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akd

Naval Action Tester
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Posts posted by akd

  1. You are reading "ban" into something that could just as easily be "complain to devs about being subjected to poor gameplay." You know the only chance you had of winning was by forcing him to surrender through holding his time hostage. Maybe not griefing, but certainly poor sporstmanship and obviously bad gameplay that no one wants to have to endure. Remember the golden rule. You won't be in free cutter forever.

    • Like 3
  2. Missions are the dullest possible thing you can do in the game. Missions are the most efficient way to progress. This is the core problem, not loss, etc. We have loss-free PvP battles right now, but people grind missions instead and if you forego efficiency for fun and enter a loss-free PvP battle, you are often rewarded with a very poor quality fight (rammed in first few minutes, etc.).

    Likewise, I showed up to an undefended port battle and didn't fire a shot. I got a pile of materials and a fine module. Again high rewards for the dullest gameplay.

    We have sought out and found excellent, nail-biting fights on the OW, but were definitely not rewarded for the investment in time.

    • Like 2
  3. I sincerely hope that not all premium ships will be handled the same way as the yacht. My experience the last few days has been Ramming Action, not Naval Action, with such super-authentic Age of Sail highlight as yacht flipping over another yacht and cutter mounting yacht in apparent attempt to produce hybrid cutter-yacht babies. Free ships with free repairs degrade overall quality of gameplay significantly, and would seem to offer a pathway to "pay-to-grief" that is almost as bad as "pay-to-win."

    Maybe perishable officers could address this to some degree in the future, but I think above a certain experience level, players should not be given zero cost ships, but instead some form of exclusive access to premium ships that doesn't turn them into go-to suicide vessels.

  4. handling language issues in the forums is already ridiculous and is going to be impossible after EA. Also many EA players are not going to come here to read rules and are probably not going to read any "click to agree" rules you put in the game.

    We are going to have to tolerate bad words until language rules are directly in game and dealt with entirely in game.

  5. Well, it's not really an exploit maybe, yet the mechanic is not working as intended.

    What preferably would happen is that pirates fight amongst themselves on occasion, and on occasion fight a common enemy.

    Would removing all xp from Pirate v Pirate fight be something that would stimulate that? Maybe.

    Would reducing the xp from Pirate v pirate fight be something that would stimulate that? Most likely.

    If a pirate attacks another pirate, it should be in earnest. Consequently, attacking another pirate (or joining an attack) should set the attacker as hostile to the defender, making them no longer able to group or join battles on same side. Ideally pirate groups would be able to own their ports / pirate nests rather than jointly owned "national" ports, and access there would also be blocked. Hostility would be on very long cooldown.

    But Pirates are just another nation, so better to remove the mechanic entirely since we have abandoned unique gameplay for the "lifestyle choice" and entitlement is now setting in, making radical change almost impossible.

    Remember that after Early access it will be extremely hard to take back features or remove flexibility. It will be much easier to add things back.

    • Like 4
  6. I think veterans just cant see the valley from the mountain of 1 year of experience.

    New players are still struggling fighting with a cutter.

    And i think that asking for more realism people feedback slowed down the game so you cant see skill anymore. Its just too slow and deliberate where mistakes could be corrected even before the other side notices it. And because its slow skill threshold is lowered. Imagine Counter strike at 10x slower speed. Thats what we got thanks to realism lobby ;)

    What? This is a really reactionary takeaway from discussion (ignoring lots of relevant feedback and focusing instead on tangential negative feedback), and CS is a terrible comparison. Combat is better now than ever before, and wins against odds in PvP happen quite frequently (which would suggest that there is little leeway for mistakes; much less now than there was before). I even screw up now and then and sink / lose against the AI which is something that never used to happen because there was huge leeway for mistakes and plenty of time to manage even a very, very bad mistake.

    In my opinion, we are in realm of tweaking.

    • Like 1
  7. That doesn't matter.  People do this because they lose nothing more than they would lose via any other form of defeat and it keeps their ship from being captured or used to gain damage XP, so just a silly scorched earth approach to losing, or because they have cheap or free ships in relation to their target.

     

    Sacrificing ships was done during this era as well, most notably fire-ships.

     

    lol, there were no people in those ships.

    • Like 2
  8. I don't think tweaks to mast or hull hp alone can ever create balance in the long run. One approach will always be superior and it will just be a never-ending loof of buff/nerf. Hence my point about effective range being of more importance than hp itself. And even with less hull hp going for masts is still the safer approach because you leave yourself an opportunity to disenge, should you need it, and you deny the same to your enemy. With mast hp>hull hp people will just stay at bigger distances for longer. 

     

    How it worked in reality given two equivalent ships with equivalent crews if one ship went for masts and the other for the hull:

     

    -ship with masts concentrated on would steadily lose maneuverability, but not fighting power.  There was a % chance, but no guarantee, that they would suffer catastrophic mast / rigging damage that would quickly and completely disable their ability to maneuver.  In either case the loss would be temporary and could be recovered from or partially recovered from if the opponent did not press the advantage (or use it as a window to escape).

     

    -ship with hull concentrated on would suffer steady crew and gun loss, leading to eventual loss of fighting power that could not be recovered.

     

    If time and distance allow you to recover sails and masts but not hull and crew, then it is less of a no brainer to concentrate on masts and sails because you cannot solely play an attrition game that gives you a permanent advantage.  Of course finding the right balance between more vulnerable masts, but with greater capacity to recover would be tricky.

  9. Do we really need to resort to fakery and undoing the complex, physics-based system for terminal damage that we have in place rather then improving it?

    Masts are round. It is absurd to make them more prone to ricochets from a particular direction, and raking fire is already more efficient at achieving mast damage. I do think, however, that their hitboxes should be extended below the deck so that raking firing into the hull can also wound masts. Also, rather than ricochets versus penetrations based on angle, there could be a sound argument made that there should be a bonus to HP reduction with hits to sails and masts from low angle raking fire (e.g. +/- 30* off bow or stern) because the 3D models do not fully account for all the various rigging components that ball or chain would have the potential to pass through. Also, "flashing" battle sails on and off should be made less efficient.

    I agree with Laik that current system pushes all players toward demast or lose, but it is because hull life > mast life. Yes, one solution would be to increase mast "armor" and overall HP until they perfectly match eachother, but (in addition to resulting in physical absurdity) that actually reduces tactical variety and removes demasting as a strategy for a smaller ship to pursue against larger ships. The better solution is to extend the life of sails and masts through repairs, but repairs that aren't instant, such that demasting isn't a pure attrition game, but a way to gain a temporary advantage.

    I agree entirely that crew must be made to matter more.

  10. Reduce mast HP and / or add chance of critical hits on masts. Make demasting more disabling (e.g. results in long rigging shock and maybe other penalties) and much slower to repair. To compensate, add more sail / mast repairs so overall "life" of sails and masts remain the same over the course of a battle (maybe put canvas repair on survival mode like leaks and leave the discreet repairs to masts). This would allow a player to achieve a major short-term advantage through skillful targeting of masts and rigging, but make targeting sails / masts / rigging less of a pure attrition game which tends to favor numbers and volume of fire. You would be able to disable one ship, but unless the advantage is pursued immediately, the opponent will have time to pull away and repair and rejoin the fight.

    • Like 1
  11. Someone said something in that earlier thing that struck me. A Cutter whose shots simply bounced off a hull wouldn't stop a fleet from reinforcing another, nor would a frigate failing to do any damage to a Ship of the Line truly be able to slow it down.

    Maybe a damage threshold should be in place for keeping someone in battle, like a full penetrating shot that can clearly damage the enemy ship over time needs to be required to keep a ship engaged.

    But also a distance threshold for the other end, because it is pretty crap when you hit someone in the side / stern at close range and it does no damage because all of the "integrity" has removed, and then they blink out of existence right in front of you.

  12. This is the second Santi that we have had the pleasure of fighting in our Frigates. The last one we captured and sold onto Gamover. That was also a GOLD Santi with GOLD enhancements. That time we had a few more frigates with us but we managed to accomplish it in a much smaller time frame. So by our reckoning we should have been able to do the same but over a longer time period. At the end of the day there NEEDS to be a down side to having a SOL. That downside is that they are cumbersome and easily harassed by smaller ships. To tackle this you should always be accompanied by smaller ships... AKA Frigates. This should provide you with the adequate protection to fend off attackers like us. Tommy HAD those frigates and then decided to send them away.

     

    At the end of the day if a SOL is caught in open water by itself, then it is that players own fault and the attacker should not be penalised. I agree that tagging needs some work but what happened to Tommy is the risk you take when you decide to sail solo in the largest ship in the game. There MUST be consequences for being singled out and found alone in your SOL. Otherwise why would EVERYONE not simple sail SOLs?

     

    If developers want to endorse this sort of "strategic play" that leads to hours of boredom, that is cool, but it would be better for the game to think of ways to keep fights from devolving into completely pointless max range kiting fests where one side can't even shoot, because that is total crap gameplay.

     

    I would suggest making max range gunnery have more realistic accuracy, i.e. basically hopeless and unlikely to achieve hits consistently enough to hold someone in an instance.)  No frigate in reality was ever able to attack an SoL and fire on it from long range over and over again without taking return fire.  If a ship was using heel to extend their max range, they would not be hitting anything, because they wouldn't be hitting anything at max elevation with no heel regardless.  There is no situation where a frigate with 18s / 24s would be in range of an SoL, but at the same time the frigate would be out of range of the SoL's 32 / 42 pdrs.  Completely artificial situation.

    • Like 1
  13. I have had my timer reset without hitting anything. I have also had my own cannons somehow hit my own ship when I fire them and reset my timer. Your own timer is not a 100% indicator of opponent's timer. I think it is hilarious you immediately assumed cheating.

    Anyways, you got what you deserved for playing that way. Just highlights that the battle timer mechanic needs to be reworked on multiple levels. You shouldn't be able to hold someone in battle by peppering them totally ineffectively from max range, but you also shouldn't be able to blink out of battle right next to an enemy just because you haven't received a hit that does damage in 1:30.

    • Like 1
  14. Not in british service though, with 8.4 knots close-hauled and 11.4 going large max.

    Her British service was sailing back to Britain after being captured following a hard-fought battle and one and half years at sea. It can hardly be expected to have shown her in her best light.

    Her actual qualities are a bit of a conundrum. She was retained in service in 1808 "because of her great speed and sailing qualities", yet in 1812 her captain, David Porter, considered her "the worst frigate in the service" because of her armament and sailing qualities.

  15. I agree that the root question is somewhat misguided. It almost never happened in reality, and when it did, it was probably down to factors that would be impossible to capture in a game (complex issues of human psychology and morale that lead to opponents surrending despite an advantage in terms of actual combat power), extreme incompetence on the part of the defeated (which is certainly possible in the game currently), or the luck factor (e.g. the lucky cannonball that brings down the mast of one ship, totally crippling her, and turns a 1 v 2 into a 1 v 1) that gamers - particularly competitive, online PvP gamers - cannot tolerate.

    • Like 2
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