Trader Ships Too Slow

[Hethwill]

Same with Traders if speed fitted, equipped with cannons and half cargo hold or so.

 

[Lonar]

Faster Trader dont change anything, yesterday i encountered a speedfitted Coni so you are dead Meat no matter what since your enemy will do 15 Knots you do 15 Knots only he has a shitload of guns. And under this Impression Trader with strange Perk/Mod Combinations are nothing special because if people realise that they are helpless and their ship is a throw away ship they just click something into the slots and done.

[victor]

10 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.  

With smart comments that i think Naval Action may become very soon a solo game, in the sense the you (and the happy few like you) will be the only ones playing it.

Besides that, I do not think that speed is the actual issue for traders. A failfitted warship will get a trader anyway.

In my opinion traders should instead be able to place a defesive tag on any ship regarless the difference of battle rating. This will allow some degree of skill also on the trader's side in the pray-hunter game.

Edited June 21, 2017 by victor

[Captain corn blower]

13 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.  

Sorry but most traders were design shallow draft for Speed in and out of shallow ports and to evade capture,  larger Commerce trading vessels or Fleet support vessels we're we're compare Ubly fast to keep up with the warships they were huge and were designed to carry vast quantities of materialsbut .but when they over loaded them they would be slower .this is game does not allow that. AND WHAT REALLY SUCKS is how they nerfed the wait that the Indiaman and LGV could carry .

[maturin]

Quote

In my opinion traders should instead be able to place a defesive tag on any ship regarless the difference of battle rating. This will allow some degree of skill also on the trader's side in the pray-hunter game.

Ayup.

[Hodo]

Here is a common problem I see with most trade ships.

Perk choice.  You all choose the +20% hold space -2.5% speed.  So you go from 12kn to 11.7kn.  Then you pack it full of cargo, which drops it further a full load can drop you down to almost 50% top speed.  

So you wonder why you are going slow... how about you build your ships to go faster, and dont pack them over the top with cargo.  Because even my Privateer, if I slapped 150t of cargo on it will move all of 15kn in OW, that is 7.5kn in battle at its BEST point of sail.  

So I have to say learn to properly spread your load on long trips so you wont be slow as dirt.  Because I have trade ships that can do 15kn and hold cargo.

[Hethwill]

warships suffer the same fate when loaded with cargo.

Hodo is right, whereas the main modules and knowledge for the warships is usually for the combat instances ( whatever pvp means to you ) the traders always pick up the "large haul" ones.

[Kanay]

I never used the extended cargo space perk, like i said earlier speed is the best asset for a trader, won't ever use a perk lowering it, many players i know have the same mentality and never use it, don't know why you guys think most trader use this .

You don't need to be full of cargo to get already slow, and again like said earlier, when you are 1/2 cargo you should not be penalized for speed, ships were designed and optimized with cargo loaded, they were loading tons of ballasts if they had to make an empty trip.

As for upgrades weird choices some can make ... Do you really assume all traders make mistakes when selecting them perks ?

For now i put all i could find giving me an advantage ( don't have much since i restarted only one week ago )  on a LGV fir+fir, studding sails, a treatise on square sails trim book, a treatise on rigging handling and a Spanish rig refit ...I am penalized against the wind with those but i plan most of my trips in function of the wind direction to be optimal... Hopefully i can put my hands on a cargo optimization and some other stuff giving a bit more speed, but in the actual form it is fast ... when empty... when you start to put some weight you became a fat whale in open world and battle sessions ,let apart loading it fully.

Remains again that a warship will be able to use more options with 5 slots compared to a trader limited to 3... So you can flip it all around, up and down, left to right, traders will always be at disadvantage... Unless you only goal is to travel empty or loaded like with less than a trader lynx which in this case is pointless since you will more likely be able to escape most offenders using the trader lynx fully loaded... and on the top of this will have shorter trips on long distances hauling compared to the square sails ships .




 

Edited June 21, 2017 by Kanay

[Hethwill]

A trader brig was as fast as a raider renomee close hauled, both has equivalent knowledge slots. Yesterday. Global.

Traders are not always slow, that is what we are saying  

 

[Kanay]

Was he even loaded with something is the question. Were them using the same upgrades and books is another one, and with a Renomee full slots open vs a trader brig with only 3 slots who had won the race is the last question

 My LGV is fast empty but a  trader can be fast as he want empty it serves no real purpose, if you plan your stuff well you rarely sail empty in the OW anyways, if a trader like the LGV or Tbrig needs to have less load on board than a trader lynx to have a tiny chance or survival you better go directly with the lynx and load it fully, beside meeting a privateer or lynx and such you won't risk much even fully loaded and will be still faster on most of your trips, while fully loaded.


 

Edited June 21, 2017 by Kanay

[Hodo]

6 minutes ago, Kanay said:

For now i put all i could find giving me an advantage ( don't have much since i restarted only one week ago )  on a LGV fir+fir, studding sails, a treatise on square sails trim book, a treatise on rigging handling and a Spanish rig refit ...I am penalized against the wind with those but i plan most of my trips in function of the wind direction to be optimal... Hopefully i can put my hands on a cargo optimization and some other stuff giving a bit more speed, but in the actual form it is fast ... when empty... when you start to put some weight you became a fat whale in open world and battle sessions ,let apart loading it fully.

 

On the upgrade slots.  A combat ship has to grind to unlock those slots.  A trade ship has to be bought to unlock all of its slots, there is no grind.  That is the difference.

And the above build will sail great at all points where the wind effects the square rigging.  You can never get above 100% sail bonus in any one direction with the sail bonuses in game.  So stacking like that does nothing for your top speed as far as I know.  And does absolutely nothing for your OW speed.  As that has to be an absolute value, which is Speed trim, Copper plating.   

 

[Kanay]

I already asked for having 5 slots upgrades unlocked based on travel XP instead of combat XP, not getting them automatically like now and not getting limited to 3 only, not like traveling for hours in slow whales is less risky than fighting mostly dumb AI ships in pve missions to unlock slots on warships anyways.
 

I know the advantages and the disadvantages  it gives me when against the wind, the best is to choose when you travel to get the best winds, with a few shops stops on the way if all is well planned you can profit of best wind during almost all your long trip, might be more or less easier for each trader depending if you are in a corner of the map or more in the middle but it's doable and it's just a matter of planning things before leaving.

I could not put my hands on other upgrades and books for now just after barely one week in game, but the speed gain is there, i know already some of the books or upgrades i want, need time and luck, or both to get them, still remains that cargo loaded will turn the ship into a whale and you cannot be efficient wiht those square sails traders ( i leave the indiaman out of the equation ) 


 

Edited June 21, 2017 by Kanay

[Hethwill]

1 minute ago, Kanay said:

having 5 slots upgrades unlocked based on travel XP

I mean, even delivery missions could also add to the unlocks of trader models aye

[Kanay]

Yup, if they change delivery missions a bit, this wasn't present when i left the game, looked a bit into them and it seems like a complete waste of time to even try them.

Saw some missions where you need to travel for 30mn with only a few quantity of goods, 30mn with good wind to make barely any profit out of it, i mean you can spend 15mn-20mn in a LGV attacking another AI LGV, dancing behind him, shooting his stern and killing crew down to 60-50 before capturing it, get all his loot, sometimes you are lucky to find some interesting stuff that is worth some cash, sometimes you get 50 salt, get 3 pve marks and 17k on top of it for the combat ( not sure how many new combat marks it gives since today tho ) .

The 17k alone is more profit than the delivery missions offer for a 30mn trip for the few i saw, if you attack a LGV in any warship it will be even faster and while you may not be able to get all his loot in case it have some heavy stuff it's still more profitable than most delivery missions i saw for now.

 

Edited June 21, 2017 by Kanay

[Slamz]

I think it's fine. If you want safe trading, use a Trader's Lynx, which are super-difficult to stop (especially if they actually bring rig repairs).

For anything else, you need to do escorted sailing. With NPC fleets in the game you can escort yourself to some extent. The standard solo pirate is going to have a hard time with a fleet that like's 3 armed Indiaman and 1 player-sailed Constitution. (The AI is not that great but it's good enough for that.)

You can still get ganked, of course, but them's the breaks.

You can make tremendous piles of cash in this game via open world trading. It needs to stay risky. We shouldn't need specialized PvP speed ships to catch a loaded Indiaman, LGV or Brig.

[Slamz]

17 minutes ago, Kanay said:

Yup, if they change delivery missions a bit, this wasn't present when i left the game, looked a bit into them and it seems like a complete waste of time to even try them.

The only person I know who does delivery missions does them mainly for the crafting XP. He also does this:

* Find a delivery mission for a crafted material that has a destination of your capital.
* Make an outpost at this mission location.
* Go to your capital and make a huge number of that crafted material.
* Hop back and forth between outposts, picking up the same delivery mission over and over and over and just completing it in the capital where you have the stuff stockpiled.

He says the missions switch up every day but stay constant throughout the day so every day he just has to find a new delivery mission, move his temporary outpost to there and then do it repeatedly until he's out of crafted materials or is tired of doing it.

I have not tried this, no idea if that's really worth the trouble, but I think that was how it worked.

I can certainly see the sense in only doing delivery missions for things you already have at the destination, though.

(The REAL money making "delivery" in this game is selling crafted materials to free ports or doing trade good runs anyway. I think delivery missions themselves are a leftover from the old days.)

Edited June 21, 2017 by Slamz

[Kanay]

Nobody asked for safe or immune traders, just asking to not be the easiest meat in game for every noob crossing the path on a trader ship.

Trading is the base income for starting players, you really expect them to have grinded enough to afford escort ships, to afford crewing them + enough grind to have all perks unlocked ?

I probably won't use such perks and limit myself in combat with other perks missing, the reset perk stuff is only usable once so it's another useless thing from my point of view, if they make it like 300 or even 1000 marks to get and allowed a reset each 48h it will be useful, for 48h you do combat stuff, then you can reset it and apply some other perks and do other stuff like focus on trading for 48h and have an escort even if I'm really not convinced by the AI escorts as good defense, against a solo guy probably yeah, but only a couple of guys are needed, one to distract the AI and focus fire on him while the other one focus on trader to board it, plus you need escorts with same sailing profile to not be penalized even more for speed in OW if it's still like before, the short draw distances for other ships with higher speed now in OW is really a problem, enemies popup and get on you in a blink, you can glass the horizon all you want and make the camera spin non stop at 360° to scan around the reaction time is so short that you will be tagged quickly and not even have a chance to destroy the heaviest goods you are loaded with and this while not even fully loaded, full loaded the only thing you will escape is a mortar brig ...

For the delivery missions the biggest craft XP i recall have seen is 50 or 51xp for a delivery mission, there might be higher ones i don't know, and as lvl 50 crafter it does not serves me anyways.

There was one offer for 94 canvas rolls to deliver 20-25mns away with good wind, if you find them on a NPC shop at the lowest possible price available on the entire map, at 162 gold it makes 15228 gold paid for the 94 units, the delivery offer gives you 22484 and 50xp + 50xp craft, makes a profit of 7256 gold, for a trip taking around 20-25 minutes just to go to this free town where hostile activity is probably high, makes a 48.15% benefit per unit.

This same destination already buys the same goods at 208 according to the trading tool, 28.4% benefit per unit, the contract for 94 units with the benefit is like selling them for 240 compared to 208, but you will be able to load and deliver a large quantity of them instead of 94 only, you will make a bigger profit per trip.

If you craft the canvas rolls yourself you loose cash due to LH's price not accounted in NPC sold or bought stuff, your mate destroys and rebuild and an outpost -15k each time you do this.

For the few i saw the most profitable destinations are Capitals and free towns, by a good margin, more chances to be ganked near capitals and free towns too... Is the risk worth it I'm not sure.

What I'm sure about is that I can not see how this is better than finding a spot with AI traders passing regularly and attacking them, with one of the early 5th-6th rates you attack a brig or snow, shoot the sails with each of your boardsides to slow it down enough, prepare boarding, board it and you done more profit in less than 5 minutes and with no risks involved, you might take one or 2 broadsides now that traders are all armed but it will cost almost nothing to repair in a port, or you can take a bit more time and get a LGV in a very short time for 17k profit just for the capture + the loot you might get out of them that you can store in outpost, accumulate materials until you have good loads of them and then sell them around where the profit is higher .... or do small level pve missions that are still more profitable for income per time spent compared to delivery missions, even at low levels.

Unless you had the delivery materials needed for a very low price ( like loot coming from traders ) and the destination is on the path to where you already plan to go i don't see any reasons to use deliveries, i can make more profit in a 10mn trip from one city to another close to it and a profit of 20% per unit carried, and can do this back and forth until i deplete the stock of producing city, travel time is short, risks are limited and benefit while not big is surely bigger than the delivery mission.

Edited June 21, 2017 by Kanay

[Vllad]

 

I don't understand the point of this request since the game already provides you what you need. The fast trade ships are Trader Cutters and Trader Lynx.

[Kanay]

1 hour ago, Vllad said:

 

I don't understand the point of this request since the game already provides you what you need. The fast trade ships are Trader Cutters and Trader Lynx.

And i have the regret to inform you that i don't understand your answer either ...

Those tiny traders are not fast... if you compare them to them armed counterparts...

Of course if you try to catch such profiled ships while using a square sails ships they will leave you behind while sailing against the wind, and it will be your own fault... Use the right tools for the right job, rest is incompetence ...

Them capacity is really low, i'd better make a Trincomalee or Connie build in fir and Bermuda Cedar planked, ships able to get 5 knowledge slots, well fitted for speed and under-gun it, keeping max large caliber on stern to shoot sails and adding only 4pd's anywhere else or even no guns at all to keep nice speed, at least i will profit of a larger cargo, have way more speed than a Tsnow, Tbrig or LGV, scare some smaller ships who consider attacking me, will be able to defense tag lot of stuff and so on ... A trinc cargo is 533, a connie is 751... leaves some room for quite some rig repair while being better than a trader lynx for cargo and way better than a LGV or Tbrig for anything else ...

I see things did not changed in this game, those who like a false pretense of pvp against defenseless ships are still finding all possible excuses so the traders ships remain easy meat... Does no surprise me to see traders ships nerfed to abysses after my come back ...

Edited June 21, 2017 by Kanay

[Vllad]

1 hour ago, Kanay said:

And i have the regret to inform you that i don't understand your answer either ...

Those tiny traders are not fast... if you compare them to them armed counterparts...

Those ships are much easier to get to the max speed of 15 kn than their armed counterparts. Obviously that speed is only achieved at the right angles but that doesn't change the fact that the fast trade ships are Cutters and Lynx. If you want speed you have to give up cargo space regardless of how you achieve it. This is an acceptable trade off. 

You said ultimately you want to sail traders that are not easy meat. That is the cutter and lynx. What you want already exist in the game. 

If we just cut to the chase and say they build a 10k space cargo ship with a base speed of 15 kn that still isn't going to help you with your problem. As soon as it is carrying 10,000 tons it will no longer be a 15 kn ship and will subject to all the buggery you don't like. Cargo ships hauling cargo is the crux of the issue not the speed of the said ships. Empty cargo ships can be fast, full ones slow. That isn't just a trade ship issue, it is a ship issue across the board. You go a head and build that speed Connie then fill it up with cargo and see if your Connie doesn't become easy meat then. 

 

None of your suggestions are going to change anything because in the end cargo ships are going to carry cargo therefore always be slow. Now if you suggested that cargo take up no weight well... that is a different topic altogether. 

 

 

 

[Kanay]

A trader lynx fully loaded will have same difficulties to reach high speed as any other ship.

If you read what was said earlier i explained that no trader ship ever sailed empty, they were not designed for this, they carried loads of ballasts to simulate weight if they had to move with no cargo for some reasons, today we can still find in some old ports those accumulations of stones used for hundred of years for this sole purpose, once arrived at port they removed those stones ballasts and replaced with the stuff they had to haul, this is still seen in some countries like in the Arabic Gulf and them traditional transport ships, in game however traders get penalized for speed as soon as they one one single unit in the cargo, they were not working like this no...  traders should start to get a peed penalty when let's say you have reached half cargo limit, not before and overall speed penalty when fully loaded should not be great as it is now, keeping it proportional to what is now but starting only once half cargo is reached.

 

Edited June 21, 2017 by Kanay

[surfimp]

4 hours ago, Kanay said:

I see things did not changed in this game, those who like a false pretense of pvp against defenseless ships are still finding all possible excuses so the traders ships remain easy meat... Does no surprise me to see traders ships nerfed to abysses after my come back ...

First of all, when I cap a player's trader, it's absolutely PVP. I am taking that person's stuff by force and making them have to replace their losses. It's possibly even more costly for them than had I sank one of their warships.

Secondly, I have been humiliated many times by player traders while trying to capture them. I have gotten better with practice but I never consider a capture guaranteed until after it's done. Especially now that traders can carry a full complement of cannons, they are far from defenseless and many fight quite well.

Lastly, this is intended as an age of sail game and it includes the possibility of privateering and actual piracy, two things that were quite common during this historical period. In addition to my hunting activities, like many players I also perform crafting and trading (as a solo player I pretty much have to). Meaning that "the shoe is on the other foot" for me quite often (especially when returning to my outpost with prize ship in fleet). I feel like this is fair and I welcome being put at risk in the same way that I put others at risk. It heightens my appreciation of the game and all that it can offer.

So, what is it you want? To have risk free trading? What is the point of that? Just to watch a number increase? To flood the market with huge numbers of ships and drive the economy to ruin? The predators need the prey to survive, but the prey also need the predators to help keep inflation in check... it goes both ways.

[Captain Lust]

2 hours ago, Sansón Carrasco said:

So, what is it you want? To have risk free trading?

Pretty much this. High speed traders, some of which almost impossible to catch even when fully loaded ( looking at you warpdrive LGV ), were retarded and it's much better now, even tho it might still need some tweaking.

[Kanay]

Sorry but you won't bring a tear on my eyes when a warship fully gunned and crewed is able to do almost 10kn more speed in OW compared to a trader not even loaded at 2/3... Pop out in OW and catch it in a blink, then ruin his sails in a single broadside from his superior firepower ... let's not forget his superior number of knowledge slots too...

With the new ridiculous speedboats OW speeds and the still small draw distance for ships poping out a guy blink his eyes and click on a ship just displayed to have his identity and he already have a ship running at 30Kn+ in OW chasing his poor trader not even fully loaded but already being a whale.

Yup, not even starting to get my eyes wet about the poor fate of warships vs traders... It's just ridiculous how it became now...
 

[Hodo]

1 hour ago, Kanay said:

Sorry but you won't bring a tear on my eyes when a warship fully gunned and crewed is able to do almost 10kn more speed in OW compared to a trader not even loaded at 2/3... Pop out in OW and catch it in a blink, then ruin his sails in a single broadside from his superior firepower ... let's not forget his superior number of knowledge slots too...

With the new ridiculous speedboats OW speeds and the still small draw distance for ships poping out a guy blink his eyes and click on a ship just displayed to have his identity and he already have a ship running at 30Kn+ in OW chasing his poor trader not even fully loaded but already being a whale.

Yup, not even starting to get my eyes wet about the poor fate of warships vs traders... It's just ridiculous how it became now...
 

Last night I capped a overloaded Trader brig, he had 1750.6 on his ship, He was moving 11knts in battle at 90deg to the wind.  I was in my Lynx and I had a HELL of time keeping up with him till I brought his sails down to 60% and he started turning towards a big square fort nearby trying to force me into range.   I only managed to capture him JUST as we were getting into range.  He sailed really well for an overloaded ship.