Gameplay Impressions

[Skeksis]

I’m on the last US campaign battle ‘already’, so I hope that this is the halfway mark of the campaign, I felt that I was just getting into my strides and the campaign was building nicely towards a whole lot of SOL battles. Even tripling US campaign gameplay hours would be very agreeable. I really hope that this is not the end!

I thought ‘boarding’ and capturing was too prevalent, in regards of using  ‘cannonball’ verse using ‘grapeshot’. Very quickly the choice of using cannonballs became obsolete and reducing crews via grapeshot was the weapon of choice. Mostly because capturing ships was the best way to collect funds and rep points but also it was the fastest way to takedown enemy ships. Overall destroying or damaging ships with cannonballs didn’t feature and in the end, it wasn’t even a viable gameplay option. I think ‘somehow’ that cannonballs needs to be made into a more viable option.

Best battles were where there was multiple engagements at the same time in different parts of the map. In these battles I had to slow the game to slower than normal speed to manage the engagements, most intense and most enjoyable. I think this is how to intensify the AI, not the way of NA by buffing the AI beyond players level or pitching the greatest ship ever against the player.

If there’s more campaign to come then organizing the AI to engage the player simultaneously in multiple parts of the map is the key to 'ultimate' battle action.

 

Suggestions to create cannonball battles.

1) The rate of crew lost during boarding should be based on side armour strength.

E.g. with heathy or full strength armour, boarding/loss of crew should take an excessive amount of time but with side armour reduced to less or 50% the rate would similar to what is in-game now. This should spur on more pre-emptive cannonball battles. Lengthen battles and gameplay hours.

2) Each ship to carry ‘weighted’ quantities of cannonball, grapeshot and chain (supplies). This then forces the player into limited grapeshot, which then leads players into tactics of using cannonballs first then switching to grapeshot to capture. Change the UI to enable setting cannonball, grapeshot and chain quantities via slider-bars. These weights should add to the overall ship weight. This then opens up strategies choices for the player when considering ship loadouts. Add an option for ships to transfer supplies during battle, like in land battles and for every ship to have transfer supplies ability (or to equalize supplies). This should increase cannonballs battles, just alittle bit though. Logic: players wouldn't risk not  taking enough cannonballs and running out of ammo and thus the control of grapeshot, sort of indirect control. 

However at this late stage of development I realize that there will probably not be any changes to game mechanics and I’m just listing imaginations but there you go anyway. 

 

Edited March 22, 2020 by Skeksis

[RAMJB]

Disagreed. While I can be on the same boat that boarding can be very effective, it doesn't mean it's the way to go, or that standard round shot is "obsolete"

On ships of the same class (variance depending on the opponents is too big to sum it up in a brief summary);

1- Grape can and will reduce your crew. Round will massacre ships sides, cause possibly massive firepower decrease through cannons being destroyed, cause a lot more crew shocks, induce floodings, cause rigging shocks (demasting) and artillery shocks.

2- Grape can and will make a boarding easier. Round (particularily so from the rear) can let you skip boarding altogether (ships surrendering when subjected to a constant hailstorm of roundshot, specially when it involves a rake or two, isn't rare at all)

3-Grape only affects crew. A good volley or two of well aimed shot at a mast's base will cripple it's rigging for good (depending on your gunnery poundage, foremast or mizzen are much more vulnerable, and the fore being destroyed seriously impairs a ship's ability to maneouver, particularily so against the wind), leaving it open to be raked into oblivion and then some. Bowsprits are very vulnerable aswell, and viable ways to cut an enemy's maneouverability significantly with low poundage guns (9 pounders or so).

4-Rear rakes are, without exception, FAR more damaging than grape ones.

5-plain obvious but important nonetheless: round shot vastly outranges grape, which means against an enemy decided to board you as long as you can keep it at arm's lenght it means a constant unchallenged rain of fire on him.

6-The heavier the broadside, the far less optimal graping is. Shooting grape with a 3rd rate is pretty much a waste of massive guns (unless you're planning to jump on board of that tasty enemy lineship to capture it, of course).

7-Grape's reliance on being on top of the enemy (at max range grape's effectivity reduces significantly) means that an enemy with double shot can absolutely SMASH your face  (and your broadsides) in the second you come too close. And heavens help you if he wins your rear because in that case you're D.O.N.E.

8- Grape is grape. It does what it does, and it does it good, and none of it is related with "how much "armor" the enemy has left". Grape works and works best when aimed at the decks (the expresion "sweeping the decks" comes from there), but when aimed at a hull it can, and it will, inflict some casualties and depending on how intense the volley, many, coming from the shrapnel that goes through the gunports and directly into the ship.
Armor in this game is a very abstract way to represent the structural integrity of a side and it's ability to keep heavy round shot from penetrating the planking, meaning, that your "armor" is gone doesn't mean your whole side is open to the enemy like a big window allowing for the shrapnel to go in unimpeded. A ship with no "armor" still has a wooden barrier between the guns and the crew, the same one it'll exist if the "armor" was maxed out. Making grape damage depending on "armor left" is absolutely unrealistic and completely unintuitive.

9- Grape backs up one strategy, and one strategy only: boarding. Roundshot allows you for total flexibility in what you are aiming to do. Including a thorough preparation for boarding but extending to sinking the enemy, immobilizing it, forcing it to outright surrender, reduce it's firepower, etc.

10- Boarding-only ship loads means decreased maneouverability and speed due to sheer crew weight. Flexible loads lets you dance around an enemy while tearing new holes in their rear end while they can do mostly nothing to keep you at bay (not to mention open up heavier cannon poundage if you wish it so). As good as grape can be against crews, nothing beats repeated rakes with roundshot. Grape has it's place. It's also open to abuse. Up to the player to be tremendously wasteful with his resources and paying for new crews over and over and over againg for indulging in rageboarding... It can be viable, yes, but hurtful in the long term.


Now again that's 1v1 similar ship classes. Variance due to the campaign, foe sizes, own ship sizes ,etc, exists. I'm not going to say rage-boarding with grape only is not viable because it is (and it should be, if you've tailored your fleet to be unstoppable in boarding actions I see absolutely no reason whatsoever for the game to penalize you for it, it was a standard doctrine in the day, it should be here too). But it is very cost-inefficient. Sure, in some scenarios where you're vastly outnumbered an early capture can help you turn tables on the enemy for the remainder of the battle - smart boarding is rewarding. But going "boarding only"...it's not.

See, through boarding you can get a lot of captures but that'll translate in admiralty points for the most part while your crew losses will be abominable (officer losses too). Eventually you'll be using those admiralty points to purchase the ships you captured to directly SELL Them because you're out of money because your crew losses are unsustainable. Can you play that way?. Sure. Does it mean it's the ONLY way you can play?. Nope, not at all, which is good because it means that you have multiple choices in the way you shape up your forces, you tailor your doctrinal use of them on the battlefield, in order to be effective in the sea.

In my opinion nothing needs to change as I find that grape is exactly where it should be. A circunstancial ammunition to use in the final stages before a boarding action, or when by the end of the battle you have absolute superiority and you can take your time decreasing enemy crew numbers for an easy, cheap and low cost boarding...other than that, roundshot is plenty useful. I don't think anything needs to change in that particular relationship between grape and round...other than player perception ;).

Now anti-sail shot...that one I almost never use. If I go for the rigging of a ship I'm not going to punch holes in his sails, I'm going to blast away at his masts. Then again it's useful for light ships to help out against bigger ones because 6 pounders usually don't do a lot against masts, so, there's that too :).

Edited March 20, 2020 by RAMJB

[Skeksis]

@RAMJB yeah you can choose how you want to fight, drag out the battle as much as you want.

My feedback is that as soon as the battle starts I switch every ship to grapeshot and then begin planning the steps on how I'm going to capture every single ship, that's exactly what I do for every battle. I'm saying that maybe that tactic should be curtail with some game mechanics.

What do you think about the last US mission? to me it seems out of place, like throughtout the campaign you build your fleet up, building towards SOLs and then suddenly you have to reverse all that acquisition and try to acquire 6th rates! waste resources, shouldn't the mission be placed around about 2.0 or 3.0 and with less enemy?   

Edited March 20, 2020 by Skeksis

[pandakraut]

5 hours ago, RAMJB said:

Armor in this game is a very abstract way to represent the structural integrity of a side and it's ability to keep heavy round shot from penetrating the planking, meaning, that your "armor" is gone doesn't mean your whole side is open to the enemy like a big window allowing for the shrapnel to go in unimpeded. A ship with no "armor" still has a wooden barrier between the guns and the crew, the same one it'll exist if the "armor" was maxed out. Making grape damage depending on "armor left" is absolutely unrealistic and completely unintuitive.

I think the devs have previously stated that reducing armor does result in improved grape performance. It's possible that formula has been changed since then though. Skeksis' comments on armor seemed to be related to boarding and not grape effectiveness? Did you mean to describe that as unintuitive? Blasting holes or otherwise weakening ship planking with round shot prior to using grape does seem like it would result in increased effectiveness?

I don't think reducing armor should provide a benefit to boarding, as you've pointed out there are plenty of benefits to using round shot already.

19 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

What do you think about the last US mission? to me it seems out of place, like throughtout the campaign you build your fleet up, building towards SOLs and then suddenly you have to reverse all that acquisition and try to acquire 6th rates! waste resources, shouldn't the mission be placed around about 2.0 or 3.0 and with less enemy?   

This mission has been updated in the most recent patch(xsolla only currently.) You will be given smaller ships prior to the battle that can be customized to fight it.

Edited March 20, 2020 by pandakraut

[Skeksis]

3 hours ago, pandakraut said:

comments on armor seemed to be related to boarding

Yeah that's it, my sole tactic is to reduce crew for boarding, don't care or need to do any damage or reduce armor for that purpose.  

[RAMJB]

On 3/20/2020 at 6:10 PM, Skeksis said:

@RAMJB yeah you can choose how you want to fight, drag out the battle as much as you want.

My feedback is that as soon as the battle starts I switch every ship to grapeshot and then begin planning the steps on how I'm going to capture every single ship, that's exactly what I do for every battle. I'm saying that maybe that tactic should be curtail with some game mechanics.

What do you think about the last US mission? to me it seems out of place, like throughtout the campaign you build your fleet up, building towards SOLs and then suddenly you have to reverse all that acquisition and try to acquire 6th rates! waste resources, shouldn't the mission be placed around about 2.0 or 3.0 and with less enemy?   

well, that's what you do, because if you do it well it works. The same it'd work if you kept round shot and used tactical advantageous movement and positions to establish firepower superiority, focus when possible, maybe demast an enemy guy or two and effectively erase them from the fight while you fight off the rest, cause surrenders, etc. 

and once you end the battle you won't have to pay thousands in crew replacements (not to mention the hit in your armory) to make up for the disproportionate crew losses a mass-boarding battle mean.

Boarding is an "easier" problem-solving, you don't have to think that much. Grape the crap out of everyone, board when possible and winnable. Problem is - it's easier...it's also a HECK of a lot more expensive. Which translates into being a lot less desirable unless absolutely necessary (for instance, if the enemy has a 3rd rate and you only have frigates your best chance to win is to grape it into oblivion and then jump it with a double-board boarding...and even there blasting her ass with round shot whenever possible is a REALLY good idea)

What do I think about the last US mission?. I had no problem with it. I had four 6th rates by the time I reached that battle so I just picked three of them and went on to win the scenario. I had kept them with me all along the campaign. Alongside three 7th rates too. So when I had to face a "size limitation" battle I didn't bat an eye.
Why did I keep them? because most "missions" you have a point limit you can use to see if you accomplish them. The combo of a 40 point 7th rate and a 60 point 6th rate is 100 points, which is the max of many of those missions, and that combo gives you the max possible chances to get a positive result in those, so my 6ths were useful for that.

They also were armed with 9pdr long guns, which made them really effective mid-long range supporters for my main ships in scenarios where I could add them. My main battle force was a 74 gun SOL I had captured after it surrendered because I had raked it into oblivion after T_boning it from the front, a razée I had captured by boarding in the last stages of another battle, and a couple Hermiones that I had captured in similar circunstances. When that mission came up, and I could use none of my heavy hitters I had plenty of ships to use without having to go to the market. 

So I'm OK with that mission, basically ;).

 

Edited March 21, 2020 by RAMJB

[pandakraut]

22 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

Why did I keep them? because most "missions" you have a point limit you can use to see if you accomplish them. The combo of a 40 point 7th rate and a 60 point 6th rate is 100 points, which is the max of many of those missions, and that combo gives you the max possible chances to get a positive result in those, so my 6ths were useful for that.

FYI the shown limits can be exceeded in almost every battle currently. The limits were effectively removed except for PoIs and battles like Valcour Island because players were complaining that they never got to use their 3rd rates when they captured them very early in the campaign.

Great to hear that someone is still winning battles sticking to the BR limits though.

[doublebuck]

40 minutes ago, pandakraut said:

FYI the shown limits can be exceeded in almost every battle currently. The limits were effectively removed except for PoIs and battles like Valcour Island because players were complaining that they never got to use their 3rd rates when they captured them very early in the campaign.

Great to hear that someone is still winning battles sticking to the BR limits though.

Correction the last patch add the BR to battles again. BooHoo!

[pandakraut]

11 minutes ago, doublebuck said:

Correction the last patch add the BR to battles again. BooHoo!

This is only partially accurate. BR was added back to land battles because players were bringing massive amounts of men and trivializing them. With some exceptions, BR still does not apply to naval battles in the latest patch.

Edited March 21, 2020 by pandakraut

[RAMJB]

11 hours ago, pandakraut said:

FYI the shown limits can be exceeded in almost every battle currently. The limits were effectively removed except for PoIs and battles like Valcour Island because players were complaining that they never got to use their 3rd rates when they captured them very early in the campaign.

Great to hear that someone is still winning battles sticking to the BR limits though.

Not talking about battles, but about missions. The grey icons where you put ships from turn to turn. Those have hard limits and in most of them 100 points is the max you can assign. Which is a perfect fit for a 6th and a 7th rate.

In battle I don't give much thought to BRs or anything like that. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to use 3rd rates, right? ;). I'm not overly focused on maxing out on big ships however. For instance I sold my Ardent as soon as I got the Bellona. One 3rd rate is far more than enough to do the heavylifting for the whole of the campaign (besides, I also already had a Razee, which is an absolute monster of a ship, almost as good as a 3rd rate because what it loses in firepower it wins in maneouverability), so there was no point in having two of them as it'd been overkill.

Edited March 22, 2020 by RAMJB

[pandakraut]

8 hours ago, RAMJB said:

Not talking about battles, but about missions. The grey icons where you put ships from turn to turn. Those have hard limits and in most of them 100 points is the max you can assign. Which is a perfect fit for a 6th and a 7th rate.

Ahh, got it. PoI = Points of Interest = Mission

[doublebuck]

On 3/21/2020 at 2:14 PM, pandakraut said:

This is only partially accurate. BR was added back to land battles because players were bringing massive amounts of men and trivializing them. With some exceptions, BR still does not apply to naval battles in the latest patch.

Yeah I agree however one of my two computers went down so I can't mention the battle whether it was sea or land when the update download and I replayed the battle and noticed the BR limit as I was playing on the computer that went down I am lucky I have a back up computer to play on.  As far as huge amount of infantry don't the AI scale up I mean some of the land battles are getting a lot harder specially if we don't bring a good enough force? I don't remember but those pentagon fortifications are brutal. Of course take what I say with a grain of salt for I am playing on hard difficulty and that may shape my thoughts a little bit.