[Reinforcement fleets: feedback]

@admin To put in my two-cents (I know this might be bordering on breaking the rule of staying on topic but please stick with me), I honestly don't think the problem here is AI, their power or effectiveness, I think what we should instead be doing is making the forts much stronger, one reason why fleets NEVER wanted to go into a harbour or choke point was because the great guns of forts were not only deadly, but could use ammunition no ship could pray to use, and beyond that the forts often used "Great" guns which were usually guns that ships could not fit due to their weight, one kind of shot used often by forts shortly after the seven year war "Heated Shot" became much more commonly used by forts, just one hit from this thing wasnt a guaranteed fire, but it'd keep the crew running to find the rounds (Which means you need to put more and more people on survival) but entire VOLLEYS of this shot could prove detrimental to the survival of the crew and the ship, the inclusion of heated shot would make forts more dangerous and a much more preferred ally in a gank situation. not only in shallow water but deep water as well.

[Custom Rank in clan]

This please

[A suggestion that suggestions should have feedback]

7 hours ago, admin said:

This is an attitude of a hater. Are you sure you want to go this way?

We are one community. There are no us and them.

If we invest time into our posts you must too, and vice versa - if you invest time into your proposal we will consider faster or add to our useful feedback lists. If a post is unreadable and is all over the place or partially offtopic - it wastes everyone's time.

I think you imagined some exaggerated expectations and unrealistic rules and are trying to apply them to other members of the community.

We are working on our priorities - if you want us to change the priorities - invest some time into your posts, build on others ideas and use all previous feedback on the subject you are talking about. 

 

We like to always manage expectations and here is the reply to everyone. Regarding post acknowledgement.

• We are game developers not psychologists who are paid to talk to you.
• The contract is - we make the game, you play the game. There was never an explicit promise that we will reply to every post, every message, every notification. We read as much as we could but we must also work.
• When we need feedback on a particular subject - we actually post a question that is relevant for us. If you want us to acknowledge things that are not even on the priority list - this is unrealistic expectation and you should never expect answer on lighthouses when the only thing we are thinking about is chainshot and ui.
  • Here is an example of us asking for feedback and acknowledging it 
• We respond to community feedback. Not your feedback, unless its really good. But even if it is good it might not get acknowledged.
• If you want your feedback to get noticed by the community. MAKE IT GOOD.
• If your feedback is not picked up by the community it might still be picked up by us - but you have to make it good and visual, its not "design work" as you try to name it. Its just how feedback should be

 

I hope all is clear now @Gregory Rainsborough?

We will post a guideline on giving feedback soon.

 

I think it'd be nice to have a guideline on feedback/suggestion rules as @admin puts it, not only would it make for less crap the devs have to sift through but it would, while not guaranteeing our posts will be read, would instead make it more likely that suggestions that obey the guidelines would be seen, hopefully this is put in place sometime soon.

[constant connection loss]

I've lost connection 4 times in a 10 minute period in a battle today, wtf is happening? is this happening to anyone else?

[Random Encounters - Ghost ships...]

1 hour ago, Tiedemann said:

I like the OP suggestion in it self. It would add much needed content to OW and a reason not to just afk sail all the time, but keep an eye out for something interesting. I would still like like to add "The Trap" scenario for a bit of a challenge, and to not make it a guaranteed easy payday every time you spot a abandoned ship.

So you spot a Brig abandoned just drifting at a distance and as you sail closer to investigate. If it's a trader it might have some good loot in the hold..

Scenario 1: The enemy crew appears from under the deck, they man the cannons, sails and raise the black. 
Scenario 2:  An enemy hunter AI appears on the horizon and hunts you in OW. 

The enemy AI could be like a single AI from the epic event. If if you defeat it you can loot a special chest. The enemy ship can be special, so capturing it might be worth the risk. 

I do get that if you stumble over a scenario like this while afk sailing 4 fully loaded Indimans with no repairs in the hold, it would suck to get slaughtered by a AI Brig on steroids.. Or hunted down by a AI 3. rate for that mater. But I afk sail a lot, and I like the idea as long as it's 1 or 2 out of many other easy payday scenarios, and just spotting a abandoned ship wold be rare. 
We had aggressive AI fleets sailing around in OW back in the day attacking players, so that feature could be refurbished and reused for the 2. scenario.  

 

Really like that idea, to fix the afk sailer getting rekt by these ai it should be a question mark in open world you stumble across and you have to click "Investigate" in the top right corner in order to interact with it or have that event happen, then once you interact with it you load in like you would any other battle with the seemingly abandoned ship nearby, you go to loot it and once your at a certain distance or you click x to inspect it'll trigger an event where the abandoned ship becomes manned or an enemy ship spawns near by to give chase.

[Random Encounters - Ghost ships...]

I can honestly say I've never heard of "Emptiness" being considered a "Feature". By virtue of being a rare occurence I hope they see that it'd still maintain the sense of emptiness but also enforce an idea that there are mysteries within that openb ocean just waiting to be discovered.

[Random Encounters - Ghost ships...]

As we all know very well one of the oceans biggest mysteries (Aside from that of the Mariana Trench) are man made structures that for reasons unknown are abandoned and left to rot. In naval action it would be pretty spooky. Just imagine your on a one hour sail to do a trading run and in the distance you spot a vessel... her sails are furled and there don't appear to be any men in the rigging or on her deck, so you bring your ship close to her to investigate, even as you draw closer you begin to notice that the deck is in near perfect consition, cables, blocks and restraints are all where they need to be. doors and hatches are properly secured and there's still materials out on the deck. her anchor is on board yet there isnt a single sign of life. further investigation shows that she was hawling an immense load of spanish gold coins, enough to make damn near any man rich yet there isnt a single body on board, long boats are still here and the captain cabin is untouched, with the only thing missing being a captains log...

From these encounters you could come across Tbrigs, Indiamen, trincomalees, basically any ship with the bigger ships being much more rare and more likely to have signs of damage making them unsalvageable (Which means if you found a Bellona drifting in perfect condition it would be the open world equivalent of a gold crafted very sturdy L' Ocean. im thinking this could be done like having wrecks at sea, except you don't get bottles to locate them, they're just out there in the deep ocean (Atlantic, the gulf, etc) drifting along waiting for someone to find them. say there's only an allowed instance of 20 or 50 in the server to prevent lag and keep the occurence rare and creepy. people could gain goods, crafting parts or perhaps an entirely serperate ship from these encounters. I came up with this idea on sort of a whim but I hope to see actual reactions from the community this time around unlike my last post...

[Galleon-esque Trade ship recycling existing assets]

I sent an email however as of late I have not been getting responses through that medium of communication, so instead for the sake of certainty and public dispute I'll be putting this idea up on the forums and see if anyone agrees.

I've been thinking of this for quite sometime and have decided that since it'll be easier than having to create an entirely new ship and instead the devs will be using assets that they already have on hand and will have to make minimal adjustments to it (Depending on the way they implement it).

 

Instead of the "Wapen Von Hamburg" there would be a new cargo ship renamed the "Reichtum Von Hamburg" this is of course fictional but it would be a reasonably accurate ship, the Wapen Von Hamburg is the closest thing we have to a galleon and in reality it was a ship built to escort trade fleets during Hamburg's time of economic prominence however it only did this twice, now wouldn't it make sense that this ship could theoretically be refitted and improved to be a cargo ship? It has a VERY wide body (Thus more cargo space) and sits considerably high in the water, by "Refitted" i dont mean a permanent upgrade or anything like that, I mean a completely different ship blueprint that would instead be named "Reichtum Von Hamburg" which in english means "Wealth" or "Riches of Hamburg" which is a fitting name for a cargo ship.

 

At this point the name and fictional history and physical build of the ship seem to make sense, now how would the devs go about implementiing it? i see a few ways of doing this with the easiest way being this...

 

1. Recycle old Wapen Von Hamburg model in it's entirety with a few exceptions, I would have the gun ports on the two bottom decks closed or removed completely and keep the top two decks as defensive armaments while keeping the paint job and physical attributes.

 

Or if you'd like to go balls to the walls you could keep the model but remove the bottom two decks worth of gun ports completely, remove the decorative gold whales and change the stern decorations to something more fitting for a merchant ship. Then you'd want to change the entire ship to a Bark brown color and insert a Green stripe where the gold stripe is (Which would signify currency/wealth) to keep a sense of individuality on the ship. 

 

Now of course with this ship would be a whole new set of stats to go with it and I have put some thought into this comparing the Wapen Von Hamburg's current stats to the Indiaman and Here's a very basic set I've come up with, all of this is up for scrutiny.

 

Class: 4

Decks: 2, limits [6 - 9]

Cannons per side: 11

Maximum Speed (Default): 10.00

Turn rate (Default): 2.4

Sides (Default L/R): 4800/4800 Thickness (Default): 55                                                                                                                    KEEP IN MIND ALL OF THIS IS UP FOR DEBATE

Bow (Default): 1150 Thickness (Default): 28

Stern (Default): 580 Thickness (Default) 25

Hull (Deafult): 2650

Sails (Default): 4500

Rudder (Default): 126

Pump (Default): 245

Crew: 415 (min. 260) <--- I was unsure about this one, Indiaman has 380 and Wapen has 470 and I really didn't know a way to put more crew on it than the indiaman but significantly less than the regular wapen.

Hold: 32 slots, Max weight: 6000.0 <--- You'd need to change the Mark weight from 5000 to 10000, still not sure though if this is high or low enough.

 

I really hope the development team takes this to heart because I would really love to see a ship similiar to that of the 17th century "Treasure Galleons" in the game, Galleons were a huge part of naval history (With race built galleons being the main composition of the british fleet during the early 17th century) and to have this huge bulk that players could use to transport even more goods and would be an interesting enemy in battle.