Trader Ships Too Slow

[EL LOCO]

Seems the base trader ship speed is too slow.   Why is a snow faster then a trader snow?   If weight is now an issue.      Same goes for an LGV which is based off an Renom.  

These need to be adjusted so as to not make trader ships totally sitting ducks.  

[Siegfried]

This speed nerf in traders is not a good thing. Warships are loaded too, but with crew, provisions, munitions and gunpowder.

[CaptVonGunn]

1 hour ago, EL LOCO said:

Seems the base trader ship speed is too slow.   Why is a snow faster then a trader snow?   If weight is now an issue.      Same goes for an LGV which is based off an Renom.  

These need to be adjusted so as to not make trader ships totally sitting ducks.  

LGV is based off Belle Poule.  But I agree s

Trader Snow and LGV seem to slow. 

Edit because auto correct sucks

Edited June 20, 2017 by CaptVonGunn

[Hodo]

They are only slow if you fill them 100% or over 75% for that matter.

When I ran a Trader Snow I would run 60% of my cargo and move just fine.  I did the same for a trader brig still had no problems making 12+ knts in battle.  

 

 

[Prater]

Are people putting mods on their trader ships?  That will make a huge difference as well.

[Kanay]

Yeah traders are fat whale intended to be free meat for everybody crossing them path.

Also why does traders gets only 3 slots for adding books stuff when others can cumulate 5 books of knowledge ?  Why cripple them even more than they are ?

Why not allow to unlock 2 more slots but instead of combat XP it will be based on travel Xp for traders...  At least they could get some little bonus like any other ship.

Oh and allow some books like "art of proper cargo distribution" to be mounted on traders only, not on warships to balance a bit.

One thing that really bothers me since i came back to the game is how the cargo affects the speed, in real life no trader sailed empty, if they needed to sail empty they used stones as ballasts, we can still find on some old ports large stone depots used for this, on most ports they were used years ago to build or consolidate sea walls, but we can still see this practice in some countries of the Arabic Gulf with them traditional transport ships, yet in game as soon as you start to load a bit of stuff you are already penalized for speed, it should not be like this, the trader should start to loose speed when it's 1/2 -2/3 full to represent this.

The loss of speed in OW for a LGV from empty to 3/4 or full loaded is just atrocious and leaves absolutely no chance to the trader if he meets a bad guy, beside trying to delete all cargo you will be caught in no time as other ships display distance is rather short and OW speed quite high for them, if you have only one single sort of product it might be doable but if you carry multiple things you will be caught before the first one will be thrown at sea.

Thing is the Dev's always penalized the traders, i come back to the game and can only note that this is even worse than before, and since now trading is almost an obligation for many just to be able to afford sailing a small warship this is a real disaster.

13 minutes ago, Prater said:

Are people putting mods on their trader ships?  That will make a huge difference as well.

I do and put the few i could afford as i restarted not long ago, remains that warshisp are faster from the start, empty to empty ships, and they can have 5 slots for mods when traders have 3 only, and they won't be affected by the load as a trader will be on the top of this.




 

Edited June 20, 2017 by Kanay

[maturin]

Most merchantmen would have a more capacious shape in the underwater hull, making them slower even if dimensions, rig and seamanship remained constant.

We should be able to build trader's vessels with a speed trim that substantially reduces cargo capacity.

Also, vessels like a trader's cutter or (certainly) trader's lynx would have the same hullform as a privateering variant.

[CaptVonGunn]

15 minutes ago, maturin said:

Most merchantmen would have a more capacious shape in the underwater hull, making them slower even if dimensions, rig and seamanship remained constant.

We should be able to build trader's vessels with a speed trim that substantially reduces cargo capacity.

Also, vessels like a trader's cutter or (certainly) trader's lynx would have the same hullform as a privateering variant.

Yes but they were designed to preform best when full not empty. 

[CaptVonGunn]

Hell I used an LGV pre wipe as my hunting ship. Crew space extra hammocks boarding parties and Marines, sights. With cooper and a barricades it was a beast.

[Christendom]

Trader ships are still too fast IMO.  They're meant to be slow and bulky, bring an escort next time.  It's obvious that this is no longer a solo players game.  

[CaptVonGunn]

Not all traders are or were slow. Some like the LGV were expected yo sail with the fleet. Which means those types were at least expected to keep pace with the SOLs and 3rd rates were Not slow ships

[Prater]

I don't know whether they are too fast or too slow, but they are fast, or at least can be.

 

Maybe different trader ships need tweaked speeds and not all of them.  I know for sure the trader lynx is extremely fast.  Trader brigs can be extremely fast.

Edited June 20, 2017 by Prater

[Kanay]

9 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Trader ships are still too fast IMO.  They're meant to be slow and bulky, bring an escort next time.  It's obvious that this is no longer a solo players game.

Is this a joke ? They are damn slow once you load them a tiny bit ... They can not use as many mods as the guys hunting them with ships for speed and boarding, and they are already way slower than them from the start ...

As for escorts ... the game favors long trips if you want to make some kind of profit, and not necessary big profits, good luck finding someone who will sail for 2 hours just to escort my LGV in a 1 hour go and 1h come back trip  ...

Edited June 20, 2017 by Kanay

[Christendom]

2 minutes ago, Kanay said:

Is this a joke ? They are damn slow once you load them a tiny bit ... They can not use as many mods as the guys hunting them with ships for speed and boarding, and they are already way slower than them from the start ...

As for escorts ... the game favors long trips if you want to make some kind of profit, and not necessary big profits, good luck finding someone who will sail for 2 hours just to escort my LGV in a 1 hour go and come back trip  ...

Then be prepared to lose then.  The days when trader ships were faster than than your average warship fully loaded are gone and It's great.  

[Kanay]

I did not asked for them to be faster than warships, i did not asked for traders to be immune, most guys hunting them before used fast ships with speed mods to attack or escape more easily, trading ships already and always were easy meat before those changes, but now they turned them into sitting ducks once they have a tiny bit of load and on the top of this crippled them with only 3 books upgrades instead of 5 for the other type of ships,  and not even a thing like the Art of cargo Distribution book is exclusive to traders only... just to make sure the first noob passing by can take them down more easily than when attacking AI trader ships ...

 

The LGV while needing a permit to be build, while costing more and needing more materials than a trader brig can carry only 150 more than the TBrig, and ... it is also slower than a trader brig...

Traders like i said earlier were not made to run empty, when they had to do it they carried loads of ballasts to simulate the weight they were designed to sail with, once arrived at the destination port the surplus of ballast were removed and replaced with the merchandises. In game however they start to loose weight as soon as you put some things on the cargo and become whales once your start to half load them, combined with the short draw distances of ships in OW and the fast speed in OW for the attacker compared to a trader this turned into a ridiculous baby seals hunting for the first noob crossing the path of a trader ship.

 

Game needs a lot more of trading now, long trips, and you cannot decently think that some guys will dedicate a lot of time just playing the scarecrow escorting them... Traders always received the low end of the stick in this game to provide easy targets, but this time they pushed it way too far.

[surfimp]

I really like that the speeds of traders vary now, depending on how much load they're carrying. Whether they're too fast or too slow is something that can (in theory) be tweaked easily via a few variables, but the larger mechanic - which affects all ships, not just traders - is a good one and needs to be kept.

Also, note that traders suffer much less from the weight of cannon than warships, in terms of the degradation of their speed. It makes virtually no difference whether you carry 16 guns on your TBrig or not, so might as well do it. Whereas on my Privateer, I need to very carefully balance the decision of what size and caliber of gun to carry to ensure I maximize its hunting prowess.

[Guest]

Personally I run heavy with a bunch of Indiamen, both dreading and looking forward to the day someone tries to take them on. Discourages most roamers.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Sansón Carrasco said:

Also, note that traders suffer much less from the weight of cannon than warships, in terms of the degradation of their speed. It makes virtually no difference whether you carry 16 guns on your TBrig or not, so might as well do it. Whereas on my Privateer, I need to very carefully balance the decision of what size and caliber of gun to carry to ensure I maximize its hunting prowess.

Just to add to that, the same goes for repair kits in the cargo space, so it's easy to stack plenty of them with minimal penalties (about 10% of the speed loss of most other ships).

[CaptVonGunn]

Not really they lose some overall cargo space with guns on them same for repairs... Remember Lots fewer crew means less crew fixtures and supplies in ship also. 

[Kanay]

38 minutes ago, Sansón Carrasco said:

I really like that the speeds of traders vary now, depending on how much load they're carrying. Whether they're too fast or too slow is something that can (in theory) be tweaked easily via a few variables, but the larger mechanic - which affects all ships, not just traders - is a good one and needs to be kept.

Also, note that traders suffer much less from the weight of cannon than warships, in terms of the degradation of their speed. It makes virtually no difference whether you carry 16 guns on your TBrig or not, so might as well do it. Whereas on my Privateer, I need to very carefully balance the decision of what size and caliber of gun to carry to ensure I maximize its hunting prowess.

Beside the chaser ones it's useless to put guns on the Tbrig, you still get 60 crew to man the ship and the guns... it's just dead weight that will serve nothing in terms of defense or efficiency like trying to hit the sails of the attacking ship(s), same for the Tsnow, side guns are pointless, difference of weight can be seen as the difference of crew and provisions and stuff needed for them between the trader and warship variants.

The LGV have 9pd's and nice load of crew, but will be most likely heavily outmaneuvered if you try to fight back, quickly get his crew graped to death after only a few minutes, and usually you won't build such ships with strong wood anyways, the best asset for a trader ship is speed, first to do the work faster and gain some precious minutes in long trips, then to try to escape pursuers (which they cannot do at all now if a bit loaded loaded), more likely traders will be built with very light wood and 6pd's will be enough to ruin it quickly, LGV doesn't have any stern guns that could be of great help for a trader ( it had some additional guns able to fire to the rear irl but not in game... ) , this making the trbrig even better with only 150 cargo less, cheap cost to build and buy, less crew loss that will need to be replaced if ship is lost and a better speed + his stern guns able to tickle a bit the sails, with low effect but still a plus.




 

Edited June 21, 2017 by Kanay

[Prater]

17 minutes ago, Kanay said:

Beside the chaser ones it's useless to put guns on the Tbrig, you still get 60 crew to man the ship and the guns... it's just dead weight that will serve nothing in terms of defense or efficiency like trying to hit the sails of the attacking ship(s), same for the Tsnow, side guns are pointless, difference of weight can be seen as the difference of crew and provisions and stuff needed for them between the trader and warship variants.
 

Not true.  I would have captured two trader brigs last night if it wasn't for one of them being armed with cannons and was able to fight me off instead of me capturing both.  For raiders to be fast, they can't carry a lot of repairs, and you can mess up their game just by having chasers and a broadside..

[surfimp]

6 minutes ago, Prater said:

Not true.  I would have captured two trader brigs last night if it wasn't for one of them being armed with cannons and was able to fight me off instead of me capturing both.  For raiders to be fast, they can't carry a lot of repairs, and you can mess up their game just by having chasers and a broadside..

Agree with this. If the captain of the trader is in any way a competent shot, they can defend themselves quite well against a typical lightly-built raiding vessel (the kind that can, you know, actually catch a trader). If the captain of the trader is not a competent shot then he / she is better served learning the best points of sail for his / her vessel and just running for it. Trader vessels are still quite fast on their best points of sail; one of the ships I captured last night could have run away from me had he not spent his time lobbing inaccurate broadsides my way.

EDIT: and then there's the larger meta of the trader choosing when/where to sail so he/she has the best wind. I feel a little bad when I catch a trader against a lee shore with nowhere to run, but it's not my fault they didn't consider the possibility beforehand. I certainly take such considerations into account when sailing the captured vessel back / running into enemy ports with the smuggler flag / etc.

Edited June 21, 2017 by Sansón Carrasco

[Prater]

19 minutes ago, Sansón Carrasco said:

Agree with this. If the captain of the trader is in any way a competent shot, they can defend themselves quite well against a typical lightly-built raiding vessel (the kind that can, you know, actually catch a trader). If the captain of the trader is not a competent shot then he / she is better served learning the best points of sail for his / her vessel and just running for it. Trader vessels are still quite fast on their best points of sail; one of the ships I captured last night could have run away from me had he not spent his time lobbing inaccurate broadsides my way.

EDIT: and then there's the larger meta of the trader choosing when/where to sail so he/she has the best wind. I feel a little bad when I catch a trader against a lee shore with nowhere to run, but it's not my fault they didn't consider the possibility beforehand. I certainly take such considerations into account when sailing the captured vessel back / running into enemy ports with the smuggler flag / etc.

I found 4 trader brigs sailing along a lee shore last night.  Got 2 in battle, one had guns and after a 40-60 minute fight, finally escaped when I had to repair and my guns weren't reloading.  Others I caught in the open ocean weren't so lucky.  My raider goes a decent speed at every point of sail.

Edited June 21, 2017 by Prater

[Sir Texas Sir]

7 hours ago, Prater said:

Are people putting mods on their trader ships?  That will make a huge difference as well.

Are they more putting the right ones?  We have captured traders with both Stubbing and Staysails mods on.  Though pretty much harm each others states and make you sail worth.  That and as stated above don't put it at 100% cargo and get a dang escort either your own ship or a buddy.  Remember safety in numbers.

7 hours ago, Christendom said:

Trader ships are still too fast IMO.  They're meant to be slow and bulky, bring an escort next time.  It's obvious that this is no longer a solo players game.  

Like the other day when my trader was out running your group. It was completely empty trader brig though with no guns.  If I was loaded ya'll would of had me dead for sure.

[hiclipucli]

10 hours ago, Hodo said:

They are only slow if you fill them 100% or over 75% for that matter.

When I ran a Trader Snow I would run 60% of my cargo and move just fine.  I did the same for a trader brig still had no problems making 12+ knts in battle.  

 

 

and speed fitted warships 15 kn.....