Crew / Ammo / Provisions

[Captain Marchant]

Personally I would love to see cost for Crew/Ammo/ Provisions to give a little more cost a depth and strategy to the game.

Examples 

Crew - simply a cost per man (the more men you use the more it will cost you) 
When in port half pay
When on your ship full pay
This would mean you think more about the ship you take and keep an eye on your personal economy 

Ammo - Why have unlimited ammo? If you are going out to hunt, rather than being able to stay out forever you need to plan your ventures and think how much ammo you may need...get it wrong and you may end up paying for it with your ship

Provisions - Crew need food and water, again if you are making a long sail (trading/ going to a PB/ heading to a nice PVP zone) you should plan for a long sail. make sure your crew have the provisions they need. 

I think with these thing implemented it could give more depth to the ship you sail and the overall game experience

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

You could even go into adding perks if needed - 25% less pay/provision use etc     


Just a suggestion and something I would personally like to see. 

I welcome any feedback
Thanks, Captain Marchant

[Tom Farseer]

Recurring upkeep costs on Crew (and possibly the Ships themselves) sound like a good idea to introduce another money sink to counter inflation. I like it. Same goes for provisions. This could have the added benefit of countering the repair meta by taking up hold space that would otherwise be used for more repairs. Fishing and conversion to provisions give ppl the ability to still sail very far, depending on crew amount and thus provision intake per day at sea.

With completely limited ammo I see a problem though: It is another mechanic to the detriment of solo hunters and the advantage of gank fleets.
Example:

1. Hunter comes around to, well, hunt in a decent ship.
2. Locals just start throwing crap ships bought from admiralty at him until he runs out of ammo.
3. Once he's out, retag, chain and capture a now defenseless ship.

One could argue that a good raider will rarely end up in such a situation by rationing his ammo and pulling out in time and sailing home. The current RoE and possible constant retagging however make it easy to corner and wear down anything but the fastest sailors without risking anything but a few thousand reals for some crap admiralty cerbs etc.

[dark arisen]

or at least have a weight cost for the crew, an undercrewed LGV with 60 men should be able to carry more stuff than a 200 men cause crew needs empty space and provisions that weight something

 

[Teutonic]

I am against these ideas.

It is not that they are bad, so much as it would require yet more work for players to get what they want and add yet another barrier of entry into the game.

I'd prefer changes and adjustments that would make the game easier to play and easier to introduce to new players...

[Angus MacDuff]

I don't mind the crew money sink at all, but limiting the amount of time you can spend at sea with provisions/ammo is a very bad idea.  With the size of our map and limited outposts, you would be tying players close to home.  A definite loss of content for all.

[o Barão]

11 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

I don't mind the crew money sink at all, but limiting the amount of time you can spend at sea with provisions/ammo is a very bad idea.  With the size of our map and limited outposts, you would be tying players close to home.  A definite loss of content for all.

He didn't detailed the limits in numbers.

As an example:

A ship with the magazine full could translate to 3 hours using the cannons. 

A ship with full provisions could translate to 3 hours sailing in the OW without the need to dock to replenish.

In both scenarios would be enough for a comfortable gameplay.

 

What I don't like about this idea is to force all players when returning to a port to waste time looking to more numbers and to make more clicks. I think is not worth it from a gameplay perspective just to bring more depth in realism.

 

[CaptVonGunn]

13 hours ago, dark arisen said:

or at least have a weight cost for the crew, an undercrewed LGV with 60 men should be able to carry more stuff than a 200 men cause crew needs empty space and provisions that weight something

 

This is why they added Provision to the build cost of the ships back a while ago,.. ok a LONG while ago. How do you determine how much ammo? If we went with Historical amounts no one would finish a fight. We shoot a LOT more shots in any battle then were ever fired by a single ship in a real fight. Because most fights ended up being both sail away shot up.. that is why the few where a lot of ships sank or were captured get the big write ups in history. Because they were NOT the norm..  Now I prefer more historically accurate but sometimes you just gotta say nope.. They already restrict the special ammo.. What I haven't tested is that per battle or from Port to port? ie if I retag do I get my starting Double Shot Double Charge Grape and Chain again or is it gone till I go to port?