Basic Cutter needs a change

[Guest]

Given the patch changes and considerable increase in ship costs and risk, the plague of having basic cutters who operate at zero risk whatsoever is reaching silly levels, allowing them to hang out in front of capitals with ease, restock instantly at any port, and even try to act as fireships with the open magazine access. It also makes it a pointless endeavour to bother with killing them just for them to be back a little later and creates a huge risk disparity between it and lots of ships in the roster.

So what could a potential solution be?

Off the top of my head.

Make them unable to tag player ships? Might just bring 1 tagging ship and lots of basic cutters to circumvent it.

Give them 0 BR?

Any ideas?

Edited May 28, 2017 by Guest

[shaeberle84]

No pvp tagging for basic cutters.

[Lonar]

The Basic Cutter costs nothing no repairs and buying costs, that makes it extremly easy to abuse it. You can sail into enemy Waters troll around get sunk spawn in a Free Town buy a new one for nothing do it again. Other player can sink you but it will have no effect.

Also that makes other small ships like Privateer, Pickle, Lynx obsolete, since they will cost you and do nothing extremly better.

Solution would be maybe giving the Basic Cutter a zero BR or take the possibility for the Basic Cutter to PVP away so you can only PVE in it.

 

Made another Thread in the Suggestion Forum so full support here.

[Siegfried]

Removing the basic cutter in the third/fourth rank and up maybe. But people with alts can delete and create a new charcter for that.

 

Remove the basic cutter from players in third/fourth rank and upper. But people with alts can delete and create a new player again for workaround this.

[Sir Texas Sir]

This kinda falls into the problem we pirates are seeing with the Pirate vs Pirate and guys trolling others in basic cutters.  They mainly go after Traders, but they have hit ships like Surprise with no means to win for the most part.   I was kinda surprised by that one, when a cutter pulled in a Surprise for a Pirate vs Pirate.  We sunk him, but he just said, "I don't care I loose nothing."

 

[Sir Texas Sir]

8 minutes ago, Siegfried said:

Removing the basic cutter in the third/fourth rank and up maybe. But people with alts can delete and create a new charcter for that.

You need to be sent to friendly port on death instead of a Freetown. I been sent to a Freetown every time and had to buy a basic cutter to get back to my ports and my other ships (the few I have right now).  Than do like POTBS did, you can only get your fallback ship which leveled a bit up with you as you leveled if you had no other ships.  This way you can't use a basic cutter if you own other ships.  Though I would say if you have other ships in docs.  

[Thonys]

well, in this example you can see that  " ï don't care , it cost nothing " is a wrong concept

developers needs to  do something about that kind of game behavior.

the solution can be to make it costly for the basic cutter aswell, or basic cutter only for doing missions.

and only gaining xp for the slots after the basic cutter , starting with the cutter or the pickle

Edited May 28, 2017 by Thonys

[Liq]

Aye especially now with those weird mast / demasting changes, a group of 5 ish cutters can take on a surprise and demast it, as silly as it sounds. The cutters won't lose anything, they can only win.
1) Please adress demasting, it's really a good bit off right now.
2) I also agree cutters shouldn't be allowed to use for PvP. Give them a BR of 0

[Siegfried]

If basic cutter is necessary, then remove the free part of it when you reach 4th rank. But the problem with alts is there too.

Another problem is when you are higher rank and in bankrupt...

[admin]

This is a temporary problem. 

Last February when the game was released we spend weeks coding server queues, priority queues, and auto disconnects. Which only were needed for 2 weeks. Same with cutter. this problem will continue for 1 week and then will disappear. It will then come back one more time on release

Cutter posts also were posted in Jan Feb 2016 where people were discussing issues like " can 25 cutters destroy a lineship". Some people imagine its not a cutter but a Rifter.

And yes. 25 cutters is 300 guns. Its almost 2x more than army of wellington had at Waterloo. 
And yes - such battles happened in history. For example Gangut, or danish gunboat raid on British lineships

[Lonar]

3 minutes ago, admin said:

This is a temporary problem. 

Last February when the game was released we spend weeks coding server queues, priority queues, and auto disconnects. Which only were needed for 2 weeks. Same with cutter. this problem will continue for 1 week and then will disappear. It will then come back one more time on release

Cutter posts also were posted in Jan Feb 2016 where people were discussing issues like " can 25 cutters destroy a lineship". Some people imagine its not a cutter but a Rifter.

And yes. 25 cutters is 300 guns. Its 2x more than army of wellington had at Waterloo. 
And yes - such battles happened. For example Gangut, or danish gunboat raid on British lineships

 

But then still the point exists that other lvl 7 ships are useless since it makes econmically no sense in sailing them when you have a free cutter with almost the same guns and crew :/

[Sir Texas Sir]

27 minutes ago, Liquicity said:

Aye especially now with those weird mast / demasting changes, a group of 5 ish cutters can take on a surprise and demast it, as silly as it sounds. The cutters won't lose anything, they can only win.
1) Please adress demasting, it's really a good bit off right now.
2) I also agree cutters shouldn't be allowed to use for PvP. Give them a BR of 0

We took 9 out and took down the mast by stern raking it and decrew an LVG which is slightly tougher than a Surprise.  We prob could of done a Surprise too with that group, only lost one guy in the fight.   Though it was only AI but the point is they can be nasty with no worries of lost.

Temporary or not it still not going to stop folks from trolling with them in Pirate vs Pirate or other means.   Folks been using basic cutters in the past for tagging and trolling.  I like what some one said about make it's BR zero so it can't pull any other ship into a fight other than AI or another basic cutter player.  Like I said above we had one guy pull a Surprise into a fight and I"m pretty sure that is way higher than the x4 curve thing (unless I'm mistake) for BR pull right or does Pirate vs Pirate not use the same BR rules?

[Zooloo]

Problem is it's a ship with no charges at all. There should not be a way to pvp where you can't loose anything and the enemy can loose alot.

[Hethwill]

2 hours ago, shaeberle84 said:

No pvp tagging for basic cutters.

Not only that but also cannot join / get pulled into any battle. Not Rank limited.

Basic Cutter should be the "tutorial campaign".

 

[ironhammer500]

Does everyone think so poorly, what if you lost all your ships and have no money left, how does a high rank get a ship if you lock them to low ranks?

[Hethwill]

1 minute ago, ironhammer500 said:

Does everyone think so poorly, what if you lost all your ships and have no money left, how does a high rank get a ship if you lock them to low ranks?

That's why other suggestions came forth.

[Corona Lisa]

fun fun fun

[Anne Wildcat]

Maybe on basic cutters you can only do 1v1?

I like basic cutter PvP.

 

[ironhammer500]

52 minutes ago, Jon Snow lets go said:

fun fun fun

i thought there was a BR cap to stop people doing this sort of thing

[akd]

3 hours ago, admin said:

This is a temporary problem. 

Last February when the game was released we spend weeks coding server queues, priority queues, and auto disconnects. Which only were needed for 2 weeks. Same with cutter. this problem will continue for 1 week and then will disappear. It will then come back one more time on release

Also a result of removing officer loss. There is now zero cost / disincentive to sinking / blowing up in basic cutter.  I don't know if it was overall a good mechanic (because of last officer life syndrome and no mechanic to counter it), but it did provide a mild disincentive to suicide tactics.

[Corona Lisa]

1 hour ago, ironhammer500 said:

i thought there was a BR cap to stop people doing this sort of thing

Only with Signaling perk (im still not 100% sure how it works tho). Normal battles are open for everyone to join for 5 mins.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, admin said:

This is a temporary problem. 

Last February when the game was released we spend weeks coding server queues, priority queues, and auto disconnects. Which only were needed for 2 weeks. Same with cutter. this problem will continue for 1 week and then will disappear. It will then come back one more time on release

Cutter posts also were posted in Jan Feb 2016 where people were discussing issues like " can 25 cutters destroy a lineship". Some people imagine its not a cutter but a Rifter.

And yes. 25 cutters is 300 guns. Its almost 2x more than army of wellington had at Waterloo. 
And yes - such battles happened in history. For example Gangut, or danish gunboat raid on British lineships

Don't get me wrong, I really like the idea of groups of really small ships taking on large ones, it reminds me of the Wako pirates operating in south-east asia trying to take on larger ships with a swarm of skiffs, but post-patch is a different beast entirely.

- Capturing a ship is hugely more rewarding for 1 dura, and loss more keenly felt. Capturing a 5-dura ship pre-patch was usually a waste of time, and 4/3/2/1 dura ships were cutter-proof so there was no point.

- See the posts above of cutters even taking on LGVs and Surprises. With the crafting and demasting changes, how long do you think it will take most players to move beyond using such ships? 1 week? No way. While I'm not enough of a crafter to make an accurate estimate, I dont imagine the average player is going to be making 'cutter-proof' ships for at least a month if not more.

And even then the replenishment time seems to be far longer than before, lord knows the angst people will have if they can produce 1 LGV a week and lose it to some zero-risk cutters. I really liked how everyone was taken down several notches for frigates to become the mainstay, but it's completely tarnished by things like this. Slower progression also means that people would much rather keep hunting in cutter fleets than, say, move on to using larger ships such as Snows.

- No officer loss means that you can risk it however much you want to, used to be a good way to inhibit suicidal gameplay. 

- Taking on people with small ships with a good chance of escaping is already a thing with their upwind performance and low entry cost, but the difference of a relatively low entry cost and zero risk, nil, nada, not for guns, repairs, officer or crew, is just ridiculous and makes most other small ships pointless to even use.

Normally, my response would be to just do the same right back when trader hunting, but honestly it feels extremely cheesy and wrong compared to what the rest of the game has become (which Im a big fan of btw, good stuff).

Edited May 28, 2017 by Guest

[EdWatchmaker]

Hello Devs and Capts.,

This does pose a problem. The basic cutter is necessary for tutorial training and as a way to get back to where you can fetch one of your ships so you can get back in the game. It should have no pvp except basic cutter v basic cutter. It should only be able to tag and fight an AI or another basic cutter, unless of course another ship tags it. As for the need to get back into the game after being brought down to nothing. On purpose I did not redeem my XP to see how I would do from dead start. With basic cutter to fish and haul goods I was able to buy a cheesy but serviceable ship in 2 days time.

Happy sailing, 

EdWatchmaker    

[Morfin van der Wendel]

9 hours ago, admin said:

This is a temporary problem. 

Last February when the game was released we spend weeks coding server queues, priority queues, and auto disconnects. Which only were needed for 2 weeks. Same with cutter. this problem will continue for 1 week and then will disappear. It will then come back one more time on release

 

It is not temporary, it was always a problem and there always were people abusing this. Especially now with fireship fitting being a skillbook, you can just do a free fireship fleet, that can actually damage a bigger ship, or even whole fleets. Today, we've seen basic cutters being used to the point, that it cna actually be considered griefing, like you can see on screenshote above. basic cutters are tagging traders and other ships, sometimes without even the intentto sink it, just to keep a victim in battle, piss him off, and waste time. they join battles, they join missions, and this is at NO COST at all. You try to make more risk in the game, with cannon cost, 1 dura ships, etc, and this is great, but there is no place in this system for a warship that has no cost to operate. Also, there is no pvp reward for sinking them (which is obviously good because it prevents pvp mark farming)   Just make its BR 0, or make it impossible for it to join PvP battles/start battles.
 

[Bart Smith]

Basic Cutters - free ships should be exluded from pvp. Simples.