Hotfix 7 for testbed patch 9.99

[victor]

1 hour ago, Ned Low said:

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

Nope, I think that other variations could be useful for niche ships (i.e. failfits for speed) or particular strategies. Sabicu - sabicu is - ATM - just the best jack of all trades choice.

[Bach]

1 hour ago, Ned Low said:

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

Only for the min/maxer crowd. If you do the percentages on the new woods you will find that an oak frame oak plank ship percentages are reasonably close to even live oak frame Sabicu Plank.  They are barely one module or skill equivalent % off. Combine that with the new stat caps like 15knt speed and it starts to really not be worth max woods. For example: the Renomee is going to speed cap at 15knts easy enough on skills or gazelle figurehead even if it's made out of oak.  Another player in a Bermuda Cedar Renomee might have X1 free perm or skill slot to use but it's not out running the oak Renomee.  

So no. The easy to get wood types will still be useful for those that don't want to or can't collect the rares.  The versatility of the new system in ship load outs is quite impressive.

Edited May 8, 2017 by Bach

[Hethwill]

1 hour 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. 

Oh yeah, weight is indeed playing a part now and personally I am very pleased with the result. Thickness will only hold so much versus all that mass and speed. And those 18 pounder surely pack.

Mediums and Carronades damage output is great at close range, really really good. While longs can provide higher penetration and start shattering the structure ribs ( and both planking sides ) early on if penetration is high enough.

But risk pays off. Combat is really raw and decisive and will not tolerate many mistakes. Wood types can only help as much.

[Bubba Smith]

Just a question regarding lifetime of the testbed. When will it be shut down or wiped soon? I assume it's here until the full game release and then what?

 

 

[OneEyedSnake]

3 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

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.  

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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.  

Well we have about 12-15 guys out doing this, but the fleets are mainly 1st rate fleets and we only have connies at best. Further more, we are talking about the testbed yes Texas? We actually outflipped you pirates with half the numbers *cough castries* when you were in America. In this testbed, we have to sail 30 minutes to get to where a fleet may be, attack it, use supplies, attack another fleet or two, and then we have to go back, resupply, and keep coming back. From Willemstad. Sorry we don't start out in the center of the map with multiple ports like the pirates do. 

And with your last part, yes, that's what I am saying about the cedar, it stood up better than my mohagony. 

[Bart Smith]

Imo test bed may stay until full game release date - there are few volunteers will to test new things i bet.

[OneEyedSnake]

3 hours 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 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.

How would ten players do that when a fleet has 25 ships in them potentially? Or even just 4-5 if 10 people are hunting 6 fleets, and we only have connies for a long time (Sweden got their 3rd ages before the fix so don't try to pull that on me), and each of the fleets is 4th rate and above?

[Duncan McFail]

Any way on port battles to start them without grinding npc's. Maybe just getting enough ships together to blockade the port for and hour or so. Would be nice if the pb starts right after too instead of this 2 day wait.

Also any news on when/if regional bonuses will be reimplemented and how?

[Neptune]

I Hope flags come back but only with a purchase from the admiralty store with a good number of PvP Marks. Possibly having raids raise hostility? 

Since hostility was put in game there has been way, way less PvP. Flags use to create a lot of PvP. Port battle fleet, screening fleet and another fleet trying to intercept the flag. Of course that was when we had a lot of people playing 500-1k. Just not a fan of doing PVE to raise a ports hostility, it should have no place on a PvP server.  Both systems have flaws but I still think flags were the best, it created the most PvP when we had a lot of people playing. 

[Kiithnaras]

4 minutes ago, Neptune said:

I Hope flags come back but only with a purchase from the admiralty store with a good number of PvP Marks. Possibly having raids raise hostility? 

Since hostility was put in game there has been way, way less PvP. Flags use to create a lot of PvP. Port battle fleet, screening fleet and another fleet trying to intercept the flag. Of course that was when we had a lot of people playing 500-1k. Just not a fan of doing PVE to raise a ports hostility, it should have no place on a PvP server.  Both systems have flaws but I still think flags were the best, it created the most PvP when we had a lot of people playing. 

*points to Raid/PB/Hostility thread in sig*

[Bubba Smith]

1 hour ago, Bart Smith said:

Imo test bed may stay until full game release date - there are few volunteers will to test new things i bet.

I will volunteer to help out on test bed if needed. 

 

[Bach]

1 hour ago, OneEyedSnake said:

How would ten players do that when a fleet has 25 ships in them potentially? Or even just 4-5 if 10 people are hunting 6 fleets, and we only have connies for a long time (Sweden got their 3rd ages before the fix so don't try to pull that on me), and each of the fleets is 4th rate and above?

Fleets are not 4th rate or above. They are smaller than 4th and sometime a lone 4th. In the Orangestad area you can find some fleets with more than one 4th. But it is an extremely rare occasion to find a large ten sip or more fleet of rate ship in the right place at the right time. Those are now pure luck.

You might be thinking of the live server that has huge 1st rate fleets all over. It is not like that on tested.   The most typical ship you end up grinding for hostility is an LGV.

Edited May 8, 2017 by Bach

[The Ghost of Sir Edward]

On the test server it would be useful for traders to have the ability to place more contracts, perhaps 5-7 buy and 10-14 sell. Players would have more influence on prices and be less inclined to stockpile goods while waiting for sell contracts to be fulfilled. This would also help jump start the economies of smaller nations by allowing a smaller number of traders to sell more goods while also encouraging them to seek out and sell a larger variety of items. It would also free up the PVP players who don't really want to trade but have to because of low availability of goods. Also traders under a smuggler flag could be allowed to ride in their escorts instead of their main transports while entering and leaving enemy ports. This would enable them to directly fight in any battles while hauling cargo and provide a more robust PVP experience for all of those pirate types out there.

[Ratline]

1 hour ago, Duncan McFail said:

Any way on port battles to start them without grinding npc's. Maybe just getting enough ships together to blockade the port for and hour or so. Would be nice if the pb starts right after too instead of this 2 day wait.

Yeah, all this talk of 'X players grinding Y fleets for however many hours can flip a port' is pretty lame. I like the idea of player ships in the water or pvp kills being the only way to raise hostility (and fairly slowly) and pvp kills being the only way to reduce it. Can't see why we need this npc grinding at all, I thought the idea was to aim for more players in OW fighting other players.

Maybe it's not technically possible *shrug*

Edited May 9, 2017 by Ratline

[VirtuallyIdiotic]

32 minutes ago, Bach said:

Fleets are not 4th rate or above. They are smaller than 4th and sometime a lone 4th. In the Orangestad area you can find some fleets with more than one 4th. But it is an extremely rare occasion to find a large ten sip or more fleet of rate ship in the right place at the right time. Those are now pure luck.

The issue we are running into is such. In Caracas since the area is so vast the traffic is sparse, especially with only 6 bots for hostilities sailing around. When you do come across an Espana NPC fleet it tends to be very small such as 7th and 6th rates, or just small fleet of 5th rates. Now when concerning Oranjestad, that region and its neighbors are very densely packed together so 6 bots for hostilities work well. That is the issue with hostilities right now. Were not saying the system is bad but rather it needs to be adjusted based on the "testing" done by a group. 

[Kaos]

47 minutes ago, Ratline said:

Yeah, all this talk of 'X players grinding Y fleets for however many hours can flip a port' is pretty lame. I like the idea of player ships in the water or pvp kills being the only way to raise hostility (and fairly slowly) and pvp kills being the only way to reduce it. Can't see why we need this npc grinding at all, I thought the idea was to aim for more players in OW fighting other players.

Maybe it's not technically possible *shrug*

It's because hostility generation is restricted to the desired region so the best way to avoid getting your port flipped was to not show up to not feed points to enemies as it was anticipated before implemented, it ends up with 2 rvr fleets avoiding each other but grinding pve when the other fleet is not there threatening them : )

I think I proposed like a year ago an idea to unlock pb's with pvp marks (instead of some war supplies) that are not tied to specific region and also access to pb's through marks as well to avoid alts and randoms who did nothing to help joining it but knowing this games playerbase then that would probably lead to fixed matches just to farm marks off of each other secretly in some quiet corner instead of promoting any actual pvp activity on OS. I wasn't sure how to prevent mark farming off of alts and friendly enemy teams so I left it at that. Maybe someone picks it up and manages to exploit-proof this idea or it might be worthless and open up more can of worms.

It would also require the port actually being more valuable than marks themselves (in the long run) otherwise why bother other than for 25vs25 pew pew if you can get more bang for your buck by just selling the marks on the market. I think you need to give land/production buildings in lucrative spots to people to lure them into war.

 

Edited May 9, 2017 by Kaos

[OneEyedSnake]

1 hour ago, Bach said:

Fleets are not 4th rate or above. They are smaller than 4th and sometime a lone 4th. In the Orangestad area you can find some fleets with more than one 4th. But it is an extremely rare occasion to find a large ten sip or more fleet of rate ship in the right place at the right time. Those are now pure luck.

You might be thinking of the live server that has huge 1st rate fleets all over. It is not like that on tested.   The most typical ship you end up grinding for hostility is an LGV.

most fleets i have seen down south are above fourth rate.. 

[VirtuallyIdiotic]

8 minutes ago, OneEyedSnake said:

most fleets i have seen down south are above fourth rate.. 

there have been OneEyed. Issue being they are not large enough to cause a dent. Plus, they are few and far between that just trying to get them in a reasonable manner is not likely. 

 

Should also state that there is no means of building Precise Parts right now so you cannot make War Supplies. 

[Captain Clark]

I note that dev's have said to use of war supplies, how can they be made if there is no blue print for Precise parts which are needed for Muskets or am I missing something, I have looked everywhere any advice would be gratefuly accepted

 

[VirtuallyIdiotic]

36 minutes ago, Captain Clark said:

I note that dev's have said to use of war supplies, how can they be made if there is no blue print for Precise parts which are needed for Muskets or am I missing something, I have looked everywhere any advice would be gratefuly accepted

 

I searched through crafting, admiralty, and the trader tool to see if there is any means on getting precise parts for war supplies. I did not find anything. I will take another look once I get back to port from my 2hrs effort of raising hostilities to .8%

[Captain Clark]

lol like I have tried all that  I get a pop up "You don't know the blueprint",  and I cannot locate it anywhere  in admiralty, craft 

 

 

Edited May 9, 2017 by Captain Clark

[NavalActionPlayer]

Anyone else finding ports empty of resources? As in nothing or at most 1 item for sale and such item being something non-productive like Russian Ducks or Swedish Chefs? Nothing else there even when the port is supposed to have it 'available' according to the trader tool. It's like a desert out there

 

Have F11ed but who knows whether it is WAD or not. 

Edited May 9, 2017 by NavalActionPlayer

[NavalActionPlayer]

5 hours ago, Captain Clark said:

lol like I have tried all that  I get a pop up "You don't know the blueprint",  and I cannot locate it anywhere  in admiralty, craft 

 

 

F11 it - looks like War Supplies -> Precise parts production is broken.

[AlteSocken]

3 minutes ago, NavalActionPlayer said:

Anyone else finding ports empty of resources? As in nothing or at most 1 item for sale and such item being something non-productive like Russian Ducks or Swedish Chefs? Nothing else there even when the port is supposed to have it 'available' according to the trader tool.

I'd assume this is normal, since it is a player-driven economy, except for special-woods and apparently some trading-goods. The trader-tool refers to goods beeing producable (obviously by players only) in certain ports.

[Hethwill]

Been selling out all the contracts I put out, from the Antilles to San Domingo, bermuda cedar, stone enough for a lot of workshops and some copper, side production of the mines.

No idea if other players just hoarde stuff, but the small margin of profit is profit.