StaleMemes

We explained this in the other Constitution thread:

Perhaps instead of saying how many crew the enemy ship has in total, say how many they have in boarding (on deck and visible)

What about making it so that attackers cannot be tagged within a very short distance of the port until the instance is closed? That way people don't have to wait in the instance and can leave without being swarmed outside. By only protecting players close to the port, they won't be able to exploit the feature to escape after losing.

I wanna see an Indiaman crammed full of so many 2 to 6 pound cannons that it lists every time it fires, so we can go full-Blackbeard on people.

Most frigates in game can equip innacurate or fantasy carronade loadouts, so I suspect it's an across the board gameplay decision. In fact the Constitution is one of the more reasonable as it can only mount carronades on the upper deck. Anyway, the video is very interesting and insightful! thanks for sharing it.

I used to enjoy taking a look at the chat log in sea trials and jumping back to some random spot to see if I remembered the battle it was from. Also to laugh at how long I spent trying to get an AI lynx to answer me in the first battle I played.

Of course, if I'm grinding PVE I never do it in the safe zone, it is the single most dangerous place to do PvE on the entire map except maybe the patrol zone. The problem is why on earth would some scrub who doesn't know the game very well think to leave the "safe" zone? If its supposed to be the pve death trap zone of lurking death, why not tell new players? When a person who has played the game for less than a month is sank in the reinforcement zone they aren't going to think "huh, maybe I should leave the safe zone and find a different spot" they are going to think "holy hello kittying shit, if I can't survive in the 'safe' zone i'll get slaughtered in the unsafe zone!"

Oh i would be so screwed

I would rather see modules have the sh*t nerfed out of them so we don't need caps. 15% speed is still ridiculous

Me too, but the ads are very old and don't say much. Just some panning shots of large fleets, linebattles etc. Little or no mention of the open world, mmo, or a lot of critical stuff that you want prospective players to know about. I think this is the one.

There are lots of ways to tune the system to fit specific situations, require strategy, and add depth. The game knows what a ship's heel is at any moment (displayed on compass). Make the 1/(change in heel over the past 10 seconds) a coefficient of accuracy. This would mean that ships travelling at high speed, violently maneuvering can't accurately shoot at smaller vessels. A battle sails, extra ballast ship on the other hand will be very effective at removing admirals crew from the decks of surrounding ships. (Sorry Nelson :C) Less crew can fire over the back than the sides, so the bow and stern would have weaker musket and swivel fire. Customization like muskets and pistols increase the number of firearms that can be brought to bear. These modules would be a coefficient on damage. Customization like barricades decrease damage to crew and increase time before crew shock. Add "Crew on deck" and "crew in rigging" values. When two ships are in close contact, they will both kill enemy crewmen on deck and in rigging. These crew will slowly be replenished from below decks. As "crew on deck" decreases deck gun reloads, deck crew musket fire, and deck gun accuracy decrease. As "crew in rigging" decreases rigging crew musket fire, sail setting speed, and yard handling speed decrease if crew on rigging is low, rigging shock occurs. If a mast is lost, any crew on that mast when it collapses are lost. Crew on deck increases when in boarding mode. (This means that players must decide in battle between suppressing enemy crew, or focusing on their naval artillery.) Boarding prep could also be linked to crew on deck, making clearing the enemy's deck of crew important before boarding. Determined Defender could also be linked to this. Heck, maybe even just straight disallow boarding until the enemies decks have been somewhat cleared. Cannon fire and grape shot to the deck area decreases effectiveness of AOE muskets. This would allow firepower based builds to counter rage boarding type strategies by weakening their AOE attack before they close range. I don't think that a system like this would require much work, its mostly taking existing mechanics, doing some simple math with them, and applying the outcomes to enemy crew, reloads, and sail handling. Call me crazy, but I think this would improve the dynamic between light vessels and lineships, and make lineship boarding more interesting while eliminating the possibility of "rage boarding" even though I don't think it was ever a real problem.

I missed that last sentence that clarified only PVE server.

Stern raking isn't a problem, and when making raking passes marines and swivels would not and should not be a problem. "Hugging" on the other hand in real life would be essentially boarding the enemy ship while in still in motion. Marines could fire directly down onto the crew on deck and in rigging, with no cover available. Just like in the middle of boarding action. A requin for instance can "duck" under the guns on many frigates. Pull a stunt like that on an actual ship and you will get slaughtered. Even If muskets aren't accurate so what, at that point they could just lob bombs over the side of the ship, you are literally crashing into them. I think if two ships of unequal height stay at very close proximity to each other for a long time the smaller/lower/weaker ship should go into rigging and then crew shock after one to three minutes. If literally "hugging" then the deck guns and helm should become unresponsive as well. As fun as it was hugging and raking a bellona to death with a single Hercules and an already damaged yacht, it was absurd honestly. The Bellona knew exactly what to do as well, turn upwind and board. Except that because the game then dropped his sails and stopped, him I could then come to a complete stop 5 feet off his stern (suicidal normally) and kill 150+ crew in 2 minutes by raking as fast as my cannons could load while his ship was stopped. Wack.

Interesting little engagement between me on my yacht and Pipolanoix on Hercules against a pirate on Bellona. I was heavily damaged from an earlier battle but was in a position to tag the Bellona while she was close to the La Navasse towers so I did. In the instance it became clear the Bellona was also returning from battle, but not from heavy fighting as she had 91% sails but no hull damage. The towers put one or two rounds into her before they were out of range. The pirate repaired throughout the battle as well, so no shortage of reps. We quickly set about decrewing her. After a few minutes of sterncamping things became dicey. I took a broadside that nearly sank me and Pip's masts were ready to fall, with his bowsprit shot off. However, the Bellona's crew soon dropped near 350, approaching the critical level when she could no longer reload a broadside and repair simultaneously. Pip began hugging her side and taking down her hull with carronades while I suppressed the enemy's rum from astern. The pirate was no fool though and turned upwind, boarding Pipolanoix with about a 150 crew advantage, and again things looked bad. However, I camped out behind the bellona and put devastating point blank grape shot raking fire into her, killing over 120 crew and causing their morale to drop so much she had to disengage, making it out with only 11 morale. Now that Pip's Herc had the same amount of crew as the Bellona, the battle was ours to win and we did just that. Once the Bellona's crew was down to 130 I switched to shooting at the weakened side of the lineship, helping finish her off. A fun little battle at any rate (pun intended) that proves 7th rate ships are not to be underestimated when utilized in a supporting role even against 3rd rates.

I meant get around by storing ships in fleet, then redeeming without getting rid of the old one.

Calling it a feature instead of an exploit doesn't change my opinion on whether it makes sense. You could intentionally add literally anything and it would be "not an exploit its a design feature" If you can have 4 in fleet, you should be able to have 4 in docks, or vice versa. Having a 24 hour cooldown on redeeming but letting people get around that by putting in fleet is inconsistent. Secondly, I made no bones about DLC ships being OP in my post, in fact the ship I referenced the most there is the yacht, and nobody is claiming that ship is overpowered.

I don't get the argument "it's their ship they can do what they want with it" there are limits on how many dlc ships you can have at once. This fleet exploit allows people to break that limit. It's like telling a kid "you may have one piece of candy" but then when they put it behind their back you give them another. And they put that one behind their back too, until their hands are full. "But they technically only have 1 right?" if "we can do whatever we want" with dlc ships why can't we redeem one every day till our docks are completely full? Why can't I fill my docks with 14 individual yachts + 3 in fleet? They are "my ships" and I can do with them what I want! The logic that justifies the fleet technique must also justify that.

I would be fine with different modifications or refits of ships as you describe, because its not actually adding or removing ships just condensing the nomenclature.

Sailing alone, I like the speed. On the other hand when I'm trying to weave through a fleet avoiding enemy fire, a little structure or an extra cannon won't make a difference, but the speed and agility might. I also like the aesthetics of the regular brig, although I enjoy both ships. For me it's not about being meta it's about sailing a ship I like. That's why I use the yacht, pickle, brig, and surprise a lot when most of those ships (except surprise) have much stronger competitors that are the smarter choice.

Can't comment on the others, but I used brigs all the time before the requin 6th rate apocolypse, no reason I would not do so again once they are fixed. i love the Brig and see no reason to remove her.

'Adding cargo to your ship will increase its weight and slow it down significantly, so only sail with what you need.' 'Carronades are lighter than medium and long guns, so arming your ship with them can increase its speed.'

I suppose if one finds them self in messy brawls frequently they might want to change friendly flags to hunting orange or something similar to make it easier to avoid friendly fire and coordinate.

It's a shame the real generals of the civil war weren't as quick to throw up their arms and cry that it's not fair. war would have ended right quickly with a lot less lives lost.

Gotta escargot fast!