Battle system core ruleset discussion

[Sir Lancelot Holland]

5 hours ago, admin said:

.
We said it before and it was the source of the comment (that was then moved to a separate topic by mods).There are a lot of battles where people tag a target with no intention to fight. Or with the intention to run as soon as they did a couple of shots. The only way to bring honor to the attack is to bring it by design - which means - attacker must always bear consequences of the attack. He must actively engage the enemy or get punished for passivity (like admiral Byng)

ps - i understand that some people have friends in enemy nations - Ally and dont attack those nations then. Or move together. 

In your responce your cite the trial of Admiral Byng, he was tried under article 12 of the Articles of War, in part the article states:  Any Officer, Non Commissioned Officer or Rating who fails to do his utmost to defeat the enemy shall suffer death. (it is effectively the same as cowardice in the face of the enemy) There is also another article that directly opposes Article 12  in that: Any Officer, Non Commissioned Officer or Rating who unduly or recklessly hazards his ship shall suffer death. (in time of war running aground could bring about a capital sentence, it is, however, unlikely a GCM would impose death for such an offense,  The Captain of HMS Indomitable, who ran his Carrier aground at Ceylon depriving Force Z of its air cover was removed from command and given a dead end job, he never achieved flag rank!)  Only one of those charges may be applied, acquittal of one charge may not be followed by trial for the other.

I would offer you the suggestion that somewhere between these two sections lies a part of the answer that you seek. 

The first article ensures that no Captain should engage in battle, fire off a few broadsides, then, runs without intending to defeat his opponent, if, however, in the event that his explicit orders are to delay a more powerful opponent, or, any other legitimate order, then the second permits him to disengage, at his discretion, should the action go wrong, and, his ship is unduly or recklessly hazarded by continuing a one sided, unwinnable action.

Equally, for example, if said Captain engaged on his own initiative,  a force superior in gun power or numbers and he loses his command then the second article may apply, in that, he recklessly hazarded his ship.   

It is as developer, naturally, your perogative to determine what behaviour fits under which article and the punishment set for said behaviour, if, indeed, you consider taking this route as a viable solution.

[IceBurg]

My two cents. 

if we want more pvp, we need to do away with the things that are holding us back, this game could be pvp battles all day long if we just make a few adjustments, leave the rules of engagement alone, make ships more readily available. and make currency easy to get,

in the above example, the only thing holding the attacking players back was how hard it is to replace ships, if the prince's in the OP could replace their ships easily, then their would have been a battle, this is the goal.

1. eliminate labor hours.

     everyone can make as many ships as they materials for. 

2. Increase material production

     Keep the ports location and product the same, but, have ports resources produced more readily

3. change Labor hour perks into Ship quality perks, 

     ppl would have the ships built by master crafters or change perks, making dabloons more valuable, 

4.  Change the Gulf to pve strictly, and merge servers

      put basic materials in the gulf, and high value commodities in the pvp zone, this would make the entrance to the gulf a natural hotspot for open world pvp, money to be made if you can  make it thru, opening up roles such as escorts,  adding ppl to the servers is just what we need, 

the idea is to make ships replaceable, within a few minutes, and the money to buy them can be made thru trading or selling dabloons, so we are down to one kill per 8 hours? how about if you were in four battles in that time, in the pvp zone, and if someone doesn't want to be bothered today, they can hang out in the gulf, 

oh, and one more thing, for me, make Key west a free town again, it really was the best

 

[--Privateer--]

On 1/18/2019 at 3:48 AM, admin said:

I want to be able to sink a 1st rate in a cutter (old heated topic). 

Could be fixed if crew loss was different, maybe a ship shouldn't be able to lose more than half its crew, or rakes past that point get ~1 crew per pass.

On 1/18/2019 at 3:48 AM, admin said:

There is actually not enough ganking (hold on and bear with me).  For accounts created in December: Only 5% of players have pvp assists and only 1% of players have more than 10 pvp assists. 

I agree.

Again, could be fixed if crew loss was different. I'd be outside KPR tomorrow getting ganked in one of my Santisimas if there was some assurance that I would be sunk instead of captured, but no, it's always stern rake after stern rake after stern rake. That really takes the fun out of being ganked so no one wants to get ganked anymore.

Imagine if people had to sink ships, using... cannons. *insert pikachu meme here*

On 1/18/2019 at 5:48 AM, Tac said:

Battle is always open for the weaker side

yes

On 1/18/2019 at 5:48 AM, Tac said:

Circle of death

no

this completely defeats the "Battle is always open for the weaker side" thing. No one is going to jump in on the weaker side of a battle that they will then be locked into for 1.5hrs. We see this in the patrol zone all the time.

If we're willing to do such major changes, maybe bring back outlaw battles for all nations? This would possibly limit ZERG nations because the ZERG nation would have a lot of infighting due to so many people and clans where as smaller nations would have less infighting due to less people being more willing to fight for a common goal.

 

[admin]

11 hours ago, Borch said:

With proposed new game mechanic you''ll still have fake battles with players attacking lineships etc in shi**y cheap ships just to give them up but still slowing other players down.

There is definitely a rule set that will solve this problem. Some players pinpointed potential solutions but such solutions might take time to code them in.
The goal is to find a rule set that will reduce (to 0) incentives to attack a target if you have no real desire to fight, keeping the real attackers (who attack to fight) happy. We want to address this issue and happy to hear suggestions on it. 

One interesting proposal was to have a attacker circle around the defender forcing the attacker to get into direct engagement with the defender at least for some time. But maybe there are other simpler solutions. 

 

[Guest]

@admin This topic is created because of post battle gank, where players intention is to keep an other player in battle unavailable to escape while reinforcements of the tagger then sits outside the battle waiting.

Why cant you just give 3-4 min invisibility, 5 min tag and join battle cooldown to the players that are drawn into the battle, the players that join the battle on targets side gets the normal invisibility timer.

I dont know if you read my suggestion a few pages back, but players that are within render range should be the only ones able to reinforce the battle and get a choice if they want to join or not.

[admin]

13 hours ago, Wraith said:

 

Simply: No change to RoE is a good solution to reduce ganking. You want to know why?  Because in an OW, non-lobby based game without matchmaking, where full-loot loss means a loss of real-world time, people prefer ganks and guaranteed wins to painful, time-sink loss and rebuild in "balanced," fair fights. Your insurance system is a joke to alleviating that pinch point. And so, people (and particularly new and inexperienced players) will gank.

This shouldn't be discouraged because it literally is the only way they can compete with experienced and geared-up vets.

So if you "solve" the ganking problem, you're actually killing off your new players and actually reducing your ability to address question 1.

Ganking is not discouraged by battles open for the weaker side for the following reasons.
1) 2 min free entry for all still exists
2) Once 2 mins passes the system checks the BR in battle and keeps it open for the weaker side. 
3) Battle closes when BR of the weaker side exceeds the attacking side.

Thus organized group will still have an initial advantage. 
But if the battle is located on popular routes the battle will escalate which means the following
Weaker side will have some hope
Other players can stumble upon this battle when sailing and join to help
Other players can be called on in chat and sail to help

I see no negatives at all with this system. It will increase pvp and will reduce ganking (at least at some locations)

[Spitfire83]

So last night i attacked a buc in my hercules we had some foreplay and i knew it was a pointless fault player was countering my moves i lost some rig (alot) was concerned of masts so turned upwind and disengaged.

 

So to player i said sorry i had to try his reply i applaud such efforts GG....

Under admin new rules i could of got a gank squad sorry even br fight to join me or i get penalised for leaving or i dont tag at all and that leads to more meaningful pvp....that makes sense...

Sometimes i think i should just leave the forums and only play the game in front of me....

 

[admin]

19 minutes ago, Spitfire83 said:

So last night i attacked a buc in my hercules we had some foreplay and i knew it was a pointless fault player was countering my moves i lost some rig (alot) was concerned of masts so turned upwind and disengaged.

 

So to player i said sorry i had to try his reply i applaud such efforts GG....

Under admin new rules i could of got a gank squad sorry even br fight to join me or i get penalised for leaving or i dont tag at all and that leads to more meaningful pvp....that makes sense...

Sometimes i think i should just leave the forums and only play the game in front of me....

 

this is exactly what we are trying to solve for (as a community) - we want to separate genuine attacks and attempts to destroy a stronger enemy from plain griefing by designs (implementing systems that stop it). No-one is trying to take your battles away.

[Vizzini]

kills per hour isn't as valuable a metric as some might believe. Wanting to log on the next time I have free time is the only way to determine If I have had fun or not.

 

If people start seeing the OW as a lobby for a perfectly balanced arena style game then I fear for it. More than half the player base ( over both servers )  IMHO are pve'ers at heart. Players only wanting 1v1 or PB vs PB with nothing else in between are IMHO the minority.

There are a good few thousand players not playing because they do not see the point in starting because a wipe might take away all their hard work.

 

I got slaughtered last night by very good pvp'ers who were 10-3 out manned. This fight wouldn't have been possible with some of the BR changes i see mooted

 

[admin]

3 minutes ago, Vizzini said:

kills per hour isn't as valuable a metric as some might believe. Wanting to log on the next time I have free time is the only way to determine If I have had fun or not.

We do not generalize of course. There are several cores of players and some do not engage in pvp at all. In fact if you take all accounts that are created in december only 25% engaged in PVP. 75% engaged only in PVE. 20% of players never even left port. Changes affecting the PVE groups are under way and are described in the Missions announcement in developer announcements. 

This discussion is only focused on the cohort (group) of players who tried to engage in PVP. Let's not mix up it with other players.  

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, admin said:

Ganking is not discouraged by battles open for the weaker side for the following reasons.
1) 2 min free entry for all still exists
2) Once 2 mins passes the system checks the BR in battle and keeps it open for the weaker side. 
3) Battle closes when BR of the weaker side exceeds the attacking side.

Thus organized group will still have an initial advantage. 
But if the battle is located on popular routes the battle will escalate which means the following
Weaker side will have some hope
Other players can stumble upon this battle when sailing and join to help
Other players can be called on in chat and sail to help

I see no negatives at all with this system. It will increase pvp and will reduce ganking (at least at some locations)

now what if i sail out see a battle 480 br vs 300 br, this means 3x hercules vs say a 3rd rate, the 3rd rate has 1 bar left of structure and is just about to sink and i join in with my belle poule, with 12 bow chasers on me im stuck in the battle for the next 45 mins, i cant kill them because they sail away and repair back to full health and i cant escape because of the amount of chasers they have.

How will you address this situation?

[Christoph]

close pve battles directly and let pvp battle 15min open

[Sir Loorkon]

9 minutes ago, Wyy said:

now what if i sail out see a battle 480 br vs 300 br, this means 3x hercules vs say a 3rd rate, the 3rd rate has 1 bar left of structure and is just about to sink and i join in with my belle poule, with 12 bow chasers on me im stuck in the battle for the next 45 mins, i cant kill them because they sail away and repair back to full health and i cant escape because of the amount of chasers they have.

How will you address this situation?

I do not understand the problem. The new system will give you the possibility to join. May be a risk, may be a chance. Your decision. With the system we have ATM you can not join because the battle is closed. No decision. Boring. The new way seems to be better.

Edited January 21, 2019 by Sir Loorkon

[staun]

20 minutes ago, Sir Loorkon said:

I do not understand the problem. The new system will give you the possibility to join. May be a risk, may be a chance. Your decision. With the system we have ATM you can not join because the battle is closed. No decision. Boring. The new way seems to be better.

But isent that the system in patrolezone. Don’t get me wrong, I am fine with the RoE in patrolezone, But lets be honnest. There is multi thread and post abouth broken RoE in patrolezone. 

[Hethwill]

I see one of the biggest, if not the major, issue is the declaration of intent versus keeping someone in battle "indefinitely".

This is intimately tied to how "damage tag" works, so here goes my idea to promote a better way

- we have 7 rates of ships, and at the moment just a slight damage hit is enough to keep other player in battle

- so, i propose a redesign of the damage threshold to hard numbers based on rate difference:

- 7th rate to keep 1st rate in battle must make 7% damage tag ( will need 6% for a 2nd rate, 5% for a 3rd, .... )

- likewise a 1st rate needs 1% damage to keep a equal or lower rate in battle. Same with a 3rd, needs 1% to keep a 3rd or lower in battle.

- example, Bellona tags Victory, Bellona (3rd) needs 3% damage done to keep the Victory(1st) in battle, while the opposite ( victory tag on bellona ) requires only 1%

----------------------

This system along with Signalling ( 1.0x BR ) can do both the proposals of @admin - declaration of intent on attack and let the battle open for reinforcements.

Regarding RoE, the present 2 minutes plus Signalling is okay. 

- 2 minutes prevents a lot of exploits we tested in the past and at the same time the Signalling allows friends to help each other.

More potential equal battles but no timer exploits ( hidden inside ports, inside battles, technically out of sight, and this becomes very visible and exponentially dangerous in conquest fleets ).

Thank you.

[Sir Loorkon]

Just now, staun said:

But isent that the system in patrolezone. Don’t get me wrong, I am fine with the RoE in patrolezone, But lets be honnest. There is multi thread and post abouth broken RoE in patrolezone. 

I see your point but in patrol zone you have this circle of death (the reason why I do not go there). On OW we will hopefully do not get this circle. If the weak BR side stays open, there will be more OW PvP. That's fine. I think pure BR based identification of what may be "the weaker side" is the weak point of the intended new system. I posted a solution in this thread but I did not get any response. But even pure BR based the new ROE will be better than what we have at the moment. The only thing I could not live with is the circle of death as in patrol zone, but as I understood admin, if circle comes, it would come in a modified way that only affects the attacker. Let's test it.

[Christoph]

I really liked it with the 30min battle open perk. we had so many good battles

[Hullabaloo]

Ganking: Increasing join times will increase ganking not reduce it. I like the current system because you cannot hide in a port and jump out to join a battle. Longer join times for 'weaker' side will not work, people will just bait with lower BR wait to get attacked then all their mates jump in. As it is you can see what ships are in play and act accordingly. At least they have to undock their ship first to get involved! Why can't we just accept that if you run into a larger group you are likely going to sink? and if you are not even out on the water then you are not going to be able to fight. It's fine as it is imo. If you want battles open longer then fine, but it will NOT reduce ganking.

PvP. Circle of death will reduce PvP, as the option to 'have a go' and disengage if it doesn't work out will be gone. It will dumb down the game to lobby based brawl fest a la Legends or Patrols. Hideous. Don't do it. 'Implementing systems' to prevent things we don't like, are just as likely to end up preventing things we do like. Make it more difficult to disengage ok, but locking people in to a fight to the death, so every ship a tanky suicide ship would be awful.

Griefing. The main problem as I see it is that it is too easy for some ships to disengage because the sailing profiles are so radically different. (I had a Lrq that tagged my endy down to 30% structure yesterday, but it was still able to tack away from me easily). Some ships should be better that others at sailing upwind yes but not at their top speed so close to the wind and definitely not when so badly damaged. But changing this would be massive now and would cause all sorts of new problems I expect. (Ironic that the DLC ships are the main culprits).

I like some of the ideas based on damage above. Make it easier for ships to leave if no significant damage is being done or if enemy ships are too far away. Control Perk for every ship, get rid of of one hit sail tagging. 

 

 

 

[Iroquois Confederacy]

1 hour ago, admin said:

One interesting proposal was to have a attacker circle around the defender forcing the attacker to get into direct engagement with the defender at least for some time. But maybe there are other simpler solutions. 

This proposal suggested a strange mechanic where someone would let themselves be tagged in a super-fast vessel, sail away, take the circle with them, and cause the attacker to sink - though the attacker absolutely wanted a fight.

How would you distinguish between a defender that is successfully running away from an attacker unwilling to engage?

[Licinio Chiavari]

4 hours ago, --Privateer-- said:

Could be fixed if crew loss was different, maybe a ship shouldn't be able to lose more than half its crew, or rakes past that point get ~1 crew per pass.

It's partially already this way... under 50% crew rake efficiency drops.
It's the only way to handle a bigger and stronger targets (the famed sKillZ of hunting a 1st rate with a Snow - that till few time ago, even if criticized, was INTENDED).

Not last, missing the possibility of multiple boardings (ie. 2 Bellona siding a Santi and boarding "together" from the two sides), it's the only way to capture "safely" a bigger ship.

Now looks like, suddenly, a lot of people awake from the dream of (skilled) 6th rates hunting (unskilled) 1st rates with these proposal up to the damage based on weight and not diameter.

5 hours ago, --Privateer-- said:

Again, could be fixed if crew loss was different. I'd be outside KPR tomorrow getting ganked in one of my Santisimas if there was some assurance that I would be sunk instead of captured, but no, it's always stern rake after stern rake after stern rake. That really takes the fun out of being ganked so no one wants to get ganked anymore.

The higher the ship cost (especially of SoLs) the more convenient (and realistic we could say) capture over sinking.

Being ganked by a bunch of random noobs in a perfectly fitted 1st rate with DD and having far superior skill and experience is already "fun"... isnt?

5 hours ago, --Privateer-- said:

this completely defeats the "Battle is always open for the weaker side" thing. No one is going to jump in on the weaker side of a battle that they will then be locked into for 1.5hrs. We see this in the patrol zone all the time.

If we're willing to do such major changes, maybe bring back outlaw battles for all nations? This would possibly limit ZERG nations because the ZERG nation would have a lot of infighting due to so many people and clans where as smaller nations would have less infighting due to less people being more willing to fight for a common goal.

Right. Both points.

36 minutes ago, rediii said:

I agree with the 10 min jointimer for the weaker side, however this will favor skilled players more than new/bad players who use numbers to overcome a skilled enemy.

Exactly.

Admin stated that new players got too few PvP kills/assists and he wants to address this. Aside I see even "too many" new players kills in his stats (granted the steep learning curve of NA) with his proposal there will be... LESS. Less skilled, experienced and geared players only hope against perfectly fit skilled veterans is using numbers. That this proposed new ROE block.

As I repeated: this will be the bigged gift to skilled veterans (and to skilled veterans groups - able to organize and play/exploit faster and better the ROE).

1 hour ago, admin said:

this is exactly what we are trying to solve for (as a community) - we want to separate genuine attacks and attempts to destroy a stronger enemy from plain griefing by designs (implementing systems that stop it). No-one is trying to take your battles away.

Tribunal is the way. There're too many variables.

An hard-coded system like the one you proposed will do more damage to PvP than benefitting it.

 

Granted that the poster who started this... did EXACTLY the same about he was whining yesterday with Yordi (not to speak not showing off / using trollfleets in PBs).

 

 

[Licinio Chiavari]

7 minutes ago, Iroquois Confederacy said:

This proposal suggested a strange mechanic where someone would let themselves be tagged in a super-fast vessel, sail away, take the circle with them, and cause the attacker to sink - though the attacker absolutely wanted a fight.

How would you distinguish between a defender that is successfully running away from an attacker unwilling to engage?

As already wisely pointed by @z4ys few pages ago.

Lighting fast LGV/T.Brig: new meta.

[Iroquois Confederacy]

Can you nail down more specifics, admin?

Is there a max BR that can join to reinforce?  [Will a 140 v. 150 be joined by a 300 to "even the fight," and force the 150 to suicide against them so as to not "leave the circle" (or do whatever they need to to prove to the game that it wasn't a "fake fight"?)]

Will merchants be included?  (Merchants counter tag as their primary defense, but obviously want to run.  Warships hitting them are obviously trying to capture them, precluding the idea of fake fights)

[Licinio Chiavari]

26 minutes ago, Hullabaloo 'The Thief' said:

Griefing. The main problem as I see it is that it is too easy for some ships to disengage because the sailing profiles are so radically different. (I had a Lrq that tagged my endy down to 30% structure yesterday, but it was still able to tack away from me easily). Some ships should be better that others at sailing upwind yes but not at their top speed so close to the wind and definitely not when so badly damaged. But changing this would be massive now and would cause all sorts of new problems I expect. (Ironic that the DLC ships are the main culprits).

LRQ enters the equation being the only dangerous (and far less than depicted) fore-aft rigged (just to generalize) ship against a good share of ships in the game.

As a lot people pointed in the past (and me in particular), sailing profiles are broken at their roots: NO SAILING BOAT WOULD EVER BE FASTER AT CLOSE HAUL THAN AT BROAD REACH. Period.

On the other hand, moving to more real profiles and manouvrability will change completely the game (no more super nimble ships, tacking being something lasting 5+ minutes even for a light frigate, closest point of sail for square rigged ships around 70° etc...).

Realism wise would be great... but will lead to a far less entertaining fights: 2 square rigged do a couple manouvers, then end up side to side, then dismantle each other. End of the battle.

Still the chances for a square rigged ship to chase even a damaged xebec or schooner, in reality, were close to zero: because the first would stop even trying to close haul at 70° while the latter would be still at speed at 60°. That leads to the usual reply of those of LRQ-is-uncatchable: would you hunt a Privateer with a Renomee?

[Bragan Benigaris]

To contribute something constructive to the topic:

What about a loss of "reputation" if a captain avoids fighting?

If a captain attacks an enemy ship, he is expected to deliver a result. As a national, the admiralty expects a brave fight, as a pirate/privateer his crew expects a prize and loot. If he doesn't deliver, his reputation suffers and he may endure a war trial or a deposition though his crew. We don't have a reputation in game, but we have ranks ... and we could simulate it with XP points. Every time a captain attacks/tags an enemy, he is risking to loose XP if he doesn't fight. He starts with a debt so to say. If he behaves brave and is fight (even against the odds), this debt will be vanish AFTER he provides a certain amount of damage. Depending on the difference of the contrahents (BR?) you could scale the amount. You could even give this additional amount of XP to brave captains, if they sink the enemy.

An example:

With my trusty Privateer i tag a Mercury in the OW and the battle starts. If i kite him and leave as soon as possible, i will loose 500 XP. If i realize the enemy is too tough and want to escape the engagement, i have to provide a certain amount of damage to leave honorable without loss of XP. If i sink him, i get the usual XP plus the 500 from the debt.

This way brave captains will be rewarded and you still can use tactical screening - you only have to fight for real (and probably loose your ship).

 

[Licinio Chiavari]

4 minutes ago, Iroquois Confederacy said:

Can you nail down more specifics, admin?

Is there a max BR that can join to reinforce?  [Will a 140 v. 150 be joined by a 300 to "even the fight," and force the 150 to suicide against them so as to not "leave the circle" (or do whatever they need to to prove to the game that it wasn't a "fake fight"?)]

Will merchants be included?  (Merchants counter tag as their primary defense, but obviously want to run.  Warships hitting them are obviously trying to capture them, precluding the idea of fake fights)

Defensive tag (I got called "defensive tag fanatic" for pointing it) was already repeatly underlined.

No: no more specifics. That would lead to weeks or months of chaotic correction to proposed ROE... hurting hard a finally GROWING player base (I'd remember: yesterday we hit 610 online - never seen in a year), granted the infinite cases to be balanced (coupled with the broken BR atm... the old example of Endy 330 and 3rd rate 300).