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Make port bonus control go from humans to game mechanic


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The port bonuses have been the hot topic, and i saw the flaw in this mechanic instantly when it was implented. It is controlled by humans/players. To be paired with the limit of friendslist 15 guilds in port...

What i feared would happen is that ports get locked behind big guilds, that don't allow solo/small clan players to build these ships ever. This has already happened in Brittish side, we have ports that will only open if you pay certain ammount of CM. And who promises that it actually would open then? or be remowed at will next day? Players.

Im all in on that you might need pay a certain ammount of "Protection" or "investment" to the ruler of the port, but isnt thats why we have Taxes?

If i need to buy my rights for port bonuses as small clan or solo player, i want it to be a game mechanic, i dont want to trust in players that might just cheat on me.

This is also breaking the nation when you announce that you can get to their port only if you pay them, i dont think its good advertisement for anyone.

My suggestion:

1st option.

Make ports open to all Nation players, clans are already getting Taxes from the ports why add another paywall to craft ships that pepole actually might buy. (Standard ships are useless shit now)

2nd option.

This can be easily implented as game mechanic in form of contract. Clan sets ammount of either goods or cash they want in exhange of certain ammount of time or permanent stay you want use the port bonuses in form of contract. Then you buy it from the port investment window for example.

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Before you decide to eviscerate the large clans for being a little restrictive on who they permit into their ports I would suggest you take a look at the massive amount of resources needed to get those bonuses and defenses set up. Moderately sized clans can take up to a month just to get 3 or 4 bonuses actually activated, then on top of that with the new marking system on the ship info card it now shows Exactly where the ship was built making that port a target if that ship is captured by the enemy. On top of that is the nice little 254,000 real PER DAY cost to maintain a timer for the port. So if you are wondering why some clans are getting a little over the top as far as picky, that is only part of the reason. The other part may be that many clans within the same nation act like total a-holes towards each other in the area of assisting when they call for help. I used to be part of britain and I swear besides using a cattle prod it was near impossible to get anyone to help if I got ganked near kpr. 

Your best bet is to try to align with one of the smaller clans and help them build up a port. Doing so (if they are honorable) should get your clan a permanent spot to access the port for building. Beyond that, there is little you can do and forcing the players to release control of who gets access to the port will not solve anything. What you are suggesting could be turned around and used by alts to get ships built at a certain port that has all the bonuses and then smuggle the ship to an enemy nation. Do you really want to spend the time to build up a port just to have to face off against an enemy that is using it against you?

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I understand you both. But still... 

I don't think smuggling ships to enemies will ever cease. In all games like these people have ALTs in big guilds on opposin nation and they will trade stuff to the highest bidder. Trust me. I think this is invalid argument. And people will always announce on nation chat your best craft ports when they find them. You think that small line telling where ship is crafted i gives out the port? No its the word out in chat and looking trader tool where alot stuff is sold. So that also is invalid argument. We need look how it should work when game is released and we have bigger player base. It will be wild west then at chat. 

And yes keeping port up costs alot i quess, but that is something for devs to retune then. 

At current state the game is, standard ships are obsolete. Wich means the meta game for traders/shipwrights type of players is totally broken. We must consider solo players too and those clans who are not on the friendlists at the time of investments. They too have right to build ships competitive for endgame PvP. So if the port bonuses are to stay as they are we need some way to allow all to optain the by game mechanism.

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you could always hire an enemy group from one nation to target them?

OR

you could join another group of clans in the same nation and get one their friends list and help them while ignoring the other group.

Honestly 2 things would make the current port investments fine for the game.

lower all max points in port by 50% - make a 55 point port a 30 point port as an example.

Double the cost of points for all Ship building investments. so to get level 4 bonus it would require a total of 20 points instead of 10.

Edited by Teutonic
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Maybe, to support a port and gain acces to its upgrades,

what if players, not on any list, could get somekind of permit to build x-amount of ships, or harvest x-amount of resource? Maybe by delivering goods (portmissions?) to maintain the upkeep(?) of the upgrades or maybe help to pay for a timer (a mission which directly helps the owning clan)?

So, (small/big) clans/solo's/casuals/whatever can contribute when they want/need to?

Many casuals will probably want to help in defending their port where they have their shipyard. Would they not be more likely to help defend (even if it is only screening, or counter hostility) if they have a serious investment/interest made in this port?

The controlling clan could perhaps select which kind of buildings and/or resources are available to all? (although i think the basic materials should be freely available, so only the rare items could be restricted to outsiders, clans on the friendly-list are always free to use any upgrade offcourse?)

How realistic is it to expect a clan to hold many friendlies (20?, 40?, 60? with a full server?) on the list, to keep up with who is who and what changes or new arrivals/players happen in those clans? How does it keep alts out of the port or atleast hinder their acces to it? (I'm sure it is fairly easy to act as a new player and join a big clan and be able to stay under the radar ... 😉 )

 

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2 minutes ago, Eyesore said:

Maybe, to support a port and gain acces to its upgrades,

what if players, not on any list, could get somekind of permit to build x-amount of ships, or harvest x-amount of resource? Maybe by delivering goods (portmissions?) to maintain the upkeep(?) of the upgrades or maybe help to pay for a timer (a mission which directly helps the owning clan)?

So, (small/big) clans/solo's/casuals/whatever can contribute when they want/need to?

Many casuals will probably want to help in defending their port where they have their shipyard. Would they not be more likely to help defend (even if it is only screening, or counter hostility) if they have a serious investment/interest made in this port?

The controlling clan could perhaps select which kind of buildings and/or resources are available to all? (although i think the basic materials should be freely available, so only the rare items could be restricted to outsiders, clans on the friendly-list are always free to use any upgrade offcourse?)

How realistic is it to expect a clan to hold many friendlies (20?, 40?, 60? with a full server?) on the list, to keep up with who is who and what changes or new arrivals/players happen in those clans? How does it keep alts out of the port or atleast hinder their acces to it? (I'm sure it is fairly easy to act as a new player and join a big clan and be able to stay under the radar ... 😉 )

 

Finally someone gets my point, thank you. We are part of developing team, we are currently low player base. We need think how it works in larger scale for all players. 

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Well, leeching is a harsh word, the point is that making/providing usefull actions which contribute to the port and/or the controlling clan doesn't make it leeching anymore?

How is it leeching if they pay for the porttimer for example? Is it not better than just having an alt in some obscure(?) unknown(?) friendly clan, because they have 'invested' once during the development of the port (and supposedly keeps their right to keep using the port even if they are removed from the friendly-list)?

 

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Do I think the port assets should be open to all members of a nation, NO. For more than just the reasons provided here but mainly due to several small or individual players who wish to sit back and do nothing and reap from the hard work of the other clans. If you want access to the port, show that you have some value to the clan that runs the port. I have a friend who operates a single person clan that does 90% trading and about 10% combat (primarily being a holy terror in a mortar brig to even rattlesnakes). She does not play often but when she is around she contributes and does not complain. Hell, she even produced and delivered over 10,000 stone to one of our ports to help build the defenses. What have you provided to the port you are wanting access to? Have you helped that clan with generating money or helped in transporting materials? Have you sailed along side them in combat and proven your worth? Or are you just wanting to build better ships without ever getting off your ass to earn it? If you have proven yourself to a clan, I seriously doubt they would charge you for being on their friends list because you have proven that your value is far beyond the minuscule amount of CM or reals you could give them.

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Woah. All these personal attacks from people blaming im not contributing anything in the current game.

When we are talking how the game should work in future with possibly thousands of players?

I totally understand people have made HUGE contributions in game for current patch.

But we are not talking about that. So please stop posting about who contributed what and where.

Focus on the topic -> How to have game mechanic that will give rights to build bonus to all players who invest / help port owner, whitout it being controlled by human.

Now please stop bitching and make better suggestions, or will we just want this game to die?

Edited by James Thomson
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1 hour ago, James Thomson said:

Woah. All these personal attacks from people blaming im not contributing anything in the current game.

Funny coming from someone who said my points were invalid. So I provided you with an example of what one person who is a small clan is doing to earn the right to get access to the port bonuses. So if all you want to do is purchase some piece of paper to get access to the port, then I will vote hell no on that. It takes a massive amount of time and resources to build up a port and all you want to do is toss pennies at it (with no indication that the owning clan gets any of that other than taxes). 

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47 minutes ago, Raekur said:

Funny coming from someone who said my points were invalid. So I provided you with an example of what one person who is a small clan is doing to earn the right to get access to the port bonuses. So if all you want to do is purchase some piece of paper to get access to the port, then I will vote hell no on that. It takes a massive amount of time and resources to build up a port and all you want to do is toss pennies at it (with no indication that the owning clan gets any of that other than taxes). 

If clan is let set the requirements to buy the permit to use the port as my 2nd suggestion included what stops the clan asking for more than pennies hmm? 

You could set it to be 1m of creds,100CM whatever clan wants.

Or in the option 1 all open, the upgrading of port is open to all and more you upgrade it more you get marks or other valuable currency. This way everyone after port is capped will want to come and invest on it. 

I'm suggesting new things here, giving my idea out for further development. Not saying it should be implemented exactly right this to the current game world. Of course worked and balanced to be fit.

But if current ship bonus system is to stay, it will render standard shipwrights useless. And only clans in specific ports will be building ships usefull. Then we have just lost major part of players as i know many love only to build the ships in these games. 

Im just suggesting here a mechanism to the game so any player can pay the damn price whitout being locked out by toxic attitudes of human players. 

And in future the port costs might be way different, thats why im saying references to the current gameplay are invalid and not needed. All things are still to be balanced. 

 

Here is one more idea how to implement this. When you are building the ship, you can select wich port bonus you take and it will cost more the higher it is and higher the tier of the ship is. The cost for this is for devs to balance. 

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On 5/18/2019 at 9:09 AM, Gregory Rainsborough said:

If you contribute to the port investment as a friendly clan then it cannot be removed from you. Ever. Even if taken off friends list.

I understood it to mean things like resources (forests, farms, etc.) not ship bonuses. Are port bonuses available after being taken off the friends list?

 

On 5/18/2019 at 10:21 AM, Gregory Rainsborough said:

You're on our friends list, at no cost might I point out.

That's not the point of this discussion, but our thanks to you, Gregory, and SNOW.

 

On 5/18/2019 at 5:01 PM, Beeekonda said:

More options to leech, nice

I think you missed the point of this. With proper game mechanics there should not be any ability to "leech" at all. It should be player based investments, yes, but not locked behind clan friend list. This is what taxes are for. Clan that owns the port collects taxes (or should if they don't anymore).

 

15 hours ago, Graf Bernadotte said:

Tell us. How many doublons, victory marks and combat medals did you donate to develop British ports. How many stone blocks, tools or provisions did you sail to help big clans with port development. How many hours in game did you use to make your nations ship production work?

I can tell you that I spent enormous amounts of all those goods and dozens of hours to help Russian ship production to be the best. Also in the big clans there are only a few players willing to do that. That's why it will never ever happen that a player of a small clan supporting a big clan with a lot of time will be locked from ship production after. If Russian big clans would lock one of those dilligent helpers from ship production after, the few dilligent players of those clans would be faced with even more work the next time something has to be developed. We would punish us much more than you, since you would be welcomed all over the server with such unselfishly behaviour, and would get access in ship production easily elsewhere in the game.

This points to the fundamental flaw of the current game mechanic. Big clans immediately take all ports and then expect other small clans and individuals to help, even though they might not be able to as much as yourself, especially if they play casually. If mechanic allowed players to pay for their own crafting developments / port bonuses individually, this problem wouldn't exist. Bonuses should be available to all who invest in it, not solely to those the owning clan picks and chooses.

 

Here are my thoughts on how to fix this:

1. Port owners receive taxes from development costs and trades made on shop (this includes doubloons and reals). Clans that own the port can invest in defenses however they see fit. They should be able to set the tax rate between 5% and 50%. The lower tax rate incentivizes economic activity and the higher rate deters it.

2. Individuals and clans can invest in ports which generates revenue for port owner to use in defense. Individuals and clans that have invested heavily will naturally want to protect the port.

3. Implement the changes Anolytic mentions:

 

 

Sincerely,

Edited by John Page
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I actually think it would be better if a captains individual shipyard was upgradable to port bonuses rather than every shipyard in a port. Resource development and defenses would still be port level improvements but shipyard an individual. Clans would maintain the same control they have now. Clans would still have an advantage as they can coordinate their production line and donate labor. However, small clans and solo players could develop a role as ship merchants. It would also put a small slowing brake on the wave of super ships.

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