Economical / ship changes.

[Amendus]

I will go straight to the point:

 

forgot the fact that forts were in development for PB, this could solve some problems.

----

Cannons:
Cannons should be crafted and purchased one at a time. If a ship has a max of 30 guns you need to buy 30 guns. small guns are cheap ofcourse so easy to buy, larger cannons will cost more so harder to obtain.

 

an idea: admirality stuff can reward you guns. yet pirates will not receive them. thus making it harder for pirates to obtain guns.

 

-----

Taxes:
The owner of the port should get taxes from the port. Why? This creates clan competition inside nations, more drama! Especially in the pirate nation where players can attack eachother. Pirates should get the option to capture another clans port (even if it belongs to the pirate nation).
This will keep the biggest nation in the game really busy with pirate politics instead of world domination.

----

Upgrades:
Would be nice when you sink an enemy exceptional ship with alot of awesome upgrades that you could have a 10% chance to obtain an upgrade he was using.

 

 

Edited post because i forgot ports and maps were coming.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Amendus

[Fellvred]

Some interesting ideas. Durabilities are mainly used to allow people to fight for a few hours without having to find a new ship + upgrades each time they're sunk. Just imagine if you had to sail for an hour to go back to your home port each time your were sunk and get a new ship, this was one of the things I disliked about Eve Online. A lot of the time people would simple avoid pvp combat whatever the odds.

 

I think one of the main issues with PBs atm is 3rd rates being captured and used en masse in every battle. One way around this would be not to let captured ships be used in port battles or perhaps not allowing 3rd rates be capturable (or even not spawning 3rd rates for AI at all).

 

You're right in that there needs to be roles for frigates in large port battles. Some people have mentioned straight BR limits or limits on the number of each ship type allowed in, but you're just going to piss people off if they sail for an hour and can't get in because there are already 10 SoLs in the battle. Perhaps each frigate type could have a specialised role in port battles, such as fast scouts being used would give the fleet a longer 'view distance' or being able to see more accurate damage on enemy ships or if they were undercrewed etc? I don't know much about the use of frigates in line fights of the time but I'm sure the knowledge squad here will be able to enlighten us

[Aetrion]

Making ships insanely expensive to justify them being overpowered is not good balance, it just keeps everyone who doesn't grind till they can afford the overpowered thing irrelevant to competitive play. This whole idea that smaller ships should just be cheap mid-tier cannonfodder that all the plebs can play with won't accomplish anything other than drive people away. What we need is a meaningful game balance solution to make people actually want to invest time and effort into smaller ships, and give them just as much room to develop as the big ones.

 

All this talk about just making stuff more and more expensive to control it will not solve the problem. All it does is try to legitimize the imbalance and throw up barriers to entry for competitive play that ultimately do nothing but drive people away and leaving the competitive part of the community in the same state as before.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Aetrion

[Amendus]

Its not hardcore circlejerking. If you look at port battles right now you see way to much SOLs. In the future everyone will only sail in huge SOLs. Making them more expensive to lose would give more people the option to retreat instead of just capping a new one or going yolo next battle because they have 4 durability left.

I just dont like the idea of massive fleets of santissima's in the game.

A: its not historically accurate

B: it will make fighting really really boring in the future. Now theres diversion and thats good, but in a few months 95% of players will sail battles in santissimas.

If you had to buy cannons individually people would go for 3rd rates faster because its cheaper. Lesser guns could also make ships faster so ideal for trader hunters.

And its not because ships are overpowered, its to improve ship variation and purpose.

For the durability, another reason is this: it makes people buy more ships (crafters get more orders) so this will improve the economy for crafters and traders. There will be way more demand for supplies.

[Aetrion]

Having to buy more ships and making all the really strong ships utterly unaffordable isn't going to make the game any better, it just means that everyone who can afford to keep going as is will keep going as is, and everyone who can't will leave to find another game when they get sick of constantly getting crapped on by people who cheese harder.

 

Sure, the game shouldn't just have entire fleets of Santisimas running around, I fully agree, but trying to lock the majority of players out of buying one doesn't solve the problem if fleets of Santisimas are still the most powerful thing you can do. It's just going to make the people who can afford it OP as all hell and make everyone else fed up with a game where they can't compete.

 

 

Really good balance can't be had until anyone can pick their ship freely, because then we're dealing with people picking something smaller because they see something positive it can bring to the fight in it, not just because the bigger things were slapped with penalties that don't relate to combat at all.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Aetrion

[Balsafer]

Amendus there were nothing but SoL's in large battles.  Battle of Trafalgar  a total of 40+ 3rd rates were involved in that battle to 10 frigates maybe.  

[Ruthless4u]

Its not hardcore circlejerking. If you look at port battles right now you see way to much SOLs. In the future everyone will only sail in huge SOLs. Making them more expensive to lose would give more people the option to retreat instead of just capping a new one or going yolo next battle because they have 4 durability left.

I just dont like the idea of massive fleets of santissima's in the game.

A: its not historically accurate

B: it will make fighting really really boring in the future. Now theres diversion and thats good, but in a few months 95% of players will sail battles in santissimas.

If you had to buy cannons individually people would go for 3rd rates faster because its cheaper. Lesser guns could also make ships faster so ideal for trader hunters.

And its not because ships are overpowered, its to improve ship variation and purpose.

For the durability, another reason is this: it makes people buy more ships (crafters get more orders) so this will improve the economy for crafters and traders. There will be way more demand for supplies.

I'm not sure how far you have progressed so not sure what you know about the " higher " levels.

SOL's already have limited durabilities. 1st rates have 1, 2nd rates have 2 iirc.

Port battles will get harder. The developers are working on bigger and tougher forts. I don't have the link right now but there is a thread with some of there upcoming fort designs. You will need SOL's to win PB's. Attacking deep water ports in frigates simply won't cut it.

SOL's are not very manuverable. To sail one solo in the OW for any length of time is generally a bad idea. Small groups of frigates would rip a solo SOL to shreds in OW. Hell even a group of snows with reasonably intelligent players could. You also have to remember, if somone spots a solo player controlled SOL it will be hunted down and most likely captured.

Cost and the limited durability will make SOL's the purview of large clans already. Your average solo player won't be able to afford to keep signifigant amounts of 1st and 2nd rates.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Ruthless4u

[Amendus]

I'm not sure how far you have progressed so not sure what you know about the " higher " levels.

SOL's already have limited durabilities. 1st rates have 1, 2nd rates have 2 iirc.

Port battles will get harder. The developers are working on bigger and tougher forts. I don't have the link right now but there is a thread with some of there upcoming fort designs. You will need SOL's to win PB's. Attacking deep water ports in frigates simply won't cut it.

SOL's are not very manuverable. To sail one solo in the OW for any length of time is generally a bad idea. Small groups of frigates would rip a solo SOL to shreds in OW. Hell even a group of snows with reasonably intelligent players could. You also have to remember, if somone spots a solo player controlled SOL it will be hunted down and most likely captured.

Cost and the limited durability will make SOL's the purview of large clans already. Your average solo player won't be able to afford to keep signifigant amounts of 1st and 2nd rates.

 

I forgot about many things you just stated. you are totally right. I will edit the durability stuff out of my original post. I still tought devs were keeping the 5 dura on a santi and totally forgot about the bigger forts etc.