Investments - What I think needs to change

[Teutonic]

Based on an Old Topic I made way back when:

So myself, my clanmates, and I am sure a lot of people have really enjoyed Investments to a degree. The idea was nice, the intentions were probably fair....

the problem is that the outcome has created a terrible environment for RvR and the lack of it. There are other issues with RvR at this time. but i'll leave that to other threads. Investments have turned what should be an active RvR conflict into a no-mans-land of dead content and everyone hesitating to fight each other for fear of "forcing" people to make the choice to stop playing this game. I firmly believe no one here wants people to stop playing, but they also fight the urge to "go pvp regardless of the future population decline." I write this with a clear understanding that port bonuses and investments are probably "too far coded" that the Devs may never revert them.

When I originally created the Topic about regional bonuses, I had the idea of what investments became, but I was geared more to economical incentives and not straight up power creep that it has become. So if I had the ability to choose to Kill investments the way they are and completely re-build how they should be --- Yes, I'd kill the port bonus investments.

I still think that "regional bonuses" of what I argued before would work - we still have a port county system, the frontline system could use adjustments - but otherwise would be fine with this.

So to re-state how regional bonuses would take effect.

1. A nation needs to hold the entire region in order for regional bonuses to be activated (after a downtime maintenance)

2. Nations can "take away" regional bonuses by taking a port within the county to disrupt the stability and defending nations (and all nations in the county) would lose the bonuses.

The reason why I believe this would work better is that Overall I feel a large group of players in NA want to disrupt their enemies and have a real feeling of negatively affecting their opponents economic backbone without "destroying" a nation like what we would have if you take someone's invested crafting port.

Example: Imagine Russia owning the entire Santo domingo County - all Denmark would need to do to disrupt their economy in that county is to hold Higuey. Or the County of Vera Cruz, you would only need to take Alvarado away from Russia to disrupt these bonuses.

 

Regional Bonus Perks and Investment changes - I originally had 4 in mind and I believe the Devs have at least implemented "some" of what I was looking for. having the ability to invest resources (both rare and basic) is really nice and I think really helps create the idea of building up "your" ports to be these great economic machines. I also feel that the better chances for better ships in ports that can be captured is going in the right direction. Even with these changes, I don't really think it's enough and I advocate again for a change to investments and new additions to be worked on.

Investment changes

1. Drop ALL port bonus investments. The intended goal was to create ships with "unique" stat bonuses. but unfortunately it just got geared to a ship outright being better than anything else - Including the side-effect that people not in a friendly list or clan just can't take advantage of this (and only hope that a ship is sold on the market). delete port bonuses

2. keep resource investments as they are - The goal should be to create economic benefits for nations and clans, not just power creep on ships.

Regional Bonus Perks - Improved - Remind yourself that these ONLY take affect when a nation owns the entire county

1. Reduced Port Maintenance cost - I am bringing this one back again because I STILL think it's both needed and would be a welcome change. When a county is controlled by one nation, reduce all maintenance costs of ports in the county by 25%.
Example -- 4,000 reals cost becomes 3,000 while regional bonuses are activated

2. Lower all Crafting resource costs by 10% - If something costs 100 fir logs to make - it now only costs 90. This creates incentives for players to craft in the region WITHOUT restricting them to a port with port bonuses. Port bonuses have the adverse affect that essentially force players to craft ships in that port, if a nation/group lose this port they lose a shit ton more than they really deserve to lose. Now players can be in any port in the region and gain the benefits of it.

If a region gets contested - players don't immediately lose their ability to play because players can craft a ship or mod that's the same as everyone else - only you use more resources again.

3. Ship Trims are added to the crafting and "special trims now have a chance" - What I mean by this is the following:

ship trims like we have them now, Cramped, Fast, mast, etc are now able to be chosen in your crafting window when you also choose wood types on your ships.

advanced ship trims like - "very fast," "very cramped," "Heavy Rig," are now able to be chosen for the crafter to get a "Chance" to get these trims.

Elite/NPC Trims like "Redoutable refit," "Bermuda Refit," "Build Strength" that you normally only can find on captured NPC ships now have a chance to be added on the ship you craft similar to how trims are now. 

Further clarification:

A. Agile, Cramped, Fast, Sturdy, and Strong Rig - Crafter chooses which one they want on their ship when in the crafting window

B. Very Agile, Very cramped, Very Fast, Very sturdy, Heavy Rig - Crafter can now "choose" one of these trims for a chance to get them on their ship -- If the crafter does not get the trim, the ship has no trim.

C. NPC only Refits/Trims like Barbary Refit, Bermuda Refit, Stiffness, Build Strength, etc - When Crafting a ship, these trims/refits now act like trims do right now - crafter does not get a choice on these refits, but gets a chance.

 

Effectively this Regional bonus would become the "NEW Port Bonus" on what I believe port bonuses should have actually been.

A Crafter could get a surprise with agile as their choice - and with luck get the liverpool refit for a better bonus on turn-speed

A Crafter could now attempt to get Very Fast on a surprise - but still have the chance to not get it (The chance for the NPC Refits still works here too)

A Crafter could get a legendary ship with Very Fast and Bermuda Refit for an extremely fast ship. Heck the Crafter got lucky and got a GOLD ship too!

A Crafter could have the bad luck of not getting an elite trim and then getting the Shabby trim

4. County Capital owner gains choice of rare resource generation - What  I mean by this is that when a County is controlled by an entire nation - the Clan that owns the County Capital gets a choice (after maintenance) to garner support from Europe in bringing in resources to further the war effort. Essentially this would allow a nation to choose the county port to "spawn" Swedish Carpenters, or Spanish Square Sails. These would spawn like they normally do now - on the open market and everyone has the ability to place a contract to buy them. Clan Owner can "change" the support for a different resource, but the cooldown is 2 weeks. So if you chose to garner support from France, you could then choose to get French Sail Cloth or Diplome D'Artillierie (but not both) - You then must wait 2 weeks before you would be able to change your support to a different resource.

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The ultimate point is that Investments, Port Bonuses, Regional Bonuses - should ALL be geared towards an economic background. Better economy, and better economic bonuses towards crafting would ultimately make the incentives for both controlling a county as best as you can, as well as attempting to disrupt the opponent so they do not get these bonuses.

 

Edited August 28, 2019 by Teutonic

[John Hill Regard]

Very interresting.

The main problem today about investments is that a single player (the clan leader owning the port ) has a total power on this investments.

When every thing is ok no problem , If you belong's to a Zerg Nation no problem to you have choice.

The problem is when you have no choice or when the clan leader decide to break all investment's (from most clan from the nation )  because he has changed nation and give the leadership of his clan to an ALT ( It already happen look at Nuevitas ...).

All bonus except regional (to motivate RVR ) should be given back to crafter (as a tec tree ) .

The unbalanced game should be fight by game mechanism (more taxes and malus for Zerg less taxes and more bonus for small etc )

The power should be given back to player's , clan leadership his a fail ....Why should a clan leader decide to open or close a port that all nation has conquered ? One more time if this clan leader has changed nation he can open and close strategic port for his new nation interrest ....and in total desinterrest for the owning nation....It's just insane.

You should have a referundum to decide to open or close a port.

I hope player's won't leave too fast because this game can be a great game .Problem's have to be solve !!

Cheer's

 

[Beeekonda]

4 hours ago, Teutonic said:

 I write this with a clear understanding that port bonuses and investments are probably "too far coded" that the Devs may never revert them.

Maybe in a long run, if we could offer changes to a current system, they would certainly look into wiping ships and implementing a new system. Maybe one day, when we all will get sick of shipyards being full of golden boats. Until then discussions are welcome, just not those "ez fix" ones

[Captain2Strong]

tl : dr

tbh this is just an unnecessary element which causes people to grind for it instead of playing for fun just because it's nice to have it so it shouldn't exist tbh

[Teutonic]

32 minutes ago, Captain2Strong said:

tl : dr

tbh this is just an unnecessary element which causes people to grind for it instead of playing for fun just because it's nice to have it so it shouldn't exist tbh

tl;dr of it is:

I want to remove port bonuses and "move" bonuses into something that requires owning an entire county - no need for heavily invested ports - only need is to actively defend ports.

also instead of stat boosting bonuses, it is economy boosting bonuses.

Edited August 29, 2019 by Teutonic

[Captain2Strong]

On 8/29/2019 at 2:08 AM, Teutonic said:

tl;dr of it is:

I want to remove port bonuses and "move" bonuses into something that requires owning an entire county - no need for heavily invested ports - only need is to actively defend ports.

well yeah, I don't doubt that it is, but I just pointed out my own thoughts and said that your post is tl for me

On 8/29/2019 at 2:08 AM, Teutonic said:

also instead of stat boosting bonuses, it is economy boosting bonuses.

yeah that would be better and healthier for the game just because people wouldn't have to be bothered with boring grind for investments and spend their time getting them just beucase it's nice to have them
instead they could have some nice fights between nations caused by the direct economical reward that would motivate to have fun battles...

Edited August 30, 2019 by Captain2Strong

[Sea Archer]

I was asking myself what we shall do with all the victory marks once the ports are fully upgraded. Is there no further use for them? So why should we fight for more then?

Concerning the port bonus system, I would rather see it completely abandoned. The quality or bonus of a ship should only be connected to the crafters experience on a certain ship type and its influence much lower than now.

[Teutonic]

I'd prefer victory marks used in lineship permits for crafting as well.

[Hethwill]

35 minutes ago, Teutonic said:

I'd prefer victory marks used in lineship permits for crafting as well.

victory marks or combat marks

All 1-3 ranks.

 

[Teutonic]

1 hour ago, Hethwill said:

victory marks or combat marks

All 1-3 ranks.

 

I'd agree with this. the option to use both would be very nice.