Hotfix 3 for testbed patch 9.99

[fremen]

9 minutes ago, The Spud said:

Isn't rum to use in the battle instance, and then medkits small, medium, large, to replenish crew? I think i tried to use medkits in port (patch 2),and I didn't seem to be able to?

You only can use the repair crew in OW (with rum) and in battle (using Surgeon key). Cannot do it in harbor.

[victor]

14 hours ago, admin said:

If you want money AND marks AND xp - get hold out and sink the vessel.

Which - by the way - is a risk free activity as well (at least when dealing with IA ships). So I do not fully understand the logic of not giving XP/gold to IA captures.

[victor]

58 minutes ago, BoomBox said:

i don't think we pve players can complain at all. the patch is awesome for us . Y? Because it gives us things to hunt and things to do. All the nifty little perks and slots to the ships, the books , the adm. store etc. all gives us pve players something to do and even the trading and lack of gold. all great stuff. if the ai gets more aggro , it will be even more fun. and the crafting wow great change. i started a new char on testbed , a week ago and i am leveling pretty fast , maybe a little too fast. gold seems to be ok, so far. i haven't gotten into crafting or trading yet because i don't have that much time at the moment and  i wanted to see how it is leveling char with the new patch. all in all great changes devs.

In fact this patch is going to impact negatively mostly on dedicated crafters and traders: things will take much more time to be done, with more risk and less reward (unless price of crafted goods will be on high demand, but this in my opinion is unlikely to happen, since the playerbase - except maybe for britain and pirate - is not huge enough and big clans will provide in house crafting services).

So the alternative for crafter and traders will be: stay independent (total freedon, very high risk, very low rewards) or work for some big clan (no risk, low rewards as well and no freedom at all of crafing what you like for profit). Personally speaking - being a dedicated crafter and trader - this is not a perspective that I like very much.

At the end of the story in the OS there will be less traders (except for the convoys of the clans, with huge escort) and - for this reasons - also the profession of corsair/hunter (especially for small nations) may become less rewarding.

Edited April 27, 2017 by victor

[The Spud]

16 minutes ago, fremen said:

You only can use the repair crew in OW (with rum) and in battle (using Surgeon key). Cannot do it in harbor.

So small, medium and large medkits are no longer in the game then?

[fremen]

2 minutes ago, The Spud said:

So small, medium and large medkits are no longer in the game then?

I think so. I don't know if those items were erased or cannot be crafted. Anyway are useless now.

[BoomBox]

12 minutes ago, victor said:

In fact this patch is going to impact negatively mostly on dedicated crafters and traders: things will take much more time to be done, with more risk and less reward (unless price of crafted goods will be on high demand, but this in my opinion is unlikely to happen, since the playerbase - except maybe for britain and pirate - is not huge enough and big clans will provide in house crafting services).

So the alternative for crafter and traders will be: stay independent (total freedon, very high risk, very low rewards) or work for some big clan (no risk, low rewards as well and no freedom at all of crafing what you like for profit). Personally speaking - being a dedicated crafter and trader - this is not a perspective that I like very much.

At the end of the story in the OS there will be less traders (except for the convoys of the clans, with huge escort) and - for this reasons - also the profession of corsair/hunter (especially for small nations) may become less rewarding.

ya think so ? i was a crafter on pvp1 US and well i'll say we were a small nation at the time . crafted ships were sold pretty fats back then and fairly high price , actually a little too high. now trading i have no idea. i didnt trade too much at the time , because basically there were no trade goods , except for the produced goods and those went a away pretty fast at a waaaay too high of a price. well at that time we all didn't have that much gold as now but still had a lot. Compass wood was the name of the trading good back then .

[The Spud]

23 minutes ago, fremen said:

I think so. I don't know if those items were erased or cannot be crafted. Anyway are useless now.

Well, the thing is if you are rear admiral and you go out in say a surprise, you can "top up" your crew with the "reserve" you have. So you max out your crew with medkits in port, and outside of battle you could refill the crew. And you use rum only in the battle instance. Because with rum I imagine you can only top of the crew on your ship, till you reach the max crew for your ship. So you can't refill crew to 1100 unless you sail a l'ocean. You can do it by buying crew at 500 a piece, but thats not a good idea.

Unless the devs want to intentionaly make it hard for players to maintain a long hunting trip in enemy waters. I think medkits would be very valuable. But its the same mechanic for everybody, so its fair.

Edited April 27, 2017 by The Spud

[captain pips]

putting up hammocks to 20 % and leaving crew space at 5% is not balanced.and should be changed.

[Stilgar]

7 minutes ago, captain pips said:

putting up hammocks to 20 % and leaving crew space at 5% is not balanced.and should be changed.

Good point. Crew space been useless since introduction of regional bonuses and looked bleak when compared to mighty Extra Hammocks (certainly the most used module ever). Perhaps the crew space should give a more significant bonus to crew numbers (+7.5-10%) and some additional benefits (+ to moral? faster crew transfer? ) The hammocks should give probably smth between 5 and 10%, I guess, so stacking of the two does not result in too large crew bonuses.

Edited April 27, 2017 by Stilgar

[furyGer]

I have no problems with the new economy and other news on testbed. But for new players it's difficult. So perhaps someone should write a short or medium text for them as startup and you should add this as help in the ui. Perhaps in english and russian hehe. Only how to make money, crew management, fleets, boarding ans so on. We have enough people who will do it. No full tutorial, only a start up. 

[victor]

10 minutes ago, furyGer said:

I have no problems with the new economy and other news on testbed. But for new players it's difficult. So perhaps someone should write a short or medium text for them as startup and you should add this as help in the ui. Perhaps in english and russian hehe. Only how to make money, crew management, fleets, boarding ans so on. We have enough people who will do it. No full tutorial, only a start up. 

Of course you have not problems NOW (on testbed I made a lot of gold with no problem, just a little boredom). But that happens because in testbed there is almost no one hunting you in OS. But think about it with aggressive IA fleets (that, with traders speed nerf, are very likely to catch you in battles) and with human pvpers around chasing traders for loot (IA have almost no loot now, so only players are a profitabile target).

Edited April 27, 2017 by victor

[Jeheil]

17 hours ago, admin said:

capturing ships (bots are not smart) was one of the main sources of risk free money. 
capturing player ships (and getting xp for them) was one of the main sources of risk free xp

we can't allow xp and money for capture. ship is the reward. If you want money AND marks AND xp - get hold out and sink the vessel.

In principle I agree, I would however consider if upping the 'output' from breakup and tweaking the volumes these traders carry.

After capping an LGV I got like 40 cotton and then 1 tar, 3 wooden frames and a 3 ballast from the breakup....thats just a little bit TOO PANTS

So, in essence yes, let us choose the money or the box...but put something a little more enticing than poop in the box

[Hethwill]

Let's look to the short amount 300 players every evening scenario in the new system.

Time invest will not be different. Money will have different value. Amount of successful raids ( surpassing investment amount in one go ) will be the same, average of 1/8.

If you capture NPC Les Gros Ventre/TBrigs/TSnows with schooners you break far more than even. Investment in crew, ship and guns is sustainable in the short run. Plus you can keep yourself a self imposed insurance, full coverage, to ensure you can go out and even if something goes wrong you can cover it.
If you capture NPC Les Gros Ventre/TBrigs/TSnows with Brigs you still are on the shiny side of things. It is a great investment for the output, from a humble Brig up to a Niagara. The combat capabilities regarding raiding and the survival if needed be can be covered fairly comfortable with the gains and again by keeping a stash on the side to cover a 100% insurance at any risk.
If you capture NPC Les Gros Ventre/TBrigs/TSnows with Frigates you are on the red. Requires proper planning in the medium term.

Change NPC for Player and you can see where the bang for the buck is going. The investment pays off. More so because the player ship will be exactly what the player is sailing and not a basic. So a extremely fine built ship will be valuable, if there's anyone out there wanting to buy it. Ship market prices will be convoluted in the first month.

After the crafting societies, trade runners and buyers set themselves up the train becomes unstoppable, same as before.

Still:

- XP for boarding is necessary.

[neogiuliani]

This new system of economy is fine if the server plays 300 players, but if the expectations are 3000 players, then this system will be a disaster. You can not move a trader without being attacked inmediately.
I hope everyone's expectations are that they play 3000 players. If not, the changes do not matter

[Hethwill]

Player Escorts ? Where are all the PvP addicts ? Escorting someone on the scenario you describe will be a PvP dream.

Same as trying to play a 8th USAAF scenario with the german wings - target rich environment.

 

[Bommel]

18 hours ago, admin said:

capturing ships (bots are not smart) was one of the main sources of risk free money. 
capturing player ships (and getting xp for them) was one of the main sources of risk free xp

we can't allow xp and money for capture. ship is the reward. If you want money AND marks AND xp - get hold out and sink the vessel.

I understand the money part, you either get the ship/marks or money, but not getting xp for a successfull job is not understandable at all!

How is a dedicated pirate/raider/freebooter supposed to unlock the upgrade slots on ships if he doesnt get xp for his work? A successful raider might be rich after a while and might have plenty of resources but he won´t have earned a single xp.

[AfkSailor]

There are some big changes coming.  Maybe when the wipe comes everyone should try to start out fresh, not redeem XP? Call it Naval Action, phase b.  

[Blackbrook]

7 hours ago, Slamz said:

I don't see anything in any of the patch notes that change anything enough to make either of these be true.

There will always be solo PvPers out hunting. It has always been safer and better to hunt in a group but that doesn't stop people from soloing and doing well at it. Solo haulers are taking a big risk because they're slow but solo PvP will work just fine, just like always. Why wouldn't it?

As for smaller nations -- you make it sound like they're dead if they can't round up a 20 person fleet just to haul some iron. That's silly. Really so many fights in this game are purely because someone got lazy, sloppy or wasn't paying attention and sailed into a trap. I think a fleet of 4 players with just 1 sailing ahead in a Pickle looking for enemy groups will probably have an easy time doing trade runs. They don't have to fight the group of 20. They just have to spot them from far enough away and avoid them.

Last year I sailed quite often alone. Trading and hunting both NPC and other players.  You just need to check the horizon and avoid enemy groups if you are alone. And you need to plan what to do. Do not sail in locations you can't escape. Check the wind and map. There was a case when I was spying near Santanillas after a port battle. I was spotted by some spaniards and I had to escape. It was difficult because they had slightly faster ships, but I managed find a way to escape (I tried to give an impression that I'm sailing to Jamaica which allowed me to gain good position to change my course to George Town.

In another case I was caught by three enemy ships near Bonacca. Instead of turning around and escaping to Ruatan, I sailed to the south side and managed to lead them to shallows between the main island and those smaller islands there are. I knew that there is a narrow passage you can sail if you know what you are doing and I was quite sure that they do not know that and can't follow me. It worked, I escaped and sailed to Bonacca from the East. 

I have not played in the testbed server much, but the changes are very promising. I see lots of opportunities for trading, crafting and screening for a semi-casual player like me when the "best" players fight the big battles. Ordinary materials might be worth a lot. And if you prefer fighting you can patrol near trade routes and protect your national ships. It is fun, especially if there are others doing the same. If there are more players (like last spring)  it's quite easy to create ad hoc coast guard patrols.

[Bach]

A lot of these doom and gloom profecies are just way to soon and in some cases very unlikely.

I've been running cargo since the game started and I will continue to.  I made huge profits in EVE cargo hauling rare Arkanor ore from lawless frontier space back to the home worlds.  My experience has been that the vast emptiness of the Carribean Sea in NA is somewhat safer than the empty space of EVE filled with choke point jump gates.  Speed of the cargo ship has never been anything but a last resort defensive measure for me.  It's probably the same with any other serious hauler.  Using a spotter running ahead and NOT taking predictable direct routes is where the greatest safety comes from. After that it's player combat escort and after that it's speed of cargo ship.  So the new rules changes the "in battle only" speed of my cargo ship.  So what? If you even get my cargo ship into an instance I probably already screwed up.  I can be safer hiring a new player in his cutter to run scout in front of my cargo ship than cargo hauling in a max speed Renomee.  And I'll upgrade the new player to a Brig for helping me.

Anyway, this change isn't going to drastically effect serious haulers. It's going to effect the guys that haul with NA minimized while they play World of Tanks on their main screen and simply used speed to run away once they got caught while AFK sailing.

[William Death]

Can we please have the ability to under-cannon our ships? I'd like to run my ship with less cannons than standard sometimes. Like right now I have a Surprise in Mort, but my cannon crafting is in a different port. I had 12 18pd carronades for her top deck, but she needs 14. So I had to buy some medium 6pdrs or run without anything on that deck. Every time I put in the 12 carronades, it kicked them out since it needs 14. I'd much rather run 2 carronades short of a full complement than to have that deck be all mediums.... 

What would really be cool would be if we could mix cannons within a deck. I'd run, on the top deck of Surprise, 2 long guns on the forecastle, then the rest of the weather deck guns would be carronades. That might be a lot of coding work though and could be difficult to give a workable UI to choose where you put which cannons on which decks... Also I know a lot of people wouldn't like the aiming that results from that, but it doesn't bother me much. 

[Sir Texas Sir]

18 minutes ago, Bach said:

A lot of these doom and gloom profecies are just way to soon and in some cases very unlikely.

I've been running cargo since the game started and I will continue to.  I made huge profits in EVE cargo hauling rare Arkanor ore from lawless frontier space back to the home worlds.  My experience has been that the vast emptiness of the Carribean Sea in NA is somewhat safer than the empty space of EVE filled with choke point jump gates.  Speed of the cargo ship has never been anything but a last resort defensive measure for me.  It's probably the same with any other serious hauler.  Using a spotter running ahead and NOT taking predictable direct routes is where the greatest safety comes from. After that it's player combat escort and after that it's speed of cargo ship.  So the new rules changes the "in battle only" speed of my cargo ship.  So what? If you even get my cargo ship into an instance I probably already screwed up.  I can be safer hiring a new player in his cutter to run scout in front of my cargo ship than cargo hauling in a max speed Renomee.  And I'll upgrade the new player to a Brig for helping me.

Anyway, this change isn't going to drastically effect serious haulers. It's going to effect the guys that haul with NA minimized while they play World of Tanks on their main screen and simply used speed to run away once they got caught while AFK sailing.

I still have my second exceptional built ship (first was a cutter) that I made and it's a Trader Brig.  Pre-patch build with no name on it.  It still has all 5 Dura's as it's never been caught.  It's not the fastest ship out there with the new builds, but it has all gold mods and was built to run (UP WIND) to escape most ships.  I would figure out the other ships worse wind and make it a chase and would 9 times out of 10 not even get hit once before I escaped.   I would never run the same route and never at the same times.   I catch so many traders cause they are like clock work of the ports they come out and around what time of the day they do there runs.  Than I'll wait a few days and catch them in the exact same port and place again.   Don't be predictable, take new routes even if they are longer routes.  Use the shallows....one of my fav escapes was cause I hit shallows with that Trader Brig and the Surprise hot on my rear hit the shallows and was instantly stopped in OW.  If he got the tag on me I would surely not escaped that fight.   

We have as a clan done runs like that where one guy runs a head and spots as we moved a fleet of traders from one port to another.  Just got to play it smart is all.   Always thought it was funny back when I was US you see some one say in coms, "Pirates out side of sunbury."  Than a few mins later some one will be screaming for help, "I have pirates chasing me in my trader."  You ask them where and they say, "Out side of Sunbury."  Well didn't we just tell you they where there?.....DUH.

[Bach]

10 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Always thought it was funny back when I was US you see some one say in coms, "Pirates out side of sunbury."  Than a few mins later some one will be screaming for help, "I have pirates chasing me in my trader."  You ask them where and they say, "Out side of Sunbury."  Well didn't we just tell you they where there?.....DUH.

That's because they posted the warning in NA US nation chat when he needed it in World of Tanks.

[Sir Texas Sir]

35 minutes ago, Willis PVP2 said:

Can we please have the ability to under-cannon our ships? I'd like to run my ship with less cannons than standard sometimes. Like right now I have a Surprise in Mort, but my cannon crafting is in a different port. I had 12 18pd carronades for her top deck, but she needs 14. So I had to buy some medium 6pdrs or run without anything on that deck. Every time I put in the 12 carronades, it kicked them out since it needs 14. I'd much rather run 2 carronades short of a full complement than to have that deck be all mediums.... 

What would really be cool would be if we could mix cannons within a deck. I'd run, on the top deck of Surprise, 2 long guns on the forecastle, then the rest of the weather deck guns would be carronades. That might be a lot of coding work though and could be difficult to give a workable UI to choose where you put which cannons on which decks... Also I know a lot of people wouldn't like the aiming that results from that, but it doesn't bother me much. 

I had to do the same with a Connie last night cause I was short labor hours to craft two more cannons.  Oh and what am I chop liver I could of made you those two cannons just now.  Take half my fir and don't even use me for my cannon making either....some clan mate you are.

But I think that is the direction they are going so we can under cannon a ship if we wish to lighten a load.  I can see in some cases where I don't want to run all my cannons on a ship. The only issue is what port will they fill on that deck of the ship?  If you have 16 slots and only put 10 cannons on than which of the 16 slots will it fill?  Didn't think about that until just now.

[neogiuliani]

this speed is a bug? or is the new speed of the Constitution?

[Cabral]

10 minutes ago, neogiuliani said:

this speed is a bug? or is the new speed of the Constitution?

 I knew I was recognizing your name from somewhere... then went to page 7 of this topic and saw Sir Texas Sir post and saw, you are one of those LGV's gankers