Patch 9.8 - Damage model 5.0, Server merges, Bird is a word (19th may)

[Cpt Blackthorne]

I see so many ppl complaining that the length of time to kill is way too long and that damage against same or higher rate ships is too low. Suggestion, (I might be WAAAAYYY out of line on this...but), how about simply facing lower rate ships? Stop doing missions against same or higher rates until you accept this is how it should be, based on historical data. Stop attacking nations or ports that you now will have same or higher rate ships?
Can we please have just a little bit of historically accurate battle left in this game? Or is everyone just wanting the instant gratification they get from 5 minute battles in WoT and the like? We all agree there are some fine tunings needed in this damage model. We have seen the same yelling from so many ppl about the same exact thing, just saying it based on their experience. Can we please be done with this now and move onto other things?

Great work devs!

[Atreides]

Crafted two except brig and got the navy brig, mortar brig and... Rattlesnake BP! Burned through my low notes bit don't care

Ps: Stunsels!

[surfimp]

Seagulls.....critical game element achieved.

Hehe

But where are my whales and dolphins and sea lions and manta rays! No naval combat game can possibly be considered anywhere close to complete without a full seaborne menagerie!

Just kidding. The birds are nice. That's enough wildlife IMHO.

[cmdrbobcito]

Great job Devs...keep it up.  Fine tuning is what you get during testing...

 

[have not seen the gulls yet...need to log back in and do some cruising...have just been "unpacking" from the merge. ]

Edited May 20, 2016 by cmdrbobcito

[Drake_Arden]

I see so many ppl complaining that the length of time to kill is way too long and that damage against same or higher rate ships is too low. Suggestion, (I might be WAAAAYYY out of line on this...but), how about simply facing lower rate ships? Stop doing missions against same or higher rates until you accept this is how it should be, based on historical data. Stop attacking nations or ports that you now will have same or higher rate ships?

Can we please have just a little bit of historically accurate battle left in this game? Or is everyone just wanting the instant gratification they get from 5 minute battles in WoT and the like? We all agree there are some fine tunings needed in this damage model. We have seen the same yelling from so many ppl about the same exact thing, just saying it based on their experience. Can we please be done with this now and move onto other things?

Great work devs!

Look i don't want to be rude. I get your point. if we cant penetrate the bigger ships why bother. Let me explain what we are not complaining about. we are not complaining that we can't take our basic cutters out to take on a Santisima. because we understand how ridiculous that would be. But today i went out with my friend(He in his constitution and I in my Trincomalee). I tried different cannons from different ranges on him to see what it would take to penetrate his armor. i had to be within 50 meters in order to penetrate him. Even then the only side i could penetrate was his stern. These two ships are next to each other in terms of battle rating. The Constitution being 100 more than its predecessor and this game as the developers said should be somewhat skill based. Previous to this patch if you had the skill to take on a constitution in a Trincomalee and win you could. And i don't think that the armor should be so great that a Trincomalee can not penetrate it. Can you show me the docs that prove that to be historically accurate? To further drive home my point. Today i watched the full broadside of a Santisima bounce off of a Constitution's hull. He was facing someone lower than him and it was still darn near impossible to sink it.

 

To give you a brief history. The USS Constitution got it's nickname "Old Ironsides" In it's battle with the HMS Guerriere when Vice Admiral Dacres was firing inaccurate shot's at the USS Constitution. At one point ONE cannonball bounced "Harmlessly" off the side of the Constitution and a crew member is quoted to have said "Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron." The Constitution did go on to defeat the Guerriere but that was due to Dacres not fighting tactically and not that the Constitution was Immune to cannon fire. In fact Commodore Isaac Hull refused to accept Dacres' Sword of Surrender saying he could not accept the sword from a man who fought so gallantly. Had Dacres focused more on aiming the shot and keeping away from the Constitution he could have won the battle.

 

Could Cannonballs bounce off of the Constitution's hull? Yes.

Did all of the cannonballs fired at the USS Constitution bounce off of it's hull? No.

 

I want to play a game where it's not necessarily the ship that matters. It's the captain behind it that wins the battle.

[B4N4N4J0E]

The line fighting and lack of focus fire was ineffective

 

Tactical stagnation in the mid-18th century[edit]

When the conflict came to be between the British and the French in the 18th century, battles between equal or approximately equal forces became largely inconclusive. The French, who had fewer ships than the British throughout the century, were anxious to fight at the least possible cost, lest their fleet should be worn out by severe action, leaving Britain with an unreachable numerical superiority. Therefore, they preferred to engage to leeward, a position which left them free to retreat before the wind. They allowed the British fleet to get to windward, and, when it was parallel with them and bore up before the wind to attack, they moved onwards. The attacking fleet had then to advance, not directly before the wind with its ships moving along lines perpendicular to the line attacked, but in slanting or curving lines. The assailants would be thrown into "a bow and quarter line" – with the bow of the second level with the after part of the first and so on from end to end. In the case of a number of ships of various powers of sailing, it was a difficult formation to maintain.

The result was often that the ships of the attacking line which were steering to attack the enemy's centre came into action first and were liable to be crippled in the rigging. If the same formation was to be maintained, the others were now limited to the speed of the injured vessels, and the enemy to leeward slipped away. At all times a fleet advancing from windward was liable to injury in spars, even if the leeward fleet did not deliberately aim at them. The leeward ships would be leaning away from the wind, and their shot would always have a tendency to fly high. So long as the assailant remained to windward, the ships to leeward could always slip off.

The wars of the 18th century produced a series of tactically indecisive naval battles between evenly matched fleets in line ahead, such as Málaga (1704), Rügen Island (1715), Toulon (1744), Minorca (1756), Negapatam (1758), Cuddalore (1758), Pondicherry (1759), Ushant (1778), Dogger Bank (1781), the Chesapeake (1781), Hogland (1788) and Öland (1789). Although a few of these battles had important strategic consequences, like the Chesapeake which the British needed to win, all were tactically indecisive. Many admirals began to believe that a contest between two equally matched fleets could not produce a decisive result. The tactically decisive actions of the 18th century were all chase actions,^{[citation needed]} where one fleet was clearly superior to the other, such as the two battles of Finisterre (1747), and those at Lagos (1759), Quiberon Bay (1759) and Cape St. Vincent (1780).

British naval innovation was retarded by an unseemly dispute between two Admirals in the aftermath of the Battle of Toulon. The British fleet under Admiral Thomas Mathewshad been unable to draw level with the French fleet but Mathews nevertheless ordered an attack, intending all the British ships to attack the French rear. He had no signals by which he could communicate his intentions, and the rear squadron under Vice Admiral Richard Lestock, his rival and second-in-command, obtusely remained at the prescribed intervals in line ahead, far to the rear of the action. A subsequent series of courts-martial, in which political influence was brought to bear by Lestock's friends in Parliament, punished Mathews and those captains who had supported him in the battle, and vindicated Lestock. In several future actions, Admirals who were tempted to deviate from the Admiralty's fighting instructions were reminded of Mathews's fate.^[11]

 

Developments during the American War of Independence[edit]

The unsatisfactory character of the accepted method of fighting battles at sea had begun to be obvious to naval officers, both French and British, by the later 18th century and began to be addressed during the numerous battles of the American War of Independence. It was clear that the only way to produce decisive results was to concentrate the attack on part of the enemy's line, preferably the rear since the centre would have to turn to its support.

The great French admiral Suffren condemned naval tactics as being little better than so many excuses for avoiding a real fight. He endeavoured to find a better method, by concentrating superior forces on parts of his opponent's line in some of his actions with the British fleet in the East Indies in 1782 and 1783, such as the Battle of Sadras where Suffren tried to double the rear of the British line. But his orders were ill obeyed, his opponent Sir Edward Hughes was competent, and the quality of his fleet was not superior to the British.

Similarly, the British admiral Rodney, in the Battle of Martinique in the West Indies in 1780, tried to concentrate a superior force on part of his enemy's line by throwing a greater number of British ships on the rear of the French line. But his directions were misunderstood and not properly executed. Moreover, he did not then go beyond trying to place a larger number of ships in action to windward against a smaller number to leeward by arranging them at a less distance than two-cables length. An enemy who took the simple and obvious course of closing his line could baffle the attack, and while the retreat to leeward remained open could still slip away. Like Suffren, Rodney was a great tactician, but a difficult man to work with who failed to explain his intentions to his subordinates.

 

At the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April 1782, Rodney was induced, by a change in the wind and the resulting disorder in the French line, to break his own line and pass through the enemy line. The effect was decisive. The guns of the British ships were concentrated on a handful of French ships as the British broke through the French line in three places, and the tactical cohesion of the French fleet was destroyed. By the end of the battle, Rodney had taken the French flagship and four other ships. The successful result of this departure from the old practice of keeping the line intact throughout the battle ruined the moral authority of the orthodox system of tactics.

 

  Sir John Clerk of Eldin[edit]

The inconclusive results of so many battles at sea interested Sir John Clerk of Eldin (1728–1812), a gentleman of the Scottish Enlightenment, illustrator of geologist James Hutton's Theory of the Earth, and great-uncle of James Clerk Maxwell. He began developing a series of speculations and calculations which he initially published in pamphlets, distributing them among naval officers, and published in book form as An Essay on Naval Tactics in 1790, 1797 and 1804.

 

The hypothesis which governed all of Clerk's demonstrations was that as the British navy was superior in gunnery and seamanship to their enemy, it was in their interest to produce a mêlée. He advanced various ingenious suggestions for concentrating superior forces on parts of the enemy's line – by preference on the rear, since the centre must lose time in turning to its support.

 

Thx for the answer.

I totally agree with this and I very much appriciate the historical/realistic approach of NA.

The point is, NA is pretty timeconsuming allready and it is a game.

There are always different opinions were the cut should be set between "realism" and "fun".

 

I think in this case - my opinion- too long battles kill the fun.PVP takes extreml amounts of time. In my case: I can do this once in a couple of weeks.

To do a fleetmission in a bit more than an hour should at least be possible. If it takes the whole 90 mins. of battle time  without - or only minimum- results, it kills the fun.

 

I am certainly not asking for an easy-quicky-carebaer-game. I just think the line between realism and gameyness tends in this case to move a bit too far in the direction "realism".

 

Lee-battles in history often lasted for days and very often almost nothing happened, as far as I know.

Representing facts like this in a game is surely realistic, but no fun to play.

 

Just my 2 Cents.

 

 

I like the patch and I like the game. 

You are doing a great job!

[SeaMist]

In my experience they've done this aplenty prior to the patch.

Yes, I have heard this from another source. Perhaps they are better at it now or perhaps before they just didn't get the chance. Never the less the AI seemed to be attacking with different tactics than before and much more successfully tactically as well.

Or as I alluded they survived longer so their tactics were more apparent. I would be interested to find new out.

[Neptune]

This really ruins the flow of combat. It's boring right now, you need to be on top of each other to do any damage. This is more like bigger ship wins now, and having to go side on side at 100m to do any kind of damage is a bit absurd.

 

Even if you manage to rake and decrew the masts are like steel so good luck boarding. This new armour really removed the all skill from the game, it really is ridiculous.  You can skillfully aim for masts but not demast because masts are buffed so hard, you can rake and decrew but you cannot board because you can't demast. And then all that's left is hull shooting at point blank range and if you are the weaker vessel well then good luck!

 

Skill is gone at the moment, all this brings to the game is 100M hull bashing and long long battles...

 

Once again not every aspect of the game needs to be 100% realistic, if it's so boring that it's ruining the fun then I think it's time to take a step back to the old system and rework this. This is insane. By far the worst thing that could happen to the combat mechanics is taking out all skill. Fun > Realism.

 

The sooner this is taken out the better, combat is so boring now it's like I can't even believe it's the same game.

Edited May 20, 2016 by Scotch

[Ojibwa_Wind]

Not fond of the way the economy works now. Making money is now limited. 

[OTMatt]

I think the damage required to sink a ship is a bit excessive. Penetration is also a little too difficult in most of my encounters.

 

Its a cool new damage system, but maybe you can slightly increase the chances of penetration a bit more beyond close range. I mean changing damage might not even be necessary if we can just have better chance of penetrating the armor on the enemy ships.

[randommexi]

anyone else notice the leaks take a bunch of crew again?

[mikawa]

Dear Admins,

As we lack now any docu or manual,

please give us a more details, how one should fight against other ships. How should I aim? What distance ist best? Yesterday it took me unspeakable long to sink two AI Cerberus in my Surprise, I shot and shot against the hull, sometimes near waterline, but my shots apparently achieved nothing ... The other side was, that they didn't do any serious damage to me, too.

 

Please give us more information about that to be able to test more thoroughly. Thanks in adance.

 

Edit: BTW: the side armour of the AI ships was completely down ....

Edited May 20, 2016 by mikawa

[Anjelen]

Hey folks,

 

after doing several battles yesterday (after patch) i just can say:

 

• Carronades / Medium Guns not usefull any more
• Long canons - wow, killing everything on long distance without getting damage
• Losing crew/canons like beeing shot by grape in normal battle - (broadside&balls)
• Smaller ships do not have any chance vs bigger on lange range any more
• Losing crew/canons when getting damage is on a super high rate

 

The damage model as it is now needs to be reworked!

Smaller Ships on distance do not even have a chance vs bigger ships anymore. I let a Renommee at long range shot like 10-15 broadsides on my Constitution, lost 2% armor. Just Stern is very vulnerable.

Fitted Medium Guns / Carronades to test them, horrible result! Need to be very, very close to have a good pen/damage result, losing armor/crew/guns on a very high rate (again vs Renommee).

 

Short: Just fit long guns, others useless. Go for stern bigger ships, kill smaller ships with super snipe on long distance. Yay, great new battles.

 

OW spyglass - seriously? Thats it? Tbh - i see no gain for my gameplay with this new function. No identification of ships, could not really see any range gain to find missions. Nive to have, but thats all.

[Delfigrey]

And who is this going to help more than the Pirates who can now use the basic cutter cap FEATURE to redeploy entire fleets then teleport in just a few minutes from hotspot to hotspot.  And yes, I am soooo jelly.... 

You can use the smuggler option to do that.

[Almirante Jimi]

Thanks! Now keep it up!

[Kokerpiraat]

I love this game, but I'd rather have the old damage model back, Or a heavily tweaked version of this.

[ITFHunter]

the goal of new penetrations (which are of course in need of final tuning) is to bring combat closer to history and motivate closer range action, proper positioning and focus fire (especially bow and stern raking)

 

ps will repeat.. some guns need to penetrate better which we plan to tune in hot fixes. But the "clicker heroes" must happen less

That would explain why u want to kill the fun which Players get if they paly NA. Ship battles weren't fun in the history. So why should we have fun doing battles.

But to be really honest. Don't be try to be realistc, try to crate game which People really love to Play. No one want to spend ages to finish one stupid battle every time. It was possible in the past that a skilled palyer can win against a "not so good" Player even if the more skilled Player hat a disadvantage ship wise. you destroyed exactly that behavior now. It's true that battles over 1000 meters wasn't quite exciting but now u have to battle within a range of 250 meter or so. And within that small area Team fights aren't really possible. Maybe you should sometimes think a bit more about what your palyer wants (but only a bit, not to much ) instead of what goal u want to achive with that game (sailing simulator). We palyer still spend to much time with boring things and instead to increase the excitment of a fight you decreased it. If a 1on1 battle takes 20 min time to decide, if both want to fight, is ok. But now it takes to Long even on Close range. And that could have been check with statistical methods.

So my Suggestion would be set the battle range from 1000 (old system) to 500 meters would be good (increase Penetration) and reduce the needed battle time (test your old System against new System) to the old times (increase dmg/reduce hp).

There is no benefit in forcing players to spend more time to do something, if they doesn't want to spend more time in the game (and we already spend to much time to get excitment).

[BungeeLemming]

Any feeback on the dmge model is best suited in here:

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/14069-penetration-and-armor-thickness-feedback-moderated/

 

Please write your thoughts about the dmge in given thread and discuss the matter.

Also the first page offers good info about mechanics of the guns.

[Jesters-Ink]

The slog is back, battles now feel realistic like ships actually have some mass to them.

I love the fact you have to get in close, its the way it was done and the way it should be in game.

 

A small group of us enjoyed a really good long slog last night, (which we thought we might have to run from), but with sailing skill, we managed to gain the upper hand and then maintain the advantage.

 

All we need now is the cap back for warships (PvE only if it helps) and we wont be playing anything else.

[Wigermo]

I like the patch. Capped 2 1st rates and a pavel. While having 2 3rd rates sitting and shooting my pavel, lost like 50% of my cannons and a whooping 1% side armor. Tldr: easiest money in my life

[OtwayBurns]

                                                                                            GREAT STUFF!

 

Very pleased w/ OW spy glass and reluctantly understand "empty hold" teleport as being more realistic.. 

BUT.... it does make transporting goods from distant ports less appealing..

 ( just an observatioin, not a complaint).. 

Perhaps down the road, one could designate a desired port to send (x) cargo, similar to way free ports can ship cargo now. However, you would have to provide a ship and the amount of cargo would depend on hold size. You would be rolling the dice that someone wouldn't attack your ship, it would respond like npc and the better built and outfitted the more likely it might survive, but you also wouldn't have to sail for 45+ minutes just to get your cargo from A to B..

It might make the "shipping" part of the game more interesting and involved for all nations as they would potentially have more skin in the game. Currently, cargo ships are kind of an afterthought, more time might be spent on crafting elite traders and making new additions like "Chapman's Indiaman" combat trader something to think twice about before raiding..

..

..

..

 

"Oh, I'm sorry. This is Abuse. Arguments are down the hall on the right."

[mikawa]

What happened to resource prizes? Compass Wood in Pedro Cay dropped to 1 Gold / piece.

[Lannes]

CANNOT LEAVE

I outdistanced my AI pursuers for over an HOUR and still could not leave. I had to wait until the whole game timer expired. I nearly did, too. I reported it as a BUG, in battle.

Has anyone else had this problem?

[Spam Hands]

Never mind the maneuvers, go straight at 'em.

[Isurus]

CANNOT LEAVE

I outdistanced my AI pursuers for over an HOUR and still could not leave. I had to wait until the whole game timer expired. I nearly did, too. I reported it as a BUG, in battle.

Has anyone else had this problem?

Yesterday I had the same problem in battle doing admirality mission against AI ship. I reported it as a bug too. I cannot leave the battle and have to wait 1 hour and half to leave or surrender and lose my ship. This is not a good idea from developers.