On Rare Woods Harvesting and Map Distribution

[Anolytic]

This suggestion is part of a comprehensive review I have attempted on the Crafting and Economy currently in Naval Action. This part is where I address crafting woods. You can find my topics on Currencies and the Economy here, and my suggestion on Labour Hours here.

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Currently most players barely craft any ships. Of course this has a lot to do with the impending wipes and release of the game, and that many players have a good amount of ships already stored up, enough to keep them probably till the next wipe. It also has to do with the (horrible) permit prices situation. But most of all, in my opinion, it has to do with how rare woods are now implemented and distributed in the game.

Even if you have access to a clan-mission for the wood type you need, 50k doubloons for 5k white oak is just an abysmal amount of grinding for what amounts to enough wood for barely a couple of first-rates. The clan missions have so far to my knowledge not caused a single conflict over access to rare wood forests. No ports attacked because they had a clan-mission. All they do is lock down what are essential crafting resources, behind a wall of grinding, as well as a restricting them to a subset of the game population with the restrictions that are placed on withdrawing rare woods (i.e. members and friends of a clan where the mission happens to spawn).

But there are exceptions to the clan-mission exclusivity. The rare woods are accessible to buy directly from the AI in some select few ports. You can even buy them on contracts, for reals. You can buy Live Oak (only) in San Augustin, White Oak (only) in Nouvelle Orleans, Teak in Bridgetown, and Mahogany in Santo Domingo to mention some.

This is great for people with a French alt… And even better if you also have a Russian alt. With only two alts you can have access to teak, live oak (french) and White oak (russian). (/sarcasm)

For everyone else it’s just a punch in the face knowing that it’s even there. There are always contracts for these woods, so good luck collecting any if you don’t have an alt to set the contracts with. 

As they are currently, the alt-friendly wood spawns on the map only compound the issue with clan-missions for woods.

These are huge issues. With the current distribution of non-basic crafting resources the game is barely playable for most average players. There is no point in even trying to craft good ships.

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Clan-missions and "RvR-Importance"

With the forthcoming Frontlines conquest system, Clan-missions as they are now simply will not work. Rare woods forests could spawn miles behind a frontline, and simple RNG would determine that some nations would simply have no chance to compete in RvR. The nation for whom the RNG is lucky, will have strong ships to defend their forests, and the unlucky nation will be lacking strong ships to conquer the port that they need in order to build strong ships. It’s a problem that’s there already but for the fact that we have ships stored from before the system was introduced, but one that will be aggravated infinitely by the introduction of Frontlines. 

 

Port-Drops and Alts-importance

The way that the map now has some very few ports that drop certain woods, and they can be bought on contracts, does not work for the simple reason that it HUGELY advantages alts. This system practically forces the usage of alts for the game to be even playable. This HAS to change.

 

Grinding

Lastly, the grinding needed to be able to afford woods from the Clan-missions is unsustainable. 

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Suggested Solutions

I have 2 solutions in mind for how to make woods work. Neither is fully refined, but other solutions to replace the current system may be suggested by others. The most important thing is that the current system is completely scrapped.

 

Short Distance Hauling

The first alternative is to revert back to the good old days when crafting woods were easily available near capitals.

Make sure that wood spawns, in the form either of ports selling the woods to the NPC-market or ports where forests can be built, are spread around the map so that each and every nation has all the important woods (live oak, white oak, teak, mahogany, caguairan, sabicu) available in ports within 1-2 regions from their capital.

This way, as long as a nation can conquer their own immediate home-waters they always have access to the woods needed to craft the ships they need to defend them. 

There should also be other clusters of woods around the map for clans to make their base near, or for the three impossible nations to settle near.

This model would encourage trading and hauling between the wood-spawns and the clan/national capitals, in turn encouraging hunting of those traders. At the same time as it would give all players equal access to equal woods for crafting vessels. Making RvR more fair.

As previously brought up, I would shift the bottleneck in crafting from woods and permits, towards labour hours and labour contracts. But the amount of wood spawning, or possible to extract, depending on the approach, could be limited, creating the need to conquer more ports around the map with the same woods spawning in order to fully match demand with supply. If woods were extracted from buildings, we could be limited to 300 logs per day (and only one forest building per port per character), enough for a couple of frigates, but needing many days to make a 1st rate unless several people collaborated by all producing the same woods. Or if the logs were dropped in port the supply each day would be limited. Though I prefer the forest factory model over the port-drop approach which will be hugged by those able to set up the highest contracts.

Also, the price of the woods would distinguish different ship-builds from each other. The base price for extracting/buying live oak and white oak would be multiple times higher than extracting/buying mahogany.

Long Distance Hauling

My other idea is this: To spread the woods out across the map and make it necessary for players and crafters to haul the woods back to where they craft from each corner of the map.

It would look something like this:

4 or 5 ports on the East Coast of Florida would spawn Live Oak. Regardless of who owned each port, anyone would be able to go there, purchase all the Live Oak they could carry, and bring it back to wherever on the map they craft their ships. This would be possible because the port would always be stocked. The stock would either be literally infinite, or 50 000 logs would spawn each day after maintenance in each of the 4-5 ports. And it would be impossible to set contracts for the logs in those ports, so nobody could buy up all the stocks by contracts.

It would allow any player to go there and get Live Oak, and at the same time it would be a paradise for raiders and hunters patrolling the area looking for traders coming and leaving carrying Live Oak. 

Clans would be organising convoys to go there and pick up enough stocks to last them for weeks, and even nations would organise hauling runs for non-clanned players to go together and collect their own supply of logs, as well as a supply of logs to sell in home harbours to those players unwilling to make the sail.

Likewise, there would be 4-5 ports, spread around for instance the Gulf of Mexico, where similarly White Oak would be available to anyone who would go there to pick it up and haul it home to their base.

Mahogany could be found, for instance in 4-5 ports in Panama.

Caguairan could be found for instance near Orinoco.

Sabicu on South-East Cuba.

And Teak, as the preeminent PvP-wood should be found pretty centrally, and be spread to both south AND north of Hispaniola, or alternatively be found in 2-4 clusters around the map, including the Bahamas.

 

There is a third solution: That rare woods forests are simply yet another expansion that can be applied to upgrade cities for a price. Say for instance that you can choose only one forest for each city, either Teak, white oak, live oak, mahogany, caguairan or sabicu. So to get all woods you have to upgrade six cities.

I will not expand more on this approach, as it has already been mentioned by others elsewhere.

Edited April 15, 2019 by Anolytic

[Angus MacDuff]

@The LoneWolf had a similar suggestion where all the woods are available in free ports and limited to, I believe,  a 1000 ton block per day.  No contracts, no bidding. Everybody can get it, but you have to travel for it.  Prices could be scaled depending on wood value.  This could also apply to copper/carta etc.  Imagine the convoys!

Edited April 15, 2019 by Angus MacDuff

[Angus MacDuff]

Just now, Intrepido said:

It wont work.

People will figure out the moment the woods spawn and then you will never smell a log.

 

The current system is not so bad but the prices must be more affordable and perhaps more ports with those woods. And no moving forests, thats weird.

The logs would be unlimited spawn.  Just limited in what you can take.

[Anolytic]

10 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

The first one clearly promotes the use of alts, a paytowin option. More alts, more hours.

I know your concern. However ANY game with an interactive economy "promotes" the use of alts by that standard. ANY system that promotes the interaction and collaboration of players will by default be possible to cheat by players willing to invest in alts. We simply cannot let this stop us. The proposal will make hoarding easy for big cooperative clans and/or players with alts, sure. But most importantly it makes things possible for the average and casual player. If some power-gamer with alts is swimming in crafting logs because he spends 4 hours a day hauling woods and trading resources, that doesn't hurt or affect the affect the average player who spends 2 hours in-game per night - as long as he has just enough woods himself to cover his needs.

This game has plenty of alts in part because at multiple times in the past we tweaked the game-mechanics so far into the hard-core extreme that the only way the game was playable was with alts. Some players left the game then, others gave in and bought alts in the hope to push through until things evened out for the better. I don't want that to be the state of the game still when the game is released. I want the game to be playable for all the average players in my clan, and others, with only a single account. 

21 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

The second one will promote people siting in those ports with their alts, buying the 50.000 logs right after the maintenance. A quantity they could probably be affordable for them after making some long AFK trading routes.

No. That is why I said there should be 4-5 ports that drop each wood. That way hunters cannot simply camp just one single city to catch all traders going in and out. They have to cover multiple ports and multiple approaches. It also means that there will drop 200k-250k logs of each type each day. Even if somebody could manage to empty out one port every day for a week before running out of money, there would be 3-4 other ports where there would be guaranteed stocks of the woods. 

I also forgot to mention in the OP that for this proposal also, the prices of Live Oak and White Oak, and Teak, should be comparatively multiple times the price of the "lesser" woods. I'm thinking 20-50 reals per log for the "lesser woods" and 100-250 reals per log for the "finer" wood types. 

However there should be NO TAXATION on purchasing woods in this model, as the nation that happens to start closest to where a popular wood spawns should not be able to earn money on owning those resources by default.

[Snoopy]

What was wrong with having farms for all wood types, free for all?

[Angus MacDuff]

Just now, Snoopy said:

What was wrong with having farms for all wood types, free for all?

Nothing in my opinion.  I don't need the advantage of premium woods to fight other players.  I am perfectly happy if everyone has it.  The only issue is that there would be no Sabicu or mahogany ships out there.....so what?

[Archaos]

48 minutes ago, Anolytic said:

Lastly, the grinding needed to be able to afford woods from the Clan-missions is unsustainable. 

The grinding was not too bad until the change in the delivery mission rewards from doubloons to Reals. Playing solo I was able to extract 25k White oak, 10k Live Oak and 10k Sabicu just from doing delivery missions. But now you spend most of the time searching for delivery missions that reward 1k doubloons.

[Anolytic]

16 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Nothing in my opinion.  I don't need the advantage of premium woods to fight other players.  I am perfectly happy if everyone has it.  The only issue is that there would be no Sabicu or mahogany ships out there.....so what?

Sabicu and Mahogany would be cheaper for one thing. Besides, in the last week I've sunk more sabicu/white oak and caguairan/white oak Rättvisans than teak/teak ones, so there's clearly some that prefer those woods even when they can choose exactly what woods they like.

14 minutes ago, Archaos said:

The grinding was not too bad until the change in the delivery mission rewards from doubloons to Reals. Playing solo I was able to extract 25k White oak, 10k Live Oak and 10k Sabicu just from doing delivery missions. But now you spend most of the time searching for delivery missions that reward 1k doubloons.

Even then it was a lot of useless afk-sailing in trader-lynxes that was easier to do with alts, was a time-sink and yet contributed nothing to the open world. The prices are the problem, not the supply of doubloons.

19 minutes ago, Snoopy said:

What was wrong with having farms for all wood types, free for all?

I refer to that in my OP too, but I also offer some other alternatives to consider if we don't want to go back to the good old basics that worked in the past. The other options I suggest have their benefits too, and they would work much better than what we have now.

Edited April 15, 2019 by Anolytic

[William Death]

Simple fix:
 

Oak and Fir farms available at non-capturable national ports (capitals and surrounding ports).

Teak, Live Oak, White Oak, Mahogany, and Bermuda Cedar farms available at all captured ports. 

Sabicu, Oak, Fir, and Caguarian are provided by freeport shops.

 

RvR incentive is the rare-resources that ports produce that go into upgrades like French rig or Cartagena refit.

 

The original 2016 system was similar to this (all woods available to everyone), and it was much better. Players didn't have to worry about losing a good ship, because the woods were easy to get to rebuild it. 

[Socialism]

All I know is back in pre-wipe and even post wipe outside Carta, the huge 25 on 25man 1st rate battles where nations were losing 50 ships a week was immensely enjoyable and the server was more vibrant and active because of all the action.  Better access to the "rare" woods and cheaper ship production made it so we could lose a few ships a week and still want to go out there and lose more.  In the current economy this is not possible and even discouraged.  This is bad for the game.  The current model is unsustainable with 400 people, I could only imagine 1500 post launch.  Something needs to be done.  Even if NONE of the discussed changes happens prior to launch....the woods situation needs to be addressed beforehand if you want anything resembling an active RVR community.

Easy access to woods + cheaper ships = more fun.

Edited April 15, 2019 by Socialism

[Hawkwood]

Doesn´t matter what you suggest right now. DLC era has come upon us. That is why only few people always post the same.

[Serk]

Can’t we just review the bonus-malus of the rare woods to make sure Oak-Oak becomes the go to meta wood while rare woods only give marginal bonus that still feel good yet are not that OP?

seriously, +10% thickness and + 3-4% speed for Teak-WO over plain Oak-Oak built?

Edited April 15, 2019 by Serk

[Njord]

2 hours ago, Angus MacDuff said:

  The only issue is that there would be no Sabicu or mahogany ships out there.....so what?

That is unless they would balance different wood stats better...

[Njord]

Even if we forget that the RNG permits and rare / expensive woods turn DLC ships from an advantage into blatant pay2win, it is still bad for the game when ships are too hard or even impossible to replace. It was mentioned several times that the DLC ships create more PvP due to high quality disposable ships being available, so why are we limiting access to crafted ships this much again? Why would I risk a T/WO Agamemnon ( assuming I can even get the woods ) in a fight vs 0 cost thus 0 value Rattvisans, even if the Agamemnon is slightly better?

In the end the Rattvisan player gets no risk but the same reward ( probably even better since DLC ships give less kill reward ) fighting the Agamemnon, while the Agamemnon player would take a significant blow in the case of losing even a blue ship. Where is the concept of promoting more PvP through easy access to high quality ships for everyone here? Or does it only apply when people spend cash?

[Capitalism]

I think that rare woods should be tied to PvE players, thus making a link between people who PvP (generating combat marks), those who PvE ("gathering"), and their intersection which are people supporting or participating directly in RvR.

If we make the "gathering" of rare woods based on time spent in game rather than labor hours then everyone wins (more targets on the open water, more PvP opportunities, etc.). Basically the "gathering" would go like this: traders drop rare woods quite often, but an even more steady supply available for base crafting materials including fine woods by capping AI ships, sailing them back to your crafting port and breaking them up.  By driving up the number of timbers and crafting supplies recovered from broken ships then we get close to traditional "mining" activities of other MMOs (making active time spent in-game matter) rather than just passive labor hour accrual or AFK hauling.

You might argue that doubloons are just a go-between for this "gathering" activity, but let's be honest.. getting doubloons is basically best done by AFK sailing these days which I don't think is good game design.  I think if you married resource gathering to the ability to cap AI 3rd rates and below (and introducing all DLC ships as open world AI), thus alleviating pinch points on permits and evening the playing field for DLC owners vs. regulars, the game would be a much happier place.

Edited April 15, 2019 by Capitalism

[Ligatorswe]

If we are going to keep the traditional system with rare woods as the preferred wood for battle, we should definitely go for your proposal for Long Distance Hauling.
 

[Barbarosa]

We have rare ships now, I think it is very good addition. Immensely expensive and just slightly better. 

Nothing wrong having rare woods in same manner. Nothing wrong to return oak/oak builds. We are just too much used to sail everything best and bigger.

The only problem is the winner/owner of the certain ports gain very easy access to strategic woods, creating snowballing effect. They can replace their ships from best woods easily and very cheaply comparing others. The spawn amount is huge compared to population. You can stock strategic woods in no time to have enough for the rest of the year :).

I believe stat differences of wood types should not be that big, to reduce the effectiveness of bonus stacking. The winner/owner of the port should only have direct access to the resource, they should pay same with all others, in this case 50k doubloons for 5k woods to avoid snowballing effect. Moreover, all spawned strategic resources should have spawn rates based on active population, lower population less resources.

 

[Ligatorswe]

25 minutes ago, Barbarosa said:

We have rare ships now, I think it is very good addition. Immensely expensive and just slightly better. 

Nothing wrong having rare woods in same manner. Nothing wrong to return oak/oak builds. We are just too much used to sail everything best and bigger.

The only problem is the winner/owner of the certain ports gain very easy access to strategic woods, creating snowballing effect. They can replace their ships from best woods easily and very cheaply comparing others. The spawn amount is huge compared to population. You can stock strategic woods in no time to have enough for the rest of the year :).

I believe stat differences of wood types should not be that big, to reduce the effectiveness of bonus stacking. The winner/owner of the port should only have direct access to the resource, they should pay same with all others, in this case 50k doubloons for 5k woods to avoid snowballing effect. Moreover, all spawned strategic resources should have spawn rates based on active population, lower population less resources.

 

I agree with you about oak/oak as standard. But if that will function we need to make the rarest ships available for combat marks or victory marks. We cant have both, scarcity of woods and scarcity of ships, then players will freak out!

Imagine that the normal player normally play with oak ships. He has perhaps 3 oak L Oceans and one oak Santti and for PVP 2 oak Trincs. Besides that he  owns 1 LO/WO L Ocean and one tealk/teak Trinc, that he uses for prioritized operations, where slightly better ships are needed. THAT is something that could be very interesting.

Either a system like the one we have had were LO/WO and Teak/Teak is the standard and few sane players will sail the useless oak ships, or a systemn where oak is the standard. Either way devs has to decide and adjust the system. 

Edited April 16, 2019 by Ligatorswe

[HamBlower]

I don't think "RareWoods" are the Problem.

The Problem is, that Clans don't work together to harvest the random spot points of these woods.

Sweden has Teak, WhiteOak and LiveOak. None of these three woods were totaly harvested. Maybe we don't need ships, I can't see people trading these woods or sail in convoys to the hot spots.

I only see players thinking about "good old times".

I'm totaly fine with the new system and can't see lot's of oak/oak ships.
There are enough ressources.

[huliotkd]

we need equity for rare woods, if you can build farm 10 players can far 1000 each so 10000 a day so game-broken again.

@admin you should make rare wood delivery RNG. example:

you set 1.000.000 of live/WO/teak/Cag/sab/Maho a day as supply for all the map; then you set that all this quantities has to be split on X amount of AI trader and then to be delivered around where no one can predict but only discover. that way, you solve the problem of breaking the game by a nation that owns all teak ports, all live oak ports, all white oak ports ecc ecc.

1st day, an amount of teak (4k) is delivered to Tumbado and to other Xamount of ports  (maybe delivery 2 or 3 times in a single day for each ports a small quantity). next day to Caracas, but only 1k...next day to Rosaly, next day Baracoa and so on...every day, at restart, the port ''buy'' all the rare wood still in stock starting again from 0 for the next day so you don't have a situation where ports can stack woods in exagerated quantity.

every day restart, everyday new quantity, everyday new Port, every day new Player tradind routes, everyday new Raiders, everyday new PVP, evedyday new PVE.

you can also send to ports only 500k of rare wood each day and the rest of 500k, of the 1kk a day of that rare wood, can be purchased by Clan Delivery Missions like now (maybe not all500k in 1 port but only 10-15k each) at the same cost like now (50kdoubl....if you want safety resources, you have to pay for the service....otherwise, sail a trader and find them in the map). the quantity of Clan Delivery Mission will stay also after maintenance, but the RANDOM Ai delivery will be reset as said before.

Edited April 16, 2019 by huliotkd

[shunt]

the wandering forest isnt a bad idea jusr poorly executed ... the price in doubloons is far too much ... there is 1million teak 1m live oak  1m white oak logs in the game ... but its all sat behind a ridiculous  50k doubloon for 5000  and clan mission barrier

drop the price in doubloons to  5k doubloons for 5k logs ... people wil start using the clan missions .. will start trading the rare woods ... start hauling to ports to sell ... it will create content for those that want to trade ... the wandering forest effect will spread the wealth around the map ... it will re energise ship building ... im tot going to spend 50 cm   on a l ocean permit if the l ocean is going to be oak/oak

weve tested the current set up and its not working so if we are testing change it and test again

 

 

 

[Guest]

@admin

50k is too much. lower the price and its working

 

[Eyesore]

What @huliotkd wrote makes sense, and gives everybody a chance to collect some rare stuff.

Like he suggested, if clans can still get a garanteed amount in the 'special' ports, it will still be a usefull advantage/convenience for RVR?

Two days ago, i capped two ai tbrigs, one had 100 live oak and the other had 110 white oak. I know, that is not much if you are crafting in bulk or crafting for extra trims or golden ships, but it makes the 'solo'-players and new and more casual people have a chance (i really think ai-ships carrying rare items in ow is a must (like it still seems to be to this day), i wouldn't be capping traders for just a chance to get some worthless (to me) tradinggoods). So, having delivered some rare items to random ports (i (and others) have suggested this before already, i'm not sure whether the ai-ships carrying rare items in ow actually deliver them to a port atm?) also makes people visit random ports and thus more traffic in ow.

[Genevieve Malfleurs]

Why not giving a daily opportunity to each individual player? Like a message/mission in which a particular port will have a certain amount of one or two wood types just for you.

The player can decide wether to go there and buy it or not. There´ll be no concentration on particular ports and no orchestrated ganking because of randomness.

The map will be used as well :). Best wishes, Gene

[huliotkd]

12 minutes ago, Genevieve Malfleurs said:

Why not giving a daily opportunity to each individual player? Like a message/mission in which a particular port will have a certain amount of one or two wood types just for you.

The player can decide wether to go there and buy it or not. There´ll be no concentration on particular ports and no orchestrated ganking because of randomness.

The map will be used as well :). Best wishes, Gene

nope.

you can abuse with ALT account receiving message also for ALT so you can buy too much rare wood and no other one will discover you.

making wood delivery RANDOM will move player to every port to find something valuable using more trader ship than now