akd
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Posts posted by akd
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Later arrivals then can move to the opposite side of the battle circle effectively cutting of any line of retreat of the fleeing party. this would not be possible in any realistic scenario obviously. enough ships can completely surround a smaller force this way.
This can be abused because reinforcements joining at 3 secs at the near side of the circle will spawn the same distance as reinforcements that join at the far side of the circle at 119 secs. This means reinforcements have 2 min of OW compressed time to exploit against the players pinned in the instance. (And to be clear, the previous spawn on the attacker system was also exploitable, just in a different way.)
This could be solved very easily by steadily growing the join circle (at say 10 kts, maybe more) as soon as the battle starts and until it closes. Not joining immediately and instead sailing through the circle would then come with a large distance penalty in the instance that directly compensates for the additional OW compressed time. It would also mean increased risk of not making it to the far edge before the battle closes. In general it would be better to join at the start or nearest edge, but reinforcements would still be able to join at distance and from the appropriate direction relative to OW (because a reinforcement might fairly be coming from the other side, rather than sailing through the circle to exploit). This would also solve any problems with land, because as soon as the circle grows to eclipse land, no player would be able to join from the location since they would not be able access the edge of the circle.
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The problem with the larger capture circle is that splitting or undesirable pulls into battles becomes more of a problem (or join / no join mechanics become very complicated). I suggest "other system" again: current mechanics except once the battle is created, the join circle expands until closing at 2 min. Anyone joining late is consequently placed at an appropriate distance, but joining from the wider area remains elective without need to respond to a prompt. Choosing not to join as soon as possible would have a big trade-off.
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Fun fact: some battles in the Age of Sail were fought with "BR restrictions" (i.e. combatants made active efforts to equalize odds in an engagement even when more force was available).Yes, the positional mechanic will allow them to surround you. It's not a very good mechanic.
In any contest of RVR opponents are not necessarily equal in skills, numbers, technology or economy. 1v1 by far favors technology and skill while minimizing economic and numerical advantages. So it's only realistic simulation of war in 2 out of 4. Ganking or otherwise using strategy that pits superior numbers to inferior numbers neutralizes skill and tech advantages and favors numeric and economic. Throughout history, real life history, the balance of these four factors if war has shaped the world. The more numerous little guys only chance to combat the high tech skilled giant has always been to swarm the opponent. It's as important strategically to be able to do this as to exert superior skills. Forced 1v1s is just favoritism to skill and tech.
If WW2 had been fought with 1.5BR rules enforced we would all be speaking German right now. The Germans had the higher tech and skills. The Soviet state excelled in numbers. The USA in economy. The British skills at espionage and recon had the rest beat. The Japanese probably the most determination. We can't just shut an entire groups war advantage off and think we're still simulating a war.
Also, your understanding of WWII is drawn mostly from silly stereotypes. The US had enormous tech advantages over Germany, and superior "skills" (although this a pretty silly concept to apply to national comparisons) in key areas.
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1. You can put an immortal mod on your ship that reduces heel. You cannot do that with speed.
2. You can put 3 mods on your ship and max speed into a characteristic that gives absolute dominance (or guaranteed escape) in many circumstances. You can only have two mods total for heel, and maxing out heel does not provide dominance in any circumstance.
3. "Depower" with "T" is overdone (you can instantly check your heel even with 0 men in sailing focus).
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It think its could be great if there is a friendly harbour in the battle that the player can find there shelter. So you have to keep him away from it.
Harbors weren't really refuges in and of themselves, and certainly not a place where you could just *poof* remove your ship from the world. Most of these "harbors" would have in fact been fairly open bodies of water with some shelter from the open sea and good places to anchor off-shore, not shelter from attack in and of themselves.
What would have made difference, however, would be friendly fortifications, and that is exactly what a player should face if they initiate combat near an enemy (national) port. You don't run to the port and magically disappear, but instead can run under the guns of a friendly fortification. The enemy then has the choice as to whether or not they want to risk cutting you out. Such fortifications should also be present in instances in key locations along the coast of friendly-controlled territory (e.g. halfway between two ports on a continuous coastline).
Free ports should remain like neutral ports. If combat is initiated outside the port, there is no help or recourse from the shore.
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Some of these are not the correct conversions for naval artillery, e.g. Russia.Dont know much about the actual differences, yet the difference in pounds:
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This certainly raises the question why bridle ports on the Trincomalee that are angled even less far forward are treated as forward-firing chasers in game.
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Just for clarification, using harassers, scouts or recon groups to slow down the movement of lighter armies so the bulk of your main army can catch them has been a valid and taught tactic of warfare since biblical times. Alexander was known to employ this to great effect after he aquired horse archers in his march to the east. It's not new and in a simulated war zone it's not an exploit.
Yes, but here is how it works in reality:
1. your scouts can be used for information, and information can be used to maneuver your main force to a position of advantage
2. if they have sufficient combat power, your scouts can be used to engage the enemy to pin them in place while the main force maneuvers to a position of advantage.
The key point here is that if scouts operate alone ahead of the main force and are used to engage the enemy, they must fight alone until the main force comes up. The problem is that the factors that make your scouts good at #1 make them poorly-suited to #2, but were a non-factor before in the game. Every group could roll with the lightest, weakest, fastest scout possible, use this to catch and pin any ship, then "warp" in the combat power to kill it that the scout lacked when in reality the scout should have had to fight it out alone for a long time. This gave every advantage to groups over the solo player. It was an exploit because battles are instances and time and speed on the OS is different.
The 1.5x BR reinforcement limit meant there was at least a trade-off to not joining as a group, but it's not the right trade-off. The trade-off should be more distance the later you join, such that:
1. There is a risk involved in tackling with scouts rather than sailing together and joining as a cohesive fleet.
2. Sailing through the circle to reinforce rather than joining as soon as possible at the nearest edge should be a huge gamble, trading time and distance (and possibly missing the battle) for possible positional advantage (that may not even be exploitable due to the increased distance).
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Like many groups, they have a tackler. This guy chases the prey. So at the point of tag the battle is formed more often then not, away from their two friends. So the friends must join as reinforcements because they couldn't keep up in the chase. This leaves at least one of them out of the fight to sit there for the next 30 minutes while his buddies have all the fun. Neither he nor his buddies are happy about this.
Of course, because "tackling" to pin a player in OW time and space is an exploit that favors the side with numbers, giving them much more flexibility than the chase. Removing this from the game is a huge improvement. These 3 can sail together and join together, they just can't use the "tackling" exploit.
That said, I don't like the 1.5x reinforcement limit, but it cannot simply be removed without a different limit on exploiting the new positional spawn system. If it is just removed or increased, you will see ganking just as it has always been, but now groups will be able to completely encircle prey, not just warp in as a mass behind.
An excellent solution has been proposed: grow the circle after instance creation so that staying out of the initial instance to join from a different position on the circle translates directly into increasing distance penalties in the instance. Solves all the current problems without falling back to a system that was already deeply problematic (including the widespread acceptance that the "tackling" concept was legitimate and fair).
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People seem, for the most part, to not be very happy with the new system, it's made as many new problems as it has fixed, judging by peoples reactions to it.
Restrictions tend to generate very vocal reactions (usually hyperbolic and laden with blackmail threats) from a limited subset. The addition of land to instances is a far more significant change than a 1.5x BR reinforcement limiter (which is actually not even new, as such limiters have been experimented with before), yet note how this addition has gone almost completely unremarked in comparison to the outrage about not being able to reinforce battles past 1.5x BR. Other changes to battle instance creation were both necessary to have land in instances and to resolve ongoing problems with the disconnect between OW and battle time and space. In fact, more problems have been solved than created, and we get land!
Also, a core problem is that quite a few people complaining the loudest do not know how instance creation and reinforcement works now, which complicates the discussion. I think if we pare things down, the problems are quite limited, and some "new" problems are just variations on old problems (e.g. port battle fleet splitting).
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I confirmed yesterday that you have plenty of time to leave port, lose invulnerability and sail to the nearest wind-friendly edge of the circle for a battle that has just started right in front of a port before the battle closes. Probably your friend messed up or didn't understand how to join from the circle edge.So, great fun I had again with this awful mechanic today laid in the ring that spawns on initiated battles. After retreating from a previous 3v1 gank I repelled in my Pavel, I was beset upon again by the same hostile group as I had somewhere important to be rather than to camp in the combat results screen for thirty minutes hoping they'd go away. With only inches away from the closest friendly port I got tagged again, this time with a friendly Brit just in the harbor! Surely, I can fight these scoundrels off for good in a 3v2 situation with my superior firepower. I asked my comrade to come to my aid, he agreed, and yet he couldn't join my battle!
Why?
Well, the tag occurred just out of his reach, but the battle spawned a battle circle large enough to encircle his position at the port. Thus, my ally who responded within a minute of my plea for help to a battle literally outside of a friendly port, was unable to join as the battle closed before he could position his ship correctly outside of the circle due to poor wind conditions (and port position) as the wind was strongest going into the port. In the previous patch he would have been able to join my battle near instantaneously to assist, but of course this must have been a poor lack of strategical thinking on my part or a lack of reading the latest patch notes.
Pardon my sarcasm, but I have been ganked 9v1 before in Naval Action and haven't felt salty in the slightest when I lost. Lesson learned: don't travel alone.
Getting ganked 3v1 with allies in plain sight and they can't even get to me in time because of some arbitrary lines and limits? This is the type of garbage that genuinely makes me want to avoid PvP altogether. The reinforcement ring isn't completely a bad idea as it allows for dynamic entry to battles, but it's genuinely frustrating how much emphasis there is in this game to make sure allies can't help you unless they are literally right on top of you.
"Anti-Gank Mechanic."
*there may be combinations of wind direction and port topography where this is not true, and yes it is a bit fake that you can't join directly from the port location in the instance, but then ships "hiding" in port or battles happening right in front of a port without interference from shore batteries is also very fake. This actually calls into question whether there should be a "no attack / cancel attack" radius around ports to prevent these oddities.
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Much more lightly-built than the Constitution, however. (And I don't just mean built of pine, but much larger frame spacing, etc. IIRC.) But I'd only want them in their original frigate appearance, not the post-war flagship configuration.Newcastle lines in better quality.
I don't think of Newcastle and Leander as ugly, the second row of cabins is of course a later addition when the pair were serving as flagships, and before that they looked much like any other British frigate of the period, only larger and with an unbroken row of upper deck ports.
Only worry about putting these ships in Naval Action is that they are very quick (Newcastle 14kts large and 13kts!! close-hauled), more heavily armed than even the Constitution and such a ship could easily destroy balance.
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no, just mixing broadside guns where you can, for example, have carronades on the top deck and long guns on the bottom deck.
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Friend jumped a NPC LGV trader, I tried to jump in and help, nope.
Why weren't you sailing next to your friend?
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Yup, old bug is back. Mixing carronades and guns limits guns to max carronade range.
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The brig can drop right on top of the fleeing vessel if they position themselves right. You can chase from leeward on the OW and attack from windward in the instance.
No they can't. You have 2 min to join and must join at the edge of the circle, which translates into distance in the instance. System is different than old positional reinforcements. The only problem seems to be that a person that joins 1 sec late gets the same "penalty" as someone that joins 119 sec late.
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Damn really? I mean the Vasa i ment could be written as Wasa too... That confused me :C still a ~450 Crew ship would be something good for this game
You do realize these names were recycled through the centuries over and over again?
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You can still rescue people being ganked. The system allows the ganked players to be reinforced. What part of that isn't clear? You can reinforce players being ganked. You can't reinforce ganked players once the BR is over 1.5BR in favor of the ganked player. Players reinforcing ganked players by more BR are by definition gankers. If 10 players jump 1 ship, you don't need 20 players to jump those 10 players. It becomes a reverse gank in that case. Ganking doesn't need to be solved by more ganking.
People are right on this to a degree in one regard: because of counter-tagging and escape mechanics, it does take overwhelming force (counter-ganking) to end to the deprivations of a high-speed gank group (arguably, they are completely unstoppable if they really commit to only ganking and avoiding / running from any fair fight, especially if they are pirates).
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trader movement paths and routes are under investigation.
Can you please report the locations of where they don't exist anymore?
I saw zero US contraband traders on US coast and a few US trader fleets. Moving down to Key West and Cuba, I saw occasional Spanish trader fleets, but no Spanish contraband traders. Contraband traders are missing?
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Imagine the situation where you sail in a big group, like carrying a conquest flag. Somebody tags you with half of your ships in the ring and pulls them in to battle, the rest cant join. Then you have 12 ppl with a flag outside to be killed.
This didn't work before (as a way to avoid BR ratio limits when tagging flag carriers or attempt to split assault fleets). Why would it work now?
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I suppose the only niggle I have with this is to do with the fact that OW is in fast forward mode where as battle instance is in real time mode. I think I saw admin say something like 2 mins of OW sailing is 2.4 hours real time sailing.
So for example, say I engage a ship in the OW, I am behind him, chasing him and there's players of his own nation behind me, chasing me. I enter the battle in the exact same position as we were in the OW, i.e, prey in front of me. Outside, the players of his nation can sail past us in fast forward mode, and enter the battle ahead of us.
Firstly, this suddenly makes my chance of escape much more difficult, especially if one enters in front of me, and the other enters behind me, with me and my prey stuck in the middle.
Realistically, those ships would never be able to pass us in the first place. Joining the battle they should be trailing behind trying to catch up.
A more realistic (but probably hard to program) way would be that they could enter the battle from the direction they were at relative to the battle when the battle started.
So if battle starts and player is north of the battle, he would join north regardless of where he sailed to in the circle after the battle started.
This would allow the attacking player to make a decision as to whether it's worth attacking based on who is around them and where. Basically with this new mechanic, you're giving players the ability to join a battle in any position they like, even if they were in a bad position when it started.
But as I said, I've not had a chance to try these things out yet so I'll reserve judgment till then.
This can be compensated for by increasing distance penalty for reinforcements proportionate to time elapsed since the instance was created (including the initial 30 secs). Want to join on the other side, then that 1 min or more of extra sailing time is going to cost you a bunch of distance in the instance (and would make it almost impossible to trade a poor lee position for a good wind position). In most cases if you are late it would be better to join the moment you reach reinforcement range. And since you have to sail all the way through the circle before you can join from the other side, this would automatically handle the situation you describe. To make this explicit, the active instance circle on the OW could just grow constantly until closing at 2 min, which would catch people trying to sail through the circle to get to the other side and prevent them from entering.
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This is what happened in POTBS. We lost the rescuers as well as the gankers. The gankers adjusted to 2 man ganks and the rescuers were screwed. You couldn't jump in to help a cargo ship being attacked by two pirates. It just ends up being you vs. 2 pirates while the cargo ship runs for it. Same thing if the other guys in inexperienced, unprepared or otherwise just runs. So the rescue type players eventually just quit. The gankers adjusted to the new mechanic and used it to advantage.
Last night in pvp1 a guy called for help. Pirates were gankng and had him pinned in port. So me and team mate race to help. 30min later, yes it takes a long time to sail in this game, we get on scene just as a pirate frig tags his third rate. We jump in the battle and discover why. The third rate is running missions and is only armed with Coronades. The pirate guesses this and has long guns. The 3rd rate would have been dead meat. But our two brigs get in the fight and it's essentially two brigs vs. a pirate frig as the 3rd rate sails around uselessly in the back ground.
Why is this important? Because if that same event occurred with the new rules we would have sailed for 30min only to have the computer prevent us from getting in the battle. Then we either sail home or wait and hour fir the pirate to pick the 3rd rate apart. BR doesn't always determine a battle. A 3rd rate with Coronades may as well be zero BR. Two Snows are only 100 and they can bring down a pirate frig at 180. But regardless, sailing for a wasted hour of my life because the computer won't let me rescue a team mate. That's only going to happen a few times. There is more to this new rule than just ganking effects.
Creative story, but a Third Rate cannot carry only carronades and should not have a problem with a pirate frigate with longs.
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You mean the wind actually mattered in a sailing game?
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Some of this is driven by the scorched earth approach to defeat that the game promotes. Since the loser loses the same no matter which way the battle ends, he is encouraged to either burn or sink, limiting reward for the winner or maybe even damaging the winner. Consequently, if a side wants to capture a prize once they have an advantage in a fight, they cannot use ball against the hull.Im not saying take demasting away - far from it (old school demaster talking here).
Im saying if demasting has become the dominating strategy it means it may be a BIT to easy.
A second factor is the escape mechanics. If it were harder to escape in proximity to the enemy, but there was more capacity to repair sails and masts if you pulled away from a fight, the dynamic would change substantially.
"Such is a lord" - Simple politics and alliances part 1 - HEAVILY MODERATED
in News Announcements & Important discussions
Posted
Will there be any disadvantages to having buildings (i.e. production) in other nations' ports?
Any chance that some terminology can be switched for the US faction? e.g.:
Lord Protector = Governor
Parliament = Congress
Ruler = President