Abandon Durability; Sunk Ships Become Hulks, Overhauled with LH and Mats

[Wesreidau]

Players need to not fear losing ships so much they avoid play, but losing ships needs to be meaningfully serious. Markets need to consume shipbuilding resources and labor hours, but end-game shipbuilders need something to do other than create more golden first rates. Ships need to be somewhat persistent, but they need to be knocked out of battles if not wars.

I think durability should be replaced by a simple switch; a ship is either in good repair, or it is a "hulk". A ship in good repair can be sailed and repaired in all the usual ways, kits or gold, but a ship that is hulked must be Overhauled, which amounts to dry-dock level repairs after being towed.. You can also offload mods from a hulked ship, although the cargo and cannons are lost when it "sinks", thrown overboard to save the ship.

Historically accurate? Everything is a compromise. Only 200 people like the current compromise. Odds are we can do better. Analyze this based on gameplay, not the frequency that half-sunk vessels become swamped salvage.

Overhauling a hulk is not like repairing a ship in good repair. For one, it requires shipbuilding materials; planks, tar, iron fittings, logs of this or that type, carriages, furnishings; roughly 10% to 25% of the construction materials. It also requires a similar fraction of the labor hours to make the ship, at the level required to make the ship. These labor hours are banked by the creation of an Overhaul Contract, which have seven rates for the seven rates of ships.

In short, you buy your ship and when it sinks, you buy some fraction of it again. You can keep buying the ship you love forever. More casual or lower commitment players are no longer scared off by the "permadeath" risk, and serious players enjoy higher levels of action, balanced by higher costs.

So practically, if my 1st Rate is sunk in a port battle, its towed back to an outpost as a hulk. Say I tow it back to my national capital, or a clan base of operations. There I buy from a high-level crafter a 1st Rate Overhaul Contract (or make my own if I can), and acquire the other materials needed for a 1st rate repair. Then I use the Overhaul button, pay a sizable gold fee for the shipyard,and my 1st rate is back in action.

The Overhaul function's material requirements take into account not only the ship type, but also the quality level. Accordingly rebuilding a green ship is far less expensive than rebuilding a gold ship. By my usual standing suggestion, the price increases geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8, 16) rather than linearly to put a strong premium on exceptional ships.

If acquiring these materials is too much of a hassle, you can trade the hulk to a trusted crafter to fix. High level crafters will be making less new ships and overhauling more existing ships, so I expect this will become common.

Overhauling could require a regional capital or free town because of the need for extensive yards and also to concentrate the repair materials market for player convenience. Thanks to outpost towing hulks can be returned to "drydock" ports and ships returned to the front lines.

Crafters producing Overhaul Contracts have a favorable labor-hour to crafting XP rate, so those trying to grind up their levels will have an incentive to produce Overhaul Contracts. The contracts themselves also require no materials, unless they were crafted out of coins.

But what about captured ships?

Ships you capture remain as one-durability "Prize" ships to prevent ship cloning or actually taking other people's ships, since this new system makes ships permanent.

 

[Snoopy]

This is an excellent idea. Loss aversion is a powerful deterrent to PvP and this would help, even if the costs were the same (or higher) as building a new ship.

[Snoopy]

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

I would disagree with such a change vehemently. What you're proposing would essentially kill ship crafting as a play style and reduce trading to money grubbing as motivation. The follow-on effects on the economy, in other words, as they translate into players in the open world and the types of production tied to war efforts, tied to PvP and PvE content, would be devastating.

One durability ships, that are cheap at low ranks/classes, easily replaced, and keep ship crafting dynamic and interesting, is the only way that this game supports multiple play styles in the vein of other open world, online multiplayer games. One durability ships make capped ships meaningful instead of just trash, especially if there are interesting builds/regional bonuses that you can't craft that are highly sought after in ship markets. There are so many upsides to it I'm dumbfounded anyone even considers multiple durability or in your proposal, indefinitely durability, a pro.

If all you want is a ship combat simulator why bother with the open world at all?

Read the OP again . If overhaul contracts for ship type X also require a BP for X, it won't do any of the things you fear, the only thing it might potentially harm is demand for ship paint if vessels are brought to life time and again. Your crafters will build fewer ships, but more repair contracts.

It does make 1 dura captures worthwhile (more than now, anyway) because they can be brought to a full state of repair again.
If it's possible to rebuy multiple durabilities it also does not have the drawback of having to transport a new vessel into combat areas after sinking like the 1 dura system.

But above all, it addresses the psychological affect of loss aversion. It is one of the most powerful (de-)motivators in human behavior.

If you can't technically lose your ship (even if rebuild costs were to be higher when looked at it rationally) , the loss aversion effect on players is a lot less pronounced, hence the urge to stack your odds in PvP in favor of yourself is dampened - and this can only be a good thing for PvP.

The days when we had 'free' 74s were unrealistic and I don't want them back, but at least nobody was afraid of PvP.

[Wesreidau]

I believe I was not clear enough.

If my ship is captured, I retain a hulk of that ship which I can overhaul and sail again. If I capture a ship, I gain a one-durability "prize" ship which does not hulk / overhaul; the same one-durability sort of ships we have now. If it sinks, its gone, mods and all. This replicates one "life" of a given ship but also destroys one "life" when the losing player gets a hulk he has to spend an overhaul to repair. The net is that your enemy gains a ship at the expense of your overhaul price.

What we gain on the macro is that players can feel free to risk their ships because an economic sacrifice will bring it back. That sacrifice is made to the crafting side of the marketplace, with associated economic activity by players, as well as gold destroyed to try and stem inflation and an overhaul price that makes top-tier ships much more expensive to lose. I think this solves a number of macro problems.

[Wesreidau]

At its core, this proposal is a compromise position for 1 durability play versus permanent ships.

Most players are attached to pixels, and if they lose the pixels they are attached to, they may well stop playing the game. Look how many dropped off when a pre-release wipe was announced! Don't call it carebear BS. If a few thousand players were more attached to their pixels, or had the pixels they were attached to preserved, they wouldn't be absent on these 100 player nights or sitting out until the wipe, as my entire clan did starting in March of '16, since there was no point in acquiring pixels that would be lost.

One durability caters to the ultra-hardcore player in a clan with the resources to replace losses and the coordination to sail in groups to negate the risk of ganking. This player base may be all that's left playing the game, but it was not the playerbase we had a year ago.

Look at the successful model of War Thunder. An aircraft or a tank is an expensive investment of time grinding up experience to unlock, then money to purchase. But once that aircraft is purchased, it is always available to you. You can be shot down, you pay a repair bill that's a fraction of the purchase price, and you can fly again. This allows players to get good (skrub) at their aircraft, master that aircraft, and grow fond of it even as they move on to a better aircraft. At any time, they can go back and fly their old planes without any financial burden.

What you propose is that the plane is purchased, flown, shot down because the player was unfamiliar with it, and the player says, oh well, I'll get another. In another system, that might work. The problem is that here in Naval Action, each ship is a hand-crafted creation that will have a different bonus set, be a different quality, have different cannons, have different specs. He never gets the chance to really learn a ship, because he loses his ship constantly. Because he's not growing attached to the ship, his primary avatar in the game, he also isn't growing attached in the game.

Losing players who grow fond of the game by being fond of their ship isn't worth the players who are fond of hardcore play for its own sake. You can still be that hardcore player who only has one durability ships; just sail captured vessels and see how long you can last. That describes my first three or four months of play, in fact. 

Regarding captures, the advantage of a crafted ship is obvious; you get precisely what you want and you have it forever. The advantage of a captured ship is obvious, its free and you can try out what other people use.

For crafters, a "hulk repair job" is a simple matter of making the Overhaul Contract (1-7th Rate) and posting it to the market. Done. Labor hours translated directly into a commodity sold for cash. Building ships is the chore by comparison. Now if a player (and not necessarily a crafter!) wants to, he can operate as the clan's repairman; stockpiling overhaul contracts and materials at a clan base or capital, trading hulks from players, repairing them, and trading them back for the bill. Even then, anyone who simply breaks up captured ships will have most of the materials needed to repair lower level hulks, and they only need to get those higher-level crafting hours packaged up as an overhaul contract.

And lastly, higher quality levels requiring more materials to overhaul translates directly into a maintenance cost for high quality ships, and raises the premium for sailing Exceptionals. Having double the materials cost to repair an Exceptional over a Mastercraft may change some attitudes.

But where this fundamentally differs from 1 durability is this; you want to scale down the cost of a ship so that one durability losses are affordable, and I want to preserve a package of bonuses that identify the ship to me as unique.

By paying the cost of building your ideal one-durability ship, I rebuild my ideal permanent ship.

We both get what we want.

[Ruthless4u]

6 hours ago, Snoopy said:

This is an excellent idea. Loss aversion is a powerful deterrent to PvP and this would help, even if the costs were the same (or higher) as building a new ship.

 

Why is less PVP desirable?

[Snoopy]

4 hours ago, Ruthless4u said:

 

Why is less PVP desirable?

It isn't.

[Koltes]

6 hours ago, Wesreidau said:

Look at the successful model of War Thunder. An aircraft or a tank is an expensive investment of time grinding up experience to unlock, then money to purchase. But once that aircraft is purchased, it is always available to you.

If you are aiming to create another lobby type game, yes sure.
NA is Open World MMO type. Economy can only work when produced things are used up and disappear so there is constant need for them.

What you are proposing and what @Wraith is trying to communicate to you is that your proposition is a controlling shot to the head of the economy. This will kill it on spot

No thank you

[VirtuallyIdiotic]

26 minutes ago, koltes said:

If you are aiming to create another lobby type game, yes sure.
NA is Open World MMO type. Economy can only work when produced things are used up and disappear so there is constant need for them.

What you are proposing and what @Wraith is trying to communicate to you is that your proposition is a controlling shot to the head of the economy. This will kill it on spot

No thank you

Agreed. 

 

MMO economics are difficult to manage and practically impossible to even devise a self sustaining global economic system. The system proposed here will not help it one bit. 

[Wesreidau]

 

1 hour ago, koltes said:

If you are aiming to create another lobby type game, yes sure.
NA is Open World MMO type. Economy can only work when produced things are used up and disappear so there is constant need for them.

What you are proposing and what @Wraith is trying to communicate to you is that your proposition is a controlling shot to the head of the economy. This will kill it on spot

No thank you

I don't think you understand what I'm communicating, and I don't think Wraith understands it neither. I'll use more formatted text to make sure I can assume you've read parts of this at least once.

I play War Thunder, I buy the plane for 1,500,000, it gets shot down, I pay 150,000 to repair it, I get the same plane I had before. My plane is always available to me. I can always get it back. It isn't a crafting economy, but the pain of losing a plane exists and my bankroll doesn't balloon.

I play EVE. I buy a ship for 1,500,000,000, I pay my insurance, it gets blown up, I get paid back what the ship was worth. I spend that to re-acquire the ship, or at least most of it. Resources are still consumed, ISK goes out through the money sink to control inflation. The economy doesn't collapse.

 

By your proposal: You play Naval Action, you buy a ship for 500,000, it sinks, you pay 500,000 for a new ship by consuming 500,000 materials and labor hours.

By my proposal: I play Naval Action. I buy a ship for 5,000,000. It sinks. I pay for an overhaul by consuming 500,000 materials and labor hours.

The "price of single dura ships" is the price of an overhaul. There is no economic damage to the game for it. The economy continues to work because things are used up and disappear, creating a constant need for them. In fact they may be consumed even faster.

Turn around time is a factor. Your system requires you to go back to the shipyard markets, ask your clanmates, and get a shipbuilder's ear in order to get back in the fight. My system uses the commodities market and lets me get back into the exact same ship I had before. This saves me a lot of time bargaining and trading with crafters trying to get that perfect ship again. This means I'm back on the ocean again, and sinking again. As long as I have quarters to put into the arcade machine, I can keep playing. I no longer have to wander off to find another ship and get frustrated with the 1 dura system.

[Wesreidau]

2 hours ago, Wraith said:

Sigh.. if this is your model for a successful online multiplayer game then I think the majority of the players and you in Naval Action will disagree.  This is a recipe for a stagnant, one dimensional "economy" where production and resources don't matter.

That is not in the spirit of what an open world, online multiplayer game like Naval Action is. It may be the type of game that you want to play, and be amenable to essentially a lobby based, PvP-by-numbers, MOBA kind of experience, but it doesn't make a dynamic, persistent world. And you're making a fundamental mistake by equating the psychology of losing a ship to the psychology associated with a wipe. People will quit playing around a wipe because literally everything they do, especially if they're already max-rank, will be taken away. If the economy is functioning, and one durability ships are 1/5 the cost in mats/labor/trading as they are now, they'll be dirt cheap and easy for new players to find, buy, and/or craft.

It just makes sense. 

 

"That is not in the spirit of what an open world, online multiplayer game like Naval Action is. It may be the type of game that you want to play, and be amenable to essentially a lobby based, PvP-by-numbers, MOBA kind of experience"

Quoting one example drawn from War Thunder and presuming I want to turn the entire game into War Thunder is a misreading so bad I presume its deliberate.

"People will quit playing around a wipe because literally everything they do, especially if they're already max-rank, will be taken away."

Well they shouldn't be so attached to their precious pixels, the carebears. That's how you invalidate else you don't like.

" If the economy is functioning, and one durability ships are 1/5 the cost in mats/labor/trading as they are now, they'll be dirt cheap and easy for new players to find, buy, and/or craft."

If the price of an overhaul is 1/5th the cost in mats/labor/trading, our suggestions are economically identical. All of your economic arguments are on the assumption overhauls don't consume resources. They do. They also consume more resources if the ship is of a higher quality level, and since players are spending time fighting and not shopping for a replacement ship, hold a very good chance of consuming more resources than one-dura schemes, which will make more risk-adverse play and less sinking.

 

[Koltes]

2 hours ago, Wesreidau said:

 

I don't think you understand what I'm communicating, and I don't think Wraith understands it neither. I'll use more formatted text to make sure I can assume you've read parts of this at least once.

I play War Thunder, I buy the plane for 1,500,000, it gets shot down, I pay 150,000 to repair it, I get the same plane I had before. My plane is always available to me. I can always get it back. It isn't a crafting economy, but the pain of losing a plane exists and my bankroll doesn't balloon.

I play EVE. I buy a ship for 1,500,000,000, I pay my insurance, it gets blown up, I get paid back what the ship was worth. I spend that to re-acquire the ship, or at least most of it. Resources are still consumed, ISK goes out through the money sink to control inflation. The economy doesn't collapse.

 

By your proposal: You play Naval Action, you buy a ship for 500,000, it sinks, you pay 500,000 for a new ship by consuming 500,000 materials and labor hours.

By my proposal: I play Naval Action. I buy a ship for 5,000,000. It sinks. I pay for an overhaul by consuming 500,000 materials and labor hours.

The "price of single dura ships" is the price of an overhaul. There is no economic damage to the game for it. The economy continues to work because things are used up and disappear, creating a constant need for them. In fact they may be consumed even faster.

Turn around time is a factor. Your system requires you to go back to the shipyard markets, ask your clanmates, and get a shipbuilder's ear in order to get back in the fight. My system uses the commodities market and lets me get back into the exact same ship I had before. This saves me a lot of time bargaining and trading with crafters trying to get that perfect ship again. This means I'm back on the ocean again, and sinking again. As long as I have quarters to put into the arcade machine, I can keep playing. I no longer have to wander off to find another ship and get frustrated with the 1 dura system.

I dont have a habit of entering a discussion without understanding the subject. I think I DO understand your idea perfectly well and yes I have read it more than once to ensure that I do.

Problem with your approach is addressing only the local issues. The guys who sails the ship and fights. What about the crafter?

Let me turn your own mechanics around from the crafters point of view.

I play NA and I'm a crafter. I made a ship which I sold to Wesreidau for 500,000 gold. Wesreidau loves PVP and has seen lots of battles, which he won and lost in great numbers. His ship got sunk 100 times... he paid the repair and got his ship back BYPASSING [quotation] bargaining and trading with crafters trying to get that perfect ship again [/quotation] and he is happily continues his NA endeavours without further interaction with the crafting community.
Crafter Koltes after making 500 ships and supplying it to everyone on the server is suddenly out of job, because there is no need for his services any more.
Or maybe you think that NA dont need crafters? Don't need crafting altogether? Lets just buy gold for real money or earn it in battles and call this Wold of Sails.

Not let me chew up the 1 dura theory for you:
1. Crafter Koltes made a gold ship for 5,000,000 gold with 8 upgraders (3 permanent and 5 regular) and sold it all to Wesreidau;
2. Wesreidau got in a fight with Wraith and was captured by him. Wesreidau has lost everything, but the insurance have paid him 3,500,000 gold back;
3. Wraith got a perfect gold ship with 8 upgrades. He is a good captain. He can survive without crafting most of the time! Be like Wraith!
4. Wesreidau got back to port and he doesn't quite have enough to get him his gold ship back. He goes back to Koltes and buys a blue ship for 50,000 gold, that has also 3-5 upgrades on it and is still very competitive;
5. Wesreidau and his friends got Wraith finally ganked and captured his gold ship. Wesreidau is super excited and happy. He got his stuff back;
6. Wraith still has old gold ship, but decides to go to Koltes and buy a green 3-5 dura ship for 10,000 gold. He got ganked again and sunk (no one wanted that piece of green crap). This happened 3 more times and all Wraith was loosing is just the green ships;
7. Crafter Koltes is happy. Business is going well. He sells cheap ships 20 times more than he sells the expensive ones;
8. Finally Wraith got Wesreidau 1on1 and after short but furious battle got his gold ship captured;
9. Wesreidau goes back to Koltes... Wraith go back to Koltes... PVP is pumping and Koltes needs more materials, so he goes to Dutch merchant Davos Seasworth to get more crafting materials. Davos Seasworth is running out of resources and needs to sail out through some dangerous waters so he hires Wesreidau and his gankers to escort him on his trade route for a nifty payment;
10. They a all got attacked by Wraith's gankers. There was a huge fight. Lots of ships got sunk for good. Insurances paid. Resources delivered, but at much higher price to crafters. Crafters are working. Economy is pumping;
11. PVPers are happy that they can sail cheaper ships and not risking loosing their best ones while still being competitive. They feel easier to go out there and fight. PVP is pumping!


Good luck!

[Anne Wildcat]

"Wesreidau got back to port and he doesn't quite have enough to get him his gold ship back. He goes back to Koltes and buys a blue ship for 50,000 gold, that has also 3-5 upgrades on it and is still very competitive;"

Still very competitive, BullShit! Still very competitive to a PVP pro, yes, but not to someone who is learning PVP.

My apologies for swearing

[Anne Wildcat]

And #5, correct, all your 1 dur ideas do is promote more ganking!

Edit: But I am open to testing it. ?

Edited March 9, 2017 by Anne Wildcat

[Anne Wildcat]

People do not learn to fight in gank fleets. I used to run in a gank fleet. I've learned more in 2 battles on my own than I did in 20 in my gank fleet (and my gank fleet did have pros in it, I still cannot sterncamp as well as they do).  I want to see people try to fight on even grounds. Multiple dur allows people to be able to try, lose, and get back out. Want 1 dur. Adjust modules so those that want 1 dur can fight in their 1 dur ships. Give modules durability, or something, to make crafters have to craft more regular mods and maybe don't lose mods when losing last dur. Give crafters the option to select dur on building gold or green ships. Add the ability to put up for sale captured ships at the shop. 

Edited March 9, 2017 by Anne Wildcat

[Koltes]

6 hours ago, Anne Wildcat said:

And #5, correct, all your 1 dur ideas do is promote more ganking!

Edit: But I am open to testing it. ?

Oh really? You think that multydura somehow promote fairness in the open world? We had multydura for how long? Hows that been working out for ya?

You people seem to forget that we have it your way NOW and we DO have those "issues". Your multydura fixes nothing.

Carebears still reluctant to PVP unless they outnumber. Dont we have this issue with people's mentality today? Yes we do!

Do we have great economy? No we don't! We can craft so many ships they cant sink fast enough. There is no demand for ships.

Do we have people leaving unbalanced PB matches today if they dont think they can win? Yes we do!

Is it hard for a newb to learn this game and whats more be competitive? Yes it is! Plain simple he cant afford your multidura ship. And he cant sail anything less than gold because this turns him into meet. If he has this gold ship he cant afford to lose it. And thus promiting carebear learning curve right from the start. 

 

Are people so blind they cant recognise that they are in fact living in those issues that they are trying to avoid?

And besides, ganking is a separate issue that has nothing to do with how many lives your ship has. To you ganking is a problem. To me it is not. Its OW. Wanna sail it face it and do something about it. I have been playing for a year now and have not yet seen a trader who would go to his nation and actually hire an escort. Today return trip KPR-LaNavasse on Indiaman makes you about 2 million. How many traders have you seen who would say in the nation chat that they are paying 250,000gold to escort them. If they get tagged and escort saves them they will pay extra 250,000? But no people prefer to sail alone KNOWING they might get ganked, but still take the risk. When they GET ganked they are pissed off they wasted a trip. Go figure.

Or take people who hunt solo and take heavy ships for it. Its like yelling all over the place - gank me! People dont want to learn the game. Your multidura and unrealistic mechanics have locked them in their carebear mind set and they think there is no other way around it.

I have been sailing solo on Reno and Surp for good 8 month right where I can be ganked any minute. Sunk countless number of people. My pre-patch Reno is still full dura. After patch Reno has 2 duras left and Surp is still full dura. I have not lost a ship yet.

Sometimes I feel that more ganking fest and blockades of near capital free ports will finally make your lot thinking differently. Wanna get out? Organise strong enough resistance and dont blame that there are not enough duras on your ship... 

Edited March 9, 2017 by koltes

[Koltes]

11 hours ago, Anne Wildcat said:

"Wesreidau got back to port and he doesn't quite have enough to get him his gold ship back. He goes back to Koltes and buys a blue ship for 50,000 gold, that has also 3-5 upgrades on it and is still very competitive;"

Still very competitive, BullShit! Still very competitive to a PVP pro, yes, but not to someone who is learning PVP.

My apologies for swearing

You comparing apples and oranges. When I say "competitive" this applies to the ship's qualities only and means that two players of somewhat equal skills facing each other sailing gold vs green ships both have high chances of winning as this will mainly be skill vs skill. Today this is NOT POSSIBLE. You get two players of the same skills and put one in gold and the other in green ship and the green has no chance whatsoever full stop. Prove me wrong!

In the proposed system where all ships have 1 dura, lower quality ships still have [spelling out]SAME CHARACTERISTICS AS THE GOLD ONE[/spelling out]. This means that if none of the ships will have upgrades there will be absolutely no difference whatsoever. Because Green ships will have same number of slot as the Gold one you can use SAME number of upgrades. The difference will lie in mere percentage of the upgrades. For example gold Steel Box -10% and green Steel Box -4%. Mere 6% difference is where you will get advantage off but this is not by any means an OP advantage.

Here I have crafted 2 Snows specifically to show you the difference.
 

Even the base numbers such as speed and HP is higher on the Gold Snow even though they both made from SAME WOODS. Funny that!
Look at actual. Gold has more thickness (and this even without Strong Hull Bonus which is percentage base and will give even more disadvantage), turns faster, has faster top speed, has nearly 4% more HP. Having more Armor Thickness for a good captain is almost a done deal. Angle it right and you bounce more than your green opponent can afford to bounce.

On top of that green can only fit 1 permanent and 1 regular upgrades. Where is a sense in that? Not only Gold ship will bounce more, has more HP, but also without upgrades captain of a green ship has no way to counter weaknesses of the gold ship.
Add to this that to craft a green ship you need same mats that you could have been using on the gold ships and it becomes a total waste.
Do we still wonder WHY lower quality ships are not used?

Now take your Opinionated Hat off and try the Open Mind Hat on.

* Green ships are made from GREEN quality woods that are plentiful and cheap. This means there are Common Live Oak (grey), good live oak (green), fine live oak (blue), master craft live oak (purple) and exceptional live oak (gold). The higher the quality more rare the woods are, therefore they are more expensive.

* Because of easily available materials and less crafting hours needed to produce Green ships their price is minuscule in comparison to Exceptional ships. 25,000 gold for green ship vs 2,500,000 gold for exceptional ship sort of thing. That's 100 times cheaper!

* Green ships have SAME qualities as the gold ones. Same base characteristics, same number of upgrades (3-5), same thickness and HP and speed and turn rate etc etc. The ONLY difference is that quality of upgrades cant be better than the quality of the ship - so they are all green.

* Yes gold upgrades give few percentages bonus, but this is the ONLY difference and is not by any means as OP as it is now when your ship is crap and you cant even have the upgrades in the first place.
What this actually means is that for example if Gold Ship has gold board fit and green ship has green fighting fit the Green Ship is actually BETTER in fighting. Do you get that?

* Now it actually makes sense to make Green Ship because you are NOT using your Exeptional Quality Woods on a green ship anymore and because Green can actually fight gold and still win.

 

 

11 hours ago, Anne Wildcat said:

People do not learn to fight in gank fleets. I used to run in a gank fleet. I've learned more in 2 battles on my own than I did in 20 in my gank fleet (and my gank fleet did have pros in it, I still cannot sterncamp as well as they do).  I want to see people try to fight on even grounds. Multiple dur allows people to be able to try, lose, and get back out. Want 1 dur. Adjust modules so those that want 1 dur can fight in their 1 dur ships. Give modules durability, or something, to make crafters have to craft more regular mods and maybe don't lose mods when losing last dur. Give crafters the option to select dur on building gold or green ships. Add the ability to put up for sale captured ships at the shop. 

I agree they dont. They just learn how to gank. The trouble is that today they have lots of duras, but still gank... how do you explain that?
It took you how long to get out of your ganking mindset?
You said it took you a while to suddenly appreciate the fact that you can try different fits on a ship and if you lose a dura or two it doesn't really matter.

Well I would be a little bit more honest AND realistic. The reason why you REALLY start thinking that is because after some time you were able to afford to lose duras or even the ship itself. Hence why you thought: "Oh well even if I lose it its not a big deal, I get another one, but this will give me at least few tries".

The problem with this system we got today is that newbs still CANT AFFORD a gold ship. They will lose it and cry. Hence why they dont want to lose it. And it takes a while for them to be able to actually afford one. And as a newb you have no other choice but to sail ships you cant afford to lose! Read this last sentence again please. This is where the issue is. This is why people refuse to fight. You teaching them to AVOID fighting and when they rank up most of them still in this mind set.

The system we propose replaces multidura of ships that you cant afford to lose to lower quality ships that you can easily afford to lose in great numbers. Keep sailing them and sink them in 100s if thats how many it will take you to learn, but right from the start the newb will learn that ships are just expendables to provide your PVP experience, which is what this game was made for.

Also you need to do a bit of math here. What is more expensive 100 ships that cost $25,000 or 5 duras on the ship that cost $2,500,000
If you actually do the sums you will understand that $2,500,000 of gold will give you 100 tries and PVP combats while today you get only 5 for the same amount.

Now who is punishing the newb here and/or promoting the gank fest? Funny that.


And if you would really want to address too much ganking the multidura is definitely not the answer. We don't have any reduction of ganking per player capital by any means though we had multidura for how long? All we have been having so far is player leaving the game.

To teach newbs simple content needed that promotes fair fights as well as game incentives added.
Such things as:
- If you are 1n1 you earn extra experience for you and your officer;
- If you in lower rate ship or lower quality ship you also earn bonus experience;
- Repairing lower quality ships is by far cheaper than gold ones;
- There should be PVP missions that can only allow 1n1 entry on a specific ships. Like find a wreck and have a fight over its loot. The winner gets it all. All of a sudden you get a mission that tells you to sail to such and such location and look for a wreck. Another person who gets the same mission also will be there at the same time when the mission starts;
- On top of that they need to create reputation system that scores your aptitudes such as mercifulness vs cruelty. Its when you won the combat and let person go or slaughtered their crew and took everything etc. Or Valour vs Disgrace for ganking or attacking in stronger ship vs weak opponents sort of thing.

This is how you promote fairness. Thinking that multidura will sort human nature is at the very least just naive.

Edited March 10, 2017 by koltes

[Wesreidau]

I'm reflecting on another open world MMO with a hell of an economy; Puzzle Pirates. Don't laugh, but it had player crafting,resource production, shipbuilding, a vibrant clan PVP scene, and a large PVE base. In it ships were "permanent" so long as you weren't sunk in a port battle or while fighting certain endgame content. Essentially, the hardcore crowd "opted in" to sinking battles. Everyone else kept themselves to normal PvP and PvE, occasionally stuck their toe in the water, and provided the all-important player base.

If port battles (and perhaps high-reward PvP events) were sinking battles (complete with fully capturing the permanent ship in a boarding), but ordinary open world fights followed the hulking rules, we'd still have the most serious and well-financed of us churning through their endgame ships while the great middle of players kept their ship permanently and consumed materials through overhauls. Crafters like you would still be selling ships to your friends instead of overhaul, and casuals like me wouldn't need to contact a crafter every time my ship sank.

[Pad Seayew]

I love the current system.  Gives you a few chances, and you face losing the ship "at the end of her life".

Seems to me to strike a good balance for a game.  But let's keep fiddling with things that already work.

[Anne Wildcat]

Koltes, I still need to read everything through as I have not had time.  But as mods are going away, to test 1 dur, why not have a middle ground, allow the dur on a ship be selected at crafting?

Edit, 

I guess I like dur as I can get more fights out of fewer ships and only being able to play on weekends, that's a good thing. For example, my Surprises. I have 1 that used to be the gank ship which is now used for trader hunting and 1 that I use for PVP. I can deal with a 1 dur trader ship, maybe a 2 dur trader hunter but like having more dur on my PVP ship. 

Edited March 10, 2017 by Anne Wildcat

[Wesreidau]

3 hours ago, Wraith said:

No, what you'd have is a mass of complexity that's confusing to players and muddies the waters between PvE, PvP, and what should be a seamless economy and player-generated set of content.  What I'm really trying to grasp is what about the system of cheap, accessible one-durability ships seems so abhorrent to you?  If we had some extremely deep ship-based (not ship class-based) progression in place then I could see becoming incredibly attached to your ship. But with the crafting system that's coming down the pipe (removal of mods as we know them and transfer of those perks to officer and captain, or baked into the ship), along with ship-class based progression, all of this makes it so individual ships are completely disposable.

If you make them permanent then mid-level crafters will be stuck grinding out overhauls instead of tinkering with different ship and build types, working on new blueprints, etc. If you turn it into a grind by making all those early- and mid-level crafters do nothing but the equivalent of make notes, they'll leave the game before they ever get to end-game ship building.

Oddly this muddied-waters complexity was easy enough for LOL-worthy Puzzle Pirates to understand. If you laugh at a game for being "childish", but consider its level of complexity too great for Naval Action players, you probably don't know what YPP was like at all. I can clue you in; entirely player-harvested, player-crafted, player-driven content with an economy built around players having limited labor hours and skills determined by their ability to play. From reading your economics thread, you laugh at the game you actually want NA to be.

The mod system we're moving into, as I understand it, is one where players build up their capability on a given ship, IE, grinding up experience on a Rattlesnake to unlock perks to any Rattlesnake. Now with one dura ships it doesn't make much sense for a player to be much better after losing his first Rattlesnake, and since he's not invested in getting a second Rattlesnake, he may get something else. With hulking and overhauling, players spend a much larger amount on getting a permanent ship. Players will overhaul the hulk grateful they don't have to spend the price of a whole new ship. Furthermore their increasing stats with the ship they kept for a long while furthers their feeling of investment in the game, as well as their ability to understand the perks they apply to it and the importance of that decision.

Everyone doesn't want to become an end-game ship builder. Many people would be quite happy fueling the lower or mid-level of the economy if it produced a reliable income stream for what they really wanted to do.  I know I got sick of trying to build ships after a week and went on to medkit production. Ship-building is apparently your cup of tea and you want single durability ships because you presume everyone else likes crafting ships and buying ships from crafters. Well, I don't. I like putting together a commodity for the market and not having to build or buy ships if I can help it at all. I'd be very happy to buy overhaul contracts from mid-level crafters who don't want to hassle with building thirty of the same class hoping for blueprints.

[Farrago]

Quite honestly I don't think it matters as long as the economy is broken. If I were king of the world, or at least head of Game Labs, here's what I would do:

1. Reduce developer time dedicated to combat and sailing mechanics. They are good and usable right now.

2. Make a statement that the solution to politics and nightflipping and who is on what server is increased population. By building a better game, the pop will come. Tell those so bothered by nightflips, work flips, and alliances that they may need to take a break until they see the release

3. Dedicate most resources to fixing and developing the economy. Crafting would evolve with the economy. Part of the economy question is number of duras. It could probably be made to work either way but it would be "different". Devs have already said that mods will be built into ships and perks built in to captains. Okay, lets start.

4. Bring some sort of raid mechanic to the main servers and continue to tune. Get something going for pirates along with it.

5. Once a few things in economy and crafting are working, do a wipe and see if it still works.

4. If it does, wipe again and release!

5. Don't let the people who happen to be most vocal on a forum choose the direction. Devs had a vision. Perhaps that has changed but perhaps not. Devs should be playing the game for all nations, all levels, and all servers. That takes a lot of time. Instead choose some trusted players to do this for you. They should be incognito and their feedback to you should be private.

Of course, I'm not in charge so I'll go back to my Surprise nestled in a Freeport until I return from vacation. 

[Wesreidau]

Crafters can continue to make replacement ships as ships are lost in port battles, which can have permanent sinking.

You say mid-level crafters currently make and break trade lynxes? Why not make overhaul contracts and shipbuilding materials for those contracts? Doesn't that improve the grind for these players?

[Koltes]

3 hours ago, Anne Wildcat said:

Koltes, I still need to read everything through as I have not had time.  But as mods are going away, to test 1 dur, why not have a middle ground, allow the dur on a ship be selected at crafting?

Edit, 

I guess I like dur as I can get more fights out of fewer ships and only being able to play on weekends, that's a good thing. For example, my Surprises. I have 1 that used to be the gank ship which is now used for trader hunting and 1 that I use for PVP. I can deal with a 1 dur trader ship, maybe a 2 dur trader hunter but like having more dur on my PVP ship. 

No probs. Take your time. I'm sure it will take you less to read than it took me to write lol

You have asked a question: "Why not a middle ground?"
It is also answered in my reply and on top of that I will just add that:

* 1 dura stimulates economy as this creates ship/mods consumption. Every time there is a battle it needs at least one side to replace whats been lost;
* buying lots of cheap ships and upgrades gives crafters ability to be part of the economy and enter trading early. Koltes probably would not bother crafting Green ships because I'm siting on enough gold than I can ever spend and being lvl 50 crafter I dont want to settle for less than gold. Fair enough. But Wade Sharkey is only level 17 crafter and has bugger all money. This cheap green ship market is a legit way for him to enter the economy and make money as a newb, which actually means very soon we will be able to afford to sail gold ships too;

Liking to have duras on your ship just means that you are so personally attached to your ship that you dont want to lose it, but in reality even if you have 2 duras its just 1 really.  You lose it ones and you dont want to sail it again.

Imagine there will be ship stats introduced as has been asked many times. Imagine when duras are no longer exist and ship is a ship. Its THE ship that you are lossing/capping. Imagine you got someone's ship that has full history on it. Imagine capping my Renommee that has sunk 100+ people at KPR? Imagine you got me and got my ships and then checking the stats on it:

Current Owner: Anne Wildcat
Previous Owner:  Koltes (pirate)
Ship commissioned date: 2016.02.14
Crafter: Koltes
Shipyard: Kidd's Harbour
Ships age: 1 year 1 month
Days at sea: 74
Ships sunk: 112
Ships captured: 34

And you know that THIS ship, this particular ship has been doing this and and achieved that etc and now you sail this ship that become famous around KPR waters...
Now THAT would be a trophy that actually means something and also have meaning to own and keep.

Tell me if this would worth to you more than having extra dura on your ship?

[Wesreidau]

I think economic stimulation can be done in a less hardcore way than 1 dura ships, which is why I suggested these hulk/overhauls cost materials and labor hours in the first place. I've also suggested things like rum consumption providing a mild speed bonus because that also produces a huge "gasoline" economy.

1 dura ships are going to cost us a lot of players come re-launch. Our current problem is no players. I don't think economic stimulation at the cost of radically increasing the game's difficulty is a prudent design decision for a game so reliant on a large player base to sustain itself.