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NEW RANK SYSTEM


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Gentlemen, glad to see the ship still floats, I've been peeking in from time to time on the status of Naval Action.  I've been silently willing certain patches and changes to take effect, which sadly have not, despite the really nice work/patches the devs have implemented thus far.

One of the primary reasons I'm delaying any sort of return to the game is a problem that has existed since we made the transition from sea trials into open world Naval Action.
1st rates, and the non existance of squadron diversity.

The game has been a 1st rate clustertruck since the beginning and I cannot express how boring, how tedious it is to have 25v25 1st rate battles, and know that virtually ever captain has at least one, in some cases 5-6 of them.  I believe the devs tried to combat this by capping certain port battles to 4th/5th rates etc, but the result was still very much the same.  We ended up with 25 constitutions v 25 consitutions.  Again. Just tedious.
Where is the diversity? Why aren't fleet battles consisting of:


2 Santis, 1 Victory, 4 Pavels, 8 Bellonas, 4 Bucs, 6 Frigates and a couple of smaller sloops/schooners  v a similar force?


Why aren't said fleet battles optimised to utilise the strength of a frigate/schooner in a SOL battle?

I'd like to suggest a system inspired by our very own Naval history, called the "Battle Record System" (please see image at bottom of post)
Essentially instead of experience being the sole factor in rank (and through this, ship choice) a players naval history will also determine his rank:

 

As you can see in the attached table my rank, and consequently the amount of crew i am allocated / ships I can sail is dependant on my Naval record, be it good or bad.  I am rewarded for fighting honourably, and victoriously, and punished for cowardness + defeats.

How does the Efficiency system work?

I start at 10 points as a new player and gain: 1 point per ship sunk in a PvP battle. 1 Point for a decisive victory. 0 Points for an indecisive victory.

I can also lose: 1 point for losing a ship durability or ship. 5 points for retreating from a battle. 1 point for losing a battle.

 

Not only will this limit the amount of rear admirals the game has, but it will also target trollers, griefers and time wasters.  If you enter a port battle you are committed.  If you withdraw, you suffer the fury of your national Admiralty via your battle record.

 

Thoughts?

 

rank battle record.png

Edited by Monkey Bullet
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I'll support any idea that makes your decisions just as important as the XP grind. I especially like the anti-griefing aspect that can demote you for questionable conduct.

Not sure I'd have called it an 'efficiency' rating, but nothing better springs to mind at the moment

My one concern is for the trading and crafting captains out there and how they would increase their 'efficiency' rating.

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I see 1 major problem and 1 minor problem with this proposal.

Major:
Encourages the "Gank or be ganked" attitude.

Minor:
Alt farming to lvl up. (This is a problem for almost any aspect of Naval Action). 

Solutions: 
Points should be given based on BR. 
If your team has between 1.5 BR and 2.0 BR reward is cut in half. 
If you team has 2.0+ you get no "points". 
No bonus is given to the team with inferior BR. 

This way we it encourages the relatively fair fights (Which are more fun for both sides) but still allows people to gank. 

As for Alt farming, well, we can't do much about that lol.

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The devs have tried to fix this by making first rates much harder to craft with several iterations over the last year as far as what is required to craft these ships, however, those attempts have failed because of how vastly superior first rates are over other ships in a port battles and no matter how painful the devs make it to craft first rates, the dedicated players always find a way to outfit their fleets with them anyway.  

The only way I ever see this being fixed is if they squeeze stats on these ships to bring them more in line with each other and make ships like the bellona (or other 3rd rates) have some superior advantage over first rates.  Or maybe make first rates super slow and nerf the turn rate on them to make them completely helpless by themselves in a battle.  Basically nerf their maneuverability to the point where they are almost floating point defenses.  This way player fleets for port battles will be forced to bring only one or two of them and use them as floating batteries.  Of course they would have to compensate by making the bottom deck guns on first rates pack much more punch with penetration and damage to be of any use in a battle. 

Now that we have land in port battles, they could also make it so only smaller frigate type ships can get into the area to capture the zones basically forcing fleets to bring frigates to port battles.  

As long as first rates keep their stats on armor, structure hit points, and their maneuverability group leaders will always choose fleets of first rates over anything else.  Players will always choose the best ships available to them for battles because when it comes to port battles, group leaders are trying to win, and 3rd rates and 4th rates just have no room in the fleets to accomplish this task right now.

BTW, 4th rate port battles are Agamemnon spams now, not constitution spams.  

Edited by Yar Matey
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I think there is another flaw in your system.  :)  It doesn't do what you say it does. Your mechanic doesn't limit first rates in battle at all. It just limits who can be Rear Admiral, but it doesn't stop 25 RA from stacking first rates in a given battle just like now.

It makes even fights less likely because you limit the pool of RA so one side may end up having to substitute smaller ships if their high ranked players don't show up. This pressure makes game play even worse for highly ranked players as they will be expected to play important battles since only they can operate the big boats.

It also does nothing at all to address the uniform Agamemnon fleets in 4th rate battles which presumably everyone is still going to be able to field.

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My idea a while back was to limit the amount of X ship per instance for each faction. The servers constantly checking to see if the quotas were full or not for each ship model. Thus hard limiting the rarer ships. But then if you owned one you would be mighty upset if you loaded the game and somebody had sailed in one simply to reserve it as soon as the maintenance period was over.

Or perhaps you could limit it to a percentage of time per player. You get 4hrs a week in your victory (or perhaps 1 day a week).... but if you managed to stay online and at sea with it you could stay in it. But go to port and it tells you like a truck driver that your time is up. The more common the ship the more time allocated for it. Obviously very common generic ships would have no limit. People with ALTs could of course abuse this by trading ships with their time limited account.

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Where is the diversity? Why aren't fleet battles consisting of:
2 Santis, 1 Victory, 4 Pavels, 8 Bellonas, 4 Bucs, 6 Frigates and a couple of smaller sloops/schooners  v a similar force?

 

because that will be just as tedious.. the bigger ships will always have the advantage  ... so who would want to sail a schooner in a port battle when your dismasted and sunk from one broadside of a santi ..

make the ships more expensive or limit the ships in either number you can own or time spent sailing .. people will not risk them as much ... which may be realistic..but also very tedious ...as battles wont happen if one side has the advantage over the other .. the weaker side will just withdraw ...people will get bored and leave the game ..

if you want mixed fleets ..get rid of the open world trading and crafting ... and just have an arena style game where you log into a battle there are x number of ships classes available and first in get the choice ...

if you want me to play the game where fighting over regions for silver, gold . live oak , because they are important for crafting ....i want to sail the ships i craft

only way i can see more fixed fleets is rework port battles make them over a far bigger area where the need for faster ships to cap the circles gives you an advantage ... but then you would just see port battles full of the fastest ships available .....and it will be tedious to some 

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8 hours ago, Snoopy said:

I think there is another flaw in your system.  :)  It doesn't do what you say it does. Your mechanic doesn't limit first rates in battle at all. It just limits who can be Rear Admiral, but it doesn't stop 25 RA from stacking first rates in a given battle just like now.

 

It's fair to say there are very few commodores / flag captains who would take their 1st rate in a port battle right?

I'm saying that EVERY current Rear admiral, as well as new ones would be subject to a demotion if their efficiency points drop below a certain point.

 

3 hours ago, Grundgemunkey said:

Where is the diversity? Why aren't fleet battles consisting of:
2 Santis, 1 Victory, 4 Pavels, 8 Bellonas, 4 Bucs, 6 Frigates and a couple of smaller sloops/schooners  v a similar force?

^ because that will be just as tedious.. the bigger ships will always have the advantage  ... so who would want to sail a schooner in a port battle when your dismasted and sunk from one broadside of a santi ..

 

 

Historically a schooner, even a frigate would never EVER, go anywhere near a battle of line ships, they would get absolutely obliterated just from one broadside. As you say later in your reply, the smaller ships need to be utilised differently, either harrassing some of the SOLs from a distance, engaging the enemy frigates, capturing a domination point, sending landing parties to neutralise a land battery etc.

 

 

What I would encourage from this community guys is not to simply naysay, that is, to reject an idea straight off the bat, but to tweak it, much like what Tommy did in his post above. Notice the flaws, and addres them, make it better. Thats how we resolve issues like these effectively, by giving the devs a polished idea that could actually work.

For me personally the single ship spam (1st rates / Agamemnon spam), alongside the still, very basic UI is the ONLY reason I'm not returning to the game. Which saddens me, as it's really a lot of fun!

 

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1 hour ago, Monkey Bullet said:

It's fair to say there are very few commodores / flag captains who would take their 1st rate in a port battle right?

I'm saying that EVERY current Rear admiral, as well as new ones would be subject to a demotion if their efficiency points drop below a certain point.

[..]

Well, the way your system is written doesn't do anything to restrict ships types in battles. It only restricts people to Commodore and they can still run their first rates.

But even if your system did further rank restrictions, all it does is it puts pressure on players to regrind their rank (and since we are talking about chores here the path of least resistance is that it will be done using gank fleets as PvP areas have taught us) and when that doesn't work any longer it puts a faction into a downward spiral of being unable to defend anything after only a few lost PBs when they can't keep up fielding competitive fleets. I just don't see how your idea helps, to me it only introduces another grind to do PBs and then a snowball effect of locking a faction out of line ship PBs.

Why not simply restrict ship types in battle outright when that is what you want to happen.. instead of introducing a system of punishments for taking part in PvP.

Loss aversion is already such a strong inhibitor of PvP.

(And I don't disagree with the original intent, I would like to see line ship battles with 74s as the backbone of fleets. I just don't think mechanics like stripping people of their rank will do any good in a game)

Edited by Snoopy
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8 hours ago, rediii said:

This is a PvP game where roles are pretty much the same. In PvP you will always see the most effective equipment as long as ships are not really well balanced. In Portbattles the roles of ships are quite the same. (Tanky+DPS, speed is not that important). So as long as there are no hard restrictions people will use the most effective ships as a base of a fleet and some special ones for special roles. (mortarbrig, a fast ship to finish of specific targets etc.)

This is the correct way to fix the best ship spam, or at least on the right track.  Each ship needs to have a different roll to play in a port battle to stop the first rate and Agamemnon spam. 

Make it so frigates are the only ships able to get into the capture zones close the the port, make it so mortar brigs or frigates outfitted for boarding are needed to take out the towers and make it so line ships bottom deck guns pack way more of a punch with more penetration at longer ranges, and you will have ships with different rolls to play.  Your line ships will be the primary protectors of your mortarbrigs as well as providing fire support for the frigates brawling in the capture zone and the frigates will be brawling in the capture points near the port. The mortar brigs will primarily be bombarding the towers. 

Also, they need to squeeze the stats of the different rated ships, and ships of the same rating do not completely outclass other ships.  For example, why does the Agamemnon have an extra 3cm of thickness and 600 more HP over the constitution? 

Edited by Yar Matey
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