Everything used in Battle Should be Limited

[GrubbyZebra]

Just like cannons are assigned to slots on the ship in set numbers, so should gunpowder; round, grape, and chain shot; and repairs. Add another set of slots for "ships stores" and have gunner's stores, carpenter's stores, boatswain's stores, and Surgeon's Stores.

Gunner's stores (4 slots): 

• gunpowder (all crafted consumables: regular, basic weighted, almeria, guacata, almeria superior, or guacata superior)
• round shot
• chain shot
• grape shot

Carpenter's Stores (1 slot):

• Hull Repairs

Boatswain's Stores (1 slot):

• Rig Repairs

Surgeon's Stores (1 slot): 

• Rum

So just like we assign repairs currently, the gunner's stores would also be assigned. Having them in slots (and not the hold) would allow them to be transported using tow permits (like cannons can be now). 

The gunpowder slot makes Sulphur and Saltpeter mines relevant again, and also does away with the gunpowder permanent upgrades by making them just another commodity.

The Gunner's stores put limits on gunpowder and ammunition would drastically reduce the demast/desail meta as it would become impractical to waste all your ammunition on ship masts.

Limited ammunition also makes limiting repair effectiveness to more believable levels less unbalancing (since it no longer becomes simply a game of exhaust the other person's repair capacity and then you win).

Having limited shot also means double shot/double charge could be removed as a perk (in other words, always available), providing more control to the captain and also provides more variability in battle. 

 

 

  

[William Death]

1 hour ago, Coraline Vodka said:

while the idea makes sense, its already annoying enough to have 3 seperate consumables to equip a ship.

Agreed. Adding too many consumables will just make gameplay more tedious than it already is.

I personally preferred the old system of 1 sail repair and 1 hull repair per battle, using repair kits bought from any port that were stored in your ship (I'm referring to the old system where you filled up your ships "gas tank" of repairs; this was seen in port on the main screen, right in the center: "repairs: 25/27"). 

 

About limited shot (round shot, at least): to my knowledge, there are very few historical records of ships running out of shot in battles. I'm sure it happened a few times, and probably came close to running out on various occasions, but it is important to remember that these ships carried thousands of cannonballs and would, of course, feel no remorse in taking a few hundred appropriate-sized cannonballs from captured prizes before sending them away.

 

One similar idea to yours which I've heard and do like is the following:

• unlimited round shot: admiralty provides it to you
• chain shot limited to 4 shots per gun
• grapeshot limited to 4 shots per gun
• double charge/double shot follows the same system that we currently have.
• optional 1-point captain perk that allows you to have 7 shots of chain/grape per gun

 

I like your suggestion (with a few adjustments) regarding guacata gunpowder and almeria gunpowder. I'm just not sure of the best way it could be implemented. If it is made super-rare, then it will become just as broken as bidding for cartagena tar. If it is made easily available for little cost, then it will be the only gunpowder used. If it is limited by shots per battle & automatically refills after every battle then we basically have double-charge v2.0. It could, maybe, be limited in the following way:

• Regular gunpowder is provided to all captains at no cost by their admiratly
• All types of special/superior powders are available from the admiralty for combat marks
• A keg of special gunpowder (+3.5% pen) is enough for 50 shots (I made that number up but it would seem ok)
• A keg of special gunpowder costs 15 combat marks
• A keg of superior gunpowder (+6% pen) is enough for 50 shots
• A keg of superior gunpowder costs 30 combat marks

You would have a new box in the ship UI in port where you can drag and drop kegs of gunpowder. They don't add weight or slow you down since your ship is going to carry gunpowder anyways. Their "negatives to prevent everyone just using the good powder" are the high cost and instant-loss if you sink (unless a player loots your ship and takes the gunpowder). Combat marks are plentiful, sure. You can get loads of them from doing missions, but 50 shots per keg is one first-rate broadside: you'll shoot through 30-100+ marks in a single battle if you only use the special gunpowders. It will be impractical to only use the special gunpowders, even with frigates, since you will shoot more combat marks out of your cannons than you will gain from sinking the enemy.

Ideally, you'd use your special or superior gunpowder to double-charge your guns with, at least until you ran out of the regular powder, or used all the double-charge the perk allows. Maybe have it in the UI as a toggle function with a gauge showing how much powder you have left, so you know when to use the free regular powder, and when to use the good stuff.

Furthermore, it would be great to select what decks to use the special powder on. On a first rate, I'd only want my lower and middle gundecks to be loaded with special powder. The upper gundeck and quarterdeck guns can be charged with regular powder, since the 12pdrs and 42pd carronades are practically useless, at all but ideal angles, even with pen mods.

 

[GrubbyZebra]

2 hours ago, Coraline Vodka said:

while the idea makes sense, its already annoying enough to have 3 seperate consumables to equip a ship.

19 minutes ago, William Death said:

Agreed. Adding too many consumables will just make gameplay more tedious than it already is.

I personally preferred the old system of 1 sail repair and 1 hull repair per battle, using repair kits bought from any port that were stored in your ship (I'm referring to the old system where you filled up your ships "gas tank" of repairs; this was seen in port on the main screen, right in the center: "repairs: 25/27"). 

 

About limited shot (round shot, at least): to my knowledge, there are very few historical records of ships running out of shot in battles. I'm sure it happened a few times, and probably came close to running out on various occasions, but it is important to remember that these ships carried thousands of cannonballs and would, of course, feel no remorse in taking a few hundred appropriate-sized cannonballs from captured prizes before sending them away.

 

One similar idea to yours which I've heard and do like is the following:

• unlimited round shot: admiralty provides it to you
• chain shot limited to 4 shots per gun
• grapeshot limited to 4 shots per gun
• double charge/double shot follows the same system that we currently have.
• optional 1-point captain perk that allows you to have 7 shots of chain/grape per gun

 

I like your suggestion (with a few adjustments) regarding guacata gunpowder and almeria gunpowder. I'm just not sure of the best way it could be implemented. If it is made super-rare, then it will become just as broken as bidding for cartagena tar. If it is made easily available for little cost, then it will be the only gunpowder used. If it is limited by shots per battle & automatically refills after every battle then we basically have double-charge v2.0. It could, maybe, be limited in the following way:

• Regular gunpowder is provided to all captains at no cost by their admiratly
• All types of special/superior powders are available from the admiralty for combat marks
• A keg of special gunpowder (+3.5% pen) is enough for 50 shots (I made that number up but it would seem ok)
• A keg of special gunpowder costs 15 combat marks
• A keg of superior gunpowder (+6% pen) is enough for 50 shots
• A keg of superior gunpowder costs 30 combat marks

You would have a new box in the ship UI in port where you can drag and drop kegs of gunpowder. They don't add weight or slow you down since your ship is going to carry gunpowder anyways. Their "negatives to prevent everyone just using the good powder" are the high cost and instant-loss if you sink (unless a player loots your ship and takes the gunpowder). Combat marks are plentiful, sure. You can get loads of them from doing missions, but 50 shots per keg is one first-rate broadside: you'll shoot through 30-100+ marks in a single battle if you only use the special gunpowders. It will be impractical to only use the special gunpowders, even with frigates, since you will shoot more combat marks out of your cannons than you will gain from sinking the enemy.

Ideally, you'd use your special or superior gunpowder to double-charge your guns with, at least until you ran out of the regular powder, or used all the double-charge the perk allows. Maybe have it in the UI as a toggle function with a gauge showing how much powder you have left, so you know when to use the free regular powder, and when to use the good stuff.

Furthermore, it would be great to select what decks to use the special powder on. On a first rate, I'd only want my lower and middle gundecks to be loaded with special powder. The upper gundeck and quarterdeck guns can be charged with regular powder, since the 12pdrs and 42pd carronades are practically useless, at all but ideal angles, even with pen mods.

 

I was worried about "equipping" stores being tedious as well. Maybe, instead of having it be something equipped each trip, it works like provisions and is something that is part of the crafting resources required to build the ship? It means custom load-outs would not be possible (but also would negate needing to redo the double shot/double charge perk, although I don't really like those being perks), but makes it significantly simpler to deal with routinely.  As for quantities, I've seen mention that HMS Victory carried 27 tonnes of ammunition (I assume this is just shot), which works out to about 30 shots per gun (less for the 2 68 pd carronades). I've also heard 40 shots per gun in various non-sourced accounts as well. Something in this neighborhood might not be unreasonable in the game either (of course, double shot must deduct from this number and not a separate reserve). Chain and grape would obviously be more restricted (maybe 10 per gun)?

Would sort of be nice to see a similar implementation to the other stores as well (repairs), but I also like the "gas tank" approach you mention. Comparing the two are kind of a wash to me from a usage PoV, but the latter is preferred from a trader/crafting PoV (as it means more trade volume). 

I really like the idea for implementing the special gunpowders. Much less cumbersome than what I had proposed, and fits better with their "special" nature and the marks economy that exists in game. 

As for selecting guns decks and loads, absolutely. This should have been in game long ago.

Edited January 21, 2018 by BPHick

[GrubbyZebra]

If you want an extreme case of why ammo should be limited:

Losing a Victory to a Basic Cutter. and yes, it happens.

[Bristol Fashion]

I really like the ideas here and couldn't agree more with wanting limited ammunition (maybe people won't fire 15 broadsides at max range looking for dismast anymore).

I worry though, that what others said is true, people will find it tedious given the current state of the game. Ships get blown through pretty quickly in the PvP community because everyone is always at war and the whole game revolves around trying to get people to PvP.

I think the limited ammo/special powders would be great, but not accepted by the majority until core game play changes (if it does). I think NA would benefit from more adventure driven gameplay where you are sailing around doing different tasks and exploring with occasional battles. It would be fun to have to plan your journey and factor in where you would be able to stop in to purchase more shot and powder as well as provisions for your crew. All out war between nations would be more rare. Anyways you get the point. With the speed ships are rolled out and lost, having to provision them with consumables many people will find tedious.

[Capt Jubal Early]

-1 For the love of god no.

As much as I love realism there needs to be some serious work to the crafting menu before i'd be on board for such a change.
A cascading craft system where you just go I want to make this ship. I have all the raw resources. Hit a button it makes the rest. If that existed I'd consider adding more craftables to the game and logistics such as this.

Equally just creating a limited stores without needing to craft all the bollocks would be fine. Ships have X amount of ammo during each battle but in reality I doubt they'll do it its to much of a turn off for new players to want to manage all that stuff.

[jodgi]

No

[Liq]

9 hours ago, BPHick said:

If you want an extreme case of why ammo should be limited:

Losing a Victory to a Basic Cutter. and yes, it happens.

First of a basic cutter cant even tag anything nor join any pvp battles

However if the vic tagged the cutter for whatever reason and is a bad enough captain, the hardcap of unkillable crew is 10%. Eg. 85 crew on a vic. If the cutter somehow managed to not lose any crew and push the vic into wind (I wanna see that), he would still be at 40 v 85 crew best case scenario. Deck difference and having 1/2 the crew will smack him in 1 turn

But yeah cutter would get stomped by a single broadsides or probably demasted by the vics chasers lol

[Wojtek]

3 hours ago, Toto Cabbage said:

No

 

[GrubbyZebra]

8 hours ago, Capt Jubal Early said:

-1 For the love of god no.

As much as I love realism there needs to be some serious work to the crafting menu before i'd be on board for such a change.
A cascading craft system where you just go I want to make this ship. I have all the raw resources. Hit a button it makes the rest. If that existed I'd consider adding more craftables to the game and logistics such as this.

Equally just creating a limited stores without needing to craft all the bollocks would be fine. Ships have X amount of ammo during each battle but in reality I doubt they'll do it its to much of a turn off for new players to want to manage all that stuff.

As discussed earlier, it would be akin to provisions, something that would be set when the ship was crafted and not a consumable.

But I also agree the clickfest of crafting ships needs to be addressed yesterday. It would be one thing if the shipbuilder could get all those parts from a ship-part crafter. But there is simply not enough players nor enough incentive for players to have the intermediate role filled. Every craftable item should be 1-click to craft, provided you have the materials for all the component parts or already have the component parts. And craft XP should be given for everything crafted, not just ships and to a far less extent, ship parts.

Edited February 9, 2018 by BPHick

[GrubbyZebra]

6 hours ago, Liq said:

First of a basic cutter cant even tag anything nor join any pvp battles

However if the vic tagged the cutter for whatever reason and is a bad enough captain, the hardcap of unkillable crew is 10%. Eg. 85 crew on a vic. If the cutter somehow managed to not lose any crew and push the vic into wind (I wanna see that), he would still be at 40 v 85 crew best case scenario. Deck difference and having 1/2 the crew will smack him in 1 turn

But yeah cutter would get stomped by a single broadsides or probably demasted by the vics chasers lol

There are other ways to end up in a pvp with a basic cutter, but I digress.

Consider this:

A victory has a turn speed of ~2.1, a basic cutter has a turn speed of ~7.2. So staying behind a vic in a BC is entirely doable (I've had slower turning ships than a BC stern camp faster turning ships than a Vic in my own experience).

A victory stern armour thickness was 32cm before the readjustments (I haven't look since) and had 920 HP of Health. The Victory's structure was 4600 HP.

A basic cutter, equipped with 6 pdr mediums, has a base damage of 480 per broadside and can penetrate >40cm of armour out to 500m (so no boarding danger here). It reloads with no mods every 35 seconds.

Assuming 60% hit rate, and pen on 40% of shots hit, the cutter would deliver ~115 HP of damage to the stern of the Victory each broadside. It would take 8 broadsides to fully reduce the stern armour on the Victory, which is just under 15 min of firing time (I've estimated 1.7 min per broadside due to maneuvering).

In another 40 broadsides (at our previous 1.7 min per broadside, this is less than 70 min), the victory no longer has any hull structure and sinks. No boarding required, so crew numbers don't matter. And a skilled cutter driver could stay clear of the two stern chasers rather easily (again, not hard to do on far more maneuverable ships).

So tell me again how it wouldn't be possible?

Here's the thing, why should a cutter be able to carry enough powder and shot for 50 or more broadsides, not to mention chain, ball, stores, and provisions?

Not to mention the other gamey as hell tactics that people undertake because there is little incentive to use shots wisely (60 broadsides of chain or ball into rigging, full broadsides lobbed at extreme range just in case you hit something, etc). 
 

Edited February 9, 2018 by BPHick

[Liq]

8 minutes ago, BPHick said:

In another 40 broadsides (at our previous 1.7 min per broadside, this is less than 70 min), the victory no longer has any hull structure and sinks. No boarding required, so crew numbers don't matter. And a skilled cutter driver could stay clear of the two stern chasers rather easily (again, not hard to do on far more maneuverable ships).

So tell me again how it wouldn't be possible?

you cant take out all structure by raking, let alone 6 pdr doing any damage to a 1st rates structure

[maturin]

32 minutes ago, Liq said:

you cant take out all structure by raking, let alone 6 pdr doing any damage to a 1st rates structure

You can by stern raking and then bow raking, although that's not terribly practical.

[Liq]

12 minutes ago, maturin said:

You can by stern raking and then bow raking, although that's not terribly practical.

I want to test that ingame, doubt  its doable to sink a similar ship simply by bow and stern raking

on the testbed server it was doable but got fixed when it was reported

[maturin]

1 minute ago, Liq said:

I want to test that ingame, doubt  its doable to sink a similar ship simply by bow and stern raking

on the testbed server it was doable but got fixed when it was reported

I was trying to test dismast by raking, and accidentally got my fleet LGV to like 5% structure. 42-pounders on a Buc, but that shouldn't matter.

[H2O]

We have many suggestions on this forum that would work nice with limited ammo. 

[blubasso]

11 hours ago, rediii said:

I doubt that one lol.

All the vic has to do is to get shot down and use rum when in boarding. Or just kill the basic cutter with chasers sailing downwind.

The real problem is people that have no clue how to sail are sailing the biggest ships

That's because IMO ppl raise ranks too fast...

[Barbancourt]

2 hours ago, blubasso said:

That's because IMO ppl raise ranks too fast...

Rank doesn't mean anything.  It's just a time sink.  If there was more of an achievement system to gaining ranks many of us would be stuck in 6th Rates forever, getting clubbed by gangs of Endymions, and would quit the game due to not being able to advance to trying out the next shiny toy. 

[blubasso]

9 minutes ago, rediii said:

No thats not the issue.

Doesnt matter for many if they have to pve 100 hours or pve 200 hours. 

Very sorry if I insist, but with this system ppl jump in a big ship, not knowing how to sail and how to shoot (your words, and I completely agree with you). It's like you give me a very fine, sharp and balanced sword, give me 1/2 hour fencing lesson then promote me as a swordsman and send me in a battle, against pro fencers.

Edited February 9, 2018 by blubasso

[samba_liten]

I'd say yes to this idea, but then I quite enjoy the involved crafting system as well.

[Blackjack Morgan]

I started a giant bonfire and tossed this idea and the OP in it......

[Tomasso il Fortunato]

NO! Big ships will lose in front of the small one or the small one who can carry a small amount of balls won't be able to take a Gros Ventre .

[jodgi]

1 hour ago, Blackjack Morgan said:

I started a giant bonfire and tossed this idea and the OP in it......

Oh, my! Harsh.

[GrubbyZebra]

21 hours ago, CaptainSparckles said:

NO! Big ships will lose in front of the small one or the small one who can carry a small amount of balls won't be able to take a Gros Ventre .

huh? 

If you read closely, it really won't have an effect other than to tone down the shooting at masts and sails with reckless abandon since there won't be unlimited ammo to do that with anymore. at 30-40 broadsides worth of round shot per gun, you would have more than enough to sink via hull hits.

[Cmdr RideZ]

On 1/21/2018 at 1:40 AM, BPHick said:

Limited ammunition also makes limiting repair effectiveness to more believable levels less unbalancing (since it no longer becomes simply a game of exhaust the other person's repair capacity and then you win).

The reason why we need so many repair kits is because we have so high damage.

We want weak masts that ends the game, if we dont have repair kits.

We want high stern damage that ends the game, if we dont have rum.

...

Now we call this bubblegum fix as a "skill".  Even though it is pretty clear that games that don't have healing potions are in general more skill based than games that have.