Make surrendering worth it.

[Meraun]

Hey Captains

 

 

Nobody ever surrenders... i mean why woud i surrender? My ship is demasted, half of my crew is dead i'am surrounded by 3 Frigates - Surrender? Why woud i? If i surrender i lose my Durability, upgrades, Officiers (once implemented) and Cannons. If i sink, i lose exactly the same, but i got a good change of  earn some extra XP & Gold with my last 3 or 4 Broadsides.

 

This is not very realistic because only fanatics woud keep fighting in taht Situation.

 

So why not change it?

 

My three Ideas:

 

1.- If you surrender you lose all upgrades (including Permanent) and Cannons. But not a Durability

                    - adjustment's - Against Pirates you do lose a Durability. (Because they don have Honor)

Problmes:  1. it coud lead to mass surrendering's in bigger Battles  once one side got a clear upper hand (well currently everyone tries to run if a OW-Battle is lost) but this woud actually be quite Historical.

                  2. Woud make 1st and 2th rate's with 1 Durability make surrender quite fast, maybe too fast.

 

2.- Kind of a "reminder" system. If you surrender in a Ship you lose a Durability. But you get kind of "reminder or mark" wich tells you have surrender in this ship once.  The second time you surrender in the same

ship, you get an other "reminder". As soon as you have 2 reminder's (or 3) on one Ship you gain a Durability for taht ship.

 

Problems:  1. Not sure how easy it woud be to implement.

Solveing:    2. 1st and 2th Rates woud be able gain a Durability

 

3.- If you surrender you lose all upgrades (including Permanent) and Cannons. But not a Durability BUT- you have to ask the enemy for a surrender, if he wants to take a Durability he can.

                  - You coud combine it with a Player reputation " from mercyfull to merciless" or " Honorable to Maniac"

 

 

Waht do you think?

            

                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ghroznak]

I agree that Surrender is pointless in it's current implementation. Since the loss from a Surrender is exactly the same as a loss from being sunk, captured or blown up then why would you ever hit the Surrender button?

 

What if Surrender meant that you lose no durability, but a message is sent to the enemy where they have to accept your surrender?

 

If they decline then you have no other hope than to either fight it out or flee. If they accept then they get the same rewards as if they had sunk you, and only difference is that you are let away without losing durability.

 

This way you can't just surrender immediately to avoid losing durability; the enemy still has to accept the surrender.

On the flip side, the enemy has the option to accept your surrender which means they get cargo and gold with less damage (even no damage) to their own ship, ergo no repair costs.

 

With a system like this it will also make it obvious who is an honorable pirate or privateer, and who is just an internet troll out to grief people Heck, there could even be a system that logs how often a player accept or decline surrenders, and when you look at that enemy through the spyglass it could come up as a small tooltip where you see name of the player, his faction and "Likely to accept surrender. Very unlikely to accept surrender" or some such descriptive indication to let you make an informed decision whether or not you want to strike your colors.

[OlavDeng2]

I like some of the ideas except the one about increasing durabilities, in no way what so ever should we be able to regain durabilities, that just opens the flood gates for exploiting.

 

i think the best way is indeed the thing of surrendering, if your enemy accepts you loose everything apart from the ship and its durability. if they dont accept it sucks to be you.

[John SIlver]

In my opinion, the only reason to surrender is to save yourself some time - and it should stay that way. There's hardly anything wrong with that yet there are wayyy bigger issues with literally all of your suggestions. Surrendering to save a durability is game breaking as hell and discourages competition, whether it be surrendering once or surrendering 50 times to save that dura. 

 

"Surrendering" implies surrendering your ship... why would you get a durability for that????

Edited February 3, 2016 by John SIlver

[Ghroznak]

If there is no reason to use Surrender, then why even have it in the game?

 

I disagree that it should be there as just some kind of "screw it, I can't be bothered with this battle so I will just Surrender, eat the loss and do something else". If that is the case, use the Quit button instead.

 

What incentives can be implemented to make it worthwhile for someone to actually Surrender and forfeit their gold, cargo etc?

 

Only reason for me to do it would be to save the durability point. And for that not to be exploited, i.e. people will just hit Surrender immediately when coming under attack, the attacker will have to accept it.

 

You could say that other incentives to use Surrender would be to keep your cargo, or parts of your cargo, or some such... but that would be rather unfair for the attacker as their purpose for attacking you, and accepting a Surrender, would be to seize the cargo for profit.

 

Now, there are obviously situations where the cargo is of no interest, e.g. you just want to get a pirate out of your waters, or you want enemy faction ships destroyed... in those cases, if a Surrender is even offered, you can simply decline it and proceed with sinking the ship.

Edited February 3, 2016 by Ghroznak

[Meraun]

In my opinion, the only reason to surrender is to save yourself some time - and it should stay that way. There's hardly anything wrong with that yet there are wayyy bigger issues with literally all of your suggestions. Surrendering to save a durability is game breaking as hell and discourages competition, whether it be surrendering once or surrendering 50 times to save that dura. 

 

"Surrendering" implies surrendering your ship... why would you get a durability for that????

 

well waht do you suggest? its just broken as it is.

 

A Moral system for your Crew wich will make them surrenderin automaticly? Maybe controlable with officiers?

[John SIlver]

I think getting rid of the Surrender option is better than any suggestion you or I have thought of TBH.

 

 

 

However the morale system could be cool, if implemented correctly - but that would be tricky.

Edited February 3, 2016 by John SIlver

[Ghroznak]

Getting rid of it simply takes content and options out of the game.

 

Surrendering would happen at sea, especially if a merchant realized they had no way to escape. Rather than fighting a battle they are doomed to lose anyhow, surrendering is a much better option as it saves the lives of the crew (well, hopefully).

 

Also, if/when crew management, training and such is added then keeping your crew alive becomes even more important, which in turn makes Surrendering an important option during battles.

 

In my opinion, Surrendering needs to stay in the game as a choice you can make, with consequences obviously, but at the same time with incentives (such as sparing crew, retaining the durability point or other incentives that make it worthwhile for you to use Surrender while also making it worthwhile for attacker to accept the Surrender).

 

If we remove the Surrender, or simply leave it in the game in the current, broken, form then the only options you ever have is to fight to the death or simply ragequit because you can't be bothered.

[Tremor]

hm.

good question.

 

my solution :

keeping durability : NO.

keeping cannons / upgrades : NO

Keeping crew (if implemented) : YES (maybe not all, maybe depending on how fast you surrender.)

[Fenn]

Surrendering should be the *Main* end of the battle, as it was historically. If an enemy ship surrenders, let the attacker decide what happens. Give the option to capture the ship for himself(Costing the owner 1 durability) or have the surrendered pay a ransom as it were, the value of the ship(if sold at the market) at an arbitrary value like, 1.5x the cost they would have got if they cap'd and sold it. It would have the affect of giving pirates either a money incentive(and the captured cargo) or a superior ship(if that was why they attacked).

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

1. A captain firing into a ship that had surrendered, intentionally, is known as a Pirate. Nations simply did not operate that way - if the other ship struck, you ceased fire and sent over a prize crew.  In fact, there were a number of instances where a Captain believed the other ship had struck (damage brought the ensign down), sent over a prize crew, who were received by the enemy ship, informed they hadn't yet struck, and were returned to their ship to relay the message and continue the fight.  Honor was HUGE in those days, and one conducted himself with same (Pirates excepted of course).

The original mechanics forced you to pay repairs on your ship (from 0) if you sank.  Surrender you only had to pay repairs for the damage done up to the point you surrendered.  This was stranding people without ships when they mistakenly sailed with too little money in their pocket to pay the repair cost.  Repairs were removed from sinkings, and surrender became worthless.

I believe the implementation of Officers, and maybe Crew will re-energize the surrender button.  My current idea is that crew can gain experience with each battle, and the more experience they have, the more (small) buffs to things like reload, sailing, turning, speed, etc.  If your ship sinks, you lose your crew - most of them couldn't swim and you didn't necessarily have the boats to carry them all effectively.   You also risk losing an officer or two.  This will bring back the idea of fighting hard, but when it becomes obvious that you've lost, simply surrendering to save your crew.  Very historical.

[Hethwill]

Surrendering, in a game perspective, should lend to no loss of Durability but loss of Rank.

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

Surrendering, in a game perspective, should lend to no loss of Durability but loss of Rank.

 

A Captain who surrendered to a superior force, after making every effort to escape, was never sanctioned though.  Captains weren't expected to fight to the death to keep their rank.  They were expected to fight to the best of their abilities and their ships' abilities, but to strike when the situation became hopeless.  So long as their losing the ship (due to striking or sinking) wasn't a result of negligence, their rank and stature was retained.  

 

As to Durability - allowing you to keep the durability just means that, since the opponent gets your ship, you'd create "duplicate" ships running around out there, which is also a bad idea, and incredibly easily exploited for gain.

[Godream]

Hey Captains

 

 

Nobody ever surrenders... i mean why woud i surrender? My ship is demasted, half of my crew is dead i'am surrounded by 3 Frigates - Surrender? Why woud i? If i surrender i lose my Durability, upgrades, Officiers (once implemented) and Cannons. If i sink, i lose exactly the same, but i got a good change of  earn some extra XP & Gold with my last 3 or 4 Broadsides.

 

This is not very realistic because only fanatics woud keep fighting in taht Situation.

 

So why not change it?

 

My three Ideas:

 

1.- If you surrender you lose all upgrades (including Permanent) and Cannons. But not a Durability

                    - adjustment's - Against Pirates you do lose a Durability. (Because they don have Honor)

Problmes:  1. it coud lead to mass surrendering's in bigger Battles  once one side got a clear upper hand (well currently everyone tries to run if a OW-Battle is lost) but this woud actually be quite Historical.

                  2. Woud make 1st and 2th rate's with 1 Durability make surrender quite fast, maybe too fast.

 

2.- Kind of a "reminder" system. If you surrender in a Ship you lose a Durability. But you get kind of "reminder or mark" wich tells you have surrender in this ship once.  The second time you surrender in the same

ship, you get an other "reminder". As soon as you have 2 reminder's (or 3) on one Ship you gain a Durability for taht ship.

 

Problems:  1. Not sure how easy it woud be to implement.

Solveing:    2. 1st and 2th Rates woud be able gain a Durability

 

3.- If you surrender you lose all upgrades (including Permanent) and Cannons. But not a Durability BUT- you have to ask the enemy for a surrender, if he wants to take a Durability he can.

                  - You coud combine it with a Player reputation " from mercyfull to merciless" or " Honorable to Maniac"

 

 

Waht do you think?

The ideas are pretty good, I agree that the mechanic should have some worth, especially in regards to affecting individuals reputation as it was an important part of naval warfare and tactics in that time period.

[Hethwill]

True that. Wrote without too much thought over it. I seem to be immune to exploits myself but yeah some folks just seem to be naturally apt to find loopholes.

[Prince of Whales]

 

As to Durability - allowing you to keep the durability just means that, since the opponent gets your ship, you'd create "duplicate" ships running around out there, which is also a bad idea, and incredibly easily exploited for gain.

 

I've seen several mentions of having surrender preserve the durability of your ship.  The concern with this is, as you explained, duplicate ships.  What if surrendering allowed you to preserve your ship's durability by ransoming it?  for example, you get in a fight with an opponent and find yourself in a hopeless situation.  To preserve your ship, you surrender.  You lose the battle, along with any cargo onboard, and must pay the victor a prize of gold equal to the value of that dura.  The victor gets the cargo and the prize money plus whatever gold/exp from the battle, but not the ship itself.  If he wants to capture the ship so he can use it, he should have the option to reject the surrender and then disable and board it like now.  No ships are duplicated, and surrendering gains immediate and meaningful value.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Prince of Whales