Repair Balancing

[Slim McSauce]

@William Death Thank you for the thoughtful response. Larger hold space for all ships strikes me as an excellent idea. Hold space and weight is a heavy limiter as well, one that I would've never thought of on it's own to be playing such a big part, but I now believe it to be because of how much weight affects speed, and when you're out pvping what's the one thing you always bring, have and loot of of every players no matter what? Repairs.

Now this makes me think hard about what could be done about the current repair situation. As you can see it is in fact a touchy subject that many are split on. Not only the disagreeing party, but your first post even though you agree too many repairs were bad I couldn't agree with you there because 1 repair for 30% for what seems like across the board hull and sail, that's too punishing IMO, but then I have to remember, whatever does happen with repairs, naturally things like thickness/hull integrity and cannon penetration will be adjusted to create the most optimal combat environment.

Kits I agree with completely, they should be relatively light compared to total hold, you can loot many of them (Up to nearly in the 100's, more than you'd probably ever need on one ship) and only allow a certain number of repairs in battle, and full immediate repair on OW that takes a bit of time not immediate, have it still cost 1 use off the items.

This is where we'll have to try to find agreement, how many uses and for what % of health in battle?

I believe 3 repairs for 33% for each hull and sail respectfully, with no timer in between. This way you can still put yourself in one extreme situation per battle and potentially walk away with the ability to return to battle being very cautious on on alert as to not get caught and got.

Say you did take that extreme chance in battle and it ended near catastrophic, you're just about toast but you manage to limp away and get cover behind your friendlies. You're a bit messed up, half and no armor, half hull, 50% sails because you lost your aft mast getting away, plus some chain damage. You pop two in hull and one in sail just so you can return to the fight. Now you're on egg shells, you're complete defense mode or you're dead because as we all know well you can get caught pretty quick in any situation. So I like that a lot for what it could open up in tactics, on the flip side you can always play cautious and spread those 3 repairs out through a long enduring match, but the option to dive IMO is a nice touch.

 

[HachiRoku]

21 hours ago, admin said:

Natural repair balance can be achieved with increase price and somewhat realistic weight

Сurrent repairs weight is too low. You can repair 10000 hp (for a ship weighing 3000 tons) by using just 100 tons of repairs.

So you want ships to be even slower? I am no expert but I'm pretty sure ships were designed to have a lot of mass in hold and they could be slower if not loaded enough. Correct me if I'm wrong please. 

[Hethwill]

2500 tons. 20% of hull is 500 tons.

i'd estimate the rigging to have high mass as well.

hull repairs recover the artillery pieces, which have their own weight as well ( and warships were designed to take into account the guns being used and adding weight, same as all the shot and powder and victuals, etc ) which I assume are calculated in the burthen tonnage for a warship, i mean it is volumetric measure, 1 ton being 100 cubic feet ( size of a standard home delivery DHL/UPS unit  )  by old age of sail measurements. I am certain a carriage and gun mass and volume were several times the volume of 100 cubic feet of win ( burthen ton ).

But do we need to be so technical ? Does the mass of repairs being reviewed means the removal of speed cap ? Does speeds get reviewed to historical records ?

Subject wasn't about speeds, but for some veiled "reasoning" is now about speeds ( see several posts ) and not about the repairs. I am confused...

 

 

[Norfolk nChance]

@Slim McSauce

 

I agree with @William Death  idea also fella.

 

The Balance is Realism versus Game play ability...

 

In a [Real-Life] Battle what actually could be realistically be repaired and to what extent? Not much

Take the crew first, the surgeon sows up the sailor gives him a teaspoon of Laudanum and he’s back in action. His other buddies are not so lucky... 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 casualties returns to work from rum [func]. If in Battle you board another ship and win, can you be allowed to completely replenish your crew if you abandon a ship not taking both?

Rigging Repairs – I don’t agree with @Hethwill the Harmless weight estimates which are extreme and too vanilla. Most repairs actually involved most of the broken or damage part. Mast, Sail or Yard... Few if anything could or would be fully replaced while at sea in battle. Will look further though for details

Seamanship in AoS (Harland) pg 294 last chapter22 ACCIDENTS. An eye opener...

Running Rigging repairs were a make do at best. It seems the chance of you exacerbating the damage further was very high while moving. Masts, ships carried “fishes” bit like splints for the lower masts to help prop it up. Nothing can be done really mid or top side while moving. Effective repairs happened when at Standing Rigging. NOT battle

So, rigging repairs in battle 30% max just for game play ability?

Hull Repairs – the same thing.

 

End of [Bi] vulnerability...

The problem with heavily nerf-ing the repairs in battle is the outside gank. Stops you travelling far from home. In O-W maybe the ability to repair at sea buff while stationary could be used as a counter balancer the nerf in [Bi]? Full total repairs up to 80% only. A Port is required for a full top up.

I would disagree towards weight increases slowing down the ship, but you guys know more than me

 

 

Norfolk

 

[Hethwill]

10 minutes ago, Norfolk nChance said:

Rigging Repairs

Sure, i don't even contest that approach.

But, look at the game design, the repairs are a %%, not parts.

[Angus MacDuff]

2 hours ago, Slim McSauce said:

You're a bit messed up, half and no armor, half hull, 50% sails because you lost your aft mast getting away, plus some chain damage

@Slim McSauce, somebody worked very hard to mess you up like that and is probably planning to finish you off.  Imagine his rage when you sneak off behind a friend and unrealistically bring yourself back from the brink.  The level of repair we have now or even the level you propose is completely unfair to the opponent.  Battle in NA are more about the repair mechanic and not enough about attacking and destroying the enemy.  @Norfolk nChance is absolutely right that repairs in RL were minimal.  Why should we be given a second chance when we make a mistake and get badly damaged?  That's not what happens in war....that's pre-school.

[Thonys]

On 10/16/2018 at 11:46 AM, Hethwill the Harmless said:

Side thought.

What you'd think it would be the easiest and fastest; to repair a sloop/brig main mast or to repair a ship of the line main mast ? Weight (and quantity) of repairs is too low and too few to represent the true nature of what they accomplish.

IF your repairs will recover 30% of "mass" of rigging, then your repairs must weight 30% of the rigging mass of the ship.  Same for hull mass. Right ?

Think about this idea and how it may change things even if it "hurts" a lot your speed.

It is all about management of your ship.

 

i agree

to make a solution to this problem

make the number of repairs more important.( double  or triple the weight for all kind of repairs [not rum])

if you have 150  (heavy) hull repairs on board of a snow the ship is overloaded actually ...and get deeper in the water

the total amount of weight should matter more than is does compare to what we have now.

not to mention sail ...sail is very heavy and one huge sail can weight tons. 

 

but also i want to see moor heel  on fast running small (frigate and smaller) ships.....there is so much more i want..so dont pay attention to me.

Edited October 17, 2018 by Thonys

[Hethwill]

That's a tiny part of the Vic fore topsail. Covering an area of 3,618 ft, it was the second largest sail on board HMS Victory and would have been one of the main targets for French and Spanish guns as HMS Victory approached the enemy line. It is battle-scarred and pock-marked by some 90 shot holes. link

[Thonys]

4 minutes ago, Hethwill the Harmless said:

That's a tiny part of the Vic fore topsail. Covering an area of 3,618 ft, it was the second largest sail on board HMS Victory and would have been one of the main targets for French and Spanish guns as HMS Victory approached the enemy line. It is battle-scarred and pock-marked by some 90 shot holes. link

the funny part, do you see how many men are handling that one sail ... [repairing sail is a huge undertaking it took a day sometime to change a sail]

not to mention they had different kind of sail on board a ship

Edited October 17, 2018 by Thonys

[Angus MacDuff]

None of those holes were repaired during the battle

[Thonys]

2 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

None of those holes were repaired during the battle

exactly impossible to do...

[Norfolk nChance]

imagine the weight of that thing in the rain 

[Fletch]

The weight issue will just restrict the number of battles people can fight before docking, Im not sure that will be helpful. Whats soul destroying is people repairing ships mid battle while sailing off into the sun set at full speed. Maxim repair should occur when the ship is stationary, if the ship is sailing at full speed and fixing sails at the same time then if anything a big chance of causing more damage should arise. Slower the ship the more repair, want to repair at full speed then you gain very little for the repairs. Leave the weight as it is thats my 10 cents 

[William Death]

4 hours ago, Slim McSauce said:

This is where we'll have to try to find agreement, how many uses and for what % of health in battle?

I believe 3 repairs for 33% for each hull and sail respectfully, with no timer in between. This way you can still put yourself in one extreme situation per battle and potentially walk away with the ability to return to battle being very cautious on on alert as to not get caught and got.

Say you did take that extreme chance in battle and it ended near catastrophic, you're just about toast but you manage to limp away and get cover behind your friendlies. You're a bit messed up, half and no armor, half hull, 50% sails because you lost your aft mast getting away, plus some chain damage. You pop two in hull and one in sail just so you can return to the fight. Now you're on egg shells, you're complete defense mode or you're dead because as we all know well you can get caught pretty quick in any situation. So I like that a lot for what it could open up in tactics, on the flip side you can always play cautious and spread those 3 repairs out through a long enduring match, but the option to dive IMO is a nice touch.

I can agree with most of that, but I still feel 3x hull and 3x rig at 33% is too much. But I mean, anything is better than what we have now LOL. Say you repair hull 5x in a fight now, and you have 30% repair value. Thats 150% repaired. I think your 100% repair is too much, but its a far sight better than 150% at least.

There was a time, back in sea trials, when they had 3x repairs. That worked (but I don't remember how much each repair covered...not as much as they do now I don't think). I believe 2x 25% (base) repairs would work too.  After sea trials we had 1x repair (don't remember percentage, but again, seemed less than the 25% we have now) and that worked. When we had just the 1 repair, much as you say, you could pop the repair when you were beat up, but you did have the egg shells approach to fighting after that.  

Perhaps a compromise between unlimited repairs and single repairs? 3x 25% repairs, but that covers both hull and rig and you can only use 2x repairs (1x hull, 1x rig, or 2x hull or 2x rig) at a time (cooldown timer of 24 minutes starts at the first repair and lets you repair again at any time during the timer, but if you want to use your last repair, you have to wait till after the timer). That way you can repair a fair amount of hull or rig, but we don't have ships running off and coming back nearly full health again in a few minutes after literally obliterating one of their sides.

I'm still partial to 1x repair of each type, but I can understand the appeal of multiple repairs. Just...too much of a good thing, at times

[Capn Rocko]

1 hour ago, Fletch67 said:

The weight issue will just restrict the number of battles people can fight before docking, Im not sure that will be helpful. Whats soul destroying is people repairing ships mid battle while sailing off into the sun set at full speed. Maxim repair should occur when the ship is stationary, if the ship is sailing at full speed and fixing sails at the same time then if anything a big chance of causing more damage should arise. Slower the ship the more repair, want to repair at full speed then you gain very little for the repairs. Leave the weight as it is thats my 10 cents 

This ^

Increase the repair weight and players will fight less battles because they will equip less repairs (they will still repair 6 times in battle). Increase the cost of repairs and players will fight less (but still use 6 repairs per battle when they do fight). The simplest thing that can be done is to just allow 1 repair per battle (or 1 repair of each if you really wanted to). It makes the battles more strategic and fun.

[Guest]

Ok you can only repair your sails 3 times so now its viable to kite you forever till your no longer able to sail rep then i shoot you dead. Carronades and tanky ships are doomed.

You can only rep 3 times, well thats a war of attrition then and not an enjoyable one.

Right now repairs are in a great place. Its not too fast or slow. Its not too much either. Also repairs scale with the ship so you always need to decide whether you want to carry too many and be slow, or carry too little and run out.

[HachiRoku]

Noone ever complained about the old 1/1 repair system. Ever since multiple reps have been added we get problems after problems and every balance patch causes more problems. Maybe it's time to give up on the crappy mechanic in favor of a system that worked? 

[Bluetooth]

There are no problems.

It's fine and it works well.

Everyone makes choices.

It's a game.

Not.

Real life.

More important stuff than this side track to  worry about.

[Stars and Stripes]

5 hours ago, HachiRoku said:

Noone ever complained about the old 1/1 repair system. Ever since multiple reps have been added we get problems after problems and every balance patch causes more problems. Maybe it's time to give up on the crappy mechanic in favor of a system that worked? 

You don't even play the game anymore.

No one at all,  moans about this in game except gankers. Oh how the gankers would love this idea. 

1 repair and your sails are down and no escape for you......equals even less players.

 

[Guest]

12 hours ago, Crow said:

There are no problems.

It's fine and it works well.

Everyone makes choices.

It's a game.

Not.

Real life.

More important stuff than this side track to  worry about.

Its obviously not balanced if you can repair and comeback 4 times without a single scratch to your ship. Even its a game thats not a healthy mechanic 

Edited October 18, 2018 by Guest

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Stars and Stripes said:

You don't even play the game anymore.

No one at all,  moans about this in game except gankers. Oh how the gankers would love this idea. 

1 repair and your sails are down and no escape for you......equals even less players.

 

If you get caught by gankers that can catch up those several sail repairs wont help much anyway since you would be pretty much dead before you can hit off the 2nd  one

[William Death]

1 hour ago, Stars and Stripes said:

You don't even play the game anymore.

No one at all,  moans about this in game except gankers. Oh how the gankers would love this idea. 

1 repair and your sails are down and no escape for you......equals even less players.

Heh, see thing is, we used to have 1/1 repairs. And guess what? People still ganked. You just had to actually think ahead and plan whether you should use your one shot at a repair now, or later. Gankers will find a way. Why should you stand a chance 5+vs1? What makes you think you're entitled to repair sails and run away from that? Everyone ganks, everyone gets ganked. Lets focus on discussing mechanics as they apply to combat where actual fighting occurs, like OW feet engagements, 1v1, 1v2, 1v3, PBs, etc.
 

Also, its a bit funny you call @HachiRoku a ganker. I've actually seen him to be a skilled player who can best most other captains in a duel. Both times I ran into him in OW, he was alone or with only one or two other players. He ran from my fleet when he was outgunned and he fought me and won when it was 1vs1. And whether he logs in often or not, he still knows his stuff when it comes to the state of combat. (oh I can imagine his head is growing bigger as I type this )

Sorry, but its mighty hard to gank 1v1. (actually its impossible)

 

See, I think you're just being a little bit salty toward the PvP crowd, calling any type of PvP you don't want to engage in a 'gank.' Let me ask you something, is this a gank?

or this?:

(both battles had odds against us almost the entire duration and in the second battle, enemy chose to engage our fleet, btw). 

I don't think anyone would say we were ganking with those fleets, fighting 20v4 and 18v4 . If anything, my fleet was ganked but managed to win. And both times, the timer ran out before we could sink more of them. 

The great battle results thread is full of screenshots like that (small fleet destroys massive fleet of casual players, "hurr durr look how skilled I am"). And you know what? Those battles are NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE without unlimited repairs. Seeing battles like this is commonplace today, because frankly its pretty easy to do. But back in the times of only one type of repair you rarely saw something like this. And if you did it was a sure sign of skill (or a massive lack thereof on the other side)

Granted, there is some amount of skill involved anytime you fight outnumbered, but its become oh so much easier with unlimited repairs. All you have to do is string the enemy out, sink the lead ships before they can turn back to repair, you spam repairs and keep on trucking away from the enemy fleet. Unless the enemy fleet is well commanded they can't do much to counter that. 

Is it fun to do it? I think so. But is it good for the game when unlimited repairs allow such battles to happen?  Ehh...I think not.

 

See, this is what *should* happen when a small but skilled fleet engages a larger (but less skilled) fleet instead of fleeing: (OG NA player screenshots incoming, war stories etc, nobody get TrIgGeRed)

Notice that in both battles, the outnumbered team still managed to sink some of the larger fleet before they got sunk themselves. Some even made it out alive. That is how PvP battles where a skilled fleet engages a larger, more numerous (but less skilled) fleet. 

 

Look at my crew count, sail percentage, hull health. Choices had to be made based on ship health and the previous decisions you made that got you there, not on how long till your repair timer is up. Notice how crew management is important because you need crew in survival to stem the flow of water through your damaged bow. No necromancer raising the dead every 25 minutes. Combat had so much more depth back then, even with the old penetration/damage model and no leeway model.

 

 

But by all means, continue thinking multiple repairs are better. I can happily meta game and mark farm, but I feel like I'd have more fun and battles would be a better test of skill if we had our old 1/1 repair system back. Or at least a similar compromise.

[Teutonic]

on @William Death's note about limited repairs. I'll add some further screenshots when repairs were limited to the 1/1 repair system as well:

I must agree, 1/1 repair system had some of the most exciting battles.

I don't hate the current repair system we have now, but I definitely prefer the older repair system.

what if we increased the repair cooldown for hull and rig again?

 

[HachiRoku]

5 hours ago, Stars and Stripes said:

You don't even play the game anymore.

No one at all,  moans about this in game except gankers. Oh how the gankers would love this idea. 

1 repair and your sails are down and no escape for you......equals even less players.

 

I am so sorry I work away from home 6 days a week and can only log in 1-2 hours a week. If you doubt my judgment I'm still will to beat I will crush you in a duel. I know how the game works and I know what equals less players. Repairs is not one of them. 

[HachiRoku]

5 hours ago, Crow said:

There are no problems.

It's fine and it works well.

Everyone makes choices.

It's a game.

Not.

Real life.

More important stuff than this side track to  worry about.

The issue is that repairs are to fast paced for a slow paced game. That is why it get worse in bigger ships. Timer based mechanics cannot work for both 14 knot and 9 knot ships. One kind of battle is 40-50% faster.