Trim Redundant Woods

[Slim McSauce]

Too many woods are just filler with slight differences to their main counterpart. These can easily be merged together for better results, for examples.
Fir can be merged with Bermuda Cedar
Teak can be merged with Mahogany.
WO can be merged with Cag wood, as they perform similar with very slight differences in stats, making them filler.
What can stay:
Oak, common, standard wood.
Teak, not sure it should remain oak+.
WO, in a good place imo.
LO, good niche, maybe tone down the thickness.
Fir, Speed, but not so much speed and less paper.
The rest can go,  they serve little purpose.


 

[Parchin]

Wood types makes shipbuilding more flexible and affordable to people that can't afford to have all ships Teak/WO or LO/WO. Wood system also motivates to capture specific ports making particular wood type, if you would want to have access to higher quality wood. Also - it makes profit to someone who will manage to cap that X port and starts to export wood exclusive to a strict list of ports. Merging woods wouldn't have any sense now.

[Slim McSauce]

9 minutes ago, Parchin said:

Wood types makes shipbuilding more flexible and affordable to people that can't afford to have all ships Teak/WO or LO/WO. Wood system also motivates to capture specific ports making particular wood type, if you would want to have access to higher quality wood. Also - it makes profit to someone who will manage to cap that X port and starts to export wood exclusive to a strict list of ports. Merging woods wouldn't have any sense now.

It makes no difference. People who don't have teak use mahogany for roughly the same bonus. They're nearly the same class of wood with slightly different stats, there is no motivation to take a mahog/cag/bermuda port. It's not flexible, it's having 1 budget wood for every useful wood, when the actual budget wood 'oak' is never used.

Edited February 3, 2019 by Slim McSauce

[Lord Gud]

10 minutes ago, Parchin said:

Wood types makes shipbuilding more flexible and affordable to people that can't afford to have all ships Teak/WO or LO/WO. Wood system also motivates to capture specific ports making particular wood type, if you would want to have access to higher quality wood. Also - it makes profit to someone who will manage to cap that X port and starts to export wood exclusive to a strict list of ports. Merging woods wouldn't have any sense now.

I agree with you because if you merge woods nothing good comes out of it other than having less woods to choose from. But there are too many woods that are not worth using compared to fir/teak/wo/lo. A suggestion is to give certain woods bonuses in cargo capacity/draught/etc. What else do you guys think could be done to unused woods that would make them worth using/balanced?

Edited February 3, 2019 by Lord Gud

[Parchin]

It would be cool to make Fir/Cargo space ships

[Slim McSauce]

15 minutes ago, Lord Gud said:

A suggestion is to give certain woods bonuses in cargo capacity/draught/etc. 

Not a bad idea. How many of these can we realistically come up with? The goal is to fit as many unique bonuses to as few woods as possible. Something like fire/crew resistance doesn't need it's own wood. Oak I think deserves the cargo bonus, moreso than a heavier wood, even merging crew space with oak would immediately remove 1 redundant trim from the game while giving value back to overlooked oak wood that has no sort of bonus and has no niche.
 

Edited February 3, 2019 by Slim McSauce

[jodgi]

24 minutes ago, Slim McSauce said:

while giving value back to overlooked oak wood that has no sort of bonus and has no niche.

I actually use oak but then only to make disposable ships I know I'm going to lose. Oak has a HP bonus, dunno if we could call it niche.

Anyway, I'm onboard with any idea that narrows the spread and dampens the fir/fir tackler with LO/WO tank in tow syndrome. I never liked that the rich, the powergamers and even the large clans have "easy" access to the best stuff while the poorfags suffer. It does not promote fighting and it does not help with retaining players. Let the dragons and orcs MMOs boil in that particular fat while we make a proper fighting game.

[Lord Gud]

36 minutes ago, Slim McSauce said:

Not a bad idea. How many of these can we realistically come up with? The goal is to fit as many unique bonuses to as few woods as possible. Something like fire/crew resistance doesn't need it's own wood. Oak I think deserves the cargo bonus, moreso than a heavier wood, even merging crew space with oak would immediately remove 1 redundant trim from the game while giving value back to overlooked oak wood that has no sort of bonus and has no niche.
 

Pretty hard to come up with things not already in the game that could be used to differentiate certain woods.

[OjK]

Well, I wouldn't exclude Caguairan and Sabicu for pure reason how accessible they are (and much cheaper).

So they're very good replacement wood for exping ships (most of the book slots I grinded with cag/sab build) or for cheap ships for new players in Your clan (You don't really want to spend LO/WO ships to new players before they learn to not sink against AI )

However, looking at how useless the Oak is, maybe just swap the Oak stats with Caguairan, and then You can get rid of it, so the most basic cheap ships will be Oak (like in reality!)

However Mahogany / Bermuda / Fir are way to similar. They could have been changed. Maybe even drop one of it?

So at best, we could drop max 2 types of wood. Is it worth the hassle?

[Slim McSauce]

4 minutes ago, OjK said:

So at best, we could drop max 2 types of wood. Is it worth the hassle?

Yes, of course. There's no doubt about it. In this case, less is more.
I'd rather have 5 viable, distinct woods than 10 woods with no discerning identity from each other.
Quality>>>>Quantity.

Edited February 3, 2019 by Slim McSauce

[OjK]

19 minutes ago, Slim McSauce said:

Yes, of course. There's no doubt about it. In this case, less is more.
I'd rather have 5 viable, distinct woods than 10 woods with no discerning identity from each other.
Quality>>>>Quantity.

Yeah, but there are 9 of them at the moment. And from that list:

Fir - the fastest one
Bermuda / Mahogany - speed alternatives, but kinda pointless if Fir is cheaper and easier to aquire. Should be buffed and one should be removed

Teak - the luxury all rounder
Sabicu - cheap alternative to Teak for all (must stay)

Live Oak - luxury hardest
White Oak - luxury most HP
Oak / Caguairan - cheap alternative to 2 lux wood above, but could be replaced with Oak if Oak gets its stats

Bermuda and Mahogany are the only problem here. Maybe we should go into same approach like with luxury and cheap version?
So make Mahogany or Bermuda a luxury version of speed wood, making Fir inferior but cheaper.

We'll end up with 7 different woods. That's only the difference of 2

[Slim McSauce]

Fir -  High speed, least armor  (Makes bermuda/mahog redundant)
Oak - Slight Speed, Moderate Armor (makes sabicu redundant)
Teak - More speed than oak, Same armor (Luxury oak)
WO - Less speed, tank (tank standard)
LO - slightly less speed than WO, more tank (Luxury tank)

You do not need more than 1 speed focused wood.
You also do not need more than 2 balanced woods (teak and oak)
You do not need a wood for thickness and for structure (LO being luxury tank)

You also do not need a luxury version of every wood. Oak is already the cheap version of Teak, Sabicu is not needed.
Merging the thickness/HP bonuses, you get a standard tank WO and luxury tank LO. Making Cag redundant
 and speed does not need a luxury version, because speed is king already




 

Edited February 3, 2019 by Slim McSauce

[OjK]

I don't agree. 

With Your logic, lets just go three woods - light, medium and heavy. 
What's the point of others? 
That's a bad design for MMO with customisable ships.

3 hours ago, Slim McSauce said:

You also do not need a luxury version of every wood. Oak is already the cheap version of Teak, Sabicu is not needed.

Yes, You do.
If not the wood exotic ports, there would be even less PB's (content) than now.

[Slim McSauce]

18 minutes ago, OjK said:

I don't agree. 

With Your logic, lets just go three woods - light, medium and heavy. 
What's the point of others? 
That's a bad design for MMO with customisable ships.

Yes, You do.
If not the wood exotic ports, there would be even less PB's (content) than now.

Going off common pillars of designs, yes 3 would be optimal in most cases. The 'holy trinity' of MMO's is based on 3 classes, the tank, the healer, and the DPS.
If we could do 3 woods then that'd be great but as you say that's not enough customization and in reality doesn't touch all the basis of ship performance.
If we can agree 9 woods is too extra, and 3 woods is not enough, then 5 woods is very close to having all the necessary performance angles covered, without flooding the market with woods that nobody cares to use and have very little discernible differences from each other, for example that would be bermuda/mahogany/fir sharing the same class, when one could easily fill the role of them all, lessening the clutter and trimming the fat so to speak.

Edited February 3, 2019 by Slim McSauce

[AeRoTR]

There are only 3 woods in the game, 

Teak

Live Oak

White Oak

When you have enough wealth or resources why would you use others? 

It is wrong to compare woods side by side, you need to compare combinations side by side. 

 

[Barbancourt]

I use a lot of sabicu.  It has that crew protection bonus

[staun]

22 hours ago, jodgi said:

I actually use oak but then only to make disposable ships I know I'm going to lose. Oak has a HP bonus, dunno if we could call it niche.

Anyway, I'm onboard with any idea that narrows the spread and dampens the fir/fir tackler with LO/WO tank in tow syndrome. I never liked that the rich, the powergamers and even the large clans have "easy" access to the best stuff while the poorfags suffer. It does not promote fighting and it does not help with retaining players. Let the dragons and orcs MMOs boil in that particular fat while we make a proper fighting game.

But the point is the reward should go to those that do RvR. @admin have promised a RvR patch that make ports value. I have a hard time to see a solution where you as an example do not make the best Wood a part of this. We can have less Wood, then we just have to limited ports where it drops to.

Edited February 4, 2019 by staun

[Hethwill]

9 minutes ago, staun said:

RvR patch that make ports value.

Indeed the discussion about it as started by the developer's not long ago

 

[Bragan Benigaris]

I really like Maho/Sabicu ships for allround-duty. A little faster than Teak/WO but also a little squishier, but much cheaper 🙂

[Slim McSauce]

https://gyazo.com/9e6ca4aa9be2022cbbf35fe5d4da86dd

[staun]

They  want this to be a fierce game. Where the top has it all, so they will fight like crasy to keep it. They want the rest to be mad about it, so they will attack, attack and attack to bring Down the top dog. So they should insted make the different bigger and maybe move the top woods to the center of the map. 1 with teak, 1 with live oak and 1 with White oak. The clan that hold that port have 100 % control over the Wood. Rest Wood should be nerfed so the different get bigger. Thats along the vision of the game, not to even out stuff.

[Slim McSauce]

6 minutes ago, staun said:

1 with teak, 1 with live oak and 1 with White oak. The clan that hold that port have 100 % control over the Wood. Rest Wood should be nerfed so the different get bigger. Thats along the vision of the game, not to even out stuff.

That's only 4 out of the 200 something ports in the game, not enough to justify what you're asking for. Not to mention the power creep  that comes with it.
NA is built around 25v25 fairish fights. Give one side all the best gear and you gridlock your game. Probably better to find other reasons to RVR that applies to all ports instead of using woods for that matter.

Edited February 4, 2019 by Slim McSauce

[staun]

3 minutes ago, Slim McSauce said:

That's only 4 out of the 200 something ports in the game, not enough to justify what you're asking for.

Ofc it is. Devs wants a fierce game. Ppl fighting to get the best. Thats the solution, it is a war game, not a British gentlemen’s club.

[Slim McSauce]

1 minute ago, staun said:

Ofc it is. Devs wants a fierce game. Ppl fighting to get the best. Thats the solution, it is a war game, not a British gentlemen’s club.

You miss the point. Bolstering 4 ports while ignoring the other 200 isn't a successful move. Which is why woods will probably not go that far beyond being just crafting items. Clearly by the reactions in this thread, the luxury/cheap wood isn't a true dichotomy, if that's the right word. People use whatever wood they can get for the class of ship they want to build. Quality is redundant because woods aren't all that important compared to mods.

Edited February 4, 2019 by Slim McSauce

[staun]

9 minutes ago, Slim McSauce said:

You miss the point. Bolstering 4 ports while ignoring the other 200 isn't a successful move. Which is why woods will probably not go that far.

It will, put the 5-10 best upgrade in ports in the center. 1 in each port. Other ports ppl will take to get the WM. But the RvR would be for those 10-15 ports in the center. RvR would matter. 

I have a hard time to see how your surgestion does make ports matter, plz explain.

Edited February 4, 2019 by staun