Destraex

I know this sort of thing has been discussed to death. But I believe we are at a point where long sail times are simply unsustainable for most players. A clan member has once again suggested time compression when no ships are visible as an option. I suggested in turn that time compression should be an option when AI or friendly players are around. As I remember it, this idea was put down before because people felt two things: a) The map would feel too small b )It would distort the effect of attacks able to cover the whole map in short order and retreat in short order c) It would destroy the look of the game I believe as I have said that all of the above are not really considerations and cancel each other out in the grand scheme of things. Something simply needs to be done to make the time sink this game has become especially for traders less arduous. I believe the time has come for time compression to once again be considered as a player turn on / off option. Perhaps 5/10/15/20 times. Making the 5hr sail to flats more like 20 minutes.

In his that case just limit each player to 1ai fleet each and if people spawn into his that fleet to man it remove their other ship if they were in game before. Perhaps only allow each player to either play of have a fleet on auto even if they are logged off.

No variable weather in battle is a rather huge disappointment because it means the game lacks some of the rare visual and mechanical variation it could have had. Are you sure we could not have synced storm waves? By synced do you mean the ships are glued to the ocean. Or that the open world weather would have to be synced with battle instances which is too hard? With the new wind strengths coming it would have been very cool to see the wind whipping up some waves. Stormy conditions having gusting winds requiring sail to be shortened.

I have not played EVE for more than 5 minutes. But if EVE already has this and it's a good idea why not use it? That is unless EVE has a patent on common sense? What pray tell... do you actually find wrong with this idea Fenris. You did not say. Besides we do not have to worry about EVE. It has no physics based combat system as far as I know?

just to be clear. I am simply talking about friends or nation being allowed to take control of player ships being attacked in the middle of the ocean. NOT any extra ships than are already being attacked.

At work now will clean this up later. But perhaps normal warships should also be allowed to plot a route on the map and then be alerted when something happens... Through the game if they are logged on or through a taskbar app.

Will there be the ability to hire or use your own ships as AI traders to do long hauls with cargo? i.e. You don't want to sail for 10hrs and you get the AI to do it between your ports while you are offline? What are your thoughts on trading distances and player sailing time to get goods together to build a ship? I am not concerned as much with the time it takes to get goods together as the time the players spends doing nothing while sailing vast distances to do it. If the AI could do it for the player then it would release players to play the game while still being aware of losses and having to escort ships personally through dangerous waters. Perhaps even being able to spawn into the AI escorts to defend them when attacked. I think spawning into the defending escort would be great. Scheduling the transport times that they leave ports would be good as well. If you do not want to monitor your ships then perhaps an APP to let you know when they are attacked so you can scramble to login. players must be able to draw their trader routes on the map to prevent easily identifiable routes players should be able to open the spawn resp ok nders to there clan members and even the nation.

Will there be the ability to hire or use your own ships as AI traders to do long hauls with cargo? i.e. You don't want to sail for 10hrs and you get the AI to do it between your ports while you are offline? What are your thoughts on trading distances and player sailing time to get goods together to build a ship? I am not concerned as much with the time it takes to get goods together as the time the players spends doing nothing while sailing vast distances to do it. If the AI could do it for the player then it would release players to play the game while still being aware of losses and having to escort ships personally through dangerous waters. Perhaps even being able to spawn into the AI escorts to defend them when attacked.

yeah but anything is better than the spreadsheet we have now right? At least it will be visual.

VERY excited about these: - Potential tuning of sailing (leeway, wind strength, fixes of legacy debt with staysails and other elements) - 3d HOMM/Mordheim style boarding prototype

holding tab would tell you soon enough. I would love to see more colourful battles via multiple flags.

Hi Shawa. This is what it says in the main thread that outlines the planned development and patches by month, note that it says "plans" and "not final" which usually means the list is tentative don't hold us to it. Perhaps the devs should put this at the top of every single feature discussion. "We wanted to share the plans for the next content patches with you. The list may change and is not final. " http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14640-devlog-forthcoming-content-patches-plan/ I agree that once we get told about things that we are disappointed when they do not get added or are not added as quickly as we would like. But how does the dev get feedback and involve the community without telling us some loose plan for features and getting feedback...? There are some things that the devs planned that after community feedback they canned. Others the community suggested that they have or have not added according to merit. A lot of opinions in between about what should be done and an original vision the devs had that was on steam early access. It's a balance and it's still the devs developing the game and us getting to play test it and offer opinions. Note I said opinions rather than "orders". We can influence the devs but not expect them to follow orders, even if most of the community believes something is needed the devs make the final decision. The real test is release time. Even then we paid our early access money taking a punt on a game that may not be successful. It might tank, it might not. The devs just have to make the calls they think are correct. Kids always want as many lollies as they can get whether it is good for them or not, whether it is good for the game or not. They cannot always have their opinions implemented. I think they have done well and I think any reasonable person would be happy, especially since they are over delivering on the original promise we all purchased the early access game for. Happy that they are part of development seeing features come and go and the planned patch content changing according to need and what works or is attainable for the devs. Some people, who rely on the game and believe we are playing a "release candidate" rather than a yet to be finished game are not happy about population. I had a good clan member leave recently because everybody wanted to be fresh for the patch and did indeed play other things while they waited, and the wait was longer than expected which made it more painful I believe for him because our clan voice room was dead and others he went and played with also disappeared over time. Once the game is released though and a lot of these features are final and have long term meaning I am sure the population will be more stable. But the swing between patches imho is expected and logical. This is a game I will play and get bored of and come back to. I want it to be around for years to come and hopefully to keep improving even after release. However in the mean time the devs I hope will get the core gameplay right and the base features. They could release the game now and it would be what it is and reasonable enough according to steam early access. But like any good devs they aspire to more and are listening to the community... they do not have to or are capable of responding to everything, but I see all the time that they listen and change due to the community and other times that they are sensible with "their game" and realise when the community just wants things that might make it easier for them personally or their particular in game role but just don't make a game. Just my 2c

Perhaps it should just be a negative modifier for the gankers. I.e. the rewards are split between the attacking ships. More attacking ships means LESS THAN NORMAL reward. This would mean the only reason for ganking would be strategic. Because there would be little reward in it.

I think that XP was reasonably quick yes. But for new players it can be hard in the smaller ships. I am the kind of person that enjoys leveling past the small ships... small ships are fun. But a lot of players want frigates right away, what they perceive as real ships. Maybe give them a basic frigate - access to unlock one frigate only. Then make them level past the small ships to gain access to the other frigates and SOLs

I was wondering if the people complaining about the grind might be doing so because they wanted to try SOLs right off the bat. That lead me to think perhaps their should be a grind in the small ships that then leads to the unlocking of two streams a little like WOWs does it. You get to the corvettes and get the choice to gain SOL XP in an ingy or frigate XP in a cerberus? I suppose since XP is kept now we cannot change this though. Just a thought.

Ship-Frigate? Got a link?

Here us what an Indiaman converted to a warship is like:

what he means gents is that there were a number of indiamen ships that while they were being built got converted to SOLs. SO THESE WARSHIPS HAD NO MERCHANT HOLD SPACE. They were hated by admirals because they had thin hulls, were of less reenforced and sturdy construction than purpose built warships and were poor sailers! But would be interesting ships in game if they were cheap.

1. Boarding system is immersion breaking because it is not graphical like the rest of the game and seems to be dependent on click timing to the second.... not realistic really. 2. Pvp join system and hide in after battle screen - Well this has been discussed to death so I will not elaborate. Apart from saying the three options I thought may work were .... small + large circle, BR limit for the defenders joining only equalling the BR of the attackers, expanding circle to 8minutes sail with correct entry vectors, no time limit and joiners have a entry co-ordinate calculated in relation from when the battle started. Hiding in after battle screen should not be allowed with an announcement of when they exit but them allowed to be invisible IF they wish for a set period. I would however prefer exit to be based on an extrapolated co-ordinate from in battle time. 3. Speed of the open world. Time it takes to sail places. We really need trade currents to allow faster speeds in the open world to different sectors. A lot of my mates will rarely play because - 20 min - 2hr sail to action, 1hr battle, sail back = potentially 3hr sail for one battle. Try to improve the time sink without destroying the immersivness. 4. Wind variety both in open world and battle. Wind direction and how it prevents tacking and general planning and speed in the open world. Wind in battle also. With the current system I cannot plan a large tack or even a small one without having the wind change making my next tacking leg slower than it should be. Winds should be more consistent for longer periods... the regular spin actually makes things SLOWER imho rather than faster. It also prevents raiders predicting the most likely trade routes being used through wind speeds. Also want lighter and stronger winds to allow larger and smaller vessels advantages at different times. Currently the META ships are just boring, it's simple rock paper scissors, renomee/rattle, connie or ingy. Although I must admit I have seen a lot more variety lately as people get bored and don't care about losing ships. Wind in battle of varying strengths and speeds that reflect preventing the same META being carried out again and again. i.e. renommee run.

It's funny. Ships of the line from the immediately previous period... 1600s - 80 were just as well armed and indeed with better metal used in the cannon. Sure the metallurgy and powder etc may not have be as good, but in general they carried comparable numbers of cannon and similar calibres. It was just that the ships from the 1600s were poorer sailers and poorer hull designs. Indeed the earlier period ships carried much more amazing decoration, but their hull forms as I said were simply not as sexy and naturally deadly looking. So as we go through 1600s and head to mid 1700s we would start to get less decoration but more advanced sleeker looking ships we have in game now.. Think Ingermanland vs 3rd rate we have in game now.

I see. So you just had people twiddling their thumbs to play the top tier at the end of the cycle. From a psychological point of view. That is very interesting. By that logic people should just never play a sailing game and move on to modern naval warfare sims or straight to prospective naval space combat games. Can people just never enjoy a period for what it is? Was their some sort of disincentive to play the earlier tanks?

When it get's rough the game will need to make sure these ships suffer and have a good chance of sinking. Plus their range and manpower vs firepower ... i.e. less guns and more men required will make them both shorter range vessels as well as costly to run and prevent them from sailing anywhere but close to glassy waters... I don't know much about galease and galleys but what I do know is that they were used in lake like inland seas or seas that were not really open ocean areas.

like this?

Texas. The British at least were actively hunting and stamping out slavery during this period, actually I just looked it up and it was 1807 it was outlawed in the UK and the British navy then actively hunted the slaver ships to extinction, but I believe they were stopping it long before them. "The Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed in 1787 by a group of Evangelical English Protestants allied with Quakers, to unite in their shared opposition to slavery and the slave trade. The Quakers had long viewed slavery as immoral, a blight upon humanity." "The Royal Navy, which then controlled the world's seas, established the West Africa Squadron in 1808 to patrol the coast of West Africa, and between 1808 and 1860 they seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.[11] The Royal Navy declared that ships transporting slaves were the same as pirates. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", who was deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.[12]" The Americans took another 60 years or so to outlaw it when the civil war happened so they defo would have some ships. I don't know about the other nations. Will look that up. Actually the Americans outlawed slavery a few months later because of British pressure, but kept their internal slave trade. So no American slave ships! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807 I agree that slavers should be about as NPCs to capture. Then you should be able to sail the slave ships for some other purpose like shipping live cattle???? Trying to find a use for slaver ship models in game..... I know pirates converted some to pirate ships because of their good internal defences?

I posted this elsewhere fairly deep within a thread but thought as it is an idea in it's own right I would post it here: I have suggested this before but thought I would flesh it out in a bit more detail now that people are starting to long for older ships: I would love to see older ships in game, but only if the game did some sort of bi-monthly or longer time period transition. For example. The game does day and night quicker than in real life now. The game could also cycle years in a similar fashion. As the years go by more ships become available until it hits the beginning year again. In this way older ships would naturally be phased out as people took up newer types as the years progressed and more ships became unlocked. Before it started again at the earliest ship year. This could even give the feeling of always having something to look forward to. I mean once you hit the top year and go back to the first year the game will be fresh starting with the older ships... seeing them in their prime before they are finally superseded by newer designs. It will also make sure the game does not look like a strange mish mash of time periods and remains majestic. As for ship types we have a lot at the moment: Gunboat - tiny dingy with one gun at each end - a swarm of these historically could take out a becalmed frigate and did. Mortar Brig - Artillery ship for fort attacks A large assortment of smaller ships in between like the snow, cutter, privateer, lynx, yacht, niagara, rattlesnake etc Brigs - navy and normal brig Corvettes - cerberus but more coming Light Frigates like the renomme Frigates like the bell poule Heavy Frigates like the trincomalee Super heavy frigates and unique ships like the constitution Merchants like the gross ventre and indiaman... although I would like to see pure merchants with virtually no guns and better holds to encourage people to take them. 20-40 crew usually 4th rates 3rd rate 74 guns 2nd rate 80-90 or so guns 1st rates like the victory Super 1st rates like the Ocean and Santissima I believe there may be a Xebec coming on top of this which will be a radical new way of sailing because the sails are completely different to anything we have in game at the moment. I would like to see despatch/packet ships and specialised fishing boats as well as whalers (which may be controversial but were a major part of the economy of the day).