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Niels Terkildsen

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Posts posted by Niels Terkildsen

  1. Another issue that there might be with my suggestions is that there seems to be a limit to the total amount of ships the servers can handle (from what I've read). Well, firstly the fact the player crew and ships have to be used limits the possibility of spam; secondly I think most people would prefer to cut down on random OW NPC spawning if room was made for hauling contract ships (one is random and without an impact on economy, the other is meaningful and player created).

    • Like 1
  2. 18 hours ago, Macjimm said:

    Contracts should be variable.  Allow players to place their own conditions, but do not impose conditions.  Be flexible.  Some contracts could include the ship and cargo and payment will be a portion up front, and the remainder on delivery.  Others could provide no payment unless successfully delivered.  Some could require the contractor to provide a specific ship.  Others could involve delivery guarantee and compensation to the payee for loss(es).    

    The reason that I put in the pretty strict contract rules is to prevent abuse and scamming. Of course, you can just fill in a trivial compensation amount at your own risk; hopefully the players will figure out where the risk/reward balance is, and how much people are willing to sell their time for, etc. One thing I would like to see though is personal contracts, so you can bypass the public contracting; in that instance it could be a lot more flexible. Likewise within clans.

     

    18 hours ago, Macjimm said:

    Outposts should not be managed at sea.  Outposts could be remotely managed, from ports,  but then a delay should be imposed to reflect mail delivery.  Outpost details, such as warehouse contents, crafting, should be accessible at the outpost only.   The teleport Doubloon charge should be viewed as wages paid to an Outpost Agent. The cost is insignificant.  If we were hardcore then teleporting to outposts would not allow sailing out of port, but only allow us to manage business within the port.   Hardcore would involve a different Passenger teleport to enable sailing from the outpost after the teleport - with both a;  higher Doubloon (or Real) charge, and time delay, increasing with the distance.  The cost charged could be provided to the clan owning the port.

    I did consider the postal service and similar things, but I concluded that it would just artificially increase the time everything takes; and everything already takes a lot of time, so it didn't really appeal to me in the end even though the concept is nice from a realism and immersion point of view.

    What I could envision though is some sort of maintenance cost for outposts reflecting the administration expenses (rather than the use of dubloons for Player teleport). If you can't pay the maintenance, your outpost will become dormant so you can't access it from afar (though perhaps it should still be functional if you go there personally).

  3.  

    One thing that has bothered me for a long time is the lack of immersive life and meaningful activity in the OW. What I'm going to propose is something that will hopefully make even those "dead" NPC traders interesting to OW hunters, and at the same time something that may appeal to the aspiring merchant mogul.

     

    Traders all know the bore of sailing for a long time in the admittedly rather dull OW of Naval Action, and OW hunters all know how unsatisfactory it is to capture NPC traders even if they carry valuables, simply because it has no impact on enemy players, therefore I propose hauling contracts in three different variants:

    • Internal hauling contract: The Player will use own ship(s) and crew. The ship(s) will be fully controlled by NPC on the OW from point A to point B as well as in potential instances.
    • External hauling contract: The Player puts up a contract for goods to be transported to a specific port. Time limit as well as class range of ship(s) required specified by the Player. Ship(s) provided and controlled by the taker of the contract. Contracts can only be taken by same nation players having the specified ship class (and fleet) ready; you can't leave port without the right configuration. Payment on delivery. Upon failure, the contract taker will pay a compensation specified in the contract - the contract can't be taken if this amount is not owned.
    • Escort hauling contract: The Player provides the hauling ship(s) from his own dock with his own crew. Time limit as well as escort class range of ship(s) required specified by the Player. Escort ship(s) provided and controlled by the contract taker who is to lead the hauler(s) to the destination. Contracts can only be taken by same nation players having the specified ship class (and fleet) ready; you can't leave port without the right configuration. Payment on delivery. Upon failure, the contract taker will pay a compensation specified in the contract - the contract can't be taken if this amount is not owned.

     

    Now, all of this will be very handy for the traders and crafters, but it will be a boon for the OW hunters as well. Instead of players being limited to one trade run at a time they can now delegate to NPC and other players willing to do the hauling/escorting. This will mean more traffic in the OW, and meaningful traffic at that. No longer will the hunters pass by those boring AI traders without a second thought - perhaps they're carrying a precious load sent out by an enemy player!

     

    Furthermore, this addition would benefit from some changes to outpost management - these have already been partially requested - but I shall briefly outline how I envision it:

    All outpost warehouses, docks, and production buildings can be managed from anywhere - even at sea.

    This may sound unrealistic or immersion-breaking etc. but if you consider it for a while: does production stop when the owner is away? Is there no staff at hand that can see to it that it is kept up? We must imagine that the Player doesn't only control his navy officer (or equivalent) but also his estate and dock managers etc.

    It should also allow you to make hauling contracts anywhere, so you can get produced goods hauled from far away outposts without personally going there.

     

    Another thing that is connected to this is the "tow ship" mechanic. I think this has to be rethought. Either it should be the hardcore way, meaning it has to be sailed, if not by you or another player, then by NPC (similar to the hauling contracts with the possibility of a strong escort, while not having to do it yourself). The moderate version may be to make it take a very long time to reach its destination, though the more mechanics we have that bypass the OW, the more dead it will be.

     

    A hurdle to get past is of course the NPC pathfinding on the OW, but I have every confidence that this can be solved by the developers, and even that it is something that they intend to improve in any case.

     

    I'd love to hear your opinions on these suggestions.

     

     

    • Like 8
  4. I'm amazed nobody mentioned the PiratesAhoy! so called "Build Mod" or "New Horizons" for the 2003 game, Pirates of the Caribbean (a.k.a. Sea Dogs II). I'm sure quite a few of you must have heard of it or played at least once upon a time.

    It's still being developed here, and is, I dare say, the best single player AoS game out there, with tons and tons of content - and you can play it however you like: arcade-ish or realistic.

    I'm currently trying my luck as a smuggler which is high risk high reward (got my favourite officer killed, and almost died myself, last time I tried selling on Puerto Rico, getting caught in a four-way fight between bandits, smugglers, natives, and soldiers!).

    I play using the DirectSail mode, which means I sail directly between the islands instead of using the World Map. It's great. The only thing I'm missing is the sailing mechanics and combat of NA.

     

     

  5. One of the least immersive parts of the game is the OW travelling. Unfortunately it's also one of the things you have to spend most time doing.

    I've been dreaming of a non-instance game where everything takes place in the current battle sailing mode - but perhaps I'm just a dreamer and it won't work (unless perhaps for a single player game)...

    • Like 5
  6. 8 minutes ago, Liq said:

    I think ships outside a BR range of 200 do not get matched with each other (Except when in a group), that's why I am kind of bored at the moment - Want to play frigates, but there are not many other frigate players, so it's PvE for the most part.

    I think it would be worth testing to get ALL ships in queue together in a battle, and let the BR balancer try to, you know.. balance it. Result might be terrible but worth a try :P 

    The only real issue I see is that frigates have too much thickness currently. A six or nine pounder should be better at penetrating at least medium sized frigates.

    • Like 2
  7. 25 minutes ago, Malachy said:

    Its the only one and it ain't that great either. Not when you have things like art of ship handling and boven etc. I don't use it much but have had it since day 1. Good pvpers aren't going to use second best mods, we want the best and for a very good reason . Settling for average gets you killed.

    Which is why there are so few "good" PvP'ers (those that are willing to and can spend the time to get all the best mods). My suggestion was a way to counter this by giving a fair chance to those that don't have the luxury of rare drops, etc.

    • Like 1
  8. Just now, Malachy said:

    Increase in sailing crew required is a malus. That reduces crew on your guns which are just a teensy bit important. Speed trim isn't even a common book so it's pretty expensive even if one is stupid enough to accept all of those malus. There needs to be common mods that are worth using for your idea to work and I'm not convinced  in the slightest yet.

    Sure, I can agree that there should be more cheap mods around; that'd make the suggestion even stronger.

    You're right about Gazelle, it requires more sailing crew - a very minor malus in my opinion. How about Optimized Ballast then? It's only got positives, and it's piss easy to get.

  9. Just now, Malachy said:

    Gazelle has crew malus, not a good mod at all. Speed trim has a sail and maneuverability malus. Again, not a good mod to use and detrimental to pvp. Those may be ok for pve boats.

    Gazelle doesn't have any malus afaik. Anyway, that's beside the point. Sure, you can optimise by using the expensive/rare ones (since you get less malus, and can use your slots for other things - but these also have a limit to their effect, meaning any bonus you get will be within reasonable values), but you can't reach a 10% speed increase by stacking expensive/rare mods anymore, so in most areas you'll have an even playing field, only slight advantages in other areas by using the expensive/rare modules.

  10. 2 minutes ago, Malachy said:

    There are no so called cheap modules. Anything worth using costs 1 mil plus.

    There are plenty of cheap speed modules for example, and if you can reach the max increase with a Gazelle Bow Figure, and Speed Trim, then there's no real need to search for e.g. Bovenwinds Refit unless you want to use your Knowledge or Permanent slots for other things.

    • Like 1
  11. Multiple durabilities again? No thank you!

    Clearly the modules are much more valuable and hard to get than the ships. I think an easy solution to this problem would be:

    Limit the max amount of bonus you can stack for each modifier (e.g. max 3 or 4% speed increase with mods).

    This would make it possible to reach the same values using two or three cheap modules, as when you're using one expensive/rare one: i.e. you don't have to search for ages to get modules that enable you to be competitive in PvP, and we won't see completely ridiculous module stacking.

     

     

    EDIT: See also this for other similar suggestions that may work.

    • Like 1
  12. I'd go so far as to say that all reinforcement zones are too big. Having only experienced the Danish and Swedish zones lately, however, I'll only attest to them being very much detrimental to traditional privateering business, effectively including 5-7 ports within proximity of both Gustavia and Christiansted, thereby making safe pretty much all the basic material production and hauling for these nations, and banishing hunting to the outermost fringes of both Danish and Swedish waters. As if the forts weren't enough of a deterrent already... (At least they make more sense than having a private zombie-fleet at your disposal, to summon out of the blue).

    • Like 5
  13. OP: You definitely have a point with the book drops. It's quite clear, in general also, that grinding NPCs with your SoL gives you so much more than trying to go out and look for PvP in a 5th or 6th rate for example; most of the time you end up with nothing to show for your effort. I suppose another solution could be to simply make RNG-drop books available for PvP marks.

    EDIT: And in the meantime make non-RNG-drop items that are now only available for PvP-marks, available through either Combat marks or RNG-drops... And only have cosmetics items exclusively available for PvP marks.

  14. Surrender should definitely not be a way to deny PvP-marks.

    Surrender is a bit of an oddity now: it used to be viable to surrender before, as you minimised your crew loss (will you still save your crew? Haven't surrendered in a long while) as well as your officer lives - now it just spoils the attacker's gains, without any major benefit to the surrendering party.

    I'd personally like to see surrendering being a natural thing to do if you have absolutely no chance, or after a prolonged fight where you were worsted - instead of all these ships mindlessly sinking. Give full rewards to the winner, but also make it an attractive option compared to getting sunk or wiped out (also surrendering during boarding should be easier - pretty much a one-click, in my opinion); perhaps saving your crew and giving you a few rewards based on damage done during combat (like back in the day) would be enough to make surrender a good mechanic again?

    • Like 3
  15. On 30/10/2017 at 11:08 AM, The Red Duke said:

    Was a great battle, glad I could watch it.

    At a moment I was vouching not for any of the teams but for the little ship - go Cerberus ! stick to the their wake ! - but the Ocean boys laid a nice trap and he overshot in between SeaWolf and Shelby with catastrophic results.

    Watching Wolf dueling the wind versus the frigate and proving such a good defense is what is worth watching in these games and learning and try to emulate in the OW combat.

    Alas the pistol and cutlass took the day.

    Great battle.

    Just watched the battle now. OCEAN was on the back foot from the start, with a few mishaps keeping them behind all the time, but the comeback was almost complete after they sandwiched the Cerberus (Findus), and SeaWolf was allowed to 1v1 Yordi in fine wind-dancing display - but then managed to get boarded by the sinking Pirate Cherubim... Well fought!

    • Like 1
  16. 30 minutes ago, Knobby said:

    Nice, love the old newspaper style. Just wanted to say though that the 'long s' ,or 'f without crossbar', is only ever used when in the middle of a word. Never when it's the first or last letter of a word.

    Thank you!

    I think you will find that the ſ (long s) was used both in the beginning and the middle of words, the exceptions being, obviously, when capitalising, and sometimes in compounds and the like - words such as successful where it may be written "ſucceſsful" (where the first part is ſucceſs, and that is how you write double-s when in the ending of words).

    Example:

    rdag-jan-30-1773-eugenio.jpg

     

    28 minutes ago, The Red Duke said:

    Only British used it afaik.

     

    Also it is lovely to read the Prussians in the leewards as Ruffians :D

    It was also used in a similar manner (with slightly different rules) in fraktur (in Germany and Denmark for example).

    Ruffians is glorious indeed ^^

    EDIT: See the issue from Friday the 23rd of September for actual use of Ruſſians under the headline: "Pirate Aggression".

    • Like 1
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