3 Dura Compromise

[Captiva]

The quote below is from Admin explaining the reason as to why they are bringing back 3 dura for ships of the line.

"Ship must provide opportunity to have at least 3 non stop battles even if you lose every time. 

We listened to hardcore players before caved to 1 durability that brought nothing to the game - It did not reduce number or popularity of first rates for veterans, but it made life harder for average player who left instead of converting. If veterans want number of players stay or grow they must accept that the customer funnel must lose less players than it is losing now. "

The biggest complaint against bringing back 3 dura ships of the line seems to be that it will encourage players to load up their ships with Gold Everything Mods in order to easily capture other ships without fear of losing any of their installed gold mods until the ship is down to it's last dura.

Well, then shouldn't the goal be to treat each of the 3 dura as if they were 3 individual one dura ships? And to do this you have to make it so that anytime you lose one of the 3 dura, by being either sunk or captured, you also lose any and all installed mods. 

It seems a little hypocritical to demand 1 dura ships and at the same time not demand 1 dura for the mods installed on them.

[elite92]

3 dura ships with 1 dura modules is the same as 1 dura ships with no dura modules = no 1 will use rare non-craftable modules on ships .

this is not the correct way... my proposal is to remove completely modules and move the customization of gameplay to another level:

1- merge modules with captain perk (no more officers) balance it well and let us decide our style (ex: add marines,ecc as perk with some tweaking). we need this merge because imho is bad to have 2 things (modules and perks) that both have the same role. no more fear in losing gold uncraftable stuffs -> better PvP.

2- make all ships 1 dura, because u dont have the problem of modules anymore. obviusly lower the price of shipbuild. this will make capping ships worth again in NA. cause atm capped ships 1 dura are useless, in Age of Sail was worth million times more than in NA.

3- let us craft ships with regional bonuses in each port, no need to move all my mats everytime losing hours and hours (imagine a little solo player); Your nation hold a region with X bonus? well, u can craft ships with X bonus in any national port where u got mats.

thx for reading, hope it helps, what do u think about it? (im noob in english)

[Anne Wildcat]

29 minutes ago, elite92 said:

 

1- merge modules with captain perk (no more officers) balance it well and let us decide our style (ex: add marines,ecc as perk with some tweaking). we need this merge because imho is bad to have 2 things (modules and perks) that both have the same role. no more fear in losing gold uncraftable stuffs -> better PvP.

 

 

 

I think people don't like the 3 dura bc now there is no fear of losing rare gold regular modules.  Every pb will be gold boarding or fireship fitted. 

I'm for durabilities myself, being somewhat of a casual player and PVP noob, but guess I'm in the minority. 

 

[JeanJacques de Montpellier]

2 hours ago, elite92 said:

my proposal is to remove completely modules and move the customization of gameplay to another level:

1- merge modules with captain perk (no more officers) balance it well and let us decide our style (ex: add marines,ecc as perk with some tweaking). we need this merge because imho is bad to have 2 things (modules and perks) that both have the same role. no more fear in losing gold uncraftable stuffs -> better PvP.

2- make all ships 1 dura, because u dont have the problem of modules anymore. obviusly lower the price of shipbuild. this will make capping ships worth again in NA. cause atm capped ships 1 dura are useless, in Age of Sail was worth million times more than in NA.

3- let us craft ships with regional bonuses in each port, no need to move all my mats everytime losing hours and hours (imagine a little solo player); Your nation hold a region with X bonus? well, u can craft ships with X bonus in any national port where u got mats.

thx for reading, hope it helps, what do u think about it? (im noob in english)

I agree with you.
1 durability, no mods, no upgrades
but the possibility to set the ship and the crew to your liking.

This is the simplest solution, logical, rational, realistic and functional.

[Anne Wildcat]

I'm all for no mods. However, I think all ships 1 dur is not a great idea. People on the forum seem to complain about the long & boring sail to get resources. With one dur ships, those that do Econ will have 3-5x the tedious work. Every time a ship is lost, it will need replacement except for those that have thousands (yes exaggerated) of ships or the PVP elite who do not lose a battle.

Since the regional bonus patch, I've had 1 ship made for me.  All my other ships are before the fine woods & regional bonus patch. It is a Surprise. Last weekend I went out looking for a fight and got tagged, partly my fault as I mistook a player for an AI. 4 French were after me. I could not outrun the Endy so I surrendered. No big deal.  My 4 dur Surprise is down to 3, I went right back out.  Got in a 1v1, the guy ran. People are already afraid to fight on even ground, 1 dur will not help this. If my ship was 1 dur, I would not have had another ship at that port to go out & fight. 

Edited February 19, 2017 by Anne Wildcat

[elite92]

for a newb the possibility to craft his first frigate-class ships for x5 less materials and hours, in his capital, with each bonus is a great Quality Of Life change. he would be proud to sail his ship althought it has 1 dura, and when he will cap for the first time another frigate he will be happy to use it, cause everyship has 1 dura.

we have a testbed, lets test it.

3 dura 1st rate full boarding in PBs will be a pain.

[fox2run]

Many duras and open battles would provide much more pvp.

It is that simple.

 

Edited February 19, 2017 by fox2run

[fox2run]

Majority left the game becourse it was boring with no battles to join.

A majority likes to fight other than the usual "5 versus 1 with nothing to do closed battles."

I know that you, Hethwill and a few others will have a bigger challenge under open battles as you won't be able to isolate victims that easily.

But hey... Maybe the game would be popular again... ;-)

[Hethwill]

Oh I agree with that, it is not like we have a win button ( but I Pray a lot out loud ) and ambush simply happen. Actually most of the times is really the trader that puts himself into hard spots with unfavourable wind, or trying to run a gauntlet or simply going out of port without even looking around, doing the same route over and over again, etc...or like sailing afk

Harmless schooners are a menace. When social was up our kraken death squad of Pickles ( 2! ) had to be driven off by a flag squadron of eight frigates and heavy frigates ready to serve King and Country.

Al'right then. Make Signaling and Control inherent mechanics. That way you can save your buddies in peril ( we use Signaling and only once did someone enter to save a trader...ever! )

[Stilgar]

Well, as far as I can see this is about extension of multiple dura's to 1st rates. Therefore, I do not think that will be a game changer (for good or for worse), but I do think it might bring more PvP and would make sailing SOLs more accessible to casual player, which is good imo.

As for one-dura vs multiple dura discussion, I'd like to see one dura and no modules system, but I must admit that multiple dura system would make life of beginner / casual player easier, which are important for maintaining a healthy population on servers and more chances for PvP.

 

[Hethwill]

As Devs usually say, memory can be short. A lot of things that might be buried in old announcement thread might hint to a lot of the changes we see.

There's reactive development and then there's the long run vision where mechanics must be put in place so the ones being planned in the future will fall in place as expected with the less reactive hotfixing/balancing as possible.

Nothing is being taken away, really, except motives to Surrender. That is bugging me a bit.

I hope we still see proper crew morale to affect the entire combat and not only the boarding.

 

[Stilgar]

Increased cost is indeed a factor, Wraith and might work against casual player.

The question really is: what's the difference between one dura ship vs 3 dura 3-times more expensive (materials/labour hrs)  ship (let's ignore mods for now) ? Additionally, what if you are given freedom to choose nr of dura's  when crafting?

[Farrago]

Just off the top of my head this morning: What about a compromise between 1 sink you're done and you have basically 3 shiny new ships in every single first rate?

Have multiple duras and a captured ship does not lose any dura BUT...

If a ship is really badly damaged, it may never be possible to bring it back to full strength with repairs. Maybe it is now slower, has less hp, worse turning, rudder can only be 80%, has less mod slots because some were destroyed, you get the idea.

Alternatively, a ship is so badly damaged it takes a week real time not sailing it to repair it fully.

You could even combine these and make the ship handicapped until after 1 week and then it can be restored to full health.

There could be a new craft able repair kit that takes many hours to make and many mats to restore a heavily damaged ship to 100%.

There could be a special, rare BP that these major repairs could only be done by the master which would start another specialization dry dock trade for crafters. One would have to turn their ship over to this dry dock shop.

Anything good here?

[Fargo]

6 hours ago, Stilgar said:

Increased cost is indeed a factor, Wraith and might work against casual player.

The question really is: what's the difference between one dura ship vs 3 dura 3-times more expensive (materials/labour hrs)  ship (let's ignore mods for now) ? Additionally, what if you are given freedom to choose nr of dura's  when crafting?

Assumed that everything is balanced in the same way for both cases, the only real difference is that palyers are interacting with other players more often when they need to buy three 1 dura ships instead of one 3 dura ship. Thats a really good thing (E.g. more ships on the market results in more competition). Besides that, one dura is realistic. Two good pros.

The question is what are the pros to have multiple duras? And if there arent any, why dont go for 1 dura?! 

You wont find a positive aspect. We got used to have duras, thats the only reason there is a discussion about it. From a rational view its simply stupid. When i want to make ships better accessable, why ever would i invent multiple duras instead of just decreasing the material cost?! Thats like increasing gravity to decrease cannon range.

Statements like "1 dura isnt working" are simply wrong, because that is only for actual balancing, including lots of parameters. When you want to change the actual balancing, there are multiple ways to do it. When you only want to change single parameters you have to adjust the others. I also wonder how this was tested with 20 players on the test server

Edited February 19, 2017 by Fargo

[Captiva]

5 hours ago, Wraith said:

That means that on average your new/casual player, relying on that final durability but unwilling to risk their uncraftable mods, will always be at a disadvantage vs. the rich/hardcore players.  As of now, first rates with one durability are almost always on a more even playing field where both the casual and hardcore players are risking the same amount of cost in mods and resources when they face each other.

At some point in time we're all going to have to come to grips with the decision made by the developers to increase ship dura. If non-craftable mods are the biggest reason for any player to not want to sail a ship and fight, then they should become craftable mods and all mods should then have 1 dura.

Now the 1st and 2nd dura of the ship suffers the same consequences of being sunk or captured as the last one.

I also agree with many other players who believe that any ship related mods should not be drops subject to a lottery system of pure luck.. Drops are ok for treasure or any type of loot such as bales of tobacco or French cognac, but not ships mods of any kind. 

Edited February 19, 2017 by Captiva

[Crayon]

Bring back throwaways and make it possible to craft ship lives. 

I wont even put gold upgrades like Powder Monkeys on my santi because of the risk.

Edited February 20, 2017 by Crayon

[JeanJacques de Montpellier]

10 minutes ago, Crayon said:

Bring back throwaways and make it possible to craft ship lives. 

I wont even put gold upgrades like Powder Monkeys on my santi because of the risk.

You will not lose anything if the upgrades are also removed.

The concept is:
-1 dura
-no upgrades or magic things

You will be able in any case to set your ship as you like.

 

 

Important Notes
Obviously the material needed to build a ship will be much lower than it is now, but not only ...

wanting to do things right (and not fantasy), it would be nice and appropriate to add and change some things.
-for the captains under the national flag: the ships are assigned by the Admiralty. These captains are salaried and they get a percentage of their catch.
-for the traders, privateers and pirates: instead vessels must be crafted or purchased. These funds get all the money from the catches and loot.                                                        -national crafters can sell their ships to the Admiralty. 

This would be very fascinating, realistic and would give a nice touch to the game and the gameplay.

[Crayon]

11 minutes ago, JeanJacques de Montpellier said:

You will not lose anything if the upgrades are also removed.

The concept is:
-1 dura
-no upgrades or magic things

You will be able in any case to set your ship as you like.

 

 

Important Notes
Obviously the material needed to build a ship will be much lower than it is now, but not only ...

wanting to do things right (and not fantasy), it would be nice and appropriate to add and change some things.
-for the captains under the national flag: the ships are assigned by the Admiralty. These captains are salaried and they get a percentage of their catch.
-for the traders, privateers and pirates: instead vessels must be crafted or purchased. These funds get all the money from the catches and loot.                                                        -national crafters can sell their ships to the Admiralty. 

This would be very fascinating, realistic and would give a nice touch to the game and the gameplay.

All well and good, but there is a problem with this.

The devs have already said they want some mods like Studding Sails, and gold Powder Monkeys very hard to acquire. With the admiralty store they are talking about, maybe it could work. 

I don't know If I would like the system, because then everyone would basically sail the same ships with exactly the same ship builds.

There needs to be mods with more substance, like if the constitution could be fitted with a furnace for the cannonballs.

Edit: If you do away with mods, i'd like it alot tbh. However, if the mods are crafted permanently into the ship, then atleast make the new types of mods ship specific that gives a more dynamic play style.

Edited February 20, 2017 by Crayon

[JeanJacques de Montpellier]

I sincerely don't understand your problem with Studding Sails or Powder monkeys; i probably was not been clear (maybe my english is too bad).
Remove all upgrades.

The customization of the ship and some of its features will of course possible, but in the most logical and rational (not with magic cards).
Do you want a ship with studding sails? Ok, When You craft it you can do it with these sails too (obviously you'll lose speed in some points and will require more people to maneuver the sails).
Do you want more powder monkey on your ship? Ok, but you will need to give up some men destined for other tasks on the ship.
And so on...

Edited February 20, 2017 by JeanJacques de Montpellier

[Crayon]

Yeah I understand what your saying, and I agree with it. 

I just want certain upgrades, specific only to some ships. Studding sails are not a ship specific item.

Only some ships were outfitted with a furnace to heat up the balls that were then loaded into the cannons tho.