StaleMemes

While I'm sure rolling the guns would be graphically intensive, what about just switching to a different model (gun withdrawn, port closed while reloading) as each gun fires. The change would not be very noticeable in the smoke and flash, and would still be more immersive than the recoilless guns we have now.

Another thing that leads to less pvp is the way mods work. The general trend is speed at the cost of durability, except for super expensive mods that are just speed at the cost of nothing (screw you, broke scrubs). Because a trader's chances of fighting off a hunter are quite low, they go for speed hoping to decrease travel time and avoid conflict all together, but this also makes them totally unable to fight back against their attacker if they are caught. So because of how wood types work, we end up with less battles, and those battles that do happen are forgone conclusions. It would be much more interesting if wood types didn't affect speed and strength nearly as dramatically, so trader's wouldn't be so focused on fleeing and it would be worthwhile for them to defend themselves. Same goes for normal ships. Players run speed mods on fir fir because if they don't, they will get ganked by people who do. So everybody but the absolute richest who can afford expensive speed mods and very fast ships is running around on pvp weak ships, avoiding committing to battles, only fighting when they greatly outnumber the enemy or are fighting a much weaker enemy. If they fight 1v1 in a fair situation, they run the risk of their enemy NOT being set up to run away, and getting rekt by a powerful ship. Its just blegh. If you are sailing and you see for example a trincomalee, you should be able to know within + or - 5%, the rough stats of that ship, as they shouldn't deviate from the base stats by much. As is, you have no clue. It could be stronger than a constitution. Or as weak as a surprise, depending on its set up. So when you look at it, from the deck of YOUR trincomalee, you don't feel like attacking because for all you know it could be a horrible experience. You could run into a 5/5 teak white oak poods trinco with art of ship handling, gunnery encyclopedia, etc that absolutely obliterates you, or it could be fir fir 3/5 with cheap mods and you trash it (or sometimes a fair fight) It could be faster than a cerberus upwind or slower than a neufchatel downwind. Ships don't have identities, its all washed out with mods. Elite players don't need mods to have an advantage, they know how to play the game and that is plenty enough of an advantage over newbies. Having a grindy "progression system" of sorts that holds the new guys back just sucks the life out of the game. PVP works better when ships act like ships. These are age of sail ships, not littoral combat vessels that can be completely gutted and refitted for entirely different tasks within days. This isn't WOT. The way upgrades work right now feels like a micro transaction game where you are being pushed to spend money on them to be competetive, but there is no way to buy them... you just have to grind away for hours and hours on boring AI while dodging gankers tactical players who employ local numerical superiority.

To me the fact that we even need caps is evidence that mods are too extreme/strong. You should never be able to get to +30% rate of fire, thats mindboggling. The limit should be +10%, not because of a cap but because there shouldn't be mods that strong. 10% should be the result of rigging the ship almost exclusively to increase firepower. The vets always run around shouting "mods and books don't matter, you just suck" "but if you happen to have one of these completely un-important mods or books, i'll buy it for 10 million..."

I'd like to see bombardment objectives. Line up your ships and bombard certain part of the city or defenses (to weaken them for the imaginary infantry assault) would be interesting.

i wish I could "send salt to chat" on forums because I think that's the only appropriate response to this lmao.

Endymion and Cerberus are both 5th rates, forcing a cerb to take on the endymion alone would be totally unfair. Two cerbs, even three would still struggle against an endymion. But if the endymion has this perk, they would be forced to attack alone, which I think is the greatest problem with this perk, it would make raiding with a super tricked out ship even easier because people can only 1v1 you to stop you. Teak White Oak 5/5 trincomalee with poods/carronades will slaughter 99% of other 5th rates all day, every day. I think that a duel room/duel invite would be a much more fair way of doing this without leading to massive exploitation.

Today Sweden rolled up outside FR with 20 something strong lineships, 10k BR during off times for France, and there was pretty much nothing to be done except frantically tell the over eager less experienced players to not join in suicide. The extended entry made it worse, because most of the experienced players saw the writing on the wall and left, so when new people joined we joined straight into the fray, outnumbered 20-3. They just sat there slaughtering the people slowly trickling in to try and help the guys getting ganked. Even though I entered far from the center of the circle, I spawned completely sandwiched by Swedish oceans and Santisimas. By the time my guns were loaded and sails set I was already below 75% health and hemorrhaging crew You could blame this on big clans not wanting actual fights, and instead preferring easy pvp marks and l33t global bragging rights, or on France for not having a 20 player strong first rate coast guard ready in off times, or you could blame it on the fact that this is the easiest way to get pvp marks en masse, and the game mechanics let you just roll up outside the enemy capital and jump into some frigate captain's battle to slaughter everything that enters it. (I personally say the latter) At the end of the day, its absolutely terrible for the game. I'm not going to say how exactly to fix this, but its just... blegh. I logged off today having enjoyed little of what transpired. If this is the development's vision for what the game should look like on launch, I doubt I will still be here by that time.

I'd like the game to be entirely clan based and have solo players working as pirates, privateers, or unaffiliated traders. Heck ditch nations all together, just one starting nation for clans to recruit from. Made a suggestion about it a while ago

Spy is not our spy!

I haven't had any problem with them sailing for France, as most of our protection is made of players: which I think is good. if people are so far away from the capital that player assistance is impossible, then I feel that they shouldn't have 100% protection like they used to. The combination of moderate AI support with player assistance makes zones less "all or nothing" and enables absolute security right at the capital with diminishing protection as you stray away. overall I think it's good. edit this may be more of a problem for weaker nations that don't always have a ship ready sally out and help.

Probably suggested before, but more logical ranging shot patterns. There are lots of ships (aggie, essex) whose top decks are set back and make aiming a pain in the butt. Also some ships (pavel, renommee) where the deck guns are just absurd... 4... at the stern?!? Let us either customize the firing pattern (IE gun deck fires first then deck guns) or just make them fire from bow to stern with the highest and foremost cannon firing. So on aggie it would fire several of the middle deck guns moving along the battery till it reached the deck guns and then fire those as you fire more ranging shots. As is lots of ships have huge "weaknesses" that would be completely irrelevant irl because playing them is just a nightmare, the St. Pavel is already at a big disadvantage vs the Bucentaure and even less people play it because of the annoyance of messing with the cannons or having an empty gun deck.

Lets keep this focused on equipment pre sets, not perk resets pls this is an excellent suggestion lets not derail it when we have tons of topics about that. This suggestion would be incredibly useful, +1

Yeah when I do that i can see my ships if I hover over my ship but not the enemy. No window pops up, it must be a glitch because it works in the OW if I go to crew management and it works on my own vessel when in the x interface. I'll submit a ticket next time I board something.

I can't see captured ship stats till I'm in port, only mine in battle. Is this a bug?

I think the way the circle works should change. It should look at where the greatest mass of ships is or average them out, and put the center of the circle there. Have the circle able to move as the battle progress so that players cant run in circles along the edge and the circle doesn't interrupt the flow of a big battle, only affecting runners

Honestly if we're going to allow joining or worse starting battles for no reason except to run away and be annoying, then I have some major problems with that. I'm not talking about screening, or pulling people into battles to stop them getting to port and keeping them there as a tactical move. But this crap? "just for you can't kill it in short time?" joining purely to make the experience of other players less enjoyable while never contributing to the battle. Quite literally the only "benefit" or achievement a player doing this will get is that the knowledge that other people are having less fun because of them. If video game trolling had a definition that would be it. I'm not saying if its allowed or not within the context of this particular case, but if it is then I would like to say I have a very big problem with that and I think that the rules should be reconsidered or mechanics abridged to prevent this toxic behavior or make it impossible. Preferably make it impossible via mechanics, as if there is just a rule, then there will always be a grey area and annoying tribunal topics will be spammed about it (like the situation with alts and flipping or whatever) tl;dr this rubbish is not ok, something should be done preferably mechanics to make it impossible.

We need more fun and interesting stuff like this in game. Content is what drives player motion and activity, and that activity is what drives an MMO and makes it interesting and fun.

Community representatives are important, but be very careful and think long and hard about how the selection process will be done. I witnessed war thunder's attempt at something like this turn into a year long debacle and huge controversy because it became about who had the most youtube subscribers and the biggest social media following, not who is the most dedicated to the game. Obviously war thunder is a different game but similar problems could be encountered. Ironically, the super dedicated historians and players were totally skipped over because only a few people knew about what they did. People who spent all their time talking trash got votes because they were the faces people knew. Considering the astronomical amount of trash talking that goes down in global chat between a relatively small portion of the player base, this is a major concern. The selection process mustn't turn into a general election

I get wanting to get people out of the reinforcement zones but so far I haven't had a single mission spawn outside the reinforcement zone so far. On the exact opposite side of Martinique? yes, but outside the zone? no. Very rarely do I get grand anse or any other out of zone mission, so whats the point? Still no risk, just a 25 minute sail (through protected waters) if I want to use my LOWO floating battery santi on a 1st rate fleet order. Lame, and no additional risk. Just a 50 minute time sink that makes me wander around looking for AI ships to hit and then have to deal with tons of friendlies jumping in the mission to "help" and actually get in the way often. Still have yet to see anyone try to gank my tank santisima when I go after AI ships because if they can't dictate where they enter relative to me and end up downwind or far away a 1st rate will eat their fir fir gankllonas and scumdymions alive. This means that the intended target (rear admiral level player grinding gold and slot xp) of this change is unaffected from a safety viewpoint while the new guy on a small frigate will be hurting more when the endymion/bellonas start harassing him. I think this was a well meant idea but it just hasn't had the desired effect. Other economic based incentives to leave the zone will work better than limit and block based punishments for staying in the zone.

Current repair system is another thing keeping people stuck in the safe zones. I've often wandered out and been forced to go back to FR because no repairs in nearby ports and no reps left = Log off or go back to safe zone, which is lame. While just repairing ships in the OW automatically isn't "super realistic," all repairs in the OW are inherently unrealistic, and I think a "free" background repair that takes time and can be augmented by repair items would do wonders to let people out of the reinforcement zones. Then again i'm an anti repair item extremist who wants all repairs to be just built into the ship, no silly items to carry.

You won't lose if you have zero morale unless the enemy attacks or counter-attacks. Likewise if you get them to 0 morale and don't attack, it won't finish boarding. Boarding win = get them to zero crew or them have zero morale after you attack. I'm assuming that the times you lost because you had no morale the enemy was attacking?

TFW the 4th rate "lineship" is faster than your brig ;-; This is why we can't have nice things

Hence my addition to the suggestion of it only being a rough estimate: akin to a crew and officers looking at the masts and judging the level of damage and strength of supporting rigging/movement/flexing and saying "yeah its fine" or "drop sails the mizzen is in trouble" etc.

Man thats just immature and a strawman logical fallacy.