://www.old-merseytimes.co.uk/NAVALBRIGADE1854.html

[akd]

 

 

If World War Z (the book, Battle of Yonkers story) taught me anything, it's that explosive ordinance does more damage by force than by penetration. I could easily see doctors of the time assuming all the dead and injured was caused by caused by contact with flying objects, and not "just" the shock waves caused by impact.

 

There were no lethal / damaging "shock waves" from impact of solid shot.  Even in explosive ordnance, the lethal area for blast is minuscule in comparison to the lethal area for shrapnel.  Of course, chance of death may be 100% in that small area, but most wounds are from shrapnel, not blast, due to the much larger area of effect.  Exception is probably IEDs due to their unique employment.

[maturin]

If World War Z (the book, Battle of Yonkers story) taught me anything, it's that explosive ordinance does more damage by force than by penetration. I could easily see doctors of the time assuming all the dead and injured was caused by caused by contact with flying objects, and not "just" the shock waves caused by impact.

I really don't recommend learning lessons from zombie fiction.

 

Explosives cause about 80% of casualties through shrapnel, whether we're talking about terrorist bombs or military ordinance.

 

And in the case of black powder, it's a low explosive. It just deflagrates. There's not much point paying attention to shock waves.

 

Edit: AKD beat me.