Patch 16: Control, Mast and Ship strengths rebalance.

[SKurj]

Solo 3rd rate missions also spawn 2nd rate pavel sometimes, they were a challenge (for me in bellona) before when the pavel appeared a in mission and sometimes I would have to run.  Since the recent thickness changes much easier to take down the pavel.

 

And the last one i did I demasted the pavel shooting through the stern windows...  (just the rear mast from the base)

Edited February 8, 2018 by SKurj

[jodgi]

21 minutes ago, SKurj said:

And the last one i did I demasted the pavel shooting through the stern windows...  (just the rear mast from the base)

Did it happen pretty much right before the ship would be sinking anyway, or earlier?

[Fletch]

8 hours ago, victor said:

Not really, since the pursuer has bow chasers that can lower your sails, while you have no stern cannons and cannot do the same, yet the control perk keeps you engaged in the combat.

You need to do something about that like turn round and shoot him. This perk will also keep friendly ships in witch is a good thing, it stops people escaping badly damaged. In short it can be detrimental to both sides as well. If the pursuer has bow chasers then he dose not have the perk free

Edited February 8, 2018 by Fletch67

[SKurj]

1 hour ago, jodgi said:

Did it happen pretty much right before the ship would be sinking anyway, or earlier?

It was pretty late in the battle yes

[maturin]

4 hours ago, Wraith said:

I believe they do, since the introduction of internal structure. This is evidenced by being able to demast people by raking through the stern or bow which you've been able to do since the test bed and being patched into the main game.

The message in Mega Patch 10.0 was cryptic, but internal structure "affects the integrity of the masts," so I guess it's unclear as to whether there are actual hit boxes there that are tracked per mast or not... I guess we'd need more info from @admin.

 

Back when the structure patch was added, hurting structure was practically guaranteed to dismast a ship when a certain threshold was reached. Guns would go down as well, even when it was clear that you weren't landing hits on the carriage hitboxes.

Which tells me that it was a statistically-based damage system, with no apparent input from hitboxes.

If the hitboxes were actually extended, I would have expected the devs to (rightly) brag about it.

Quote

You can shoot just behind the anchor on the conny and demast it that way.  Same with some other ships if you aim for the hull area where the mast is you can do the same.  It's been like this for a while.

But I will go and try to test this on an unlucky fleet ship now.

 

[Bristol Fashion]

1 hour ago, jodgi said:

Did it happen pretty much right before the ship would be sinking anyway, or earlier?

I have demasted other players in PvP whose ships still had over 50% armor on both sides and between 80 and 90% structure, by raking the stern (through the gallery as I was going for cannons and crew at the time).

[Holm Hansen]

5 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

And no your not reporting a problem, your whiney about a feature that is working as it's intented to....>>>FLEET MISSIONS<<< are meant to be done with a FLEET.  Hint the name of it.  

...

Sorry, but you are wrong here. It is in no other missions the case that you encounter higher rated opponents, only in 3rd rate missions.  From that i conclude, that it is not intended.

And if it is not enough for you as a confirmation, with a bit of bad luck even in a 3rd rate single mission you can have a pavel as opponent.

[Barbancourt]

Why not just add the bow and stern guns already, instead of this wonky "control" thing? 

[maturin]

5 minutes ago, Barbancourt (rownd) said:

Why not just add the bow and stern guns already, instead of this wonky "control" thing? 

You've got it all backwards. Tagging people with chasers is wonky. It's silly and magical. Control perk is more like a real chase.

Many ships can't mount bow or stern guns.

[maturin]

3 hours ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

You can shoot just behind the anchor on the conny and demast it that way.  Same with some other ships if you aim for the hull area where the mast is you can do the same.  It's been like this for a while.

 

I must be bad at this or something. 100 hits from 24 and 42 pounders. I had to stop when the LGV was in danger of sinking.

Then I switched to shooting at the mast itself, and it went down in only 5 hits.

I'm not doubting your experience, but it isn't set up correctly, and we don't know how it works.

[Bristol Fashion]

23 minutes ago, maturin said:

I must be bad at this or something. 100 hits from 24 and 42 pounders. I had to stop when the LGV was in danger of sinking.

Then I switched to shooting at the mast itself, and it went down in only 5 hits.

I'm not doubting your experience, but it isn't set up correctly, and we don't know how it works.

I can vouch that you can dismast the mizzen via stern rake even if the opponent still has armor/structure. So there must be at least a hit box set up for that. Never seen main or fore be taken down by anything other than direct hits above the hull.

I have, however, heard from one player that he dismasted a fore-mast via bow rake. I've never seen it so I can't verify however it might be true seeing as how stern rakes are capable. Perhaps the devs wanted rakes to be more lethal and so the hit boxes are directional?

Edited February 9, 2018 by Bristol Fashion

[William Death]

42 minutes ago, maturin said:

I must be bad at this or something. 100 hits from 24 and 42 pounders. I had to stop when the LGV was in danger of sinking.

Then I switched to shooting at the mast itself, and it went down in only 5 hits.

I'm not doubting your experience, but it isn't set up correctly, and we don't know how it works.

I've taken mizzenmasts from stern raking, foremasts from bow raking (more rare), and (rarest of all) a mainmast by shooting the side of the ship. Best I can figure with the mainmast and foremast is that once the side is weakened a bit, some of your cannonballs pass all the way through and strike the lower mast. I've had the most luck taking masts off this way against AI Agamemnons or Constitutions. If I remember correctly, there is a gunport on the Agamemnon that lines up perfectly with the foremast when sailing parallel to it. Aim for that. Still, it doesn't happen very consistently.

I can only remember one time that it happened to me. It was a few months ago and I was fighting an AI Agamemnon with my Teak Surprise...I was stern camping the Aga, had just worn ship and was at the perfect angle to "bow tank" the Aga's broadside...I was quite happy to see I bounced nearly every shot it fired, but rather worried when I noticed my foremast fell by the board! A quick sail repair and I was back in business though.

 

 

 

Regarding fleet missions: its called a fleet mission because you are meant to "search and destroy [the] fleet." What would make a player think they could destroy a whole fleet by themself? (Yes, you can do it, I have done it, but that is an exception to the rule, not the rule).  Also, I don't see what the problem is: the AI spawns far away in the mission, you have plenty of time to look at the list of ships in battle and decide if you want to fight it or not. If you don't, simply turn and sail away. Even my 6kn Santi could get away before the AI gets in shooting range . 

I will agree that the 3rd rate fleet missions seem to be bugged: you will often get Pavels in there. While its not impossible to handle them (especially with a group) they really should only spawn in 2nd rate missions. I did do a 3rd rate mission solo the other day in a Third Rate (not the Bellona). The first one was 2x Pavel, 2x 3rd Rate IIRC, I ran from that and went to the next one that I think was 1x Constitution, 1x 3rd Rate, 1x Bellona: easy XP.

Edited February 9, 2018 by William Death

[TommyShelby]

7 hours ago, Banished Privateer said:

Here we got 1v1. Connie demasted me "by accident" after 10 minutes. Imagine player that focuses on demasting for 2-5 minutes. We are back to 0% sails demasting after 5 minutes, right @TommyShelby ???

Well, i'm rusty so my take on this could be wrong. But i always like to look at the numbers, because numbers don't lie. 
And if i were to summarize what i think based on the numbers, it'll be something along these lines; 

5th, 4th and 3rd rates;
Mast HP looks pretty good now. 
Thickness nerf, unwarranted, unneeded and cancels out the HP Buff. (Because demasting can now be done from even further away.) 

2nd and 1st rates;
Mast HP Buff is a bit over the top. Especially on 1st rates. (Just to put it in perspective, the Mid/Top section of a L'Ocean has the same amount of HP as the Bottom Section on a Pavel...)
- I think if 1st rates had about 800-900 Mast HP on bottom sections, that would be more balanced.
Thickness nerf, not needed but because of the huge HP Boost i doubt it will make any difference. 

I imagine the result will be something like; 
In general i think "Super Pro 1337 no scope" Demasters will demast you from even further away now.
 

[Barbancourt]

3 hours ago, maturin said:

You've got it all backwards. Tagging people with chasers is wonky. It's silly and magical. Control perk is more like a real chase.

Many ships can't mount bow or stern guns.

They can mount bow and stern guns if the programmers decide they can.  At least with tagging shots you have to do *something* other than sailing in a straight line waiting.

[King of Crowns]

18 hours ago, admin said:

Captains
Patch has been deployed 

Whats new

• Control perk has been added to all ships with no bow gun ports (no chasers).
• Masts
  • Mast HP rebalance. Mast HP is now based on general ship and rig strength and was generally increased
    • Ocean 1200hp for lower mast sections
    • Cutter has 290 for lower mast section
  • The main idea behind this change is to remove dependence on single shots and to require consistent modest amount of damage to rig to demast the ship. (instead of 7-10 shots for a mast every ship independently of its size and overall strength)
  • Mast Thickness have been slightly reduced to allow more consistent demasting opportunities at close range.
  • Upgrades for mast thickness and mast hp are currently under review
• Hull HP
  • Hull HP rebalanced based on ship dimensions and displacements. Most ships have received slight or medium buffs, some ships have had their HP reduced.
  • Additional hp changes will be applied over the next couple of patches, if necessary.

Other changes

• Fleet attack BR difference slightly reduced to allow a bit large fleets to attack other larger fleets
• Double shot reload slightly improved (time decreased from 43% to 30%)
• Double charge (full charge) reload slightly increased (time increased from 10% to 20%), full charge penetration bonus lowered by 5%
• Long leaf pine yards contracts can now be placed
• Umlauts work now for Prussian ranks
• Light carriages now affect speed
• Fixed the bug allowing splitting the guns into other gundecks

 

how bout giving us a BR ratio. instead of just saying.. that it changed. some details would be nice... 

[Hullabaloo]

Personally I like the control perk idea but think it should apply to all ships though, not just those without chasers. The tagging sails with ball to keep ships in battle, and having to to remember to tag  (and in my case ships disappearing right next to me cos i'm an idiot and forgot) has never felt very satisfactory. You should need to escape from the control range of enemy ships before you are able to leave a battle.

[Cmdr RideZ]

Remove/Balance Edinorogs as everyone is now using these.  Masts in general are tested vs Edinorogs.  Carronade rebalance wont get attention.

I agree mostly with Tommy but would also add.

Thickness nerf made more decks able to penetrate masts.  This increased dps everyone has vs masts.  Good is that it takes longer to snipe masts as sniping is probably not just slightly unrealistic.

Santisima was able to penetrate mid masts with 2 decks.  Now it can penetrate mids with 4 decks, which would be 35 cannons more per broadside.

Masts are in balance when even pro players use chain shots to shoot rigging.  Chain shot is there, it should be used, else remove chain shots from the game.

 

Why some ships got hp and others lost is because they based mast hp on hull hp.  They want to run stuff true algorithm and as a developer it often feels realistic when things are based on math.  Also algorithm based values are easy to modify for all, as you modify algorithm to be more better and it fixes all ships at the same time.  Also if you dont have facts for something, it is hard to give values that you could be happy with if you do not base those to anything.

Is a good idea to give control perk for ships without bow chasers.  Unrealistic magic, maybe, I could not care less.  It is a game and this is buffing weaker ships, which improves balance, gives players more options, etc.

[Palatinose]

13 minutes ago, Cmdr RideZ said:

Remove/Balance Edinorogs as everyone is now using these.

Don't know, just kite those using them. I used them and got kited in three fights the last two days very badly. Lost two Trincs. It's a gamble. Use them and intelligent players know what to do to counter them. On the ow they're not a problem imo. Longs still got their place.

[admin]

5 minutes ago, Palatinose said:

Don't know, just kite those using them. I used them and got kited in three fights the last two days very badly. Lost two Trincs. It's a gamble. Use them and intelligent players know what to do to counter them. On the ow they're not a problem imo. Longs still got their place.

Edinorogs are too strong and supply is vast as a result they will be rebalanced next week - they will be good but at a specific role
 

[admin]

35 minutes ago, Cmdr RideZ said:

 

Why some ships got hp and others lost is because they based mast hp on hull hp.  They want to run stuff true algorithm and as a developer it often feels realistic when things are based on math.  Also algorithm based values are easy to modify for all, as you modify algorithm to be more better and it fixes all ships at the same time.  Also if you dont have facts for something, it is hard to give values that you could be happy with if you do not base those to anything.

 

HP was rebalance based on the ship hull weigh (displacements). Generally a heavier ship would have more displacement AND more HP

Next step BR , and final tunes.
My personal feel lower thickness made combat more dynamic, but slightly reduced the skill level plank you need to reach to win fights (which means its harder to win if you are outnumbered by sheer skill). 
More guns are usable now (mediums probably are a new meta). Previously most pvp players sailed with longs and charge perk. Now there are a lot more options. 
 

[NethrosDefectus]

Just now, admin said:

HP was rebalance based on the ship hull weigh (displacements). Generally a heavier ship would have more displacement

Next step BR , and final tunes.
My personal feel lower thickness made combat more dynamic, but slightly reduced the skill level plank you need to reach to win fights (which means its harder to win if you are outnumbered by sheer skill). 
More guns are usable now (mediums probably are a new meta). Previously most pvp players sailed with longs and charge perk. Now there are a lot more option. 
 

Good points. 

A couple of questions, first was there anything worth mentioning in today's patch. Second, has the fix for rigging specialist perk been implemented?

[admin]

Main post updated

Hotfix deployed

Based on internal testing we have found that refits focused on changing sail plans did not have adequate bonuses to justify their use. 

Rigs that represent captain significantly changing their sail plan without increasing crew requirement

• Spanish rig and Elite spanish rig received huge buffs/debuffs to sail groups power
  • Basic version 15% bonus; -15% penalty
  • Elite version 30% bonus; -30% penalty
• Pirate rig and Elite pirate rig refits received huge buffs/debuffs to sail group powers
  • Basic version 15% bonus; -15% penalty
  • Elite version 30% bonus; -30% penalty

Extra sails that represent captains just adding sails to a specific sail group, but require more sailing crew to operating them

• Staysails and Studding sails skill books received slight buff  (debuff remained small)

Bow figure - Gazelle refit

• Crew on sails requirement lowered from 7% to 3.5%  

[z4ys]

2 minutes ago, admin said:

Main post updated

Hotfix deployed

Based on internal testing we have found that refits focused on changing sail plans did not have adequate bonuses to justify their use. 

Rigs that represent captain significantly changing their sail plan without increasing crew requirement

• Spanish rig and Elite spanish rig received huge buffs/debuffs to sail groups power
  • Basic version 15% bonus; -15% penalty
  • Elite version 30% bonus; -30% penalty
• Pirate rig and Elite pirate rig refits received huge buffs/debuffs to sail group powers
  • Basic version 15% bonus; -15% penalty
  • Elite version 30% bonus; -30% penalty

Extra sails that represent captains just adding sails to a specific sail group, but require more sailing crew to operating them

• Staysails and Studding sails skill books received slight buff  (debuff remained small) 

What about treaties of staysail / square sails trim?

[NethrosDefectus]

7 minutes ago, z4ys said:

What about treaties of staysail / square sails trim?

I think that would've been a completely different process (Square sails at least)

 

 

Edited February 9, 2018 by NethrosDefectus

[Knobby]

4 minutes ago, z4ys said:

What about treaties of staysail / square sails trim?

That's literally about trim (it's in the name!). Trim means the positioning of the sails vs the incoming wind. It's about sailing skill, not about equipment.