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hoarmurath

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Posts posted by hoarmurath

  1. I wonder what could be the coat of arms of the De Montfort...

     

    de gueules au lion d’argent

     

    Hey, that remind me something!!! It's actually MY coat of arms, the one i have as avatar!

     

    So, the first thing i want to say is... It was an accident. I never intended to do this!!! Well, maybe i intended to do this, but i never thought it would actually work!!! It's not my fault!!!

     

    What? Reward me? So, you haven't found out yet?

     

    Good!!!

     

    For the reward ship, it's not really necessary, i haven't done what i have done for reward, just to help newcomers...

     

    Hélène De Montfort, who isn't sailing accross the indian ocean right now... No sir, that's not me... Must be some mirage...

    • Like 2
  2. Just a question by why does everything have to have negative traits attached to it?

     

    my 2 cents: Lets not suggest a bunch of useless mods that nobody will use and make no sense. I think the admins stated they wanted to avoid the tons of useless, never used mods found in Potbs. Ill use the above post to give an example of my point. The "Dread Captain Roberts" flag, actually makes some sense to me. When you are being commanded by a notorious and competent commander than your morale would go up in a general sense. This mod I can envision. On the other hand, "Lucky Figurehead" makes no sense whatsoever. first a figurehead isn't gonna provide luck anymore than a rabbits foot is but if you are gonna have a mod that simply is used as a way of saying that the ship is a lucky ship then its application should be applied to things that have a %chance of happening. So a reduction in chance of fire makes sense but buffing rudder and mast hp doesn't. I would suggest that that type of mod reduces fire chance along side of a reduction in cannon loss and crew loss.

     

     

    This topic find its origins in a discussion ingame with Bjorn. He asked specifically for upgrade suggestions with both positive and negative traits.

     

    Considering the Lucky figurehead, it all come to sailors superstition. If they think a figurehead brings them luck, then it can make them do whatever is necessary to create their own luck. And i wondered at what you could consider unlucky : the ship catching fire, sure, but also losing your rudder in combat (i suggest you read about the Bismarck sinking), and losing a mast to ennemy fire... The  lucky figurehead just reduce the chances for these unlucky events to occur.

  3. Figureheads

     

    Name of Upgrade/Module: lucky figurehead

     

    Positive traits:

     

    - fire chances

    + rudder hp

    + mast hp

     

    Negative traits:

     

    - crew hp

    - preparation for boarding

     

    Name of Upgrade/Module: Dreadful figurehead

     

    Positive traits:

     

    + morale

    + preparation for boarding

    + attack

     

    Negative traits:

     

    - brace

    - defend

     

     

    Name of Upgrade/Module: Neptune's favor figurehead

     

    Positive traits:

     

    + speed

    + turning

    + rudder turning speed

     

    Negative traits:

     

    - reload

    - crew

     

    SAILS

     

    Name of Upgrade/Module: light fabric sails

     

    Positive traits:

     

    + yards turning speed

    + sails setting speed

     

    Negative traits:

     

    - sails hp

     

    Name of Upgrade/Module: heavy fabric sails

     

    Positive traits:

     

    + sails hp

     

    Negative traits:

     

    - yards turning speed

    - sails setting speed

     

    FLAGS

     

    Name of Upgrade/Module: Dread captain Roberts flag

     

    Positive traits:

     

    + morale

    + attack

     

    Negative traits:

     

    - brace

     

    Name of Upgrade/Module: No quarter flag

     

    Positive traits:

     

    + attack

    + muskets

     

    Negative traits:

     

    - defend

    - brace

     

    Name of Upgrade/Module: Honor flag

     

    Positive traits:

     

    + defend

    + brace

     

    Negative traits:

     

    - fire deck guns

    - fire grenades

     

    SWIVELS

     

    Name of Upgrade/Module: Light swivels

     

    Positive traits:

     

    + attack

     

    Negative traits:

     

    - fire deck guns

     

    Name of Upgrade/Module: heavy swivels

     

    Positive traits:

     

    + fire deck guns

     

    Negative traits:

     

    - attack

    • Like 1
  4. logbook

     

    15 January 10h20 "departure from Fort Royal"

    15 January 16h30 "Engaged by a british Surprise frigate at 14°53'38.1"N 61°56'37.0"W end of battle at 16h47"

    16 January 7h10 "Engaging a pirate navy brig at 16°25'00.9"N 62°42'53.0"W pirate navy brig sunk at 7h23 pirate brig sunk at 7h34 end of battle 7h34"

    16 January 19h25 "reached Plymouth port after 2 days of sailing"

    • Like 1
  5. Not long ago, i had the occasion to capture a Renommee frigate. During the fight, i made a gun explode, the ship started burning and finally exploded. After boarding it, i took control of it. It was completely demasted, the side armor was blown away, it had half armor on one side and one fourth on the other, there was a lot of damage all around the ship.

     

    Excepted the cannons, all were intact.

  6. No, ai doesn't seem to fight under same rule as for cannon damage. I usually aim specifically at gunport level, and their gun number don't change. At the same time, i can lose as much as 25% of a broadside, and even have guns disabled from the opposite side i'm taking damage.

     

    A couple patch ago, i could occasionnally make a cannon explode, but it doesn't happen anymore. The only times i see ai guns made unable to fire is when they start to sink and the lower decks are under water.

     

    Making a F11 screen of this is quite hard as what happens is, precisely, nothing... Hard to tell if something should have been disabled and isn't, especially with the smoke and without the ability to pause the game.

  7. So, I thought a lot about open world map and what could be done with it, and how exploration could be integrated in the game with these map mechanisms. Here is how I think that open world map and exploration could together to give the game a sailing navigation feel and reward explorers.

     

    The open sea map :

     

    My vision of the open sea map is a map with only the land mass, and a grid to help determine the longitude and latitude on map. No port, nothing beside landmass, the islands, the shores, that’s all. Then, everything on this map could be added by annotations, let call them bookmarks.  There could be three kind of bookmarks, with different purpose.

    Also, the map wouldn’t show your ship position, to know where you are, I imagine a navigation skill with 30 minutes cooldown that would allow you to know where you are by giving you your longitude and latitude, up to you after to check on your map where it is. Precision and cooldown could be affected by special items owned by the captain, like various quality sextants and marine chronometers for example.

     

    The Port bookmarks :

     

    A beginning player would have a few bookmarks on its map, mainly the closest ports from its starting port. Then, there would be two ways of adding a port to your map, either buy navigation maps of certain parts of the west indies that would add ports to your map, or explore yourself to add ports as you reach them (every time you enter a new port, it adds a bookmark).

     

    The personal bookmarks :

     

    Every player could place personal bookmarks on its map. These marks would be only for its information and for navigation purposes.  I suggest that each player should be able to see on open world the position of its bookmarks, so he can use them as visual helps for navigation. Each player would only see its personal bookmark, so the open world and map would not be overloaded with infos from other players. To get a better effect on open see,  it could be possible to chose when placing the bookmark how it shows in open world, as some sort of buoy for a sea bookmark, or as some object like a wreck, a temple, a distinctive rock, a tree, a lighthouse, a ruin for a land bookmark.

    Additionnally, these personal bookmarks could be copied and exchanged with other players (like the old eve online bookmarks) , so they could share meeting points or location of places of interest.

     

    Exploration bookmarks :

     

    These would also be kind of personal as no two players would have the same, and as they would show on map as on open world only for the concerned player. However, these marks would not be placed by the player but would be generated by the system according to the exploration game (I speak of this after). These bookmarks would represent localization of ressources that would reward players for exploration, they would stay as long as there are ressources left on it, or as long as the layer keep that bookmark. It could be erased, but also could be exchanged, with the difference that only one player at a time could have the bookmark, so it wouldn’t be possible to copy them, only to transfer them to someone (sell them). The bookmark would not only show the location of the ressources, but also their type and remaining number (to reduce chances of scam, like let sell bookmarks with only one resource remaining).

     

    The exploration game :

     

    Every player, upon discovering a new port or exploration landmark, could earn exploration experience. Along with its combat rank, he could have an exploration rank that would give him, as it raise, access to more places to explore. A player with a given rank would have generated for him, in the open world, a given number of exploration places. They would be personal and no two players would have the same. The players would not know where they are, just that there’s something that wait to be discovered by them somewhere. These places would be shown on that player open world as some sort of object, just like a personal bookmark. Each such place would contain ressources that the player could take, that’s the reward. Every time a player exhaust an exploration place by taking all the ressources, another one could be automatically generated so the player always have the same amount of places to be discovered. When checking the exploration place, a bookmark would be automatically generated for him so he can come back later, or in the case he want to sell the bookmark to another player. In that case, the buying player would get the bookmark added to its map with the corresponding place in open world, while the selling player would have that bookmark and places deleted and a new one generated.

     

    The exploration rank would be different for each part of the world so a player that is a top explorer in west indies would still be a novice explorer the first time he goes to Europe (and vice versa).

     

     

    • Like 1
  8. Carronades were introduced at the end of 18th century, and became obsolete during 19th century. The fact is that they were only useful at point blank range and that the development of naval artillery quickly made the range of engagement greater as the gun was quickly winning its race against armor efficiency.

     

    The current carronades we have currently in game have nothing in common with the real ones. The real ones wouldn't damage hulls like they do here, they were mostly used to decimate the ennemy crews at close range before boarding. For this, they were great. But once it became too dangerous to approach in range of cannons again, carronades just stopped being used.

     

    I think that the importance of carronades in the current game is too big, and that it could use some tweaking if we want the game to give them a place more according to the one they had historically.

  9. First, sorry for all the english bad grammar and vocabulary, it isn't my first language :P

     

    Well, i have been thinking about ganking, how it works in other games, how it is adressed in other gaming environments, and how it could and should work here.

     

    The first part in my reflexion was understanding why people gank. Some may find it obvious, but understanding what it’s really about is a mandatory step in looking how to handle the phenomena and keep it under some sort of control.

     

    ==========

     

    So, why do people gank?

     

    To win?

     

    For rewards?

     

    Of course, ganking is all about winning, but it goes farther than the usual winning spirit, ganking isn’t just about winning, it’s more about crushing the opposition with overwhelming strength. Do you need to gank to win? Of course not, just a couple advantages in combat are usually enough to ensure your win.

     

    Concerning the reward, it seem obvious that by having to share the same amount of gold/xp/loot among a greater number of players, the reward can only be lower than in fair battles. So we can assume that the usual rewards aren’t what the gankers are looking for.

     

    So, why gankers gank? The answer may be in the various battle reports that can be found posted by gankers in forums. Most of the time, when I read such battle reports, the main motivation of the poster seem to be the ultimate humiliation of the opponent. In fact, I noticed that nothing make a ganker happier than to have made someone ragequit the game.

     

    This being said, why ganking is bad and should be restrained?

     

    It is obvious that for those of us that plan to invest in a game for a long time, having the game successful and attracting other players is a must.

     

    It’s also obvious that for a game company, attracting players and retaining them is good for profit.

     

    Two reasons why having a pool of players whose intent is to humiliate other players to the point that they ragequit the game is a bad idea. It’s a bad idea for long term players, and it’s a bad idea for game developpers.

     

    ==========

     

    So, enough reflexion, now I had to ask myself the ultimate question: what can be done?

     

    Enforcing “fair” battles according to battle value or number of participants is generally unsatisfactory and open the game the another plague, the griefing.

     

    Reducing the rewards for gankers seem also totally pointless as they obviously think that their ultimate reward is their opponent humiliation. They really don’t care that much about xp and gold, so they don’t care either about their reduction.

     

    That makes things hard to have the gankers think twice before ganking, doesn’t it?

     

    So, I had to think about the various ressources in game, and which one would really affect all payers, including gankers.

     

    That’s when I thought about a universal resource in all games, one that is vital into the gameplay design : time

     

    The amount of time a player have to play is limited, and he naturally want to get the most for its playing time. So, why not make gankers lose time? At that point, I started to have a lot of ideas coming (yeah, I’m a genius!!!). The first idea that come to mind is, of course, a “ganking cooldown”. Once the ganking battle is over, have the gankers waste time by locking them into battle for some time until they can leave and look for another target. You can also make it progressive, the bigger the gank, the more they outnumber/outpower their opponents, the more time they stay locked.

     

    Then, I started to think about what could be done with that time. Something that nobody likes, including gankers, is to be ganked, of course. They want to humiliate others, not to be humiliated themselves.

     

    So, why not using this time to prepare them their own medicine? In faction games, factions tend to care for their own, and while they don’t care for other factions getting ganked, they certainly tend to take action to ensure their faction isn’t ganked. If someone is getting ganked somewhere, a faction will tend to assemble other players to chase off the gankers. By locking the gankers in their initial battle, you can give that faction time to react and prepare for retaliation. All they need, is to know there was a gank, where it was, and when it occurred.

     

    Of course, someone ganked can give these informations in faction chat, but newbies and non English speaking players may have trouble communicating efficiently. So, as we have a mechanism to lock the gankers into battle, why not have the system make that information available for everyone in the faction?

     

    You can even go farther, and ensure the people that come to gank the gankers aren’t victims of the same game mechanic. Instead of having them start a whole new battle with the gankers, you can reopen the locked battle shortly before end of lock, and make it so if people enter the battle at that stage, it restart the battle timer. The good points about making it that way is that it will make gankers lose more time and protect the retaliation force from the antiganking mechanism.

     

    ==========

     

    Well, I believe that ends my suggestion for ganking. It doesn’t prevent people from ganking, but bring consequences for doing it. I also left aside discussion about the exact point when fairness ends and ganking starts. This is number crushing that is more for the devs to decide.

  10. Puisque je viens de la simulation de vol, opposons un instant quelques références du genre. Comparons ce qui n'est pas comparable, flight simulator et IL2. Dans le premier, nous avons une gestion quasi à l'identique de l'avion, chaque swtich du tableau de bord, chaque cadran, chaque manette reproduit exactement la fonction de son équivalent réel. Dans le second, même si la plupart des instruments sont fonctionels, l'interface est simplifiée pour permettre au pilote de se concentrer sur l'essentiel de sa tache : le combat aérien.

     

    L'un d'eux est il moins réaliste que l'autre?

     

    Flight simulator est extrèmement réaliste sur tout ce qui concerne la gestion des instruments et des commandes du cockpit, ainsi qu'avec la navigation et la gestion des pannes en vol. En revanche, en dépassant les limites de l'enveloppe de vol, on voit rapidement les limites du moteur physique. FS est fait pour naviguer comme dans un vrai, pas pour y faire de l'acrobatie.

     

    IL2 est extrèmement réaliste sur la physique de vol, les performances des appareils dans toutes les conditions de vol, ainsi que la physique des armements et la gestion des dommages. L'acrobatie étant le coeur même du combat aérien, tout le moteur est prévu pour gérer ce qui se passe quand on va au dela des limites de l'enveloppe de vol. En revanche, la navigation, bien que présente, y est simplifiée, et la gestion des commandes du cockpit simplifiée pour ne gérer que ce qui est vraiment important dans un avion de combat. IL2 est fait pour combattre, pas pour reproduire l'ambiance des grands vols long courrier.

     

    Chacun a son domaine ou il est infiniment plus réaliste que l'autre. Alors, la question qu'on doit se poser, c'est ou est ce qu'on veut placer le réalisme?

     

    Dans Virtual skipper 5 par exemple, on a un jeu de course à la voile, ou on ne fait que de la régate. Donc, pas de grandes courses transatlantiques, pas de tour du monde à la voile. Le jeu gère extrèmement finement toute la dynamique du voilier de régate. Dans le mode simplifié, on essaie surtout de choisir les meilleures trajectoires, gérer au mieux les petites variations de vent, et bien sur la gestion tactique des autres navires en course, y compris en leur coupant le vent. Dans le mode complexe, on doit gérer la voile avec plus de finesse, sans le bordage automatique. On doit surveiller qu'elle soit toujours convenablement réglée en plus du reste. Et je peux vous dire que ça réclame toute votre attention. Je vois mal ce niveau de complexité dans un jeu ou l'on doit aussi pointer et tirer ses canons.

     

    Non mais parce que n'oublions pas que le Capitaine de nos navires dans nos petites batailles cumule les fonctions de capitaine, de bosco et de maitre cannonier de chaque batterie de canons. Ca fait quand même beaucoup pour un seul homme.

     

    Faudrait pas qu'on en arrive au silent hunter III ou il fallait faire sans arret le tour du sous marin pour voir si un marin n'etait pas fatigué pour l'envoyer se coucher, pour après voir lequel de ces cherubins etait assez en forme pour le remplacer. Mais oui mon gars, va te coucher va, ton capitaine va venir te border et te faire un bisou avant que tu t'endormes! Parmi les premiers mods, on a vite trouvé celui qui désactivait la fatigue de l'équipage. Dans le 4 avec uboat missions, ils ont vite rectifié le tir, et on n'avait plus qu'a gérer la composition des équipes de quart, avec les quarts qui changeaient d'eux même. C'était quand même nettement plus vivable.

    • Like 1
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