OW Groups in Depth

[Lyric]

Hello!

 

I know I've already mentioned this idea to a friend, and it will most likely make an appearance in another thread, but I had a few more ideas, and wanted to explain how I'd visualize OW groups working in the future in greater depth.

 

 

So, essentially every time you group up with your friends, you are essentially, [using other game terminology] raiding together.

So if we consider that in a typical raid group you usually have a leader. And perhaps a second in command. If we incorporate this into Naval action, add a bit of history, this is the result:

 

A Fleet with a Leader and 2 assistants with the titles Admiral, Vice Admiral, and Rear Admiral. 3 squadrons in the fleet, with the same fleet chat. Each admiral has their own group, is able to see exactly who is in the other group by clicking the icons above [4 players] or [6 players], and also have different colored writing to distinguish them from their captains.  

All fleet members should also be able to see the green, red and blue tags so they know exactly what squadron they belong to, even in a battle instance. It makes seeing which line of battle you should be in a lot easier, if there are more than one.

 

 

 

The only problems I forsee with this are:

- the title confliction between the grouping and experience [rear admiral specifically]

- more clutter on the UI [maybe have an clickable arrow to hide/show the group interface]

- more ugly looking flags. Bring in nicer flags please!

 

See pics below.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

Edited September 17, 2015 by Richard Bolitho

[Charles Caldwell]

I like the idea Richard very much, with some UI tweaking this would be a welcome addition.

 

Perhaps lose the Admiral titles and go for Division/Squadron/Column - Commodore?

[Lyric]

I agree that different names would be better in order to avoid confliction or weird mechanics, but I'm really loathe to discard the Admiral, Vice, Rear as it's more historically accurate.  Plus if you make the max exp rank commodore, it would fit in fairly nicely.

 

But if anyone has some good name suggestions/substitutes for admiral/vice/rear, speak up!

[Johny Reb]

I like the idea on first glance...

 

To bring more depth to it then I would change the titles based on group size.  As an explanation.....  Say the standard group or "stick" (if its appropriate to borrow a Potbs term) comprises 5 toons with a max size of a fleet being 25. So the potential is 5 sticks in a large group. If you are running around in a group of 5 hunting bad guys then essentially the lead is a Commodore. If your group has more than one stick then an admiral would be present and each stick commanded by a commodore.

 

I think the idea of color coding works but I would rather have my team all one color to avoid any confusion that could arise from having two or three colors. (I guess I'm assuming that these colors you present would be applied to the names above the ships and not just in the list of group members on the UI.) I'd rather all the names be the same but a small symbol placed next to the name to denote battle rank.

[DeRuyter]

Nice idea. I agree with JR though, titles depend on the size of the fleet/ number of squadrons. So for the RN if you had 1 squadron of frigates, the leader would be in effect the Commodore and the others just ship captains. Technically commodore was not really a rank just the title for someone in charge of a squadron (or of a yacht club!) If you had a fleet with multiple squadrons you'd have an Admiral as the fleet commander several other lower ranked admirals as squadron commanders. The latter system would be good for the large fleet events.

[Charles Caldwell]

 Technically commodore was not really a rank just the title for someone in charge of a squadron (or of a yacht club!) If you had a fleet with multiple squadrons you'd have an Admiral as the fleet commander several other lower ranked admirals as squadron commanders. 

 

Agreed hence me picking the title Commodore.