Patch 13: Variability in port battles, epic events, swivel guns

[Salty Dog.]

6 minutes ago, Peter Goldman said:

Tried Epic Event and:

1. Enemy AI spawn in 2 lines. Players spawn in 2 horizontal lines (1 ship behind actually the front line). It is total bs in my opinion, if you make AI spawn in 2 smooth lines, players should be spawned the same way, not in some clusterhello kitty. 

2. Weird collision with 1st rates often leads to boarding. My ship goes 7-8 knots and while colliding side by side with other, speed very often drops to 0-3 knots and then often jumps back instantly to 7-8 knots. Very often during that slowdown period players get boarded. I got boarded by slightly colliding side by side with enemy 1st rate, but thanks God during boarding my speed went back to 6 knots magically and boarding was disrupted.

3. AI ramming. AI is very often ramming players, its scripts to avoid collisions are not working properly. In fact, I see often AI ramming AI etc. This needs to be improved, otherwise we can as well add battering ram to the ships:

 

4. Epic Events had always one issue, they spawn after maintenance and then it is harder to find them for players that play later. They should spawn randomly during the server live time giving equal chances for everyone.

5. AI ships are always ready for boarding. This is not really connected to Epic Events comment, but for instance, the player turning on the boarding, you can hear the whistles. During boarding preparation crew loss is huge. For a 1st rate it takes a very long time to get that preparation up. For me that is a big magic what AI does with boarding and means almost always instant-death to get boarded unless you are 100% boarding fitted.

 

Rewards: They are good. Worth the risk to try Epic Events that are very hard.

Overall I like the new Epic Events as a great challenge, but it needs a lot of tuning and fixing.

 

Did one Epic event last night.... While I didn't see any colliding, all the slow players mixed with faster AI did keep us on our toes.  This is what I observed.  We only took 5 ships vs the 9.  

1.  The enemy ships started in two lines, then immediately turned down wind. 

2.  The enemy ships are much faster and seem to have a high penetration rate they seem to also have more side armor.

3.  It seemed like the enemy ships would try to protect damaged sides.  

4.  Our first and the last ship (me) took a massive amount of damage following a upwind initial pass and wearing immediately for a second pass.   Using focused fire, the first AI ship went down on first pass. 

5.  It appeared the AI would make a fast run turn through our group and quickly sail out of range.   The AI were tacking like cutters and easily 3-4 knots faster.  The AI easily out turns players.

What we learned:

1.  Bring lots of repairs.

2.  Groups DO need to fight as a team.  A "free for all" is not going to work.

3.  Overall it was a lot of fun.  Good rewards.  Good fight.  

4.  Our fight took about 1 hour.

5.  We were able to do it with 5 but the fight did turn really dicy after the initial passes.   We ended up in a running (kiting) fight while we repaired two ships the took heavy damage in the initial pass..  I was using urgent, crew and hull repairs as soon as available for the full fight.

 

Overall, my first impressions: I thought the epic event was great and a good challenge.  You need to bring a experienced team that work well together.  It appears to me the ships behave better than normal AI but that may be because they are faster and more maneuverable than our ships were. 

[Barberouge]

On 30/10/2017 at 2:11 PM, Peter Goldman said:

Sure they will. George's Town, Ragged Cay and few other shallow Bahamas ports can dock deep water ships.

@admin is it intended? Why these ports have a shallow status? I do believe there should be way more shallows around Bahamas, it is the only place we can have maximum fun with shallows ships, yet players use 4th rates for grinding them. Same other shallow ports. Pyrates would love more shallows in Bahamas 

I think those ports were set as shallow because their access wasn't easy with deep vessels. Setting them as deep could require to clean the access (heightmap modifications removing shallows). Keeping them as shallow could require to block the access (heightmap modifications adding shallows).

But those ports will be looked at, and there was already a topic about it:

 

[Quineloe]

I am not quite sure where the 10k or 13k figures from the trafalgar request from @adminare coming from, because I'm getting 15.650 BR for the British Lineships and 750 BR for the attached non-lineships. (assuming 170 BR for the 18pd Frigates, 400 for the 74s since I checked five of them and they were all listed with 32pd cannons, so clearly Bellona BR and not 3rd rate BR) and 500 BR for the sub 100 gun second rates

The Franco-Spanish fleet hits 14.250 BR from Lineships and 1.020 BR attached for Frigates and unrated ships.

[pietjenoob]

28 minutes ago, Quineloe said:

I am not quite sure where the 10k or 13k figures from the trafalgar request from @adminare coming from, because I'm getting 15.650 BR for the British Lineships and 750 BR for the attached non-lineships. (assuming 170 BR for the 18pd Frigates, 400 for the 74s since I checked five of them and they were all listed with 32pd cannons, so clearly Bellona BR and not 3rd rate BR) and 500 BR for the sub 100 gun second rates

The Franco-Spanish fleet hits 14.250 BR from Lineships and 1.020 BR attached for Frigates and unrated ships.

I did not use the ships caliber to determin the br, since gun caliber is not a good comperisan tool, only broadside and gun amount, also used halfway br since there no good comperateble ship, but I did it quit fast so i need to get over the figures as soon i am done with the Franco spanish line up. 

Because 32 pdr can be on both a 64 gun ship up to a 136 gunner for example and also not that the ships in the british fleet tend to have a mixed loadout of meds, longs and carros and for the Franco spanish even howitsers

So there can be indeed some difference in BR per person because of personel preference or idea. 

Edited October 31, 2017 by pietjenoob

[DerExcler]

2 hours ago, CoolBreeze66 said:

Hey Salty I figured it out, but thanks for your help.  I mean that really.  Thanks it has to do with crafting level.  My Bad!

thats what i say to u in pm

[Quineloe]

47 minutes ago, pietjenoob said:

I did not use the ships caliber to determin the br, since gun caliber is not a good comperisan tool,

 

So how else would you distinguish between the 380 BR third rate and the 400 BR Bellona when you have to assign BR to a 74-gun ship in Trafalgar?

[Corona Lisa]

4 hours ago, Malachy said:

The Russians recently lost a huge port battle force in the os to a mixed group of nations, ship types and groups. In fact, each group worked independantly because half the pirates there hated each other, and the Danes and swedes weren't too friendly with each other or pirates either. So stop being lazy and learn how to do it.

Do you mean this battle where most pirates sank and you didnt even had a kill participation?

Quote

So stop being lazy and learn how to do it.

 

[pietjenoob]

57 minutes ago, Quineloe said:

So how else would you distinguish between the 380 BR third rate and the 400 BR Bellona when you have to assign BR to a 74-gun ship in Trafalgar?

By calculating the broadside weight of a ship by simply clicking on it the british 74 gunners have 4 or 5 different gun loadouts so give them all the same caliber would be like giving every Volkswagen golf the same engine and stuff so a lot of manually work. So i do too if required an heavy 3rd br so one that does not exist in game atm

Edited October 31, 2017 by pietjenoob

[Quineloe]

So you actually don't use the BR of ships we have in the game?

[pietjenoob]

Not quite since some ship loadouts are missing ingame. For example 36 *24 or 36* 18 on 74 of the middle and lower decks

Edited October 31, 2017 by pietjenoob

[jodgi]

2 hours ago, Peter Goldman said:

This is mostly HDD/SSD thing

Memory plays into this too, went from 8 to 16gig - it mattered.

[Farrago]

Yes, I'm sure certain port battle br limits will need to be adjusted and ship BR needs to be reviewed but I really hope @admin and his team gives this particular change some time for folks to fool around with fleet makeup before more changes. It gives us new ideas and possibilities to explore in doing port battles but we may not necessarily discover them in one week of testing.

[King of Crowns]

11 hours ago, sveno said:

Im trying to withold with a judgement until we had some more PB's - i am tho a bit sceptical.

We need ship BR fixed and port limits reviewed.

What i can tell you from now is:
- It is an organisational nightmare to get the right guys into the right ships.
- It leads to a very non-inclusive PB crowd, where you before easily could intergrate and school new guys, is now very hard and risky.
- RvR minded people need a gazillion of ships ready to be "in the gang" at all times, due to many different limits on ports.
- Not very well organized countries are without any chance of success, i think what the devs wanted was the opposite?

Not only it has become more complicated to do RvR, you even need more guys now, because you need to ensure that your puny little PB fleet is not eaten by a 1st rate screening as snack by bringing your own counter-Screening.

I have to give redii right that it is a bit putting us off that PB get downgraded from the awesomness of stricly led trafalgar style linebattles to a back ally brawl fight. Portbattles is for what we (sure redii and me) play the game for, for those 90 minutes pure excitment. First Impression was somewhat not that positive.

This is not a final statement and we shall test further.

i totally disagree. this makes port battle organization easy. because we don't have to 25vs25 any more. the days of herding cats are over and now port battles can be more accessible o smaller clans. 

[RaimundoJoe]

I think this is a good way to control an expansion. Take the swedes for ex.  Most of their expansion is due to a group of 25 experienced players that bully everybody in possesion of something wort while. With this layout those 25 players will have to get very bussy defending all those possesions. For once the devs reacted before players start to leave. tks.

[Malachy]

6 hours ago, Peter Goldman said:

Yea, I sank and I captured 2 1st rates. Sounds like a good deal for a Bellona? Vile captured another 1st rate. He would capture a 4th 1st rate but Swedes ON PURPOSE rammed him off during the boarding and interrupted it what could be considered as intentional green on green. It's hard to get assist when 50% of the ships get captured and not sank.

@Jon Snow lets go I did over 1200 sail damage and 1100 raked crew off those 1st rates which my group leader had asked me to do, I'll take it.it brought us a win. Was gonna board a first rate but vile got it first.so yeah Aloha walked away with 3 or 4 first rates in that battle in exchange for one bellona. Rest of us made it out despite the fact we were in 3 and 4th rate and not cooperating with anyone else for the most part. In fact the reason I didn't get my board was some swede first rate pushed me out of position trying to get a sink and vile had to get in there instead.

Edited November 1, 2017 by Malachy

[Celtiberofrog]

I agree this new BR-PB system should be tested further, but

What would be necessary at the soonest is to adjust hostility:

- a 1700BR port should be grinded with a 1700BR MAX fleet (Does it mean heavy rework of AI's fleets ? there could be random different combination of 1700BR AI's fleets)

- One hostility mission should get 50% of the grind, not 25% as today, so easier PB setting that might increase server activity.

 

As a result, players will get used faster to adapt fleets to BR levels as well as testing combinations.

 

Why do we still have 10 Mercuries, 10 Agamemnons or 10 Victories ? while the ports do not even show anymore their class (4th or 1rst rate) as before.

Only Shallow port are remarkable and they should be grinded exclusively by shallow fleets.

Edited October 31, 2017 by Celtiberofrog

[Teutonic]

This patch has been really nice so far and really enjoying it.

Can we expect foreign clan alliances soon @admin? That would be the final icing on the cake for a beautiful finish

[The Geth]

1 hour ago, Intrepido said:

Unfortunately it seems that we wont get alliances back. 

It is a pitty because it could open new oportunities for all nations.

 

 

Developer confirmation? I'm rather new here, but I'd really hoped that international diplomacy would be a thing. There must be a way to make it work, without it devolving into some sort of massive seal-clubbing match.

[Cmdr RideZ]

1700BR for Deep water is not bad really.  1750BR = 7x 4th rate.  You need a clan of 21 to have 7 players online at the same time for daily port battles.  Maybe current players are very active and got used to run 25 man port battles.  I would not see HC players as a standard here.  Even smaller battles than 1700BR might be something casuals look after.

Raids may bring some interesting scenarios that affect to BR limits.

[Quineloe]

12 hours ago, AxIslander said:

I think this is a good way to control an expansion. Take the swedes for ex.  Most of their expansion is due to a group of 25 experienced players that bully everybody in possesion of something wort while. With this layout those 25 players will have to get very bussy defending all those possesions. For once the devs reacted before players start to leave. tks.

1. This isn't the place for your national news hate speeches.

2. Your definition of "A group" is funny. Sweden has one of the most heterogenic RVR battle fleets.  Just the 15 players last night that fought at Port de Paix came from no less than EIGHT different clans.  They faced half the number of clans in that fight (EDR, PODW, RUBLI and Goldman inc.) I think you're just envious because the atmosphere in your nation is so toxic, every clan gets along at best with two other clans and hates everyone else, and it's completely unthinkable your whole nation would work together. But you love blaming the swedes for this, as always.  If you honestly believe it's the same 25 players over and over, then you're just dead wrong.

3. I guess you're British, since you're not Cornelis Tromp and I see no other reason why you would target the second largest (instead of the largest nation, the British) with your incorrect rant
Sweden 43 ports
Britain 57 ports....

At least your user name (slander) checks out.

Edited November 1, 2017 by Quineloe

[Quineloe]

14 hours ago, Intrepido said:

600BR * 25: 15000BR for a fleet full of first rates.

I think more than 12000BR is not needed and will still provide a non monofleet for some singular ports.

Very important capitals of the caribbean could have this BR while all the others capitals of regions have 8500 and 6800.

5100 and 3400 for the rest of deep water ports.

And 1400 for all the shallow water ports.

 

12000 / 25 = 480.

Monofleet 25x Bucentaure.

[louis van boxtel]

When is the new ui coming? @admin @Ink

[Quineloe]

Number of ships wins because of the circles mechanic

[admin]

28 minutes ago, Quineloe said:

Number of ships wins because of the circles mechanic

we are still waiting for 25 lynxes to win against a heavy mixed fleet.

[Quineloe]

1 minute ago, admin said:

we are still waiting for 25 lynxes to win against a heavy mixed fleet.

That's funny, which port has a BR limit of 750?