Crew experience and ships sinking

[Bulwyf]

One of the biggest aberrations in the game is the number of ships which sink, historically the sinking of ships involved in battle was extremely rare. For example Trafalgar which was a large battle, saw just one ship sunk. (not counting the many that sank in a storm after the battle) The French vs British battles in the west indies saw 0 ships sunk over 5 major battles. This trend was repeated across virtually all the battles which took place in this day and age.

 

Storms were far more likely to sink ships than battles where the majority of losses were due to ships striking their colours due to loss of masts or crew and fire or explosions more rarely.

 

The game at present tailors to those who gain satisfaction by seeing a ship sink for purely gamy reasons, it is certainly not a reasonable or historically likely outcome.

 

My suggestion is that the game mechanics be changed to reflect that historical tendency for ships to stay afloat and that the value of crews be increased by creating crew experience.

 

Crews could gain experience up to a point by sailing and from battle up to higher levels expressed as a percentage.

 

Crews could start as green 40% and progress to trained 55% via sailing time and or combat. From 55% crews would gain experience by battles with veteran crew status at 70%, crack crew status at 80% and elite crew status at 90%. 

 

The different levels would give penalties of benefits to the following:

Green -5% to sailing (speed of raising lower rigging and moving yards), boarding, reloads, gun accuracy, repair times etc

Trained 0% effect

Veteran +5% Sailing, speed, boarding, gunnery, repairs, damage control and cargo space.

Crack +10% Sailing, speed, boarding, gunnery, repairs, damage control and cargo space.

Elite +14% Sailing, speed, boarding, gunnery, repairs, damage control and cargo space.

 

Replacements for crew losses would water down the overall experience level of the crew as the replacements would be green.

 

Thus losing crew would become more important than losing a ship. Players could strike their colours to save their crew as they did historically. Something which doesn't happen at all at the moment.

 

If you fight to the death and loose all your crews you start again with a green crew, if you go from a small to a large ship you will lose some crew experience until you work up the crew on the new ship.

 

Historically crack and elite crews defeated green or trained crews many times their size in boarding actions. With this system of crew experience that could be replicated unlike the present system where the larger crew typically wins.

 

Raiding of towns could provide a benefit of gaining crew numbers a percentage of which would be more experienced.

 

Norska Comte Grass has suggested that experience could be gained more rapidly sailing ships which were rarer in game, a good idea I think to diversify the range of ships present and one which could also work for crew experience as well.

 

Probably the biggest problem with this idea is getting across the idea that it was an absolute rarity for ships in the age of sail to sink each other, they could absolutely shred each other, kill the bulk of the crew and smash the structure while staying afloat. Boarding actions then became much more important. Crew quality was paramount to all of this and sadly at present in the game not present at all.

 

 

 

 

[Macjimm]

Monsieur Bulwyf,

I appreciate your thoughts and opinions. For many players who value the experience of sailing and historical naval conflict your ideas are intriguing.

But alas as you well know the objectives at NA are to encourage combat and fighting. The game prioritizes fighting often and quickly. Suggestions that distract from these goals are not likely to be acted on.

Although your concepts favor realism and authenticity and would enhance the immersion they would likely reduce the quantity of battles and increase the frequency between them. For that reason they are not likely to be adapted into the game.

Great ideas though.

[Bulwyf]

In reality anything which encourages people to not fight to the last as the present system does will actually speed up the battles. If someone knows a boarding action is going to go against them, they strike their colours, are repatriated and the battle ends that much quicker. At present you have to bludgeon them till the unrealistically sink or kill almost every last man of their crew which is once again unrealistic and at the same time very slow.

[SuperCookie]

I love and wholeheartedly agree with this idea. Instead of treating the crew of our ships as an expendable throwaway like we all do now, we should be encouraged to think first of all about the safety of our crews.

[Quineloe]

Also, if the crew changes will get a green light into the game, captured ships will be worthless (except first rates). Whole durability system will have to be reworked.

This. If losing the last durability of a ship is really this prohibitive, people will simply not use the last durability anymore, which basically makes the Pavel 1 dura, the Bellona 2 dura.

 

I already know people who do this with 5th rates, dumping the last durability because they don't want to risk their golden upgrades on them or sailing them with expendable basic upgrades until they lose the last dura. The announced crew changes will only worsen this.

[fox2run]

Sometime plp seems to forget that this is a GAME. Not a real world sailing ship simulator. Therefore GAME-mechanisms should be prioritized. Imagine a Sid Meier Civilization-game in real time... Or a ww1 wargame. (A soldier in that war saw high density combat action of around 2-7 days in a year - that means 358 days of waiting!). 

 

Its very satisfying to see ships explode and sink around you. Its makes it exciting. Keep it that way please.

[Tyrant]

I love the idea!  I would ask for an ability to move crew around and manage them better.

 

I think this is a great way to bring out some more RPG aspects of the game and give the player a sense of crew preservation.  It will tie in well with the upcoming limited crew as a resource.

 

I would ask for crew management so I could do things like train a crew all the way to veterans and then stick them back on shore and take out a new green crew for grinding.  I would use my more experienced crew for important PVP or port battles and the green "standby" crew would be the ones that I was grinding thru the ranks.

 

To prevent people from farming all the nations crew allocations, I think crews should cost money overtime, and possible cost more as they gain their experience. 

 

This doesn't stop me from having 10-20 separate crews, it just makes is so expensive that I may not be able to afford it.  If you stop playing, it should detect your inactivity and stop draining your funds, instead it would drain your crews experience and dwindle it back down to 0 (green).  If you returned after a year of not playing, you would still have some gold, but your crew would have deteriorated skills that need to be rebuilt.  

[Bulwyf]

Sometime plp seems to forget that this is a GAME. Not a real world sailing ship simulator. Therefore GAME-mechanisms should be prioritized. Imagine a Sid Meier Civilization-game in real time... Or a ww1 wargame. (A soldier in that war saw high density combat action of around 2-7 days in a year - that means 358 days of waiting!). 

 

Its very satisfying to see ships explode and sink around you. Its makes it exciting. Keep it that way please.

There is a balance to be struck for sure, this change would in no way take away from the action and ships would still explode just the same as before, catch fire, lose masts etc. Probably the most unspectacular part of the whole kill process at the moment is the actual sinking, even a fast sinking ship slowly settles beneath the waves so you wouldn't miss much at all. I'm certain some sort of capture animation could replace that anyway in the future.

[mikawa]

I'm out for *action* in Naval Action. So I certainly won't like to see all battles ending in boarding. It's nice to see ships sinking or exploding. And sometimes it's a good thing to board them when you see that the ship's armour is quite good and you wanna get a good one dura consti. But have in mind that one dura is lost after a lost battle, so battle endings are quite balanced now between sinks and boardings. This is good, because in general I prefer variety and richness of gameplay. Making crew a limited resource *can* be helpful in reducing the number of first rates, but there surely are other possible solutions to that problem. So I'm still very sceptical about crew changes. Too complicated game mechanics might destroy the simplicitiy of naval combats which I like very very much in the current state of the game.