Cecil Selous

Of course not . Just a quick photoshop job to visualize what I mean.

I am thinking about this idea for a very long time and since I see that the complaints about demasting are on the rise again and that many mostly blame the accuracy of our cannons for this, I decided to present this Idea in a hopefully fashionable manner. Keep in mind these are just some ideas I have and want to share. I don’t insist that these should be implemented nor would I be frustrated if they won’t (I will just write a bad steam review ). I too think that our cannons are far too accurate and thus enable players to snipe for specific parts of an hostile ship. Especially at longer ranges. Also the speed of changing your point of aim, acquiring a new target and the feeling of disconnection of the cannons from the ship, bothers me. Our cannons act like they are mounted on modern turrets. You can single shoot masts and if you miss you can instantly adjust your point of aim (horizontal and vertical) and shoot again with almost no delay whatsoever. Also, the up and down motion of the ship doesn’t influence the aiming at all. Sure, heel does influence your max and min elevation, but doesn’t pose a real problem. So the main subject of my idea is, that the cannons and their point of aim really get fixed to the deck and are affected by roll, pitch and heel. So our aim bar constantly moves with the ship. The roll in the game right now is moderate to almost nonexistent because the sea in the instances is very calm. Maybe that should change too (variation). Heel can be significant but everybody should know by now how to minimize it. I don’t know if pitch plays a role, since aiming at the moment is not very much affected by the movement of the ship. Furthermore, the change of horizontal orientation and elevation of cannons should be a bit slower. Cannons were manhandled with handspikes to change these parameters. This took time and to instantly fire a cannon during this (like we can do now) wasn’t possible. So cannons in game should not be able to fire while being traversed or elevated. A simple example of how it could be shown to the player that his cannons aren't ready to fire during adjustments What will be the effects of this? Changing horizontal traverse and elevation isn’t almost instantly anymore. Adjusting your aim to snipe enemy masts in a fast manner isn’t an option anymore. To have a further option of balance. carronades could receive a buff in horizontal traverse speeds due to their carriages. Changing elevation fast to quickly aim at the waterline and right after that back at the hull or masts won’t be possible anymore. You must pre-plan your broadside. You must calculate how and where you want to aim and how to position your ship to get the best result. In fact you will mostly don’t touch the elevation setting of your cannons and aim with the ship now and keep your guns leveled to the deck and use roll to either shoot high or low. You don't wan't an arched flight path of your balls and want to keep it as flat as possible. Elevation then comes into place if you want to compensate for heel or are very close to your opponent but still want to shoot high. Also there would be a use for battle sails and people wouldn’t sail around with all sails set all the time. Full sails let the ship heel but also stabilize it against roll (although I somewhere read that higher speed makes the roll more unpredictable, sailing experts?). No sails on the other hand won’t let your ship heel as much but let your ship roll too unpredictable. Battle sails could be the middle ground between both extremes. A moderate heel and a moderate more predictable roll. I also read somewhere on the forum that the current battles sails layout isn’t exactly correct with set topgallants and royals but again, I think our sailing experts can prove me wrong on this or give better explanations. A downside with current firing mechanics in combination with my proposed idea above is that many shots of a broadside probably won’t hit due to the ship movement. Well at least if you are not right next to the enemy ship. Right now we can single shot with space bar or release a whole broadside with a mouse click, where many shots will miss and be wasted. I believe that no gun captain would fire his cannon if the target isn’t in sight (I assume he has a clear picture and is not hindered by smoke). Therefor I would like an additional way of releasing a broadside. This was an idea of @Hethwill some time ago. He suggested that, while you hold down spacebar your ship will fire a rolling broadside (front, back, random). If you release spacebar it will instantly stop and will continue at the next cannon if you hold spacebar down again. Maybe a general gimmick could be to let the player choose between 2 or 3 different rates of firing intervals. With one where almost all guns fire at the same time. This could increase the probability of a reload shock of your enemy. A downside could be that it also has a small negative effect on your structure. But that's just an extra and honestly not really needed. Until now I just made it harder to actually hit a target. I would also propose something more positive for the gunplay. As far as I know, the transparent fire sector roughly shows where the shots will land. I don’t know exactly where the aim bar is pointing but I assume it is somehow an elongation of the bore axis (of course somehow the average of all decks). I would like to keep it that way with a few adjustments. I will explain these things with a few pictures too. At first, all decks should be independent from each other. This means different point of aim and also different cannon loads per deck. You will basically see an aim bar for every deck (aiming all decks at once should still be possible). If you go into aim mode of a deck, the correspondent bar will be highlighted and a vertical axis for elevation and horizontal axis for traverse will appear. There would be middle markers (where the cannon is leveled/perpendicular to the deck) and min and max markers. This way you could load chain on the top deck and aim it a bit higher, while the two other decks are loaded with double shot. Or you are up close and preparing for a boarding action. So load your small top cannons with grape, while still pounding the gun deck and waterline with ball. Since it is a bit more complicated, I think UI wise it would be probably better to use the mouse for everything instead of smashing long button combinations (like 1 - 1 - 2 for example). no deck selected all decks selected and in aiming mode (chain loaded only on the top deck) all decks selected and traversed to the right example to show what I mean: only the lowest deck is selected and all decks are aimed differently In addition to that, captains should be able to mark up to three individual set settings on the elevation bar. You can experiment against AI or whatever you like and find some good settings that will help you in future battles. For example, you roughly know how far 200 meters are. With simple trial and error you can set the cannons of all decks to an elevation, where they will hit the target at 200 meters and roughly the same spot and mark it on the elevation bar. Doesn’t matter if the top deck consists of carronades while the other deck mounts longs. Or you keep your top deck always loaded with chain and aimed higher, because the low caliber won’t penetrate the hull of the enemy ship. example of premarked elevation settings. Deck 2 and 3 set to almost the same elevation, while deck one is elevated higher (the colors are just to make them more distinguishable) Since gunnery would be less accurate with those ideas, other things could also be adjusted. Like the thickness of hulls back to normal values. Leaks can be more dangerous (although I think they are fine as they are right now). Performance of cannons and carronades could be adjusted. Maybe introduce different firing mechanisms for cannons like flint lock and fuse ignition, which affects the delay between the command to fire and actual release of the round. So a rough overview of what these ideas can change Pros: no more easy mast-sniping (especially at long ranges) no more easy waterline sniping long range chaining very difficult - easier to escape a purpose for battle sails positioning and maneuvers are even more important more difficult to get the perfect rake (also affecting long range rakes) individual loadouts and aiming of every deck possible reintrodution of reasonable hull thickness because it is harder to hit consistently also adjustments of cannon damage possible to make up for worse accuracy (a really good broadside should have a big impact) Cons: too complex and over-complicating mechanics too difficult can be frustrating no real difference with current calm and invariable sea states/ship movements many others I bet.... Swivels. Since we introduced swivels with the new pirate refitted LGV I thought about a way to implement them to all ships. Every ship should have some places where you can install swivels if you want. An example is shown in the picture below. To fit swivels to your ship you have to select in port where you want them on your ship. Maybe limit the number of swivels so not every point can be equipped with them. The player could also be allowed to switch the positions during the battle. This should take some time of course. To man the swivels in the battle instance with crew, there should be a second option in the boarding menu (like press 9 and then 2 for “man swivels”) to fire the swivels you can switch between them and aim them personally at your target. I made some example pictures with a swivel aft and one at the fighting top. This can be a nuisance to smaller ships who like to stern camp your SoL. Those swivels can also be used in the new boarding mechanics if the devs are still on it. So, this was it. Remember, these are just some ideas I had.If everything stays as it is, fair enough

This would be frustrating for players who can't join their friends right next to them. Most of the time it will be frustrating for one side. And if they spawn to far away to even do something, then why introduce it. With always open battles, a group of 10 people can control a very large area of sea and gank every poor soul in it. Of course now they can stick together and gank one poor sod too. But the 5 other guys might slip through. What he meant is, that we had these mechanics, and it was tested to be not the ideal solution.

That was a typo by me. I meant in an exciting battle. So it is still going on. My opponent and I are fairly even and suddenly his buddies join in. And you can bet, that everyone will cry for help in nation chat if he gets tagged somewhere .

no, but getting ganked after 10 or 20 minutes in an exiting exciting battle is far worse imho.

But it isn't realistic to be able to join a battle at La Tortue for example, when you were near Kingston at the time it started. We had all of this a long time ago and ganks back then worked in a completely different way than they do now.

I wouldn't say that something different than naval combat couldn't have a reason in the game because I think that new content can give players a opportunity to live another virtual life than that of a navy officer or a trader/crafter. But you are right, to make whaling not a fake feature it actually has to have good gameplay mechanics to make it worthwhile. Like own instances and the player doing the actual whaling instead of just pressing a button. With that comes a truckload of others things like animated 3d whale models, whaling boats, harpoons bla bla bla. So like you said a complex and costly feature creep and very low on the priority list imho. Then the question if whaling was actually a thing in the caribbean? Most hunted species mainly lived in different regions respectively were far more numerous in other parts of the oceans. Then what do we do with the gained resources? Whale oil, meat, whalebone and maybe the expensive ambergris of spermwhales. Just new trade resources with no actual use. Good for trader/whaler hunters and a new income source for PVE players but nothing really new and useful.

Well, I wouldn't call it beaten. The fight that actually took place was won by sweden although it doesn't matter in the end cause one side didn't really want to win this one and came with throw away ships and the other got out smarted but actually wanted to fight a port battle. Which itself wasn't really won either since there was no real opposition. All this talk beforehand, who has the best fleet, the bigger balls and e-peens or whatever, the constant whining about empty port battles, the crying that the game is dead and pvp and other mechanics are shit. But if it comes to the point where we finally could have a real, interesting to watch and meaningful port battle, a clash between two strong and competent fleets, everything is done to avoid it. RvR on server and in the forum is so full of hypocrisy it is no wonder if this game actually might die.

this

And I didn't see this. He had the same name all the time. Or do you mean just the little star in front of a name, that indicates if it is AI or not? I must admit that I didn't look for that.

How do you know, that he switched back and forth at will? Did he talk with you at the end? I left the battle so I didn't witness the end of it. But I told you in the battle, that this already got reported as a bug. I saw that he was afk at the start and then the AI took over which resulted in the never ending repairing. So unless you didn't speak with him or he with you, there is no indication that he switched back into his ship and did all of this on purpose. If he did and if this is even possible at all, than this bug is even more serious.

Hm, I don't consider myself a good pvp player but those long range broadsides with random fire and unlocked sector focus 100m really triggers me . Especially at 35:43. He is in the middle but the only ships getting hit are probably both allies to his left and right.

Well, but I think no gun captain would fire his cannon if nothing is in front of it. There are some occasions where this might be useful. @Hethwill, didn't you make the suggestion once to hold down spacebar to fire your cannons and stop doing it when you release it?

This was adressed so many times already and Sir Texas Sir said it again. Make chain and grape limited like double and charged shot and refill them after the battle. Of course the amount should be higher then the current amount of double shot and double charge. Maybe something like 10 - 15 broadsides of chain and grape per side (open for discussion). using chain and grape the right way should matter. You have to make sure that you hit and not fire away one broadside after the other because, well who cares, I have an unlimited supply of chain. In the process, limit repairs to one

No, it's a mechanic that is somehow impossible to fix for whatever reason.

Vernon is right though. Calm down, let some steem off somewhere else and wait for a response from the devs. Your reaction to a simple remark doesn't make a good impression.

I often see that too, that 1 crew member is missing on sailing or gunnery while there are plenty on the greyed out boarding station. If you dissable another one the missing sailor usually appears from somewhere. Crew failing to reload cannons although I have enough to do the job happens very rarely to me but it does happen.

Thx guys. So it's confirmed it is just my shitty hard drive. I also try to always tag AI for my first battle but sometimes you can't choose.

I start this topic to see if anybody else experiences the same issues or can help me to find an explanation. Everytime when I join the OW for the first time after starting the game It usually took ages to load and I mostly get disconnected druing the process. I have to start at the login screen again and then the OW loads very fast. I encounter almost the same problem when I join the first battle after starting the game. It sometimes loads for minutes and the battle is already going when I finally finished loading. This isn't a real problem against AI but if your enemy is a player he can already position himself to have an advantage. If it takes very long I also already received some broadsides. All battles after that, start in a reasonable time and I usually finish loading before the battle timer starts. I can imagine that it has something to do with my HDD (cheap notebook) but could it also be something else?

The thing is that in an extreme case you can repair your ship to a point where it is almost as good as a shiny new one. Lets say you lose a mast. It shouldn't be possible to replace it with an exact copy of the old one which has the same performance like the original mast. It should be a workaround which helps to stay at least somehow maneuverable to not lay completely dead in the water. The same goes for hull repairs. You patch some holes in the heat of the battle as good as you can but the hull shouldn't be as resistent as it was before. And you should only be able to do it once or at least with an increased timer.

Which is also a good argument for 2 minute timers or insta closed battles

Funny when you think about the fact that USS President surrendered to Endymion. I know this might be right for the game but it is still kind of ironic

So you are basically saing that I always need a clan or a random bunch of players behind me who support and protect me when I am in an instance.

No open mag. Although I think a ship with it shouldn't be more prone to starting a fire. Just because the access to the magazine is improved doesn't mean that the ship is easier to set on fire. Instead an open magazine should be dangeroues if your ships starts to burn. The increased danger of the fire reaching the magazine and causing an explosion should be the main disadvantage of open magazine. But that's another subject. The fleet mission was test man. It wouldn't have been a problem If I didn't get too cocky at the end and went in for a brawl so that they can chew on my hull hp too. But I never had the feeling of being in trouble. The reno was sinking and I popped a repair because I had a few men on survival and wanted to kill the remaining navy brig without being distracted by that. But then that lucky shot and fire started with repair already going. So I needed about 25 men on survival at that point. The screen doesn't show that those 108 men on gunnery never went anywhere even in the beginning when the fire was still small and they could have easily prevented the fire from spreading (bow chasers and not used broadside where already switched off before). All the guys in survival came from the repair. I know there is a fixed rate of how fast men change from one station to another. But how is this rate if the crew must relocate to two new stations from two other stations? Is it the same for both or do they interact and get in each other's way? Anyway, I guess this is a simple case of really bad luck then and it was lost as soon as the fire started regarding the situation I was in. A fire negating your repair and also starting a flooding while your men run around confused and not knowing where to go first. So dismiss this case. But to the other problem I encountered and which is maybe more important. First of all I see that I stated this wrong in my opening post. The repair where I already noticed that not every men was changing to repair was earlier in the battle. There was no fire involved and I had more than half hull hp at starboard and almost 100% at port. So I wasn't in any kind of danger and I popped it to see how much it would repair. But already there I could not get to 100% of the men required to repair on the station. I deactivated sailing and gunnery. Switched off port and starboard broadside as well as bow and stern chasers. But at one point nobody changed to the repair anymore although there were still some guys left and many men on sailing and gunnery (all greyed out). I don't have a screen for that but I F11ed it. As I saw another thread with a similar problem of crew being stuck and not reallocating and @Ink wrote to report it if we encounter those problems. So I did. I hope it helps. EDIT: I still got rewarded for that fleet mission. It wasn't a succes and I went to the bottom of the ocean but I got the gold and xp from killing the other 4 ships. Working as intended?

Today I decided to test the redeemable Indefatigable and did a master and commander flet mission. I wanted to test the performance at long range, demasting and close up. Everything went well with killing a Frigate, a Niagara and a Navy Brig leaving a Reno and another Navy Brig still alive. Piece of cake I thought. I slowly killed the Reno and while doing so I started to repair the Hull. This was the first time I noticed that not all of my crew members reassigend to the repairs. Even though I dissabled sailing and gunnery. The repair slot wasn't full and I had still many sailors left on sailing and gunnerey stations. Ok, a potential bug and I reported it. The Reno started to sink and the Navy Brig got one lucky shot of and started a fire on my Indy. That's when the real trouble started. Only a portion of my Crew changed to survival. With the repair still going on I didn't had a suffiecient amount of men in both of them. Adding to that I had still crew on gunnery although it was still deactivated. I did a double check with activating and deactivating it again but nothing happend. The fire incresead and so did the amount of crew I needed in survival. As I slowly went into fireshock my men started to leave the repairs and went to survival but too slow and too late. I filled another report. Meanwhile the fire burned to my structure and hull and accelerated the flooding. Now I needed even more men on survival. But my gunnery crews were calmly standing next to their cannons. Those 108 men on the screen never left their gunnery station. Would have been a great help at the time I only needed 30 dudes on suvival or when I wanted to repair. The last report also had a huge impact on my FPS and ping. Is it possible that this can have a negative effect on changing the stations. Well, grats to the AI navy brig. killed me with one lucky shot. I wanted to get rid of the Indy anyway because It's not my kind of ship but I wanted to make profit in the process online upload photos I lost a privateer some time ago to a similar problem. But there I had always enough crew on survival. Back then I was set on fire and left my enemy. I sailed for more than 5 minutes without getting shot at but the fire couldn't be extinguished. In the end I sank due to structure loss. Never went into fireshock. This was also reported by me.