RE: Press Gang

[Eldberg]

Greetings!

It was clear that with the introduction of Press Gang, it was a little broken. The applied fix was to debuff Press Gang from 100% of the enemy crew left remaining to 50%, as well as tweaks to morale during boarding AND you no longer keep crew obtained through Press Gang after the battle. Simply put, these changes have made Press Gang absolutely pointless! Take a typical boarding battle like below (between a Santisima and a Pavel). As you can see, the result of boarding meant the death of 796 of the 800 enemy crew. This means I only received 2 crew through Press Gang. If anything, this is almost best case scenario when entering a boarding battle. By Round 3, poor Bastieaen's crew would be fighting amidst the blood and guts of 715 of their colleagues, this should be more than enough to cause a ship to surrender through Morale.
 

 

 

 

The tweaks are too extreme... As always. The reduction in crew obtained through Press Gang (100% > 50%) would have been a good start, but tweaking morale to the point where Press Gang is pointless as well as the inability to keep crew after battle is just too much.

[Elric]

I agree with the observations.  Since the patch, I have taken 6 towers in port battles and ended up with about 20 crew between them all.  With one exception where it hit it just right, most towers I ended up with zero or close to it from the press gang..  I would hit for 40+ men each attack, yet the morale would not drop very much.   I noticed with one tower, the enemy crew was down to 65 and the morale was down to 65....even though I still had 350+ crew on my ship.

 

With a Connie equipped with crew space, hammocks and gold marines, I had well over 500 crew to start with - after 2 towers I was down to under 250 crew.  The previous weekend under the old '100%' press-gang, I would end up with 350-400 crew after taking two towers in each PB as I was receiving 30-50 back each tower.

 

Similarly, I have been boarding ships during AI missions - and at best I have received less than 20 crew from 200-250 enemy crew at the start of the fight.

 

Hopefully the boarding mechanic is revisited to drop morale a little more rapidly when you kill a decent number of enemy at a time - and they capitulate rather than fight to the last.

 

You would think once the ratio of attackers to defenders starts to sway massively the morale would drop proportionally - but at the moment it doesn't seem to.

[Eldberg]

It used to, unfortunately gamelabs uses a sledge-hammer for tweaks 

Edited August 22, 2016 by Stephen_Decatur

[Eldberg]

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/15898-issues-with-994-boarding-changes/

 

I see that I am not alone in this then. The admins reply is an expected response considering the history of development decisions.

Edited August 22, 2016 by Stephen_Decatur

[admin]

Its not a bug

0 does not mean all dead

0 means 0 willing to fight

they can be alive but scared, soiled or whatever. Why do you expect them to join your crew suddenly and fight against the next ship?

[lokii]

Its not a bug

0 does not mean all dead

0 means 0 willing to fight

they can be alive but scared, soiled or whatever. Why do you expect them to join your crew suddenly and fight against the next ship?

Thank you for the information Admin. So the press gang perk should add crew after battle, 50% of some unknown number. The confusion is that the boarding action says Crew killed (at the bottom). Doctor Perk is clearer, so I do think press gang needs some clarification in game.

[dumpert]

So the press gang perk should add crew after battle, 50% of some unknown number. 

 

lol no. that means right now it works like devs want it to work. basically - "yes, its worthless, we know, deal with it"

[Eldberg]

Its not a bug

0 does not mean all dead

0 means 0 willing to fight

they can be alive but scared, soiled or whatever. Why do you expect them to join your crew suddenly and fight against the next ship?

I never said it was a bug.

0 crew is 0 crew (and by default 0 morale as there is no crew to have any morale). 0 willing to fight means 0 morale, but that does not mean 0 crew. Simply put, your argument is completely illogical and is wrong. Get angry at me if you want, but this is constructive criticism from a player who has put in almost 2,000 hours.

Why do I expect them to join my crew? Perhaps that is because that is EXACTLY what impressment is. Colloquially known as "the press" or "press gang", it refers to the act of taking men in to a military/naval force by force. If they did not, they would be severely punished (flogging, lashed to the mast, left out at sea, walking the plank etc).

I understand your goals here, you want to prevent what I think you refer to as "chain boarding", the act of boarding multiple ships back to back. However this is a cheap and easy fix. At this point you might as well remove Press Gang and Morale during boarding, because at the moment it means sweet feck all.

[dumpert]

morale gives bonuses - a lot of additional damage at least - so no, its not like they removed morale. they removed press gang perk without removing it thou

[Woody051]

I have also made similar observations as the above.

 

I had mentioned this in a different thread.

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/15898-issues-with-994-boarding-changes/?p=299550

 

 

I did some boarding today in some missions with some players grinding. It feels like Morale is broken and the NPC is less likely to surrender to you. It also felt like Press Gang wasn't working. I could be wrong but this is how it felt to me. Following two missions i had to buy back more crew than i thought usual as i normally fair better with Press Gang.
 
First Test
 


 
Second Test
 


 
Third Test