Hotfix 7 for testbed patch 9.99

[admin]

6 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

Thx for the answer.

Remember they don't despawn when you attack them. so a group of 12 can get it done if supported by war supplies. We plan to change the distances they are sailing to so they somewhat stay around the capital of the region. 

[OneEyedSnake]

Just now, admin said:

what ai buffs? You can sink an NPC lgv in a basic cutter. Ask DAS to help you. 

A frigate doing 25% side damage to a mahagony Connie in a broadside and a half?  Wasn't like this before. But that is beside the point, must be a big of you deny buffing ai, we will report them. The main point is, WE CAN NOT TRIGGER PORT BATTLES. 

[OneEyedSnake]

2 minutes ago, admin said:

what ai buffs? You can sink an NPC lgv in a basic cutter. Ask DAS to help you. 

Also yes, any more maneuverable ship can defeat a less maneuverable ship in a 1v1. But we are talking about in fleets firstly. And secondly. I have defeated several Victories in heavy rattlers. As well as connies. Do not be condencending to me please. I do take personal offense at it. It's like me telling you that you don't play your own game. 

[Anolytic]

1 minute ago, OneEyedSnake said:

A frigate doing 25% side damage to a mahagony Connie in a broadside and a half?  Wasn't like this before. But that is beside the point, must be a big of you deny buffing ai, we will report them. The main point is, WE CAN NOT TRIGGER PORT BATTLES. 

I think AI are able to use double shot and double charge now, which might explain why you had that experience. But apart from that AI has not been buffed relative to players, it's just that the damage/hp has changed with the new structure and repair systems and we have yet to get used to it.

[OneEyedSnake]

Just now, Anolytic said:

I think AI are able to use double shot and double charge now, which might explain why you had that experience. But apart from that AI has not been buffed relative to players, it's just that the damage/hp has changed with the new structure and repair systems and we have yet to get used to it.

Perhaps that. And also I think they are now loading the correct cannon weights too. My theory anyways, and combined with yours would make a lot of sense. But yea, idk about being used to the system, not much to get used to when your your repairs are 15 minutes apart, which is good. Just, easy to know when to use them.

[Kiithnaras]

5 minutes ago, OneEyedSnake said:

A frigate doing 25% side damage to a mahagony Connie in a broadside and a half?  Wasn't like this before. But that is beside the point, must be a big of you deny buffing ai, we will report them. The main point is, WE CAN NOT TRIGGER PORT BATTLES. 

Mahogany was also changed to a medium wood, not nearly as beefy as it used to be and nowhere near close to Live Oak

[OneEyedSnake]

Just now, Kiithnaras said:

Mahogany was also changed to a medium wood, not nearly as beefy as it used to be and nowhere near close to Live Oak

Still though. The broadside weight of a loan frigate was massive. I have played in Bermuda cedar connies before all this that took less damage from a 3rd rate broadside. 

[VirtuallyIdiotic]

1 hour ago, admin said:

You probably did not notice

You are missing the point. It is not just me out there for starters trying to grind down one region. It is not the fact that we're not finding them. There is only 6 fleets to attack to raise hostilities in a region that takes close to 30 minutes or more to go along its coast line. Granted they are regenerating but you still have to go find them. War Supplies can only get you so far as you said yourself. 7.1% hostility increase is not because we cannot find any Espana ships at Caracas. It is because it takes too long to find them and when we do they are either too large a fleet for us to handle so we have to let them go or we are able to take them on and we get chump change. Most of us are lucky to get two or three battles in before real life beckons. Apart from France and Sweden all the other factions are having the same results. 

Edited May 8, 2017 by Henry d'Esterre Darby

[Ned Low]

22 minutes ago, admin said:

Captains who have not programmed at least one MMO NPC system should avoid giving programming advice to us. Because of 2 reasons

They don't know what they are talking about. Because they have not programmed something like that on scale they have no idea how it works
By doing so (talking about things they know nothing about) - their other statements where they KNOW what they are talking about (e.g. gameplay) might get devalued. 

TLDR. Dynamic spawn systems don't work in persistent MMOs, When you are limited by a number of agents. If you are limited by a number of agents you cant spawn despawn bots live because you might destroy persistence in some locations. Thats why in wow, those murlocs are always there. waiting for you. If our bot is on the route carrying iron somewhere we cant despawn him. He has to get to the destination.

 

You are comparing 2 different MMOs again. Their traffic vs NA traffic is like day and night. They have 20 people enter and leave that hat area every 5 mins, so for them it's better to keep them live all the time. For NA I believe where traffic is 5 players every hour (in some regions) is a different environment.

 I throw ideas that I see reasonable for your game. It does not mean you have to use them. No need to take it personal. Emotions don't belong on internet. 

 

Edited May 8, 2017 by Ned Low

[Zoky]

From time to time I get angry at you @admin but this time you guys did good 

Now in next hotfix I better see improvements to pirate mechanics or you will be sent to gulag! 

[Ned Low]

9 minutes ago, Zoky said:

From time to time I get angry at you @admin but this time you guys did good 

Now in next hotfix I better see improvements to pirate mechanics or you will be sent to gulag! 

Anger creates great things  look what anger did to NA. We got a bad as* Age of Sail game. 

[Bach]

15 minutes ago, Kiithnaras said:

Mahogany was also changed to a medium wood, not nearly as beefy as it used to be and nowhere near close to Live Oak

On the test bed all cannon base damage has been increased 20%.  It's not an NPC buff. It's all cannons. But it does mean the 18# guns on an NPC will hit a Connie harder than they used too.  It's not specific of NPCs and players have it too.

[Rychu Karas]

I am not sure if this 1min invisible is a good solution. In my opinion, this potbs mechanics was quite sufficient. After pop out to OS, a player had few seconds of invisible within he can decide what to do but the most important were "invulnerability" for a certain amount of time allowing log off in a case to be trapped or in case when the player have to finish his session with the game. Any other action than log off break invulnerability and the player become taggable.

regards

[victor]

To mitigte new cannon damage in missions or against the IA try a sabicu - sabicu ship: now it's the best all around. Good HP, good thickness, decent speed (ATM better than teak in my opinion).

If you want even more tankiness without loosing too much speed, then caguarian - sabicu is the way to go.

Live and white oak will trasnfrom the ship in a floating brick.

 

Edited May 8, 2017 by victor

[Sir Texas Sir]

3 hours ago, admin said:

it would be better to reduce time to gain hostility but increase degradation to 100%
this will force attackers to finish hostility set up during one evening. AND also force defenders to come protect the port NOW because if they don't come PB is guaranteed to happen and they won't be able to grind it down later.

This really all depends on the new Port battle windows if they where moved to support this so you can have port battles set 2 hours before maintenance down time and not be allowed to set them until after the full 2 hours for updates down time.   To be honest I don't think Maintenance time needs to be changed it was just that window for the Global server since it locked out US prime time for port battles.  

3 hours ago, admin said:

why is it a problem? Build a iron mine and you have iron for yourself and maybe others. 

Because there is no NPC supply players will be forced to build them. And supply will appear

Yah just build one of 5 things at a time until you have every thing. This is what I did for months before I joined a clan and even after than I did most of my resources myself.  Your not meant to have every thing in a week to build a ship. It takes time to get a good supply stocked up and ready for such.  I use to put buy orders up in locations where new plaeyrs might make something close like the simple stuff and let them fill it so I wouldn't have to produce coal and other common resources.  It paid them well too and gave them something to make money off of.

26 minutes ago, OneEyedSnake said:

Yea, so far in the testbed us Dutch can only raise hostility a couple percent because the fleets are too strong especially with the AI buffs, and the sailing is so far from our capital sailing in circles looking for fleets very far away. Give Dutch more ports so we have access to supplies or ditch this because hello kitty that.

And how many guys are doing it?  Maybe you need more players?  If your not getting a good group than how will you fill that port battle?   If you don't have enough players to beat a small fleet of 6 ships than you prob don't have enough for a port battle.    I'm sorry we flipped the 25 fleets ships to flip ports It only took one to get 50% hostility on a port and this is how ya'll couldn't figure out how we raised hostility so fast.  Most the time with just a small group of 4-6 players.

Now I do think they need to look at AI a bit.  They pretty much have all green mods so they do get kinda of a Buff.  I mean they have marines, but I can kill half there crews and they don't seem effective.  They turn on a dime a lot of times even when low on crew.  They have every boarding mods so there firepower, marines and muskets are higher than me if I'm in same ship with same crew no matter what unless I do a board fit only ship.  They don't sink for a good while cause they have extra pumps.  It's stuff like this that some times make folks complain about them.

19 minutes ago, OneEyedSnake said:

A frigate doing 25% side damage to a mahagony Connie in a broadside and a half?  Wasn't like this before. But that is beside the point, must be a big of you deny buffing ai, we will report them. The main point is, WE CAN NOT TRIGGER PORT BATTLES. 

This isn't live, the ships are made different and you do have a lot more repairs to work with.  Don't go in there balls to the wall.  Not to mention Mahogony now is just a step above Cedar/Fir so it's a softer wood.  

16 minutes ago, Anolytic said:

I think AI are able to use double shot and double charge now, which might explain why you had that experience. But apart from that AI has not been buffed relative to players, it's just that the damage/hp has changed with the new structure and repair systems and we have yet to get used to it.

I don't think they should be using double shot/charge.  Cuase they prob aren't limited on ammo use like we are.  It should stay basic shot.  I seen some one post a battle log of a ship using them though, but haven't seen it in battle myself.

12 minutes ago, OneEyedSnake said:

Still though. The broadside weight of a loan frigate was massive. I have played in Bermuda cedar connies before all this that took less damage from a 3rd rate broadside. 

That is on the old system, you can't do that now, that cedar connie is going to be butter against any other decent guns.  

[RaimundoJoe]

Why do we still keep the upgrades flick for?

[Ned Low]

8 minutes ago, victor said:

sabicu now the best all around. Good HP, good thickness, decent speed.

 

Do you think all other wood types will become obsolete? Since pvpers use only the best specs. 

Edited May 8, 2017 by Ned Low

[Bach]

1 hour ago, Davos Seasworth said:

You are missing the point. It is not just me out there for starters trying to grind down one region. It is not the fact that we're not finding them. There is only 6 fleets to attack to raise hostilities in a region that takes close to 30 minutes or more to go along its coast line. Granted they are regenerating but you still have to go find them. War Supplies can only get you so far as you said yourself. 7.1% hostility increase is not because we cannot find any Espana ships at Caracas. It is because it takes too long to find them and when we do they are either too large a fleet for us to handle so we have to let them go or we are able to take them on and we get chump change. Most of us are lucky to get two or three battles in before real life beckons. Apart from France and Sweden all the other factions are having the same results. 

My group has been experimenting with this in France on testbed.  

The ports are not equal.  Some are much easier to put hostility on than others.  I'm not sure why but some factor seems to decide that one region spawns 4th rates and bigger while and another just spawns 5th and 6th rates.  Example: Orangestad spawns larger NPCs and the area is condensed so it flips faster.  Roseau spawn LGVs constantly and it is also small region. Bridgetown spawns small ships and occasional 4th rates and the ports are more spread out so it is harder to find the NPCs. 

In general each 4th sunk is about 2% contention and 6th rates are about .4%.   The trick to seems to be to split up into 2-4 groups of 2-3 players in Frigates.  Put the biggest group at the regional capital. The rest at each of the nearest ports to it and sink all the NPCs.  You have to sink them all even if it's just a cutter or trader brig so it will spawn something bigger.  We found 2-4 players can manage 10-15% contention gain in an hour on just NPCs.  Don't expect to much if you only use one big group of players to grind like in POTBS. If the port has x6 NPC fleets and each averages 2-3% contention gain then one group grinding in one spot is only likely to gain 8-12% an hour.  You need to spread out so you are sinking all six NPC fleets at the same time.  Then you get 48-72% in an hour with x8 players.  Theoretically ten players should be able to flip any port in two to three hours on NPCs.

[Ned Low]

11 minutes ago, Bach said:

My group has been experimenting with this in France on testbed.  

The ports are not equal.  Some are much easier to put hostility on than others.  I'm not sure why but some factor seems to decide that one region spawns 4th rates and bigger while and another just spawns 5th and 6th rates.  Example: Orangestad spawns larger NPCs and the area is condensed so it flips faster.  Roseau spawn LGVs constantly and it is also small region. Bridgetown spawns small ships and occasional 4th rates. The ports are more spread out so it is harder to find the NPCs. 

In general each 4th sunk is about 2% contention and 6th rates are about .4%.   The trick to seems to be to split up into 2-4 groups of 2-3 players in Frigates.  Put the biggest group at the regional capital. The rest at each of the nearest ports to it and sink all the NPCs.  You have to sink them all even if it's just a cutter or trader brig so it will spawn something bigger.  We found 2-4 players can manage 10-15% contention gain in an hour on just NPCs.  Don't expect to much if you only use one big group of players to grind like in POTBS. If the port has x6 NPC fleets and each averages 2-3% contention gain then one group grinding in one spot is only likely to gain 8-12% an hour.  You need to spread out so you are sinking all six NPC fleets at the same time.  

Don't forget if your guys get sunk, all your 1 hour of NPC killing work is wasted. If a friendly group of noobs (enemy alts on your nation) sails in and enemy who is trying to counter grind sinks them all points went down the drain. How can Devs counter that? How would you feel about that?

Edited May 8, 2017 by Ned Low

[furyGer]

3 hours ago, Anolytic said:

Since hostility will be based on attacking NPC fleets, and defenders will need luck to find the enemy in their own vast regions to engage them in PvP, can we at least make it so that any battle initiated against NPC will stay open to entry for both defenders and attacking side for 30 minutes, 45 minutes or even the full 90 minutes? No need to give the added protection of quickly/instantly closing battles to PvE.

I'm not quite sure how it is now on the testbed, but I don't think PvE-battles should close after five minutes.

We need over 6h for 100% at bovenwinds. And we need 10 players, mostly near the regional capital. It's a high potential for pvp. The idea is great, much better as the missions, because you can do it with missions in short time with minimal open world time. Now you must sail and search for hours in enemy waters. Npc is only the start. Later we will see more pvp i bet. 

Only thing is, is it possible to attack or defend such regions. So lets go live and try. First its easy because all take their homewaters with low defense. But later we will see. I think you need a whole attack force to make a portbattle, not only 10 players. 

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 minute ago, furyGer said:

We need over 6h for 100% at bovenwinds. And we need 10 players, mostly near the regional capital. It's a high potential for pvp. The idea is great, much better as the missions, because you can do it with missions in short time with minimal open world time. Now you must sail and search for hours in enemy waters. Npc is only the start. Later we will see more pvp i bet. 

Only thing is, is it possible to attack or defend such regions. So lets go live and try. First its easy because all take their homewaters with low defense. But later we will see. I think you need a whole attack force to make a portbattle, not only 10 players. 

And folks forget PvP gives big amount of points over PvE kills.  We accidentally flipped a port or two we didn't want to cause we stopped but the PvP we got from raising the hostility to get them out caused players to show up.  After the battles we flipped the port cause we killed every one that showed up.  So remember PvP still will be the number one way to raise hostility, but the devs need to balance it in a means that just ignoring it won't stop them from flipping it either.  I notice as some posted you can sail around an area and never see something bigger than a shallow water ship or trader other than one 4/5 rate fleet and than others you see tons of ships.   I know there was that 4th rate region spawn bug but that should be fixed.  We have to remember also this is with 30-90 players right now.  What would it be like with 300-900?  Than we should prob see a lot more of the PvP going on in these regions.

[OneEyedSnake]

Just now, Kiithnaras said:

Mahogany was also changed to a medium wood, not nearly as beefy as it used to be and nowhere near close to Live Oak

Still though. The broadside weight of a loan frigate was massive. I have played in Bermuda cedar connies before all this that took less damage from a 3rd rate broadside. 

[Teutonic]

I'm with Bach on this. It was just a couple of us at a time and we got it to 15% in 1-2 hours but if we really coordinated with the whole team that region could be flipped in a reasonable amount of time.

I guess I personally just wish there were fleets that were bigger spawns, instead of the "a connie here, an ingermanland there" if you know what I mean.

So I wish for a more consistant way to gain hostility, but the current trend is not bad. With the plan to make the "Raid" mechanics part of hostility generation as well as a resource and pvp generation, I see a lot of promise here.

[Challenge]

3 hours ago, admin said:

why is it a problem? Build a iron mine and you have iron for yourself and maybe others. 

Because there is no NPC supply players will be forced to build them. And supply will appear

Quote

Yah just build one of 5 things at a time until you have every thing. This is what I did for months before I joined a clan and even after than I did most of my resources myself.  Your not meant to have every thing in a week to build a ship. It takes time to get a good supply stocked up and ready for such.  I use to put buy orders up in locations where new plaeyrs might make something close like the simple stuff and let them fill it so I wouldn't have to produce coal and other common resources.  It paid them well too and gave them something to make money off of.

Building and tearing down doesn't really help you test whether your econ model is viable, however. I realize the devs gave us a huge chunk of cash to start with, but (using the fourth Outpost as an example) 70,000 goes into putting up one production building for farming. 120,000 for the fifth outpost and building you need. Unless I start pen and paper records of the capital expenditures there is no way to keep track of the profit/loss info. With so few people on the test bed for any individual country testing the trading market at this time isn't practical.

[Stilgar]

Overall, the need to hunt small and dispersed AI fleets in a certain regions to raise hostility could result in improved chances for PvP action, as compared to the old-fashioned mission grinding.

As for hostility generation, ideally, I'd like to see all three ways to raise hostility to be in game, that is killing AI fleet (and hopefully accompanying PvP), war supply, and port raiding, just to allow various options.

@admin as far as I remember PVP zones were tested on play server and declared properly working. Are there any immediate plans for PvP zone feature? Perhaps in connection with hostility raising or maybe for rewarding screening action during PBs?

Edited May 8, 2017 by Stilgar