Forthcoming shipbuilding changes [Heavily Moderated]

[Vaan De Vries]

 

Main post updated to answer some of the questions raised in the topic:

1. Regional bonuses will remain and NPC ships as well will have them too 
2. Regions and map will not change thus your repositioning to new areas will remain valid
3. ETA for the changes is somewhere between end december - end january. We will first add land in port battles and some other previously promised things.
4. Wood types will remain and will affect ships stats, what will change is how the ship general stats and upgrade slots and other elements are determined during crafting, giving more options to a crafter to build the ship just for him (or for his buyers)
5. The current proposal is a proposal and might change based on what is found during the design stage. 

 

 

Will upgrades and the slot system be reworked? 

 

It really looks silly when somehow one ship has slot for "steel toolbox" and another one doesn't. Cmon - it's just a tollbox - either there is free space in hold for it or not. Why does it need a special slot?

 

Don't get me started on the Marines upgrade. Not craftable - obtained only through pure luck. Insanely OP. And actually - quite a magic thing converting your sailors into marines. If you have a magic slot in your ship for this magic thing.

It's not some fantasy game about elfs. If you are planning to rework the sustem - rework all of it. Stupid upgrade slots somehow depending on the ships quality  is the main reason people now want yellow ships. Not because of slightly better base stats, but because of magical 3-5 slots. 

 

Remove them, allow the same number of updates for all ships or better tie them to ship modules. Like you can place either copper plating or extra planking on your hull, but not both. Reinforced masts or extra sails, etc. Do this and you will see even the old colored system will work - people will decide a small increase in stat is not worse extra efforts.

 

But any dependency of number of installable updates on the ships quality will in any case make people build only the best ships they can afford.

 

Also introducing upgrades durability and allowing to capture ships from players with installed modules with 1 dura will be a great change! Now nobody wants captured one dura ships (even gold ones) cause everybody is afraid to lose upgrades. This will change situation - less people will be risking their gold upgrades even on full dura ship in OW. Gold upgrades will be saved for vital battles. More people will perform daily PVP ith lower quality upgrades.

Edited November 3, 2016 by Vaan De Vries

[oldcrankyman]

The premise of the OP is wrong.  The new system is making people build and use lower grades of ships, and the system hasn't been implemented long enough to have any sort of a clue of how it's going to affect gameplay.

 

Testing is great and I like doing it, but we've barely started testing this system.  Trashing it in favor of something else is a little premature.

[Celtiberofrog]

Dear admin,

It looks like my post was deleted, I apology if it was considered off topic, could you please post it where it was supposed to be & let me know the link ?

If you've not done so & as I did not make any copy, could you send me the copy by PM ? 

Thx 

[Powderhorn]

Dear admin,

It looks like my post was deleted, I apology if it was considered off topic, could you please post it where it was supposed to be & let me know the link ?

If you've not done so & as I did not make any copy, could you send me the copy by PM ? 

Thx 

 

This is absolutely the way to handle such a thing.  Other users, please take note.  I'm PMing him a copy of his message directly.

[Magnum]

 

Hello Сaptains!

 

We will abandon the 5 color grades for upgrades and ships. Fine (blue), Mastercraft (purple), Common (green) are not used and thus are useless. Nobody makes them and nobody buys them. 

 

As a result of testing the final ship quality and shipbuilding system will look like this. 

• Captured - captured (grey) will be assigned to all ships captured (except for ships captured from player fleets) 
• Сrafted (yellow) - ships built by players
• Special - events, rewards, tournament vessels, or maybe extremely rare and hard to craft (months of effort required)

Instead of quality (who would try to make a bad ship) players will select things they want they their ship to have sacrificing other elements if they want to improve one of the characteristics

 

Definitely will be done

• For example if a shipbuilder wants to increase speed it will increase ship cost AND will have to sacrifice the hull quality
• If they want to have additional slots for upgrades they will have to sacrifice space or increase weight
• If you take more crew you might need to reduce hold
• Cannons and ammo and powder supply will affect cargo hold and will reduce ship performance if you overgun it

Under consideration

• If you want to take 200 shots per gun instead of normal supply to battle you might need to sacrifice some space (this will solve cases of light ships unloading 10000 rounds in a battle into a first rate)
• You can determine the number of repair kits you can take for the vessel and affect the weight.
• Unstable designs - add to much sails (to increase speed) your ship might capsize in some cases
• Other experimental ideas like 1 durability ships and other changes

Same treatment will be applied to upgrades. 

 

Once this system is coded in all old ships and some upgrades will become unusable due to database changes and will have to be removed from the game. 

 

discuss

 

Update to answer some of the questions raised in the topic:

1. Regional bonuses will remain and NPC ships as well will have them too 
2. Regions and map will not change thus your repositioning to new areas will remain valid
3. ETA for the changes is somewhere between end december - end january. We will first add land in port battles and some other previously promised things.
4. Wood types will remain and will affect ships stats, what will change is how the ship general stats and upgrade slots and other elements are determined during crafting, giving more options to a crafter to build the ship just for him (or for his buyers)
5. The current proposal is a proposal and might change based on what is found during the design stage. 

 

 

Feedback: Your implementation of this SO FAR blows chunks and gives [RUBLI] an unfair advantage in game.

 

Explanation of feedback: The three Gold Santa Cecilia's you gave [RUBLI] for winning your tournament are situated right in the sweet spot of Frigate building = too fast for bigger stronger ships to catch - too strong for smaller weaker ships to fight (and win). THEY ARE OP!

 

IF --- IF you do more of this: Favoring those with great ping and no real world obligations, which is really what it takes to win your tournaments - you will RUIN your own game.

 

-----

 

You are NOT a real world despot who can hand out choice goodies to your pals - you are "selling" a game and if it is not equally difficult for all players to win, it will be getting bad reviews.

[Hethwill]

The Santa Cecilia does not replace, weatherly or firepower wise, a Suprise nor a Frigate nor even a Belle Poule.

Sorry for the coming back but how did you come up with such conclusion ? Let's discuss it on PM or out of this thread please.

 

Also one detail, if i'm not mistaken it doesn't yield a BP if broken. It is a one time ship. Once it's gone it's gone. Can't build another one.

[William Livingston Alden]

^{I think, for me personaly, it is time to make a break and wait until the game is final.}

^{it makes no sense to discuss things you couldnt change. and at the moment the game isnt worth to play it, with all the changes in the past and in the future.}

 

^{maybe better times will come, hopefully.}

[Magnum]

If you want my feedback - either accept it or not. I will NOT be battling PM's with you.

 

I came up with my conclusion after several days of chasing them and being sunk by them - if they are "NOT" OP then give me the BP so I can "fight fire with fire"

 

SIMPLE REALLY

[Horror]

Wipe (and not just ships) is long overdue.

 

There, i said it.

[Wesreidau]

A wipe is overdue. The reason for the wipe is wrong. Getting rid of quality levels is a terrible idea because the pursuit of higher tiers of ship quality is what will drive mid and end game content. This destroys the end game because they never priced exceptional ships to be end-game content. We all wound up with what should have been end-game ships because they only cost another few crafting notes more. That was bad balance, and the devs are not realizing they failed to balance quality levels with cost. If they realized that, we'd see patches that tried to make that balance. Instead we got fine wood, which suffers the same imbalance of the crafting note system.

 

The premium to go from grey to green is the same as to go from mastercraft to exceptional, and to make an exceptional is only a fraction more effort than what it took to make a grey ship. That's why everyone has exceptionals. 

[Wesreidau]

Devs passed out exceptionals like candy and are surprised nobody's eating their greens. 

[Twig]

The Santa Cecilia does not replace, weatherly or firepower wise, a Suprise nor a Frigate nor even a Belle Poule.

Sorry for the coming back but how did you come up with such conclusion ? Let's discuss it on PM or out of this thread please.

 

Also one detail, if i'm not mistaken it doesn't yield a BP if broken. It is a one time ship. Once it's gone it's gone. Can't build another one.

But isn't the BP available within the pvp tournament reward?

I've got ganked by a pirate santa cecilia a few days ago. This ship (which I borded when he tried to bord me) was purple and freshly build. Bermuda Cedar 3 / 4 upgrade slots - Explorer bonus and golden speed.

That means those ships are buildable right now. I dont know how to get the BP but they exist. So I dont think that this is a "one time ship"

I still have that ship and can prove it.

Edit: It does have big potential - more than the endymion...

Edited November 3, 2016 by Twig

[Hethwill]

Not sure Twig. I had the impression it would be a ship of that model but hey if it is the BP i'll make sure to contact the crafters  and try to by favours and all of that . Will review the thread myself.

[Twig]

Not sure Twig. I had the impression it would be a ship of that model but hey if it is the BP i'll make sure to contact the crafters  and try to by favours and all of that . Will review the thread myself.

Im not online today but I can show it to you the next days.

[Hethwill]

Will find the crafters and beg for a special one

[arrr matey]

 

Main post updated to answer some of the questions raised in the topic:

1. Regional bonuses will remain and NPC ships as well will have them too 
2. Regions and map will not change thus your repositioning to new areas will remain valid
3. ETA for the changes is somewhere between end december - end january. We will first add land in port battles and some other previously promised things.
4. Wood types will remain and will affect ships stats, what will change is how the ship general stats and upgrade slots and other elements are determined during crafting, giving more options to a crafter to build the ship just for him (or for his buyers)
5. The current proposal is a proposal and might change based on what is found during the design stage. 

 

 

So my question is, with the devs past tendency to nerf everything in the game that give you the ability to build ships with to counter big ships with massive side structure and extra planking and such like the trincomolee pre nerf speed why the sudden desire to give us the ability to craft ships that have those differences?

[Wesreidau]

I can't wait to see how minmaxed ship builds completely break things either.

[arrr matey]

I mean lets be real here. The devs tendency to nerf anything that could give someone a divergent gameplay style is what has forced everyone into cookie cutter ship design.

[Neverdead Ned]

It seems to me that you're switching one set of ship building variables that we have to micro-manage with another set.  Keep in mind that the more complications you throw in front of people who just want to PvP, the more you may lose.  This needs a perfect balance to work and all I see is dev's ideas swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other.  KISS...keep it simple stupid, it's what most people want.

Edited November 3, 2016 by Stroopwafel

[KrakkenSmacken]

It seems to me that you're switching one set of ship building variables that we have  micro-manage with another set.  Keep in mind that the more complications you throw in front of people who just want to PvP, the more you may lose.  This needs a perfect balance to work and all I see is dev's ideas swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other.  KISS...keep it simple stupid, it's what most people want.

 

Pretty much this.  

 

Don't confuse "interesting" with "fun"

 

14:00

 

Edited November 3, 2016 by KrakkenSmacken

[PaladinFX]

To Devs:

 

By "all old ships will be removed" do you mean all ships crafted before Patch 9.96 when Regional Bonuses & extra craft requirements came in; or do you mean in ETA Dec/Jan you will wipe every single ship from the game?

 

 

Can we get an answer to this question PLEASE?????

[Helbent]

Can we get an answer to this question PLEASE?????

I interpreted "old" to be any ships crafted with the basic/common/fine/MC/excep model. So basically anything before this patch drops would be wiped because the database will be completely changed. Only the devs can say for sure, but with the changes they are talking about it sounds like a database change that would require dropping the existing tables.

[KrakkenSmacken]

I interpreted "old" to be any ships crafted with the basic/common/fine/MC/excep model. So basically anything before this patch drops would be wiped because the database will be completely changed. Only the devs can say for sure, but with the changes they are talking about it sounds like a database change that would require dropping the existing tables.

 

As a developer, if the reason is a DB change that can not support the new format, then everything in the DB will need to be purged.  If it's the ships tables, then say goodbye to ALL ships.

 

I would suspect that with the changes to the construction model, the BP records and formulas would also all change, so odds are the BP's will go as well.

 

I would actually hope that would happen if the ships do, so we can test how hard the BP drops are given there will be no way to increase you chances of a BP drop by building a "higher quality" ship.

[jw62]

Yuck, I vote no

I want to keep all my ships

kind of kills the "build cheap ships to learn how to build expensive ships" thing

Kind of throws way too many unnecessary hurdles into what for me is a good chunk of the game

I want to keep all my ships

you keep putting the bar higher and higher, this is my evening and weekend recreation. I do want depth, but I don't want mickey mouse

You have a really solid concept coming together, and now you are proposing dramatic changes just before release (in the scheme of things), sounds like a silly move.

Right now you should be building on what you have, adding content, sounds (really coming along), working on that finished and polished UI for in port, national/clan BBS, mp3-4 player, better in port trading and socializing set up, fix the rigging on the ships (the futtock shrouds do not attach to the shrouds of the mast on the lower level, they go back to the mast and wrap around cheeks passing through each other), closing all gunports in the OW, closing gunports on the lynx in the BW, maybe adding some separate non-demilitarized merchant schooners and cutters (look through "search for speed under sail" by chappelle please), Shrink the "town" models on the OW by at least half (this is me as yeah I have done a lot of set and stage design), tweaking resourcing, ship stats, AI smugglers (last night was outstanding), and therefore making sure you have a lot of fun for new and older players.

Otherwise I think the last patch was really cool but still needs some tweaking.

[Bramborough]

You have just made a pretty enormous change to the entire shipbuilding aspect of this game.  The fine woods requirements (and relative scarcity), regional bonuses, competing demands for LH (e.g., War Supplies), and re-introducing varying quality in captured AI ships, each on their own merits would've significantly altered the crafting environment.  Taken all together at once, and you've shifted the trade/craft gameplay to such an extent that the playerbase hasn't yet fully adjusted to it; folks are still trying to figure out "the new normal".  And I don't think we will fully reach that state until pre-patch gold ships are mostly attrited out of the players' collective inventory.  That might take a while.

 

I think how the playerbase eventually evolved to meet the new environment might've been pretty interesting.  As one example, I think quite a few players are learning that middling-quality ships aren't necessarily quite so bad after all.  Your 9.96 changes were clearly meant to make Exceptional ships, well, "exceptional", rather than "minimum acceptable".   And from my perspective, we were slowly headed toward begrudging acceptance among the playerbase of that new reality.   Your observation "...not used and thus are useless. Nobody makes them and nobody buys them."  was certainly true very recently, and still valid for many today.  I think if you had let this process continue, however, for another few weeks, this statement would've become increasingly obsolete.

 

Yet now you've announced another seismic shift in the shipbuilding aspect of this game...before allowing the current paradigm to fully establish itself.  The mere fact that you've announced these changes is going to affect how the 9.96 changes play out.

 

I really don't understand the timing of the announcement, following so closely on the heels of 9.96.