Testbed Feedback - Battle UI, Localization, Patrols, Delivery quests

[z4ys]

10 hours ago, admin said:

They should not be based on numbers and tests in dirty. Something must be wrong. Are you sure it is not because of un modded ships? Because based on numbers 1st rate should sink the first rate in the same amount of time as before. Same with other classes. 

1st rate vs 1st rate was the only battle and dmg distribution that felt right for us during testing. (except the 1 time were no dmg due to raking happened) But side dmg felt right.

Even 2nd rate vs 1st rate feels about right.

But 3rd, 4th, 5th rate feel really weak now even compared within their own class

The thickness drop due HP loss is really noticeable. In my opinion it should be removed. Dmg of 1st broadsides feels ok but all other that follow are just over the top.

10 hours ago, admin said:

For how many hours?
For how many broadsides? I hope you are not mixing those. 

and those ships arent even a fight between 2 equal classes. Currently those fights end to fast. It might not broadside dmg alone. Ontop we have speedships and turning monsters ignoring closehauled wind. Its even better to tack than to do a wearning because of yardpower + sailforce + increased turning.

Edited February 9, 2019 by z4ys

[Sir Loorkon]

The damage model feels interesting. The DPS paradoxon is solved. Hugging big ships with Hercules or BelleP might be obsolete. Many tactics and the use of ships will  change. Very interesting and I am looking forward to test it.

It will also be interesting to see how this will change the OW. I hope there will be some frigat captains left for OW PvP. It is much easier now for an average captain to sail a 1st rate and be victorious against frigates. Thats good. I hope it will not be to easy now because this would lead us into a OW full of 1st rates where smaler ships are only used in groups with 1st rates for ganking purpose. Lets see and test. It can be tuned.

Firering broadsides while boarding is interesting. I just tested it. It makes positioning while boarding very important. I do not like the fact that if you have switched off the broadside before boarding you can not switch it on when in boarding. That should be changed. The intransparent new boarding screen is not good for this point blank fire option. I commented on the new boarding interface in two posts in thisthread so I do not repeat it here.

[Sven Silberbart]

9 hours ago, admin said:

What is supposed to happen with Surprise after a HMS Victory broadside in your mental historical pattern/model? 

Do you only spend time to look at the historical side? Do you think about the impact on the game balance? One broadside crashes a frigate class ship. What do u think what happens in the battles? No frigates will try to attack a line ship anymore. The result: Less, not more battles. Maybe noone wanna sail a frigate, cause no chance against a bigger ship. Maybe most payers can not or dont want to sail a line ship, because of high dubloon cost. Less, not more players. 

You are designing a game, you need to take an eye on ship balance and playable of your own game. Realism isn't all.

Edited February 9, 2019 by Sven Silberbart

[Baptiste Gallouédec]

Guys, it's not even 1 day of testing, with so few pvp fights.

HP can be tweaked, to keep the same  7 to 1st rate ratio but improve the larger 5th & 4th rate survivability, sweet spot can be met.

[Jan van Santen]

For PvE server the new damage model = sealclubbing (SOL vs frigate fleets)

What happens when sealclubbing is encouraged ? No more seals for those who actually rely on them for a living (players lvling up in frigates)

Not so long ago Frigates were made tougher, now the other way round. 

None of these is balanced. The middle would be....3-5 AI 5th rates should be a challenge to a player SOL imo.

Maybe im biased here bec I just dont like sealclubbing. No challenge in that.

Edited February 9, 2019 by Jan van Santen

[z4ys]

Quote

pvp oppertunites are now really limited only ships vs ships of same class makes sense

13 hours ago, Licinio Chiavari said:

That's definately realistic.

Ofc its realistic but are Sols sailing 5kn into the wind realistic? Is tacking in no time realistic etc? When almost all player ships are 1st rates at sea is that realistic in any way?

If you go the realistic route do it with everything thats my statement otherwise its just cherry picking bias.

Edited February 9, 2019 by z4ys

[Christoph]

we have so many bad things in game and you will change the good things. cant understand that.

i tested it and i dont like it. nobody will attack a 1st rate anymore with a 5th rate

[John Cavanaugh]

I’m yugely relieved to see the Devs explicitly working with regard to the “mental model,” Frictional would be proud. A massive broadside weight should indeed devastate smaller vessels, however I do agree with @Teutonic above. An increase to thickness of ships in general, a general increase to structural HP, and an increase to crew casualties from splinter damage. A ship sinking from gun fire should be not quite so quick, but in place of that a ship’s crew should be have its morale broken by the great casualties inflicted by such overwhelming firepower. A general increase to crew damage from splinters while making sinking a bit slower might (possibly) address an issue often raised by @Licinio Chiavari regarding the fact that boarding actions are far less viable between equally weighted vessels, as raking is less of an option than with smaller ships. 

[z4ys]

2 minutes ago, John Cavanaugh said:

 by the great casualties inflicted by such overwhelming firepower.

Trinc vs trinc both carros 320 crew to 145 crew in 4-5 broadsides enough crew dmg (splited on both sides because 3 broadsides are almost enough to sink)? No raking involved

Edited February 9, 2019 by z4ys

[John Cavanaugh]

Just now, z4ys said:

Trinc vs trinc both carros 320 crew to 145 crew in 4-5 broadsides enough crew dmg?

I should be more specific. In your instance of the video provided, both ships were at that point on the verge of sinking. This is why I say an adjustment to thickness and structural HP. Things are under the current state of the patch far too heavily weighted in the one direction, but once brought back under consideration a portion of the increase to crew damage should remain. Please also refer to the points at which crew casualties were suffered Most severely - the rake, and when armor already was broken. We should be wary of grape becoming obsolete, but these specific hot spots of crew damage are good, if in need of tuning. 

[admin]

33 minutes ago, Christoph said:

 nobody will attack a 1st rate anymore with a 5th rate

Yes yes. Finally

We have finished with the UI and almost finished with localization and now are fixing the long overdue issues with the combat model.

No ship should tank with bow and stern - check
5th rate must avoid lineships - check
DPS paradox must be solved - check

We have stated that we are FULLY AWARE that some players will be very unhappy, and we are fine with it because WE KNOW lots of players will be extremely happy. (much bigger numbers)
We do not have resources to continue feeding thousands average players to a 100 pro players in 5-6th rates (who sink in their 1st rate to hercs or belle poules and leave - because it does not fit the historical pattern they have been sold on all their life).  5th rates should hunt 5th rates and 4th rates and sometimes gank 3rd rates 25 to 1. 

Model requires tuning but we are not coming back. A light 5th rate (like hercules or surprise) should be 1-2 shotted by a 3rd rate. Or devastated losing most combat capabilities. 

[z4ys]

2 minutes ago, admin said:

  5th rates should hunt 5th rates and 4th rates and sometimes gank 3rd rates 25 to 1.  

 

Who will sail 5th rates with no further changes then?

Edited February 9, 2019 by z4ys

[Pada]

Before it took around 2 hours to find a good battle that lasts 30-40 min. Now with this it's gonna take 4-infinite hours to find a battle i can actually fight and i doesn't even last 15 min.
With the higher dmg the game feels way too fast now. Everything is useless but lineships and if, for some reason, you decide to sail frigate you have to go with carros because cannons are useless now too. In the fights we had yesterday on testbed you could clearly see that there's gonna be 2 new metas, Carros and Lineships.

Edited February 9, 2019 by Pada

[Marquês do Bonfim]

With that being said then, I hope you make 5th/4th rate lone frigates and fleets of 2~3 frigates appear more offen in OW instead of 3rd rate fleets and 1st rate fleets.

SOLs should definetly be bumped to some expensive and more difficult to be crafted, otherwise OW will be floated with them, which would totally unbalanced the world we sail in.

Give frigates a little more thickness and structure HP, so we don't feel like paper when we receive a full broadside from any other ship in the game. 

Upgrades need to mean something. I tested a Trinc w/ Bow Figure - Elephant + Basic Hull Refit, bumped my HP to 6~7k HP and it felt like paper when I got sunk.

[OjK]

2 minutes ago, admin said:

DPS paradox must be solved - check

Oh yes!

But I think You've gone a little to far with that.

I just tried Agamemnon vs Bellona. And it's just way of the line.
Those ships realistic value differnce was not that big.

They were quite similar size (2 meters length difference) with similar amount of guns, making them both a really succesfull ships.
Agamemnon was fighting in Trafalgar, and wasn't one shoted by Santisima. It did really well.

 

Anyway, back to the topic - just because of class difference (every deck of Bellona is 1 class higher) made horrible dmg difference in between those ships.
What I expected to be a nice interesting fight, turned out to be a massacre.

My full broadside was doing 1 bar of side armor (20%) while Bellona shredding me twice as much, not only for armor, but for the structure as well.

From "Small guns beeing unbalanced" we went totally opposite with "Big guns are unbalanced"

Can we look for some middle ground of it?
Make it more towards number of cannons, not its weight (but of course, without going back to DPS paradox)

 

[Marquês do Bonfim]

And about fights getting a little bit faster than usual, if we slow down the pace of the game, make the ships a little more slower in instance, this would slow down the fights because turn-rates and overall speed would be a factor against bigger ships like it were in real life. Frigates ARE faster than SOLs and DEFINETLY 1st rates. 1st rate ships should feel like a big BOAT that takes time to turn around, this would give frigates a better luck w/ maneuvering faster and smarter to take a chance against SOLs.

[Marquês do Bonfim]

Don't get me wrong, SOLs and 1st rate should devastate frigates with 2~3 broadsides, that's just plain realistic. But if you gank up a 3rd rate w/ 2 frigates for example, you should be able to out-maneuver her and if you rake her stern-to-bow and bow-to-stern with 2~3 broadsides, you should be able to take that b* down with no f*ing problem whatsoever.

Rudder shots should be more devastating, but right now, if you shoot the rudder of a ship, it goes back to yellow in a matter of seconds, which btw, doesn't give too much time to maneuver and finish the job.

Edited February 9, 2019 by Portuguese Privateer

[do not say dlc]

16 hours ago, HachiRoku said:

I am not sailing to an enemy port for 1 hour to test soemthing.

You are a developer dream tester!

[OjK]

Oh yes, the fight no longer has the feeling of beeing "epic".

I feel more like in Star Wars / Call of Duty "Pew-pew" now.
Victory, going side by side with Santisima is done after 3 minutes of combat. THREE MINUTES

Which is funny considering during Trafalgar Victory could stood up 40 minutes beeing fired by a 1st rate, 2nd rate and two 3rd rates.
With this model we have know, Victory would be dead after 1 minute and 30 seconds. Three minutes, if half of the shots were missed.

 

Also, 1v1 - Agamemnon vs Bellona. From a first shot fired to structure completely gone took exactly 4 minutes and 50 seconds.
And it wasn't side by side broadside exchange, but actually some circling combat.

 

That's not the way the game should go...

Edited February 9, 2019 by OjK

[warriorz]

Why can't i join to the testbed to try it?

 

[Marquês do Bonfim]

Just now, warriorz said:

Why can't i join to the testbed to try it?

 

It's in maintenance right now.

[admin]

6 minutes ago, OjK said:

Victory, going side by side with Santisima is done after 3 minutes of combat. THREE MINUTES

 

3.7 mins exactly to take off planking and 2-3 more shots for structure.
and how is it on live against the oak crew space NPC?
Did you check lately? It should be same 3.7 mins exactly (side by side)

Can you post the video of 3 mins destruction please?

[MrocznaSurykatka]

I prefer new damage model. 1st rates stoped feeling like frigate food and are quite scary now - just like they should be. And now I have reason to fully gun my ships instead of using smaller guns for dps.

[Grundgemunkey]

Victory, going side by side with Santisima is done after 4 minutes of combat. FOUR MINUTES

[admin]

35 minutes ago, Pada said:

Before it took around 2 hours to find a good battle that lasts 30-40 min. Now with this it's gonna take 4-infinite hours to find a battle i can actually fight and i doesn't even last 15 min.

Not 2 hours. For pvp it was 6 hours on average. But your statement about 4 hours (increase of pvp search) is not going to happen, for multiple reasons. If you are a real hunter you will adapt. Noone hunts in Lynx and just like with lynx hunters will always choose ships for the targets.

But more people will sail slower (stronger) ships and you will actually get more prey. Many players are not taking out lineships because they hate the fact that they lose them to snows - now they will sail (because they hated to sail light ships).