Patch 9.9 - Officers, Fishing, Provisions and other things

[Captain Lord Cochrane]

one could argue that a determined and well trained crew (historically) could achieve a 3 to 1 reload bonus and sail set up bonus (british gunnery training could get even bigger result)

 

but some of the bonuses could be high or low - its too early to tell

 

 

So whose understanding or misunderstanding of history gets to determine what nation gets what? The British were excellent at gunnery until about 1800 and then the admiralty ordered captains to limit their live fire training to almost nil because of costs. The Americans during the War of 1812 -taking the British method and then applying motivated, well paid, volunteer crews and almost incessant live fire exercises- would have the strongest claim to fast reloads.

And then how is this fair to Dutch players who outgunned the English in the era before this one? Maybe they don't want to be traders. What do the Swedes get? There was no more 'Viking' aggression in the gene pool by this era than there was Celtic rage on the Iberian peninsula. This is going down the road of stacking modules that is going to further take this game into the realm of magic and away from skill.

And who in the world decided that adding AI fleets back to battles was a good idea. Total garbage that. Carrying an AI ship is no longer an option if you wish to PVP, you must have one now. Yay.

Fishing is a nice addition, but it should only be done when at slow or dead slow. Provisions and crew changes look good, new plantations are good.

 

Will storm instances ever come back?

 

So after one little battle I was able to add 3 perks to my officer, so by tonight the entire population will be maxed out, what was the point?

[Trevish]

Sounds like some good additions, one note: fleet ships should be able to keep the upgrades and cannons and maybe even cargo you have on them otherwise once the send to outpost button is gone we wont be able to take trade ships without losing everything on our main ship.

[CaptVonGunn]

 

 

Umm this is not a good idea... This officer will prevent nearly all trader hunting. He should give significant boarding defend bonuses but not immunity to boarding...

 

 

 

 

how so? just means you have to chain them down a bit first..... no more freebie casptures

[eriks]

The Free Camera (HOME) no longer works in OW.

 

Good. No one had scout helicopters on ships in 1800.

[akd]

It does open up a far more Rock/Paper/Scissors kind of play in the end game however.

That's true. Most of us came here looking for sea-themed rock/paper/scissors and PvE loot-hunting game. The whole naval tactics thing really is a bore. I mean, battles where victory is determined by player tactics, sailing skill and gunnery skill are too complex for most people. No, let's stick to a game that is about obtaining the best implement (rock, paper or scissors) in PvE and then hoping to win the bluff when combat against an actual player occurs. That way everyone has a chance to win, as long as they spend a lot of time grinding PvE and now and then randomly win the bluff against another player. "Hoho, you outmaneuvered me in your crappy ship, but I spent all last week grinding officers and upgrades so you lose."

Upgrades and officers should be about marginal bonuses with decreasing returns (the first +5% is easier to get than the last +1%) that also come with trade-offs. A great example of the opposite is this ridiculous "coward" officer (setting aside for now whether or not making it even easier to escape combat is even good for the game; p.s. it is not.). In addition to offering an enormous bonus where even a marginal bonus would still make the officer valuable, there are no negatives associated with putting a coward in charge of your men in combat. Seriously? How about this: you get a bonus to escaping combat, but if you are boarded or take X% crew loss, your coward officer hauls down the colors, breaking the morale of your crew and causing you to surrender instantly so your opponent loses less crew and less time if they do catch you. Every trader will have this officer, but as a consequence, every trader will act more like a trader.

[Kaos]

That's true. Most of us came here looking for sea-themed rock/paper/scissors and PvE loot-hunting game. The whole naval tactics thing really is a bore. I mean, battles where victory is determined by player tactics, sailing skill and gunnery skill are too complex for most people. No, let's stick to a game that is about obtaining the best implement (rock, paper or scissors) in PvE and then hoping to win the bluff when combat against an actual player occurs. That way everyone has a chance to win, as long as they spend a lot of time grinding PvE and now and then randomly win the bluff against another player. "Hoho, you outmaneuvered me in your crappy ship, but I spent all last week grinding officers and upgrades so you lose."

Upgrades and officers should be about marginal bonuses with decreasing returns (the first +5% is easier to get than the last +1%) that also come with trade-offs. A great example is this ridiculous "coward" officer (setting aside for now whether or not making it even easy to escape combat is even good for the game; p.s. it is not.). In addition to offering an enormous bonus where even a marginal bonus would still make the officer valuable, there are no negatives associated with putting a coward in charge of your men in combat. Seriously? How about this: you get a bonus to escaping combat, but if you are boarded or take X% crew loss, your coward officer hauls down the colors, breaking the morale of your crew and causing you to surrender instantly so your opponent loses less crew and less time if they do catch you.

Pretty much this, skill is something of an abstract carrot for average player to chase it seems, items are much more simple to understand, they are straightforward buffs at the moment and give you a clear view of what flavor of the month needs to be chased now. Posts like these are probably falling to deaf ears since it seems only 10-15% of the server is actually interested in skill based pvp anyway, if even that. It was fun while it lasted though.

[Diceman]

So much this. True to form and credible from the historical point of view.

Need AI fireships

With crew management now, you can decrew your fireships to protect those precious pixel lives!! I don't see anyone doing that though cause it would make their ship unusable for anything else...

[Mrdoomed]

That's true. Most of us came here looking for sea-themed rock/paper/scissors and PvE loot-hunting game. The whole naval tactics thing really is a bore. I mean, battles where victory is determined by player tactics, sailing skill and gunnery skill are too complex for most people. No, let's stick to a game that is about obtaining the best implement (rock, paper or scissors) in PvE and then hoping to win the bluff when combat against an actual player occurs. That way everyone has a chance to win, as long as they spend a lot of time grinding PvE and now and then randomly win the bluff against another player. "Hoho, you outmaneuvered me in your crappy ship, but I spent all last week grinding officers and upgrades so you lose."

Upgrades and officers should be about marginal bonuses with decreasing returns (the first +5% is easier to get than the last +1%) that also come with trade-offs. A great example of the opposite is this ridiculous "coward" officer (setting aside for now whether or not making it even easier to escape combat is even good for the game; p.s. it is not.). In addition to offering an enormous bonus where even a marginal bonus would still make the officer valuable, there are no negatives associated with putting a coward in charge of your men in combat. Seriously? How about this: you get a bonus to escaping combat, but if you are boarded or take X% crew loss, your coward officer hauls down the colors, breaking the morale of your crew and causing you to surrender instantly so your opponent loses less crew and less time if they do catch you. Every trader will have this officer, but as a consequence, every trader will act more like a trader.

Yup. The world of the modern gamer and the fly by night games that come and go faster than you can download them. Yup sure is great.

[Kanay]

Hired one officer and dismissed it, his name wasn't inspiring me any confidence, same for a few others that followed until i met mr Ironhook, this one i kept him.

 

I passed Rear Admirable a few days ago, pushed a bit on the grind not not have to bother with this anymore especially once crew hire will be added ... but mr Ironhook told me he needs half of the xp i do in fights or traveling to start being of any use, never ending grind ... well so it be.

 

As i'm fighting some times and other times spending my hours in long journeys sailing traders i decided to hire a second officer for my traders ships, not possible, of course i won't use the same perks for my traders as i use on my warships but not a problem as this will apparently come the next month.

 

Since mr Ironhook was fresh new with no capacities i decided to make him visit a bit the waters around while profiting of the occasion to see what kind of fishes we could find around. Just before leaving my Ironhook told me there was some salt for sell on the shop and maybe i should grab and load some if we planned to do a long fishing trip as the fish will probably be rotten when we will return .

 

Turns out the salt was not needed, we were collecting one or few fishes at once at a regular time interval and we could keep them or transform them into meat and despites the hot weather and long time at seas the fish did not had any kind of damage when we came back few days later. I told to mr Ironhook that having to craft barrels and load them with some salt on the ship to keep the meat in decent conditions when going for few days of fishing under those latitudes weather had make sense and had been more interesting, Mr ironhook answered back that a dedicated trading ship and more diversity in the times needed to collect fishes instead of regular intervals and fishes not stopping to jump regularly inside my ship had been better too.

 

Also the speed or the size of the ships/crews used should matter for the type of fish caught, a small trader lynx with 23 crew onboard able to bring 3 or 4 tuna fishes at once seems  a lot when a LGV does exactly the same.

 

Once at the tavern i saw that sharks and flying-fish were possible to be sold for 5k and regretted to have turned the ones we caught into meat, other fishes are apparently not tasty enough and nobody wants them outside transformed in meat where they will sell for 33 gold a piece, a shark is 20 pieces of meat, a dorado is 30 pieces of meat...

 

...anyways, once at the tavern i heard an old sailor completely drunk speaking about labor hours contracts, he apparently found numerous bottles indicating some shipwrecks spots where there is lot of good things to collect, weird i sailed in shallow and deep waters for more than one hour, close and far from the lands and saw nothing like this, the drunk sailor was speaking of 5 bottles found already ... Maybe he found a good spot and those bottles poped out at regular intervals while just waiting for them there...

 

I took mr Ironhook with me and we went again in the speedy trader lynx for a 1h30 fishing long trip, still no bottles, arrived at destination one fellow sailor told me he found one shipwreck with a grog ration gold , 8 contracts of 500LH each and some gold coins in such shipwreck after finding a bottle ... Many other sailors reporting many bottles at the seas found and started to brag about the shiny gold upgrades they got out of them along all those nice labor contracts... I guess RNG gods still hate me or maybe mr Ironhook brings bad luck with him ...

 

Wanted to leave him at the port and go for a trader trip alone that could be risky for his life as he's still impotent, but apparently he have to follow me like a shadow since i hired him, i'd like to be able to force him to take some rest at my capital and not follow me every-time when i go into some special taverns far away in risky waters ... 

 

I was also very surprised to see my exact coordinates at the top right of the map combined to the grid, some of us were asking for the removal of F11, instead the game gets dumbed down and we get a GPS tracker indicating our exact coordinates on the map ... in the age of sails ... It's not in the spirit of the game we had and i was extremely disappointed by this.

 

Loved the new sounds added for birds and wave , did not had much time to test combat beside a small fleet mission, right now everybody is on the quest of those damn bottles before they get nerfed, i just hope i can be lucky and find a couple of them before it happens ...

 

 

 

 

i found 4 of those in a shop for 7 gold each : 

 

Not sure how to use them and if it's normal to see them in stores, tried quickly to put them on ships once back at port before login out and it's a mystery for now...

 

PS : i loved the new intro cut screens, congrats to the artists, this one cracks me up each time it pops out : 

 

 

 

Still too fresh, still a lot to test before seeing more clear into all this, some interesting things, some disappointing, a lot of things that can be rendered really more interesting like fishing, made me a fast fir pickle with crew space that came out with speed to cover a lot of distances quickly and will go like everybody try to hunt for the golden bottles and drop the fishes at sea when caught due to low space in cargo ( btw caw we find bottles without fishing enabled ?? ) and hope to be more lucky than during my numerous hours spent sailing without seeing one for now ...

 

 

Edit : i almost forgot about medkits . 

 

they cost the same price as hiring crew, 500 per crew, a large one contain 150 portable crews stored in your hold and i am not sure yet if there is some kind of limitations about the number of kits your can bring with you ... what is the point to make dead crew needed to be replaced if it's to introduce portable crew into the shape of medkits loaded in your hold doing this without any need to return at ports after a couple or 3 of kits used at least ? Beside adding more money and labour hours sink ? ( if they are not limited to max 3 medkits per trip for example )

[EL LOCO]

Fleets.   About time you can hire more ships..  However.

 

I switched from server 2 usa to server 1 but was past level 4 at the moment ( I could hire all 5 ships on server 2 usa)  but they didn't switch in servers so now I cant hire anything.

 

This makes me mad as I am a trader and would love some darn escorts and now its  pointless.

No way am I going to restart character for this.    

[Bart Smith]

Even Nornica back so i guess this will be good patch:P Hope i get some time to test it after Euro and those wave of post-brexit homophobia mob...

[KrakkenSmacken]

That's true. Most of us came here looking for sea-themed rock/paper/scissors and PvE loot-hunting game. The whole naval tactics thing really is a bore. I mean, battles where victory is determined by player tactics, sailing skill and gunnery skill are too complex for most people. No, let's stick to a game that is about obtaining the best implement (rock, paper or scissors) in PvE and then hoping to win the bluff when combat against an actual player occurs. That way everyone has a chance to win, as long as they spend a lot of time grinding PvE and now and then randomly win the bluff against another player. "Hoho, you outmaneuvered me in your crappy ship, but I spent all last week grinding officers and upgrades so you lose."

Upgrades and officers should be about marginal bonuses with decreasing returns (the first +5% is easier to get than the last +1%) that also come with trade-offs. A great example of the opposite is this ridiculous "coward" officer (setting aside for now whether or not making it even easier to escape combat is even good for the game; p.s. it is not.). In addition to offering an enormous bonus where even a marginal bonus would still make the officer valuable, there are no negatives associated with putting a coward in charge of your men in combat. Seriously? How about this: you get a bonus to escaping combat, but if you are boarded or take X% crew loss, your coward officer hauls down the colors, breaking the morale of your crew and causing you to surrender instantly so your opponent loses less crew and less time if they do catch you. Every trader will have this officer, but as a consequence, every trader will act more like a trader.

So shallow and knee jerk your thinking is in this case.

 

Rock/paper/scissors is only the description, but really the idea and reason behind the mechanics it provides are much deeper than that by causing imperfect balance..

 

 

The big thing is game longevity.  If everyone ends up being in the same top of the line ship because its ALWAYS the best choice, and eventually the only way to compete is to be in that set up, the game will become ridiculously shallow and boring.

 

May as well have everyone always drive basic cutters, as at the end of the day it will all just be the same ships anyway, and that way new players would be competitive with old ones, only being defined by skill.

 

See the basic material of the physical reality of these types of ships of war is largely determined by number of cannons/men you have.  So without something to create perfect imbalance, there will be a best ship/outfitting for every situation, that will quickly be found and used.  That's just boring.

 

Now I agree that they may have gone over the top on the numbers on these, but the direction of adding a set of skills that offers a choice and refinement of style is a good one.

 

Glass half full and all that.

[Loco Bandito]

World of Tanks had a great officer system probably one of the best I've seen in a game, why can't we have something similar? Different officers for different vessels?

[NorthernWolves]

I second all the comments about the inexorable shift towards 'magic spells' in the form of modules and officers, but what do we know, especially those of us who have been through all this before.
 
Fishing and how it works with provisions is a good addition as are the new plantations. Crew management looks good so far, will feedback more as I play.
 
However the most glaring thing for me is the one that leaves me the most speechless

 

[Snoggy]

Not a big fan of the crew costs. Even for smaller ships, going out and capturing other small ships just doesn't make it worth the while.

[Bloody 9]

Nicely done patch...big salute for all the work..

[kaneguy]

 

Great patch on many points ! Thanks to devs

 

But i have a light problem : Before the patch, I had an escort fleet of three cutters available when I wanted in any port.

 

After the patch, if I want to activate, I have a message telling me that these ships are not in this port.

 

I understand that this is more realistic and we must know where our escort ships are.

 

But these ships escorts are only displayed in the "Fleet" window, where this information is not, so it is today impossible to know where are these damned ships.

 

 

Yep, I've lost my fleet. The only clue provided  is "Fleet Ship located in other port".  Ok but WHERE?

[Bubba Smith]

Just explored my first bottled message. Great add on, love the addition of labor note certs! As far as the other changes great work! 

Edited June 29, 2016 by Buba Smith

[Hethwill]

With crew management now, you can decrew your fireships to protect those precious pixel lives!! I don't see anyone doing that though cause it would make their ship unusable for anything else...

 

I am literally saying that we could use captured ships as Fireships, not the upgrade, set them on fire and send them drifting toward enemy lines. Simple aim and Forget. I know I wouldn't because there's no use in 1v1 and other small scale encounters but for port battles ? sure thing.

[Ned Loe]

Good. No one had scout helicopters on ships in 1800.

What about Photographers like me? I lost my job and you won't get anymore screenshots from me. 

[angriff]

He who runs away lives to fight another day.

 

But we lost our newbie cutters...       It does not tell you what port they are in and always says not in this port.   I paid money for them.. now I cant use them anymore.

[Potemkin]

With regards to the determined defender 40% crew differential, doesn't it just mean you actually have to work the crew down to the appropriate ratio with grape/ball stern rakes? If so good job, its pretty gamey to have someone just fit out boarding mods and ram board with 2 or 3 friends stopped right in front of you. LOL at everyone crying because they have to work a little harder to cap someone. If this is not the case then disregard this but clarification either way would be appreciated.

Edited June 29, 2016 by Potemkin

[Bleakbeard]

 

Pirate Hunter – Officer hates pirates and is able to motivate his crew better, allowing faster reload if the enemy ship has a pirate flag. Reload bonus is 20%.  In the future this perk will only be available to nationals

 

Errr what?  The other magic ones are rather irksome, but this is egregious.

 

What do you think most combat oriented non-pirates are going to load up as a first perk?  20% difference in reload is huge.  It is particularly potent when combined with the new ability to spread crew out to AI fleet ships.  Granted the perk probably doesn't apply to the AI escorts, but it allows the non-pirate a buffer in crew before their capital ship takes a penalty to reload.  Or they can spend it on Marines.

 

Hell even PvE Pirates might load up on it for missions but good luck with PvP skewed 20% to one side.

 

Oh great I somehow missed this jewel: 

 

 

Pirate – officer with the shady piracy past, allows to extract more sailing performance increasing battle speed by 1 knot if the enemy has a national ship on their side. In the future this perk will only be available to Pirates.

 

20% reload bonus is good, but I missed out on the +1 knot accessible to everyone.  Combine with the Frigate/Light master for +2 knots total.  Jump to lightspeed.  The pirate officer perk is a doozy as well for Nationals.  Yay for tribal double dipping.

Edited June 29, 2016 by Bleakbeard

[Hethwill]

Reload Bonus and Double Charge... yes, I can see it

[Potemkin]

Errr what? The other magic ones are rather irksome, but this is egregious.

What do you think most combat oriented non-pirates are going to load up as a first perk? 20% difference in reload is huge. It is particularly potent when combined with the new ability to spread crew out to AI fleet ships. Granted the perk probably doesn't apply to the AI escorts, but it allows the non-pirate a buffer in crew before their capital ship takes a penalty to reload. Or they can spend it on Marines.

Hell even PvE Pirates might load up on it for missions but good luck with PvP skewed 20% to one side.

You really surprised? They had to do something to knock the pirate pop down without overtly forcing them to switch nation. This also makes it super risky to downright suicidal for pirates to engage in PBs. With the crew mechanics in place this buff AS IT STANDS CURRENTLY effectively eliminates any viability to pirates fielding 1st rate fleets against opponents fielding an equal amount of combat power. Adapt or go national. Edited June 29, 2016 by Potemkin