Clan Missions Revival

[Anolytic]

This is not a suggestion for a new mechanic, but rather an argument to revive and improve an existing one.

The mood in my circles about the freshest changes to the game is generally positive. The new woods introduced seem to have an idea behind them. They need further adjustment and balancing, but that’s already been promised is coming. And the decrease to acceleration is something the game experience may really profit from when it is further adjusted as indicated. 

The thing that isn’t really working however, is the distribution of the new woods. The way they are distributed serves only to advantage those few players who have alts in all other nations, and are rich enough to be able to buy the best woods at any cost. Some spawn locations are captureable, but they are also extremely close to the home waters and Home Defence Fleets of a nation, and also happen to be in ports that are already developed crafting ports. Meaning they are either practically uncaptureable and therefore may as well have been placed in a capital, or they serve as a rag placed in front of a nation’s crafting port making it more likely some other nation will attack the port, something they might not have been willing to before, effectively destroying the target nation and driving droves of players away from the game.

 

Now...we have a mechanic for distributing rare woods already in the game, which has been effectively unused and neglected since release. 

The Clan Missions mechanic, whereby you extract X amount of logs from a forest for typically 2X amount of doubloons out of a forest that starts at 1 000 000 logs was an interesting idea meant to incite fighting over the ports where the resource would spawn. Before release it was effectively replaced as the system to distribute woods by farms that we could invest and plant ourselves and with unlimited resources. Which had the advantage of shortening hauling distances, give players back control of the supply and also avoid the situation where some nations would be randomly gifted access to woods with more favourable RvR-characteristics than others, while risking some nations might have to live with oak/oak warships. 

However clan-missions were never removed from the game. They spawned around the map at release. There are white oak forests, live oak, bermuda cedar, etc. as clan missions in various locations on the map. 

Yet no wars have been fought over access to these forests. And to my knowledge none of these forests have been depleted and respawned since release. Some forests were almost halfway depleted at the beginning right after release, when labour hours for resource extraction were sparse and doubloons were plenty. Since then they have not been touched, and I’ve come across forests where only one clan mission has been completed.

Some of these forests have changed hands since release, yet I doubt the conquering nation paid any mind to it.

My proposal:

Is to remove the clan missions we have on the map today, slightly adjust the numbers in terms of output, cost and total amount, and reimplement the mechanic, but for distribution of the new woods. 

Remove the current clanmissions for Live oak, White oak, Bermuda Cedar, etc. 

Make new clan missions for Malabar Teak, African Teak, Riga Fir, Greenheart etc.

These clan missions should see some changes from previoulsy.

The size of the forest should no longer be 1 000 000 logs.

Make it perhaps 25 000 logs per forest. Enough that more than just a couple of people can extract some, but a small enough forest that it will be quickly depleted and respawn in another location. 

Make it so that each extraction is 2500 logs at a time, about almost enough for 2 lineships.

The total forest size should be small enough that the forests are depleted and respawn in a different location at least about every week, provided that the woods are actually desirable for players to acquire. Yet large enough that it is not just the first player who comes across the forest that gets to extract some.

There could even be a mechanic that these forests are redistributed on the map once every week, regardless of if they are depleted by then or not.

The forests could be distributed one out of two ways across the map. 

Either they have an equal chance each time to spawn in any of the almost 400 captureable ports on the map. The consequence of this is that the more ports a nation, clan or clan-alliance owns, the greater the chance each time that a forest will spawn in one of their ports. If you own half the map, you have a pretty good chance at any given time to have each and every one of the desireable woods spawn in one of your nation’s ports. Smaller nations would see forests spawn in their ports maybe once for every 3-4 times it spawns in a particular larger nation.

Alternatively there could be a two-step lottery. Where in the first step for each forest it is randomly decided which nation a forest will spawn in, and secondly after that there is a random decision which of that nation’s ports the forest would spawn in. 

Smaller nations would have just as good a chance to spawn a desireable forest as larger nations, and moreover, large nations would often find that although woods spawned in their ports, the location of where they spawned could be on the other side of the map in their far-away colonies, requiring a long haul to get it back to where it is needed after extraction. In some small way this could serve as a slight rebalancer of nation.

I’m not sure how much it should cost to extract woods from a forest, but particularly rare and  desireable woods could have an exorbitant price in doubloons. Requiring for instance 10 doubloons per log, costing us 25 000 doubloons to extract 2 500 logs. And each player being able to extract only one batch of logs per 24 hours.

If the forests deplete often/weekly, then within just a few weeks each of the woods would have typically spawned at least once in each of the nations ports, distributing the woods somewhat evenly and fairly between the nations, without flooding the market with logs that are meant to be rare and expensive.

The old, «normal» woods that we ourselves produce in our ports would still be the go-to for most builders, but once and again there would be a chance for each player to extract enough of a special wood that he seeks that he could build a ship out of it. Or two. 

This is how clan missions look today:

This forest has been in place since release, not moved at all. Only 2 clan delivery missions have been completed, taking a total of 10 000 logs out of a forest of 1 000 000. This forest will never move, and no other nation will get access to this particular forest.

Here's how it could look for the new woods:

25 000 logs in the forest.

2 500 logs delivery. 

The price in doubloons is adjustable.

The forests could despawn every week forcibly, or just wait for the 25 000 logs to deplete, which should go quick as soon as the location of the forest is discovered.

Apart from a viable distribution system for logs, this suggested system of distribution has two further advantages. It encourages exploration playstyles, as players sail around their nations ports looking for freshly spawned forests to be the first to get their hand on the new logs. And secondly, it gives immense added value to doubloons as a PvP-reward. PvP-players can exchange their doubloons for logs, and hand them to crafters who turn the logs of their choice into ships.

[Despe]

i like too much this idea, i think is so better that woods are only dropped in some permanent ports. Imho dropping on permanent ports will be deleted and this woods only would obtained with missions like that and with random daily drop in all ports of map.

[Tiedemann]

Good suggestion, I had seriously forgot about those "Moving forests"..  

[BoatyMcBoatFace]

thats nice but a person/clan and their alts can melt that forest in 1 day with your proposed amounts...

 

 

Edited June 24, 2020 by BoatyMcBoatFace

[Admiral Howe of Gibraltar]

And I thought this was removed for good, but here we go again.

 

Would you propose this if you had the best woods in Veracruz? Asking for a friend.

[Despe]

32 minutes ago, Admiral Howe of Gibraltar said:

And I thought this was removed for good, but here we go again.

 

Would you propose this if you had the best woods in Veracruz? Asking for a friend.

we have the best woods in VC? where? i dont see it.

Well a mechanic like this is much more fair for all players that put rare woods in unconquerable ports. Why spanish players dont have rare woods in Habana like KPR have? I do not understand why the brits, the dutch or americans have that privilege, and spanish, danes or pirates no... It is not fair, and random woods are much more playable and fair for players.

Edited June 24, 2020 by Despe

[Stilgar]

I am all for more accessible woods, but your proposal will beat the purpose of these woods to be rare and would favor (larger) clans leaving casual/sole player or small groups in the dust.

[Isaac J Smith]

On 6/25/2020 at 5:22 PM, Stilgar said:

I am all for more accessible woods, but your proposal will beat the purpose of these woods to be rare and would favor (larger) clans leaving casual/sole player or small groups in the dust.

Casual solo player discovers Malabar Forest. Sells information to a clan for a reward.

I know for some of these woods you might see clans offer bounty rewards (rare ships, upgrades, reals/doubloons etc.) to people who report a location of a forest to them.

Casual/solo player would have just as much opportunity to sail around ports and find these, and if they get in first could easily get them themselves. There are a lot of ports out there after all...

This would beat the "rarity" a little bit, but you could always tweak the numbers to make them rare. What it does do is create more things for people to do than just Combat or Trading, by creating a 3rd "exploration" type role. It also presents a bit more fairness to the map, rather than locking things like the fastest woods behind having alts in every nation.

[Despe]

On 6/25/2020 at 9:22 AM, Stilgar said:

I am all for more accessible woods, but your proposal will beat the purpose of these woods to be rare and would favor (larger) clans leaving casual/sole player or small groups in the dust.

put in unconquerable ports is worst mechanic that anolytic proposal because this make the wood only rare for players that are not in that faction, for nationals ones is expensive, but not rare. All these rare woods are imported from Africa, India and some more places, and put it in a port as dropped wood is a weird mechanic for a rare resource... Wouldn't importers also want to sell those woods in Havana or New Orleans? I think that answer is yes, and this mechanic needs a fix.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Despe

[mikawa]

I have nothing against putting them in unconquerable ports. I think every nation should bring some personal flavour into shipbuilding, so why not put some of the woods in capitals? They can be sold in free ports, they can be captured by chasing traders, and not everyone must have access to "all" woods ingame. It's a special happy day if you get access to a wood you have not used so far and it should remain rare. The mixture is what makes the game interesting, so lets test it throughly before spreading things in different directions.

[Hethwill]

Remove doubloons and replace for wooden chests in the clan missions. ( doubloons are easy to come by. wooden chests require clan organisation. )

Spawn the clan missions in non-regional-capital clan owned ports -or- ports that clan is friendly with owner. ( makes owning ports other than capitals a step further important )

Quantities per missions equivalent to european trader volumes. ( benefit being extra euro trader commits to deliver a certain quantity at selected clan port and nowhere else )

Clan is the keyword.

Edited July 1, 2020 by Hethwill

[mikawa]

On 6/24/2020 at 4:34 PM, Anolytic said:

Make new clan missions for Malabar Teak, African Teak, Riga Fir, Greenheart etc.

No. make these woods only regional.

[Sea Archer]

I like this proposal. Woods will still be rare, if there are only one or two forests of each on the map, but no nation will have exclusive access to special woods.

Though I still like the idea to find the rare woods on NPC traders... maybe we can do both.

[Conte D. Catellani]

What about:

Clan dockyard: 5 slot you pay a rent in reals every day

If you dont use it to give crafted ship to your mate you place indiamen or an other tship  inside one or more slots, flag an option for trade and add an amount of doubloons.

Before the maintenance you have the result of the trade with an amount of rare woods and other special rare resource.

Like clan warehouse only officers have the rights to move the stuff from the tradeship holds into the clan warehouse only.

If you dont pay the clan dockyard you dont have the auto trade service but you  can use a daily clan dockyard mission where you have to go with the trade ship inside an enemy port, like a

cargo delivery mission and come back.. in this way you find a note for fixed quantity of rare wood that you decide ( but ist depends by  the dimension of the trade ship you use ). Since you

have five slot you can take 5 mission daily and use doubloons too.

Alts: i dont think they could be useful since is a clan thing  and just officer and more could use it

Big nations: the strong clan could use the basic system and wait what the fate will bring or use the mission, in this case you can hunt them 

Little nations: could use both the system due the clan dimension and clans could work together to built up a pb fleet 

 

[Knuddel]

 

On 6/25/2020 at 12:08 AM, Tiedemann said:

Good suggestion, I had seriously forgot about those "Moving forests"..  

u arre just to slow to follow them. Or u have a beachparty at the Other side of the NA World