A series of ideas for overhauling the game.

[Musuko42]

Crafting.

 

I'm just going to come right out and say it: labour hours stink. I can understand the idea behind the mechanic; to prevent powergamers from grinding 24/7 and dominating the ship-building aspect of the game. The problem is, the game as it stands actively forces you away from it when you're a crafter; it makes you close the game and leave it for days at a time while the hours refresh. There is also little gameplay involved in the process; gameplay is all about making choices, and there aren't many engaging choices involved in crafting.

 

Who has heard of the old adage; "Cheap, fast, good; pick two"? What if this choice were incorporated into the game?

 

Want to build a ship fast and cheaply? Well, it'll be a weak, crappy ship.

Want a good ship, fast? Well, it'll cost you!

Got time to wait? In that case, you can have a good ship for cheap...eventually.

 

My proposal for crafting is this; scrap labour hours, and replace it instead with something that any player of other economy/resource games will recognise; timers, building-based production, hiring and firing of staff, tools and equipment, and choices, choices, choices!

 

You build a shipyard.

You buy tools and machinery for the shipyard; you can buy high-quality, improving the quality or speed of the production, depending on what choices you make later. Or, you can buy cheap and dirty stuff and get what you pay for.

You hire shipwrights. Do you choose the cheap, inexperienced men, who'll perform poorly, but will gain experience later? Or pay top-dollar for the grizzled old veteran with skilled fingers and a sharp, honed mind?

You pay those shipwrights, and you choose how much to pay them. Maybe you even supply them with rum. The happier they are, the better they work.

You feed supplies and money to the shipyard and set them building a ship. You get to set your priority, within the bounds of the quality of tools/machinery/staff: quick, cheap, good.

The shipyard then starts a timer, and the ship is completed when the timer runs down. You can do things to change the length of this timer, but you'll still have a minimum length of time to wait, preserving the intention of labour hours, but now involving lots of gameplay choices and tactical decisions.

 

Now, extend that idea further down the supply chain. Build woodworking workshops, blacksmiths, foundries, for making the ship-building materials, all with the same mechanics; buy machinery, buy tools, hire staff, pay them, all affecting the quality, speed, and cost of the materials you produce.

 

Take it further; your mines and forests work the same way, affecting speed and quantity of production.

 

Why would you have different qualities of materials? Well...

 

Abolish crafting notes.

 

Honestly, they're a bit of a clunky mechanism.

 

Instead, why not have the quality of the ship be determined by the quality of the parts that it's made of, and by the result of the cheap/quick/good decisions made in its production?

 

Why not even take it further; divide the ship into different sections and allow each section to differ in quality? Build a ship with super-high-quality canvas and rigging, but shoddy planking and frame parts? Then you'll have a leaky, poorly-armoured tub with brilliantly-fast sail-handling. Build a high-quality ship, but skimp on the carriages? Then you might have a gold-quality ship in all areas, but with a fatal flaw; the cannons tend to break their carriages too often.

 

Potential areas:

 

masts

sails

rigging

armour

frame

pump

carriages

rudder

 

Trade ships.

 

Abolish AI traders. At least, as they stand anyway. Replace them with player-driven AI traders.

 

Got one port with a foundry smelting iron, and another port with an iron-ore mine? Want to get the ore from one port to the other? Buy/capture a trader ship, hire a crew, give the ship orders to sail back and forth between the two ports to transport the ore, setting certain criteria for when they sail; fill the hold, or sail when they have a specified amount of ore. Choices, choices!

 

Your traders might be captured by the enemy. They might be sunk. You'll have to be careful where you let them sail. The importance of safe areas of the map will be increased. And, if the goods are captured, they remain in the economy, and we don't have the artificial inflation of AI trader goods coming out of thin air when one is captured.

 

But what if they do get captured or sunk? Well...

 

Insurance.

 

Durability seems so artificial. In the real world, sunken ships aren't magically recovered from Davy Jones' Locker to be reused over and over.

 

In the real world, ships and their cargo are insured...if you want them to be.

 

Allow captains to purchase insurance policies on their ships. Offer a range of policies; more expensive ones pay out a greater percentage of the ship's value. Some will even offer an immediate like-for-like replacement. Some might cover the upgrades too. Some will cover the cargo, some not. Choices, choices, choices!

 

Port Battles.

 

I don't think anyone likes timers.

 

And what about flags? Did they do that in real life? "Sorry chaps, we've sailed for days to capture this port, but Smitty accidentally dropped the flag overboard, and without the flag we can't take the port! Back home we go!"

 

I propose instead of flags, we have "decrees". The King/Queen/Admiralty/whoever decides which port they'd like taken...captains don't.

 

Every day, a number of ports are chosen by the game AI to be vulnerable to attack for 24 hours.

 

"Port X, owned by France, is desired by King Wossname of Britain, and a royal decree has ordered it be taken! (23h remaining)"

 

It will be a shame to remove player choice in where port battles will be held. But, it will allow flipping of ports to be slowed and controlled by the devs, and will add a healthy element of randomness to fighting; we won't be attacking/defending the same key ports over and over, and will have to consider defences over a more varied area. And player choice will remain; we won't get to choose which ports are vulnerable to attack/defend at any given time, but we will get to choose how we react to them.

 

It will also prevent any faction being knocked all the way back to one port; the game will stop issuing decrees for that faction's ports to be taken when it's utterly beaten, and in turn give them more decrees to expand into nearby ports. They'll still need to fight, but they won't be utterly destroyed.

 

Additional minor port battle changes:

 

Split the BR limit between ship classes, so only a certain percentage of the ships can be ships of the line, giving a role to frigates. Combined arms are more interesting.

 

Player-built defences and reinforcement. Remember the building ideas above? Extend that to defences and reinforcement as group-built projects. On the home screen of a port, you'll have an option to provide money/materials/ships to the defence of that port. How strong the forts/defences are for that port will depend on how much has been invested in it, and it'll decay over time. How many ships, and of what type, can be summoned by reinforcement will be determined by what ships have been donated to the reinforcement pool. And when they're sunk, they're not replaced, unless they're insured. This should mean that factions are forced to choose which ports to actively defend, and which to leave vulnerable.

 

Pirates.

 

Should not be a faction. They should be an "exile" faction for lone-wolves. No ports, no buildings, and no teaming-up together.

 

But...

 

Pirates can fly a false flag to pretend to be a friendly player, before springing a surprise attack, or to use one of that faction's ports. Pirates can bury treasure; hide stashes of cargo on otherwise empty stretches of beach. Pirates can support larger AI fleets. In essence, they should offer a very different gameplay style.

 

And pirates can join other factions...and to change factions, you MUST become a pirate first.

 

France isn't going to hire a British captain. But they MAY hire a British captain who fired on his own countrymen, renounced Britain for the pirate life, and subsequently attacked British shipping almost exclusively.

 

Changing faction would require you to first become a pirate, then by your choice of actions encourage the AI leadership of your chosen faction to approach you with an offer of enlistment. It would not be an immediate process. But, maybe, an entertaining one.

 

More to come as I have further ideas. Thoughts? Comments? Rebuttals? Accusations of being an idiot with stupid ideas? All welcome! Thank you for your time and attention!

[Cmdr Thrudd]

I like your crafting suggestions. As a player that really enjoyed the crafting/econ side of games I wholeheartedly agree with what you've posted. The current system is just frustrating and not engaging for someone like me that wants to do econ 80% of the time. More choices and flexibility would be fantastic.

The current system though seems to be designed more around players that want to dabble a bit in crafting but spend most of their time out pvping. That's fine if you're that sort of player but for those of us that like to make stuff or don't pvp it's pretty frustrating only having a few clicks every couple of days as our crafting fix. I don't think they're going to change it though.

 

I can't comment though on the port battle stuff as I play on the PvE server.

[Galileus]

Were you even a part of a port battle...? That suggestions are just straight up awful! Just que benny hill music when whole clans cannot plan for what they want to do or where they want to fight and suddenly need to rush to a port away from the front because AI "decided" it will be "fun".

 

Let's just sit on our asses 24h a day next to a randomly selected port. Because fun...

 

Honestly, what the...

[Musuko42]

whole clans cannot plan for what they want to do or where they want to fight and suddenly need to rush to a port away from the front because AI "decided" it will be "fun".

 

We already have to do that when another faction springs an attack just before we want to make an attack.

 

I'm sure the AI system could be smart enough to stagger port battles intelligently, to avoid having us rush around aimlessly.

 

Perhaps not 24 hour windows. Maybe 6 hour windows.

[Galileus]

We already have to do that when another faction springs an attack just before we want to make an attack.

 

I'm sure the AI system could be smart enough to stagger port battles intelligently, to avoid having us rush around aimlessly.

 

Perhaps not 24 hour windows. Maybe 6 hour windows.

 

Still unacceptable.

 

And no, AI would never be "smart enough" to keep up with player-driven politics, strategies and plans. It would remove w whole huge aspect of the game AND remove player control, replacing it by random events requiring you a job-like amount of attention, offering job-like amount of fun in return.

 

It's straight up awful. Im sorry, but it is.

[Musuko42]

And no, AI would never be "smart enough" to keep up with player-driven politics, strategies and plans. It would remove w whole huge aspect of the game AND remove player control, replacing it by random events requiring you a job-like amount of attention, offering job-like amount of fun in return.

 

It won't be intended to keep up with player-driven politics. How players react to the semi-random element of the decrees will be the strategy.

 

You're right; it takes away player control for where and when port battles are staged. I wouldn't say the present status-quo is "fun", though, with timers and shooting towers.

[Lyric]

Like a lot of these ideas, I'll just pick out one giant fault with the last suggestion. Allowing guilds to choose a new nation every week, every month, or at all ruins the game. A classic example of this is guild wars 2. World v World was ruined by top EU guilds deciding they wanted to all play on a single server and bring it up from bronze to gold league. Whilst that was in one way quite useful, you tended to find a good 2 or 3 servers then became dead servers and lost players.

[Ronald Speirs]

1.) Your crafting proposal does seem interesting, hell you spend the time to make it right you should get what you want not some random generator to say what u get.

2.) Insurance seems good and realistic, just like anyone that wants to take out a policy you pay i higher cover you are better off.

3.) Crafting notes need to go as they are a big chuck of SFA and are a waste of time to not get what you want most of the time.

4.) Trade ships does make for more players want to patrol and protect their own cargo or clan shipping lanes so will make for more interesting game play IMO

5.) Port Battle idea though would slow things down does take alot of control out of our hands and most wont agree with it, i preferred more of a slower method of blockading and attacking those nations fleets, traders outside of port to increase the ports unrest on contention, the more people the quicker it takes but should still take a few hours just to get into contention thus making clan and nations have to focus on 1 area rather then capturing 10 in a few hours across the map

6.) Pirates yet again keep popping up as most that arnt pirate hate their mechanics and implementation on the game the way they are at the moment, Pirate = (Game Cancer) they are in no word of the meaning pirate in this game atm, they are a nation just like the rest of us though they can farm their friends and get free XP or nations struggling just join them without losing anything, pirates were mostly individuals who did everything for their own gains, i for 1 say they shouldn't be a starting nation, and u cant defect to them till after you have passed rank of Merc captain, they cant capture ports but raid them for supplies to fix and upgrade their ships for better boarding stats, slightly bigger guns, Pirate should be the ultimate and difficult PvP experience, those that can handle it are truly pirate and deserve respect and fear, not like now where every man and his dog want to be Jack Sparrow.

[Wilson09]

Intelligent guy, I must say....appreciate your efforts.

A bunch of good ideas and some bad ones (Port battles?)

 

Let me focus on Trade ships (yes, Pirates I agree...but I presume---no changes....we will see)

 

-Abolish AI traders. At least, as they stand anyway. Replace them with player-driven AI traders.

YES, maybe. But there are useful to balance prices and supply/demand. We don´t have the DATA to know about...

 

-Your traders might be captured by the enemy. They might be sunk. You'll have to be careful where you let them sail.

HAPPENED once to me. I´d love to be captured, but happened once in the beginning as I was panicing and did not know

about pressing the "rescue button" (=call in reinforcements). Trading goods from A to B is with no risk and you simply

cannot call it PvP. It is just plain money grind and I did it every day to grind money. Now, having introduced the production

buildings this does not feel right anymore, more like a waste of time. I do grind money now logging in every 3 days and

retract ressource and sell them....well.

 

Having been caught as a Pirate by a British PvP-fleet was the best experience I had in the game.

270k in goods being "killed" by the enemy, wow.

 

How could we get this into the game?

 

Hm....

 

1. idea: Keep the mechanics "sailing from A to B on a Traders Brig/Snow" to make money.

With no reinforcement mechanics, give the player a choice to call in reinforcements from nearby Ports,

after being tagged into Battle. How?

 

Asumming, as a Pirate I want a trip from A to B. Before the trip I "insure" my cargo buying a contract at Port A from the

local government, I can choose how COSTLY this might be. (Full package = 1-3rd rates, medium package = 3 Frigates,

everything is thinkable...) therefore depending on my cargo I have some sort of gamble here. The same applies to the

enemiy, they spot me, the instant battle opens and they don´t know if I have a contract calling in big reinforcements.

Nor do they know the size of my cargo. I can call reinforcements, depending on the distance there might be a "timer",

they arrive on time or not. So, I might be unlucky. Also I could think of automatic trips, hiring a merchant to do the trip for me,

making it more costly, but therby I could have a Port Battle instead. Also, I could think of "joining the battle" if the traders

get attacked to add more fun due to playable reasons.

 

2. idea: Keep the mechanics "sailing from A to B on a Traders Brig/Snow" to make money.

With no reinforcement mechanics, give the player a choice to call in reinforcements from nearby PLAYERS,

after being tagged into Battle. How? A window opens I call in ALL Pirates to help me for a certain amount "bounty"

(100k? or depending on BR), if they help me. All Pirates get this message in a window. (right now, you get in chat windows)

and can figure out if they can make it until the instance closes. If they make it and do some significant damage they get

the bounty from me. Also, this could make this ship letters valuable now for the enemy, they get important messages

of Trade ships heading from A to B.

 

Lots of variants are thinkable....

Edited March 18, 2016 by Wilson09

[surfimp]

Trade ships.

 

Abolish AI traders. At least, as they stand anyway. Replace them with player-driven AI traders.

 

Got one port with a foundry smelting iron, and another port with an iron-ore mine? Want to get the ore from one port to the other? Buy/capture a trader ship, hire a crew, give the ship orders to sail back and forth between the two ports to transport the ore, setting certain criteria for when they sail; fill the hold, or sail when they have a specified amount of ore. Choices, choices!

 

Your traders might be captured by the enemy. They might be sunk. You'll have to be careful where you let them sail. The importance of safe areas of the map will be increased. And, if the goods are captured, they remain in the economy, and we don't have the artificial inflation of AI trader goods coming out of thin air when one is captured.

 

But what if they do get captured or sunk? Well...

Insurance.

 

Durability seems so artificial. In the real world, sunken ships aren't magically recovered from Davy Jones' Locker to be reused over and over.

 

In the real world, ships and their cargo are insured...if you want them to be.

 

Allow captains to purchase insurance policies on their ships. Offer a range of policies; more expensive ones pay out a greater percentage of the ship's value. Some will even offer an immediate like-for-like replacement. Some might cover the upgrades too. Some will cover the cargo, some not. Choices, choices, choices!

I am a huge fan of NPC-crewed trade ships as a solution to what I and many others perceive as the problem of ship teleporting and its negative impacts on the overall gameplay experience.

NPC-crewed trade ships is a great solution to the claim that long-haul sailing is "boring" for the player trader to engage in.

I'd go so far as to allow player traders to teleport themselves, *without* ships, between ports much more frequently, allowing them to engage in an almost RTS-like setting up of trade ships and routes. I mean, let the traders really focus on building up their trade empires - I'm all for that! And let them personally sail an extremely high value cargo, if they want. But also let them build up huge networks of trade routes, with hired/owned NPC trade ships picking up cargoes comprised of port and/or player production, most likely bought via a contract, and delivered to the player's destination of choice, completely without interaction other than to set it all up and then let it run. Have automated notifications when the cargo arrives successfully as well as notifications of when the cargo doesn't (because it was interdicted by a privateer or pirate). Provide insurance coverage as an option not only for the ships but for the cargoes, too.

I'd even suggest making the existing, autospawning NPC trade ship routes be something that players can purchase, if they want, and take over to profit from.

These changes would let pure economy players really dig into the game in a way they really can't right now. Yes, it would expose them to risk, but that's the entire point. They'd of course have the option of sailing as escort to these routes, or hiring clan mates and (ideally) NPC escorts to protect their cargoes.

I really, strongly believe that fleshing out this part of the economy is the missing link that will make the entire Naval Action universe come alive. It will provide so many more interesting things to do in the world, whether you want to be a hunter or an achiever. And it will drive player-vs-player interaction in a way that's really not happening, currently. I feel it would really boost the game.

[Justme]

As long as crafting remains a no skill time sink there will always be an issue with it.

[GrapeShot]

Well, yea crafting is pretty skimpy in terms of game play value right now, but I think the ultimate meat on the econ bone is developing resources --which apparently they are working on -- and the movement of those resources to market (ship crafting).

I do like the idea of a player's shipment being tied to NPC traders, even if the link is abstract. For example, every NPC trader captured is subject to an RNG check, and if it fails a trader's shipment is lost.

That puts risk in sending out shipments, and gives a rationale for players to do single ship/small squadron PVP as they defend their trade lanes.

I'll bang the drum I always bang -- econ, not artificial port capture flags and timers, is what should drive PVP.

Edited March 19, 2016 by GrapeShot