Those thinking there should be more frigates and less 3rd rates in battles

[Aetrion]

I think a lot of it comes down to just adding more content to the game. In reality the reason why nations needed frigates was because they needed fast ships that could sail around on their own to actually patrol and police the waters they controlled. Currently there is simply very little content in the game that necessitates that.

 

That's one thing where Eve has a really significant advantage over this game. Resource generation is actually done by unarmed industrial ships that have to operate in open space. A single enemy cruiser can take out an entire mining operation, and you can't go after every single pirate cruiser with an entire fleet of dreadnoughts. In Naval Action there is currently no requirement for actually securing territory, because resource generation isn't tied to keeping your waters controlled, it's purely tied to keeping your ports secure, so port battles are what ultimately matters.  

Edited February 27, 2016 by Aetrion

[Captain Tylor]

they should introduce medium water ports ....

[Aetrion]

There needs to be meaningful PvP content outside of port battles, not just port battles with all manners of artificial restrictions. 

[Remo]

There needs to be meaningful PvP content outside of port battles, not just port battles with all manners of artificial restrictions. 

 

As long as smaller ships are weaker in every way compared to larger ships, there will always be issues with PvP outside of port battles.

[Aetrion]

As long as smaller ships are weaker in every way compared to larger ships, there will always be issues with PvP outside of port battles.

 

I agree there.

 

The biggest issue with small vs. large ship balance as far as I see it is that large ships have a relatively easy time destroying the rigging on a small ship and instantly take away their speed and maneuverability advantage.

 

If I were to try and balance the ship types my angle of attack would be: "More rigging =/= harder to destroy rigging". I'd simply run with the assumption that having more sails, more ropes, taller masts, and more manpower required to manipulate any of it is actually a huge liability when people start taking cannonballs to it. More rigging simply wouldn't mean more difficult to destroy rigging.

 

 

 

One thing that I read recently just sort of parousing various articles on naval warfare at the start of the 19th century is that it was considered a war crime at the time to sink a vessel of lower class instead of capture it, and generally sinking ships was very much frowned upon.  I personally would really like to see a system that plays around more with your reputation and the political ramifications of your actions, because that's a huge lever to use to get better fights. In real life people were actually lot less likely to kill each other and sink ships than in the game, there was much more of a sense of honor about the way they fought.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Aetrion

[Balsafer]

 There was a admiralty reputation in place prior to EA that got removed to be reworked because it wasn't really well liked at the time.  So keep in mind some reputation system will be added in the future.

[Aetrion]

That would be cool. The gold you get after a fight comes from the admiralty, so that'd be one obvious place to start making your behavior matter.

[Zeekoning]

One way to stop open world from having only line ships sailing on it would be to change the latter missions.  At around Vlaggenkapitein, instead of always facing a harder enemy, you would be tasked to capture a packet boat (with escort).  This would mean that there will be less line ships in open world because even though they can fight the escort if they desire combat, there will be a greater incentive to sail frigates because it is easier for them to catch the packet boat to finish the mission.

[Aetrion]

Yea, having more varied content will make a big difference.

 

Personally I see no problem with people who play the game for battles using ships that were meant for battles. 

 

There just have to be equally exciting uses for ships that weren't meant for battles too.

[Lockheed]

 

That's one thing where Eve has a really significant advantage over this game. Resource generation is actually done by unarmed industrial ships that have to operate in open space. A single enemy cruiser can take out an entire mining operation, and you can't go after every single pirate cruiser with an entire fleet of dreadnoughts. In Naval Action there is currently no requirement for actually securing territory, because resource generation isn't tied to keeping your waters controlled, it's purely tied to keeping your ports secure, so port battles are what ultimately matters.  

 

The PvP in EVE is vastly superior to many games. It is VERY complicated, require a lot of experience and great knowledge about game mechanics. I am talking about lowsec small/micro gang and/or solo pvp here. Nullsec blobfights are boring. 

And there is one more thing. The loot. You can become very rich (when I say very I mean REALLY rich) if you are lucky enough to kill somebody with very expensive modules on his ship or it happened to carry some expensive cargo. You can pay your gametime for several months or a year if you got lucky. That makes it really fun and its a great motivation as well. 

[Quineloe]

Why?

 Because I can't possibly think of a more dull fleet composition but the same ship 25 times.

 

As I said before, even if you add 20 more buildable 3rd rate BP's, people will only use capped 3rd rates.

 

This is an inherent issue with crafted third rates only having three durability, making it remarkably unattractive to craft them

 

Either make third rates uncaptureable, or make crafted third rates have 5 durability.

[Aetrion]

Arbitrarily uncapturable enemies are kind of stupid, so is that on the PvE side of things it's not even possible to have real endgame right now just because they don't allow 2nd and 1st rates to even exist.

 

It's just always going to be a total mess until the essential cost in ships stops being the possibility of losing the ship itself and starts being the maintenance thereof. 

 

 

For all the calls for realism when it comes to ships being sunk, the #1 thing that spells the doom for warships throughout history is being broken up simply because they are too expensive to keep around while nobody is sailing on them. But people in this game can store dozens of ships in ports all over the place without any penalty whatsoever, and stockpiling ships is considered a completely normal part of the game (After all, you have to do that to keep playing with all these "realistic" losses)

[Mrdoomed]

I agree there.

The biggest issue with small vs. large ship balance as far as I see it is that large ships have a relatively easy time destroying the rigging on a small ship and instantly take away their speed and maneuverability advantage.

If I were to try and balance the ship types my angle of attack would be: "More rigging =/= harder to destroy rigging". I'd simply run with the assumption that having more sails, more ropes, taller masts, and more manpower required to manipulate any of it is actually a huge liability when people start taking cannonballs to it. More rigging simply wouldn't mean more difficult to destroy rigging.

One thing that I read recently just sort of parousing various articles on naval warfare at the start of the 19th century is that it was considered a war crime at the time to sink a vessel of lower class instead of capture it, and generally sinking ships was very much frowned upon. I personally would really like to see a system that plays around more with your reputation and the political ramifications of your actions, because that's a huge lever to use to get better fights. In real life people were actually lot less likely to kill each other and sink ships than in the game, there was much more of a sense of honor about the way they fought.

I would love to see the article that says it was a war crim to sink an enemy vessel lmao. Guess its a good thing napoleon didnt just send a army of row boats to attack britian lol. The brits couldn't sink them or go to jail but couldn't possible capture them all. Shame napoleon was so stupid to not know this.

[Aetrion]

I would love to see the article that says it was a war crim to sink an enemy vessel lmao. Guess its a good thing napoleon didnt just send a army of row boats to attack britian lol. The brits couldn't sink them or go to jail but couldn't possible capture them all. Shame napoleon was so stupid to not know this.

 

Obviously it was permissible to sink a ship that didn't strike it's colors. It was not OK to sink a ship that surrendered, and it was expected that you'd surrender to save the crew rather than condemn them to death in an impossible fight.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_1_August_1801

 

This account of a battle contains a lot of interesting details about the various rules and attitudes in place back then. Like for example that the Americans didn't start firing with the intent of sinking the enemy ship until after the Tripolitans faked striking their colors twice and then attempted to board the Americans when they pulled up to accept a surrender, or that the Tripolitan ship was demasted and left to limp back to port because the American captain was not authorized to take prizes. That apparently means it was very well possible that your admiralty would give you a mission that was so important that you simply were not allowed to split your crew to take a ship back to port, even if it did surrender to you, and instead you were instructed to render the vessel incapable of re-entering the fight and let it go.

 

And this is a battle between the USA and Tripoli, which was considered a pirate state, not someone you'd make these kinds of allowances to unless you really believed in these kinds of honor codes.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Aetrion

[Mrdoomed]

Obviously it was permissible to sink a ship that didn't strike it's colors. It was not OK to sink a ship that surrendered, and it was expected that you'd surrender to save the crew rather than condemn them to death in an impossible fight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_1_August_1801

This account of a battle contains a lot of interesting details about the various rules and attitudes in place back then. Like for example that the Americans didn't start firing with the intent of sinking the enemy ship until after the Tripolitans faked striking their colors twice and then attempted to board the Americans when they pulled up to accept a surrender, or that the Tripolitan ship was demasted and left to limp back to port because the American captain was not authorized to take prizes. That apparently means it was very well possible that your admiralty would give you a mission that was so important that you simply were not allowed to split your crew to take a ship back to port, even if it did surrender to you, and instead you were instructed to render the vessel incapable of re-entering the fight and let it go.

And this is a battle between the USA and Tripoli, which was considered a pirate state, not someone you'd make these kinds of allowances to unless you really believed in these kinds of honor codes.

Ok. Thats completely different then. Its still a war crime to kill soldiers who surrender.

[Mighty Bouff]

I really hope they remove the ability to capture 4th rates and above. Will promote frigate play on the OS and make 3rd rates a more risky proposition in Port Battles (as only 3 Dura).

 

To acheive this I'd just remove every captured 3rd rate from peoples outposts, returning any installed upgrades.

[Prater]

I didn't realize that port battles were the emphasis, and of that I agree.

 

One thing that could limit sol creep is to lower the open world speed of 1st and 2nd rates.  Maybe just lower the OW speed of 3rd rates a tiny bit, because they still made up a significant portion of the fleet.  That, and Balsafer's port battle idea in the Testers forum.

[Mighty Bouff]

I think large ships are getting a turning nerf (which is overdue) but yes would support a slight reduction in OW speed (so they have to be escorted). maybe 1kt like the trading ships?

[Remo]

Remove the ability to capture/captain AI CONTROLLED 4th rates and higher. This lets players steal peoples ships regardless of rate, if they are stupid enough to sail a 1st rate on the OS you can still take it from them AND captain it if you want. And it solves people using nothing but captured AI connies/3rd rates for pvp as they can no longer captain AI captured ships.

 

Boom, done, finished.

 

Thank me later.

 

Edited March 2, 2016 by Remo

[Tindahbawx]

I really hope they remove the ability to capture 4th rates and above. Will promote frigate play on the OS and make 3rd rates a more risky proposition in Port Battles (as only 3 Dura).

 

To acheive this I'd just remove every captured 3rd rate from peoples outposts, returning any installed upgrades.

 

What a horrible idea, capturing ships is a good way for a nation that is behind in crafting progress to try and keep parity with once that can craft 2nd and 1st Rates, by stealing them off the players who have them.

 

its not like NPC's even have Bellonas and upwards to steal anyway.

[maturin]

Stealing large ships from missions should be impossible, however. The admiralty has need of them.

[Remo]

What a horrible idea, capturing ships is a good way for a nation that is behind in crafting progress to try and keep parity with once that can craft 2nd and 1st Rates, by stealing them off the players who have them.

 

its not like NPC's even have Bellonas and upwards to steal anyway.

 

See my post above for the proper way to fix this problem.

[Hethwill]

Supplies per crew number. Wages. Prize share.

 

That should be interesting.