Patch 24: Properly depowering your staysails

[jodgi]

(shakes head in disbelief)

Lol, who benefits from the removal of mast pen info?... People who ran around with mast mods and enjoyed watching enemies pelt their masts to no avail. They enjoyed a one sided situation and didn't like when people could adjust quickly.

Pen info makes WoT more dynamic and not less. When people are dug in and shells ricochet good players reposition and change tactics.

I disagree strongly on this, admin. I think you've made the wrong decision based on I don't know what, really.

[Wind]

2 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

Yeah, an improvement on graphics that wont happen.

We would need to make a switch to Unreal Engine in such case. 

[Ahoy H.R. Matey]

You know what I think? The game offers WAY too much information and it's a bad thing.

We should remove all the HP indicators on both sides. Just count the cannonballs as they hit or miss and make an educated guess whether you or your enemy will sink.

We should also remove the cannonball counters for double charge and chain and double shot, just count things in your head or on a piece of paper, like in real life.

Wind indicator needs to go, just look at the flags and pennants on your ship and at the sails.

Compass is overkill, it's always on screen, that's not realistic, captains didn't walk around with a compass glued to their face, if you want to look at the compass you have to hold "look at compass" button for 20-30 seconds and imagine that your captain walks over to the compass stand and peers into it. Add a random 5-10 seconds to account for ship sway, battle stress, sun glare, etc.. After time elapses, the compass flashes on the screen swaying this way and that until you let go of the button. But once you let go, you have to redo the whole thing again to see the compass again.

Pressing a button and seeing a map is not realistic, you need to hold "Look at map" button for 60-90 seconds that it takes your captain to walk to his cabin and sit down and bust out all the navigation tools and a loupe. Same deal as with the compass, once you look at the map you have to hold the button down, if you let go your captain walks back out onto the bridge and you have to redo the whole thing to look again.

Consistent map grids are not realistic. Well, maybe they are, but we say they aren't, so they aren't. Because in our real world, there was no way to determine the position of your ship with any kind of precision, people would just pick a heading with a protractor and hope they get there, and if you got blown off course, you were screwed. Anyway, since in our world navigation is still somewhere on par with Polynesian canoes, all maps are crappy, so every ship gets a random map with differently sized grids.

Labels above ports in OW need to go, OMG SO UNREALISTIC.

See how much better the game could be if we would only get rid of TOO MUCH INFORMATION?

[admin]

43 minutes ago, jodgi said:

(shakes head in disbelief)

Lol, who benefits from the removal of mast pen info?... 

I disagree strongly on this, admin. I think you've made the wrong decision based on I don't know what, really.

We lived fine for 2 years without knowing if you penetrated masts or not.

When penetration was shown enemy was knowing more about the masts than you. And once we started to think about showing the mast HP to the player we decided that some blackboxes are better kept closed for the player. And state of the rig is one of them. 

[staun]

3 hours ago, admin said:

Ill explain 

If you don't know if you penetrated the mast, it takes time to realize that target is fitted for masts which gives all sorts of options for the target to react
If you know if you penetrated the mast you demast in 30-60 seconds. 

This sort of thing is not good for variability of combat. Becomes too easy to make a decision to switch to hull. 

Yeah but you can still demast in 30-60 second. That don't change even if I don't know if I penetrated, So You think it is a problem that a ship can be demasted in a 30-60 second?  Ore you think the 60 second I spend finding out if I have taken down a mast will do a big different in game?

[Wind]

Veteran convulsion is so strong in this topic. All we have to do now is count every time we see splinters fly as it should be in a normal simulator game. If you read O'Brian novels, it's very clear that they did not know if they penetrated or not, it was all luck. 

Edited May 10, 2018 by Wind

[Raf Van Boom]

Allow turning in place without masts/sails to simulate towing/turning with anchors. Dismasting is much easier to do than simply sinking a ship and it's basically a game over for the guy who loses his masts.

[Cabral]

 The demast meta players don't like it but on overhaul it's a good change. If the victim can't be informed of how many mast hits has suffered so far, why should the attacker be informed by computer and not visually also?

[Wind]

26 minutes ago, Cabral said:

 The demast meta players don't like it but on overhaul it's a good change. If the victim can't be informed of how many mast hits has suffered so far, why should the attacker be informed by computer and not visually also?

He should not be. You have to look through the telescope and count. Probability of mast fall will be 50/50 based on player's 'hit the mark' count and ballistics weight. This means on my tenth hit with 24lb shot mast should fall and that is only if I count correctly and only if all my shots penetrated. Can't be more realistic than that. Get it?

Now @admin I would like to suggest armor/mast/sail hit sounds. 

-Mast Hit - Whistle sound

-Armor Hit - Shout 

-Sails Hit - One deep Drum sound

-Rake Hit - (more than 30 men dead) Sword Metal Sound.

*Multiple hits still would be represented with a single sound. ex. 10 shots inside armor would follow by a short Shout sound!

This way players can start counting hits like it was in real life. If you look even closer into this, gunners knew if they hit the mark or not. They would notify the captain accordingly (sounds). Make it a game of calculations and luck. 

Start watching at 2:17, @ 2:23 Jack is counting shots...

 

Edited May 10, 2018 by Wind

[firebool]

At the risk of being burned at the stake, I think that we certainly have too much information that even in a battle of today YOUR ENEMY does not have, nobody knows the real damage that is doing to your enemy in a battle and we know exactly how many more volleys can stand a guy who we see that he has no band or helmet.
Personally I would remove the possibility that your enemy has to see the damage that he is doing to you in the hull or crew, that affects or damages everyone equally and maybe it would change a lot the dynamics in the battles.

 

[jodgi]

24 minutes ago, Wind said:

All we have to do now is count every time we see splinters fly

Except that happens when you penetrate and when you don't penetrate. We would settle for that kind of visual feedback.

[firebool]

You know exactly the damage received but you do not know the damage you are doing, that would be fair, in addition to the real thing. You can see that the enemy is increasing or decreasing their shots or their speed but you do not know what hull or damage is left or how many crew survives after your broadsides, with which you really submit to decisions that nobody (NEITHER TODAY WITH SO MUCH TEGNOLOGY ) known.

[Wind]

1 hour ago, jodgi said:

Except that happens when you penetrate and when you don't penetrate. We would settle for that kind of visual feedback.

50/50 chance is legitimate and realistic. You will be making these decisions and you will be responsible for the outcome. 50% chance for you and 50% chance for the enemy is fair. 

I personally know of software that does demast calculations in NA and is used by some players. You guys have it too easy. What admin is going to do with this patch is to clean up this mess. 

Forcing player to count and rely on luck is what we need here. 

Edited May 10, 2018 by Wind

[jodgi]

1 hour ago, Wind said:

50/50 chance is legitimate and realistic. You will be making these decisions and you will be responsible for the outcome. 50% chance for you and 50% chance for the enemy is fair. 

I personally know of software that does demast calculations in NA and is used by some players. You guys have it too easy. What admin is going to do with this patch is to clean up this mess. 

Forcing player to count and rely on luck is what we need here. 

You don't know what you're talking about.

[Navalus Magnus]

4 hours ago, EliteDelta said:

I think to make a change like that we’d need much more dynamic animations of ship damage. Large holes in a ships side, cannons overturned, ports beaten together into large gaps etc. Right now it would just be too uncertain. 

And this might need even better hardware!?

E.g. i can play NA PBs and big engagements with low graphics only - might be that I couldn’t do them at all if requirements would increase.

Showing the stats is a good way for slower computers to show al crucial information to every player.

[Sir Texas Sir]

7 hours ago, admin said:

previous system was way better. sometimes too much information is a bad thing.

Says who?  Really right here in this tread your getting most of the players that are very active on the forums statying it's a bad thing.  Now back to the new guys and casual complaining, "Well I shot his mast 100 times."  Well did you pen? They have no clue.

 

6 hours ago, Intrepido said:

Still we have port taxes that are killing RvR for many (small/medium clans, casual playerbase). Taxes that are a pain to deal with due to the grind it takes to pay for them.

That WAS A MISTAKE, and it is still on the game.

The other day we made the most we ever made at Marsh Harbor 2 million mainly cause our guys been buying up all the trade goods and such and doing a lot of trade runs right now to support our port cost in clan.  You want to know what the port maintenance was?  1 Million, half of what we earned.  Why does port maintenance curve so high as your income goes up?  What the point of making the money if you loose half of it?   I think the curve should be off the 100K only not the 500K fee you add for timers, that should be a flat fee and the curve should be off the 100K only.   We loose money every day cause of most our ports don't make money, but we need to keep them up to protect our nation coast line.  Their prob isn't another clan in the US right now that can hold that many ports and we don't even have that many. It's not breaking us cause we have enough active players doing econ on the side and some of our guys are sitting on 200 million (not my broke arse).   I just don't understand how tax's go from 10% for every one else, but I have to pay 50% port maintenance on my earnings for a port? 

@admin Can you maybe shed some light on how the maintenance curve works on what your charged daily?  Cause it makes it realy hard for a small clan/nation to keep multi ports up over big clans/nations.

6 hours ago, EliteDelta said:

What about only showing the mast-splinter animation when the mast is penetrated. 

This right here would fix the problem.  We only see the splinters when it's a penetration and nothing else.  That will give both the attacker and defender notice of penetration.  Than give the powder puff ball when it's close to snapping or what ever you want to call it.   Other wise have non pens give no visual indication of a hit.

 

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Wind said:

50/50 chance is legitimate and realistic. You will be making these decisions and you will be responsible for the outcome. 50% chance for you and 50% chance for the enemy is fair. 

I personally know of software that does demast calculations in NA and is used by some players. You guys have it too easy. What admin is going to do with this patch is to clean up this mess. 

Forcing player to count and rely on luck is what we need here. 

Except that isn't what admin is doing. It isn't 50/50 random chance. You will know every time you get a mast hit, but depending on the distance and mast thickness of the enemy, you either will penetrate or you wont. 
 

The issue I see with this, is that new and inexperienced players don't have all the cannon penetration tables and mast thickness/hp information memorized. Some captains do (myself included, mostly) and we will be able to still demast, but the new players will have no idea if they are getting penetration damage or not. 

@admin If we are going down this road, can we remove the mast hit notification all together? All it does is cause confusion because people think it means they are getting penetrations, similar to how hull/sails notifications work. 

[Slim McSauce]

14 minutes ago, Wraith said:

All but a few whinging testers like a new feature?  Something must be wrong! Remove it!

This wouldn't be the first time that the dev's respond to an otherwise universally liked feature by removing it. 🙄 My only gripe was that if the enemy was notified they got a mast pen then you should be notified you were penned.  I'd urge the dev's to walk this back, ignore their sycophant minority, and make it so you only get the splinter animation on a mast pen.  That way both players can gauge mast pens.

Too much information is never a bad thing in a niche, simulation-y game that appeals to a bunch of naval nerds. Making people guess at stuff is a universal method for upping frustration, just like RNG in a skill- or choice-based game does.

It's not like I can look at my masts and observe damage like I can the wings on a plane in a flight sim, the info needs to be there in some way, all your doing is blinding the player denying simple info like that, doesn't make for a great game! It'd be excusable if we have no spec'd info at all but we do for hull and structure which assumes your "crew" is taking note of this info to pass up to the player but apparently they weren't trained at looking for holes in the masts, what a blunder.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Slim McSauce

[Hethwill]

Just now, Wraith said:

mast damage was immediately noticeable from sound alone and changing tensions

So yards control should be affected by mast and rigging damage ? Sounds interesting.

[jodgi]

There are two ways of informing players on both sides of a fight about mast pen without new and complicated features (which would make it a no go):

__________________________________

Different animations for pen or no pen for the mast shooting player.

Mast pen decals for penetrating shots and no- or different decals for non penetrating shots.

__________________________________

Counters on screen or with TAB press for both sides on number of penetrating mast hits, nothing else is needed. No need to separate between sections as people can get that info watching the roundshots fly.

__________________________________

Doable?

[DeRuyter]

4 hours ago, Hethwill said:

So yards control should be affected by mast and rigging damage ? Sounds interesting.

Absolutely!

4 hours ago, Wraith said:

It would make sense to me.. but I think we all suspend a bit of disbelief since damage to "sails" and "masts" is all kind of a proxy that would include damage to rigging and shrouds, which isn't modeled. And from my understanding, it was the damage to these that were the most problematic and which caused most of the damage impacts on sailing.

I think it would make a lot of sense to decrease sail turn time and change sailing crew requirements as sail/mast damage accrued.  

I also think that with the limits placed on the amount of chain, we should greatly increase the effective range of chain and the damage it does at range. Alternatively, we greatly need to buff the amount of "rigging" and sail damage that ball does at range. And I also think the silly laser aim of rear chasers needs to be removed or balanced by placing laser aim on front chasers as well.

Exactly. Maneuverability was most impacted by damage to the running rigging - a brace gets shot away and you won't be turning that yard. My understanding also is that in NA the general % damage to sails is supposed to represent damage to rigging as well. Also masts didn't just fall from direct hits, rather the supporting rigging was shot away, more often than direct hits IMO.  

[Sir Texas Sir]

@Ink @admin What was the hotpatch today about?

[Rebrall]

1 hour ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

@Ink @admin What was the hotpatch today about?

I noticed that mast hits are back on some streams maybe that’s what it was 

[Sir Texas Sir]

38 minutes ago, Rebrall said:

I noticed that mast hits are back on some streams maybe that’s what it was 

You mean it shows if you hit even if you don't pen?  That was part of the May 10th hotfix.   

[Sir Texas Sir]

Knowing the Devs it's some Ninja pre-patch before we get hit by the next BIG PATCH.....lol