Patch 16: Control, Mast and Ship strengths rebalance.

[blubasso]

19 minutes ago, z4ys said:

When I compare @Hethwill (shop ships with crap mods) vs me (custom build ships with expensive mods and books) I would say custom + expensive mods win.  I am able to force fights when he has no chance of catching.  So first of all I would say gear decides what you fight. 2nd I can disenage whenever i want Heth chances are high that he sinks. I can rebuild my ship in fights while he just gets back a little bit of hp.

Whenever I hear about shop ships i think about throw away ships.

Ok, so what lesson we have from this? Gears are badbad? Shop ships are for loosers (no offence @Hethwill, i didn’t mean you)? Should be better an upgrade but not so much, look at the end of Russia, according to what i read in the “End of a Nation” thread? Or simply we should use commen sense? 

 

Edited February 13, 2018 by blubasso

[Hethwill]

@z4ys is right

Although a shop ship is no excuse to not sail out with friends and get into a fight and learn.

 

[Cmdr RideZ]

10 hours ago, Capn Rocko said:

None

There is physics simulation in this game.  You don't make your thin hull to do magics if you dont have the cm.

[Cmdr RideZ]

9 hours ago, jodgi said:

Jodgi, how did you know?

[Cmdr RideZ]

9 hours ago, Knobby said:

So why would gear need to be balanced if it does not matter?

I don't believe gear will decide the outcome of a fight. I believe gear is a way to tune a ship/setup to a play style and would be sad if that option would be taken away.

Read again what I said.

Yes it does.

[Knobby]

9 hours ago, jodgi said:

You don't have to rely on belief, you can go out and test this. We've done this many, many times.

Edit:

You don't get any dissonance from this?

"gear is a way to tune a ship/setup to a play style"

"My 12kt teak/wo bellona goes 14,4kt in batte"

You didn't read that I needed to sail backwards to get out of 'irons' while I was still at 30 degrees? This particular mod has a penalty as large as it's bonus, and in that same post I was arguing for that bonus to be reduced.

I've also long been asking for stacking penalties for bonuses to the same stat, as well as arguing against hiding mods/skills/etc behind RNG PVE grind and other kind of luck/grind based distribution methods.

However I do like the options mods and skills give me in tuning my ship to a play style. I feel it is also is in keeping with impression of large amounts individuality in of age of sail ships and their captains that I get from reading O'Brian and Forrester et al.

 

So to be clear, tuning mods is fine, especially by finally introducing stacking penalties. Making mods available to most players, also fine. Removing mods all together, please don't!

[John Sheppard]

After testing for few days now i find that the mast thickness nerf was a mistake . now we see lineships ships shooting at top masts form 1 mile + away and after few broadside taking them down just as before .. only now on longer distances

like others stated the increase in HP is meaningless coz now with lower thickness more guns can penetrate the masts thus the damage per broadside is much higher .. sometimes twice as high as before

shooting at masts from such a long range and doing any damage is unrealistic . besides the fact that the masts were really thick historically the fact that they are round and have a very smooth surface means that every shot that is not aimed directly at the center of the mast will bounce off .. tangent shots can't do any damage but in the game they do

so pls increase the thickness back to 120+ to simulate real world

i don't think any ship would waste ordinance taking this long distance shots and hoping for 1 in a thousand chance to hit the mast dead center . chain is the a much easier way of disabling a ship .. ofc in real life it would cut off all the ropes and rigging parts and that's why the ship would be disabled not coz it got a few holes in it's sails but you are already working on it so it's ok

demasting must be something you prepare to do in advance . like loading double charge and not something you can always do without any side effects

currently people say "ah he's angled away so my regular ball won't penetrate the hull .. so why not just shoot masts ? got nothing to loose .. i will reload before he turns" whereas before if you were serious about demasting you had to load double charge in advance .. mast shots shouldn't be target of opportunity this dumbs it down too much and makes it un-tactical (is that a word?) coz there is no drawback to shooting at masts now

[John Sheppard]

4 minutes ago, rediii said:

I disagree. I snipped topmasts before with 1 broadside per topmast, now I dont.

I would keep testing for a while.

yes i know that i was doing that also specially oceans were prone to this more than others but .. all i'm saying is that there was actually a maximum distance where your shots wouldn't penetrate anymore .. now there isn't and for top masts ok .. but there's no way you could take off the middle section off a lineship close to or at the limit of your range certainly not with a 24pd armed ship from 1000m away . now it's only a matter of putting enough shots in

Edited February 13, 2018 by John Sheppard

[John Sheppard]

no not really too lazy for that

but bellona's mast is 102 that means middle section is 76cm and 24lb penetration at 750m is 75cm .. pretty close just need to be a few meters closer or 32pd have 85 @ 750 and 71 @ 1000

[Capn Rocko]

Its strange the developers decided to make demasting easier when it was not a problem before. I always felt that mast thickness was one of the few things in the game that was perfectly tuned, it makes no sense to me why they lowered it. 

[Cmdr RideZ]

Top sections could be balanced so that those can take 2 hits from big cannons without breaking down.

Right now Pirate Frigate top section has 90 hp.  12pd long cannon damage is 49 and can penetrate from +750m.  2nd hit from 12pd cannon takes the top section.

If you take Edinorogs, 61 damage.  For top sections to last 2 hits, that would be 61X2+1 = 123 hp

42pd long damage is 60, 32pd medium damage is 60.

To give some change for smaller ships, mast wise, I don't think that would be bad at all.

...

Speed wise smaller ships should have an advantage.  This is pretty much because else you don't leave them room to stay in the end game.  You take hull hp, you take hull thickness, you take masts, you take speed?

Trinc and Endymion both have excellent speed and smaller ships than these have the same or lower speed.  Smaller ships have less firepower, have less hull hp/thickness, way weaker masts..  You should leave something for small ships.

This is also important when new players join the game.  Before they get enough rank to sail big ships, they will be in small ones naturally.  If you would increase speeds from Renommee to 180BR ships, it can be that these new players would have a role and feel useful sooner in their PvP careers.

You may say it would be unrealistic and that big ships were equally fast, depending from wind conditions.  In this case you probably should go gameplay first and bend realism a bit.