[Suggestion] Placing Officers on Shore Leave

[Woody051]

I originally started talking about it here in the patch notes thread: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/15485-patch-993-bucentaure-acceleration-rework-and-many-other-things/page-15#entry288759

 

Part 1: I think it would be a good idea to have an option available to the players to unequip our officers and leave them in the outpost.

 

Part 2: I also believe it would be great to have the ability to have multiple officers but only a limited number equipped.

 

 
Suggestion - Maybe the total number of officers we have could be effected by player rank such as max rank can have 5 officers (or whatever number they see fit) the interim ranks would be limited.

 

Here is just an example:

Rank - Nation Rank Name - Officer Limit
1 - Midshipman
2 - Ensign
3 - Second Lieutenant - 1 Officer
4 - First Lieutenant
5 - Lieutenant Commander - 2 Officers 
6 - Master and Commander
7 - Post Captain - 3 Officers 
8 - Flag Captain
9 - Commodore - 4 Officers
10 - Rear Admiral - 5 Officers

 

So say maybe we can only have 1 or perhaps 2 maximum equipped to our ship at any given time. It would still be a pleasant option to have an ability to train/level up other additional officers with other perks that i can switch out.

 

Shore Leave - This could be a game mechanic that would essentially be like an item warehouse but for officer personnel. The only difference is perhaps maybe a gold price could/should be paid to approve shore leave every time you take the officer off shore leave (i think putting them in storage should be free, but withdrawing should have a cost). This way there is a monetary penalty so players have to choose wisely about their officers. 

 

If you're a wealthy captain then great!, perhaps you can enjoy additional benefits as in rotating out officers depending on your wants/needs/situation. If were something to be done for free then i feel it would be too unfair to other players who have invested in certain perks. 

 

An alternative balance instead of pay to withdraw from shore leave is a time cooldown. An officer once placed on shore leave could then only be available again after X hours/mins.

[Kiithnaras]

Yer shtole mah ideeur! ; )

 

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/15506-another-approach-to-officers/#entry288752

 

Still, I really like this idea. Options are important for engaging gameplay.

[akd]

part 1 - no. you will leave your officer on shore, then go on suicide missions to take lives off of other players' officers.  Everyone should have to stake their officers in combat.

 

part 2 - not quite in this form.  you will just have one officer with the best perks for every ship and every activity, making the choice of perks (which are powerful to the point of being bordeline OP) meaningless and just obligatory grinding. I would, however, like to see the ability to build a retinue of officers, each officer being a specialist and drawing from a unique perk pool.  Specialization comes with huge benefits, but also opportunity costs.  However, you shouldn't be locked in forever and should be able to change your specialization by dismissing and hiring new officers, or by "respecking" an officer with some form of point penalty.  You can change everything, just not on the fly.

[De La Rose]

Brillant

[Chimera]

Wouldn't mind the leaving the officer on shore even for a suicide mission.

Maybe a shore leave always takes, let's say 2 days.

That way you can't instantly switch between a port battle officer and a crafting officer, but it would give you some flexibility.

[Cpt Blackthorne]

There is no reason an economy officer would be needed on a ship. IMO aan econ officer with econ perks should remain land based.

[Woody051]

Wouldn't mind the leaving the officer on shore even for a suicide mission.

Maybe a shore leave always takes, let's say 2 days.

That way you can't instantly switch between a port battle officer and a crafting officer, but it would give you some flexibility.

 

 

Yep, somekind of disadvantage to compensate wouldnt be bad. Maybe you have to pay the 'port tavern' where your officer has to sleep and eat.

 

 

Exactly! It wouldn't be fair to those who play a dedicated PVP or a dedicated crafting/economy playstyle if we could just interchangeably swap around without at least some form of disadvantage or limitation to keep it in check. It could come in the form of money as in paying to take the officer off of the shore leave status (to take out of storage) or in the form of time hours or days. Perhaps even both if the costs were reasonable.

 

Maybe even one economical way could be as follows:

Player can place officers into storage for free (Always)

Player can withdraw officer from storage after a time cooldown (hours/days) for free

OR a Withdraw now option will be another choice, however to do so the player must pay a fee (in game credits)

 

The idea here is that having multiple officers isn't a necessity but a luxury. To train up multiple officers and to pick and choose what skills you want on them gives individual player goals in the game but it also gives the freedoms of making their accounts more unique.

 

For a player to sustain this luxury that is to enjoy their customizability options and to employ their various officer types they must either be a successfull and skilled player, or a profitable player and/or has the support of a clan or friends.

 

Regardless we are still faced with the actual leveling of the officers themselves which in itself requires effort and time to do.

 

 

There is no reason an economy officer would be needed on a ship. IMO aan econ officer with econ perks should remain land based.

 

I agree and disagree.

 

I feel like there should be risk vs reward options for these types of things. In order for a player to enjoy the perks that a certain officer rewards we all kind of have to make a sacrifice somewhere. The economy player is diminishing their combat ability in order to improve their wealth and production efficiency. Likewise in the exact opposite end of the spectrum combat-heavy perks obviously aren't going to help you sitting in port building ships.

 

Diversity and career path is what is going to make the game more fun and interesting i think. You will get various perk-builds in either combat or economy, but you may also find players making combat/economy hybrid officers.

 

What i would also like to point out is that if an officer "remained on land" but still provided its perk rewards to the player then it would be a little bit unfair as these officers would be immortal as they would never be at risk of being killed.

[BallsOfSteel]

We all have officers whose perks were full or almost full then more are released but no way of buying additional officers so we can create specialists officers for specific missions.

 

This has merit

[James Rackham]

Counter the issue of no risk of officers by making it impossible to take a ship out without an officer, you have to have at least 1 active officer available and equipped on your ship to sail it and you can put other officers onto shore leave to put them out of use or into "barracks" if you want to keep them in reserve to use on different engagements with a rank based number of reserve slots with say 5 shore leave slots similar to outpost slots that get progressively more expensive as you open them up with a daily charge for board and lodgings for officers on shore leave but not those in your reserve as they are on active duty and living in military accommodation.

[Woody051]

Counter the issue of no risk of officers by making it impossible to take a ship out without an officer, you have to have at least 1 active officer available and equipped on your ship to sail it and you can put other officers onto shore leave to put them out of use or into "barracks" if you want to keep them in reserve to use on different engagements with a rank based number of reserve slots with say 5 shore leave slots similar to outpost slots that get progressively more expensive as you open them up with a daily charge for board and lodgings for officers on shore leave but not those in your reserve as they are on active duty and living in military accommodation.

 

Hmm, maybe a building-type similar to an iron mine or hemp plantation (crafting building) could be built but instead it would be a Military Building. This could be a Guild/Clan owned structure and there could be limitations associated with it. 

 

Drill School / Officer Academy

 

Suggestions could be:

• Building can not be built in your nation's capital
• Building can only be built in regional capitals
• Players can place an officer into the building for a fee
• Building will provide officer exp per day (at a maximum daily cap)
• Players have to pay to withdraw the officer
• If port is captured, all officers that were assigned to the building now become lootable to the capturing clan. Building also becomes destroyed. (Risk vs Gain)

[Woody051]

It will be interesting now that players have to travel further to find their shipwrecks how more frequently people are losing their officers.

[Woody051]

I still think this is a priority given that some players are considering not even undocking or PVP'ing due to not wanting to lose lives on the economy officers.

[Woody051]

 

 

I'm still advocating any ideas for officer flexibility and customization as well as choices to the player for the mitigation of lives(durability) lost.

Edited August 15, 2016 by Woody051

[Woody051]

I also want more depth in the officer feature. Right now, you level up, choose the perks and you do nothing more. You can nearly forget that you have an officer.

It is a good feature but it lacks something more.

 

Currently it looks like officers exist only as a stat enhancement (or handicapped depending how you look at it.) but the only way we get to interact with them is through the interface screen.

 

I agree there should be more in-depth interaction as they do seem lacking. Being able to name them/rename them is a start. A step up from that could be showing them on the deck of our ship walking about and eventually when we have the more critical game mechanics ironed out then we can get into uniforms and apparel.

 

 

Officers to fleet? - We have the ability to send ships to fleet and have AI ships sail with us, perhaps a future ability will be to send an officer to ship if i wanted to either during or prior to a battle.

 

 

Experience - Another setback i feel is that those of us who are already at max rank are in a sense disappointed as player experience doesn't benefit us any longer so little things such as travel exp or just PVP and PVE there is wasted rewards. I feel that once player reach the max rank the so-called "end-game" phase that there should be a better means of distributing our rewards one one way of doing this is enhanced experienced gains for our officers. I would make the argument that players at this max-rank end-game phase are among the most likely to fight and potentially kill off their officers so in theory they would also be the ones in a hurry to re-train up a replacement in order to continue to enjoy the game.

[maturin]

You mean we can't do this now? I have to take my Light Ship Master on board my SoL?

[Woody051]

You mean we can't do this now? I have to take my Light Ship Master on board my SoL?

 

 

As of right now you can't, no. So that officer is always with you and any perks that are ship-class specific (or economy specific) won't help you if on a different type like in that situation.

[Woody051]

Hahahaha bit absurd, isnt it?

 

Ditto

[Woody051]

I haven't seen any mention of anything similar to this yet in any upcoming patches. So i'm still suggesting this.