Give small ships the ability to initiate boarding at higher speeds

[Aetrion]

This is an idea I had to improve the balance between large and small ships that I think wouldn't mess too much with historical accuracy.

 

Basically the idea is that the speed at which you can initiate a boarding attempt is higher for smaller ships. Right now big ships have a huge advantage in boarding, because not only do they have way more people, but they also have the ability to simply ram a vessel to stop it or turn it into the wind. Small ships on the other hand can't do those things, which means despite being a lot more agile they have a much harder time starting a raid.

 

The idea here would be that the lighter your ship is the easier it becomes to pull it against an enemy, even while going at relatively high speeds, and that means a 7th rate might be able to start a boarding attempt at 7 or 8 knots, while a ship of the line still can't initiate boarding until the speed is down to 3 or so.

 

 

Together with the changes to crew management this would make small ships a lot more dangerous to large ships, because it would give them the ability to set up situations where they can initiate a boarding action, but their opponent can't launch a boarding action in return. This would essentially force large vessels to always keep a force assigned to boarding defense when they go up against smaller ships, or be in danger of lightning raids that take the captain hostage to force a surrender. 

 

It would also legitimize the use of smaller ships for capturing enemy vessels a bit more, since right now the only advantage in that department that a small ship gives you is having a somewhat easier time chasing the target, but a large ship tends to be able to offset that very quickly by just getting in a broadside of chainshot at the start of the battle, and from there on out is better in every regard.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Aetrion

[maturin]

Definitely not.

 

Successfully grappling an opponent means that they are arbitrarily forced to strike all their sail, stop firing guns and remain stationary. You will have fleet battles where little cutters swarm the line of SoLs, grappling just long enough to screw up the maneuvers. Troll gameplay dominates.

 

If small craft get to board my large warship, then I want to keep sailing while the little gnat gets dragged along, and fire my broadsides too.

[Aetrion]

I agree that being the target of a boarding action shouldn't completely incapacitate you, especially given the fact that the new crew system explicitely assumes that not your entire crew even gets to fight because they are still doing all those other jobs. However, shortcomings in the current boarding system aren't a reason to say giving small ships bonuses to initiate a boarding wouldn't be a good way to give smaller ships more of a meaningful role in the game.

 

Giving cutters the ability to swarm in and screw up your line sounds like an improvement over the current system where you can pretty much just ignore small ships entirely.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Aetrion

[Trebs]

Bad idea

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

I agree that being the target of a boarding action shouldn't completely incapacitate you, especially given the fact that the new crew system explicitely assumes that not your entire crew even gets to fight because they are still doing all those other jobs. However, shortcomings in the current boarding system aren't a reason to say giving small ships bonuses to initiate a boarding wouldn't be a good way to give smaller ships more of a meaningful role in the game.

 

Giving cutters the ability to swarm in and screw up your line sounds like an improvement over the current system where you can pretty much just ignore small ships entirely.

 

No.   Maturin has the absolute right of it.

 

Small ships should be ignored by far larger ships - they're no threat and we should not make game mechanics to make them a bigger threat.

[ObiQuiet]

IMO Rating: At-speed grappling by small ships

Realism: Limited to Barbary Cosairs against traders

Gameplay: Annoying at best

Edited March 3, 2016 by ObiQuiet

[maturin]

Fleets were removed because the dozens of snows ruined battles. It was like trying to play basketball with the court covered in marbles and banana peels.

[KrakkenSmacken]

I would support this idea with a couple of additional mechanics.

 

One, when you board, you board.  The boarding party gets onto the other ship and starts a fight. Crew move from one ship to the other, and battle on the actual deck of the ship that is boarded.  So there should be two parts, what the ships are doing to each other, and what the boarding party is doing to the crew of the other ship.

 

Small ships should be dragged, jostled against, pushed around and ran over and sunk, all while boarding is happening.

 

It should take time for crew to transfer from one ship to the other, and they are vulnerable when this is happening. Slower travel would mean it happens faster and safer, while fast moving ships would jostle and push and would transfer crew slowly with high risk.

 

Repelling boarders would involve pulling crew off other work to fight, so boarders for example could tie up the crew of the top deck guns, or one side of the guns only, while the rest of the ship continues to operate while the boarding fight happens.

 

Jump ship should also be a thing.  The entire crew empties from a sinking ship, with all the marbles thrown into the desperate fray to eliminate the other crew. Empty a cutter onto a victory, and it should be a short bloody fight that has little impact on the Victories performance.  Swarm a victory with 5 cutters worth of crew, now you have a serious problem to deal with. 

 

In order for the above to work, the option for the captain should exist to run the boarding mini game like he runs normal ship operations, such as crew focus, repairs, etc, without stopping the ship.

 

Of course all of this would take quite a bit of programming effort, but it would be I think more interesting than the current mini game.

[Tomms123]

I don't know what to respond in this thread other then that I support Maturin in this as Maturin has already written my point of view to.

 

So as the proposal is lied out right now I wont support it.

[Vain]

I would also presume that the addition of this mechanic would make the presumably unintended, but opposite true as well.  If a small ship can grapple a large at speed, physically the opposite should be true as well.  If the reasoning being is that a lighter ship is easier to pull against a larger ship, it goes both ways.  A large ship would be able to board a small ship at speed for the same reason, and I think this would defeat the purpose of this (small ship balancing) mechanic you propose.

 

It might physically make more sense, but it doesn't enhance the game play for either side.  It just makes both ships more vulnerable to trolling depending on who decides to utilize it to their advantage.

[Aetrion]

Small ships should be ignored by far larger ships - they're no threat and we should not make game mechanics to make them a bigger threat.

 

That's in no way historically accurate nor good game design. 

 

Letting any kind of ship pull up right next to yours posed a significant threat, because you had no way of knowing if it was a fire ship that was rigged to blow, or if the crew had bombs or petards or burning oil on board to mess you up. You definitely wouldn't ever have had a situation where someone went "Meh, 6 pounders can't even hurt me, just ignore that ship". The reason why small ships weren't taken into large battles when bigger ones were available wasn't because they posed no viable threat to large ships, but because they would be destroyed in short order to remove that threat.

 

It's also just crap from a game design standpoint. This game utterly fails to incentivise the use of smaller ships with it's "bigger is always better" policy. Right now the only reason to use smaller ships is because you can't afford the big ones, and the only thing that motivates people to do is find a game that doesn't jerk them around. Can't have people constantly whining that there aren't enough small ships in battles and then the second someone suggests something that might give small ships half a point they complain about not wanting to be attacked by cutters.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Aetrion

[Hethwill]

It's a compromise I think.

 

Bloody 3rd rates and bigger wouldn't even be sailing all the time on cruising tours like we do, so the big versus small is far fetched.

 

A frigate is a different thing and re-enacting the Philadelphia can be done. Just jump a Consti with a group of privateers and proceed to the best of your abilities to take over her.

[Aetrion]

I think people are overstating how dangerous this would actually be. There is a significant difference between "Small ship is on even footing with large ship" and "Small ship can meaningfully contribute to a fight".

 

Sure, realistically smaller ships weren't commonly present in battles, but let's face it, this game currently has nothing to offer but battles and tries to restrict everyone from using large ships. If they wanted to be true to history you'd be more likely to be captaining a third rate than you would be to captain a cutter if you serve in a national navy.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Aetrion

[Hethwill]

Maybe that's where Admiralty build will come in ?

 

More than not navy Captains preferred to stick to frigates at maximum. Prize money was more important to some than fame and immortality.

[Aetrion]

Sure, if they built the game in such a way that what kind of ship you use comes down to how you like to play instead of what you can afford, and the game offered a full range of sensible activities and interactions for all types of ships it'd be an entirely different story.

 

I'm not seeing any indication of that happening though. The devs seem to be entirely stuck on bigger is better and trying to "balance" it by price, which really just means if you don't play so much that you have a stockpile of ships of the line you might as well just quit.